The newspaper headlines said: ... One nation under God' makes its debut this week. " In the body of the article, I found, ". . . The national 'One Nation Under God' campaign was conceived by the Sycamore Church of Christ in Cookeville, Tenn. . . . The local four-day effort began on Saturday evening, in a nearby town. According to the article, ". . . During the first week in July, 102 million brochures are being delivered throughout the country." They claim the idea is to put the gospel message into every household in the U.S.

The idea will fail miserably, as it should.

I received some material direct from "headquarters," with instructions to "do my part." Let me quote from the letter. ". . We chose a 'rally' format because we thought that it might attract people who would not attend a traditional Gospel meeting. We went to public facilities to attract people who would not go to a church building. We've installed patriotic speakers to attract people who would not go to hear a Gospel speaker. This represents their approach.

Now just how much gospel can we expect to hear from "patriotic" speakers, including two local politicians, and a man who was imprisoned by the North Vietnamese? These men may well be believers in God, but hardly after the New Testament order. Will they preach baptism for remission of sins and the church? If the purpose in Christ's coming was to seek and save that which is lost - and it is (Lk. 19:10), I wonder how our brethren expect this to be done without preaching the plan of salvation.

The Sycamore church has gathered or been pledged several millions of dollars. Take the Philippines, for example. It would probably cost about $150.00 per month, or $1800.00 per year to support the average preacher there. So, if the Cookeville brethren have $3.5M, that would support more than 1900 preachers in that nation. Or take the U.S. Assuming the average preacher here needs $30,000.00 per year, we could have 116 more supported preachers for a year in the U. S.

Anyone want to bet Sycamore gets $3.5M worth of soul saving preaching from this nonsense?

Guardian of Truth XXXV: 17, p. 532
September 5, 1991