Truth Magazine

By Connie W. Adams

Silence from the Crusader

Readers of Truth Magazine may be wondering what we have heard from Vernon M. Newland, editor of The Crusader, in response to our acceptance of the challenges he has been offering in that paper about instrumental music. Absolutely nothing! Editor Newland is as silent as the tomb. We wrote him a personal letter, sent him a copy of the article which was carried in Truth Magazine on January 13, 1972, before it appeared and offered him space to reply. We offered to discuss the matter with him in written or oral debate or both. On top of that I sent money for a years subscription to his paper and have not received a single copy or my money back. We will inform the readers of future developments, if there are any to report.

The March 3, 1972 issue of Religion at Vanderbilt gives a report from the dean of the

Divinity School which says “students are rejecting rigorous analysis, as evidenced in the decreased enrollment in Bible courses, and instead stress a more free-flowing approach to understanding.” He said students want to “grasp a hunk of material and gets its smell and feel.” He sees this attitude as similar to the “Jesus Freak phenomenon” which he describes as a “premature fixing on the penultimate as ultimate.” All of which makes me glad I am just a gospel preacher at liberty to teach the truth of Gods word without all the jargon emanating from divinity schools.

Church Youth Organizations

For years gospel preachers have defended Bible classes as systematic arrangements under elders of a congregation to carry out the generic command to teach. It has been said that these are not separate organizations like the Christian Endeavor or the BYPU. Gospel preachers have also correctly preached that the largest and smallest unit for church action is the congregation. But we are seeing an increase in structured organizations within some of the more liberal churches of Christ. These have officers, treasuries, make and execute plans and have all the necessary elements of organizational structure. For instance, the weekly church news of the Streets Run Road and Brownsville Road church in Pittsburg, Pa. carried this item in the October 25, 1971 issue:

“A Teenage Organization was formed at a meeting of all of the teenagers at ________s house last Sunday afternoon. The following were elected officers. . .”

Then there were listed the names of the President, Vice President, Secretary and Treasurer followed by this note:

“We are looking forward to a lot of good to come out of this new teenage organization in the way of Christian fellowship among the teenagers and MORE ACTIVE WORK FOR CHRIST IN THE CHURCH (My emphasis, CWA).”

 

The January 16, 1972 Broadway Bulletin of Broadway church in Lubbock, Texas carried the following:

“At their meeting Sunday evening the junior high nominated members for the youth cabinet. This list was then combined with the nominations presented by the junior high Sunday morning class teachers … The cabinet will help direct Broadways YOUTHREACH on the junior high level.”

The January 30, 1972 bulletin of the same church reported on a “ski retreat” and then said “The Youth Council and the Youth Cabinet have functioned so well.” So, they have a “Youth Council” and a “Youth Cabinet” which will help “direct” the “youthreach” and they are already functioning. I can read in my New Testament of elders overseeing the flock but I cannot find anything about such intra-congregational organizations.

Nursery Authority

The nursery of the church in Elizabethtown, Kentucky is not just a room where mothers take their babies, tend to their needs and then bring them back into the assembly. It is staffed by some young women who keep them throughout the service and attempt to do a little teaching. This gave rise to some question by some as to whether or not these young women did not need to be in worship with the rest. The preacher responded with this note in the January 27 1972 Caller:

“MAYBE I HAVE HAD THIS NOTE IN THE CALLER BEFORE, but I just thought you would want to know where scriptural authority for having a nursery in the church building is found. I Cor. 15:51 reads, we shall not all sleep but we shall ALL BE CHANGED. Enough said.”

I can appreciate his sense of humor if not his exegesis.

TRUTH MAGAZINE, XVI: 25, pp. 6-7
April 27, 1972

By Robert C. Welch

Readers of religious papers among the brotherhood are aware of the fact that some of the leading lights among the churches which have espoused the union of church and human institutions have also been having some meetings with the conservative wing of the Christian Church. These meetings seem to have been for the purpose of discussing possibilities of, and hindrances to, union. These brethren seem to envision the universal church being composed of all of those groups which they catalog in the “Restoration Movement.” Question: Are people, who formerly went in the direction of restoration but have now turned back, still in a restoration movement? If so, then this writer does not know the difference between forward and backward. But the ecumenicalism which pervades the denominational field is growing in the attitudes and actions, expressed and manifested, of many brethren today.

You will perhaps remember that the editor of the Firm Foundation was in some of those “Restoration” meetings. This tendency is a growing thing. Its ecumenical yearning will not stay limited to those whom they call “Restoration” groups. It soon reaches out to all sorts of sects, movements and social groupings. If you think I am “judging motives,” as one of my good brethren recently charged me, read the following revealing item from the pen of the Firm Foundation editor (January 18, 1972, issue) :

“We feel that there are some areas in which we can, and should, cooperate with religious and even secular groups. We cooperate with law enforcement officers, with P.T.A.s, and with groups opposing the use of alcohol. We can lock arms with religious groups on moral issues, census taking, attempts to strengthen the home, respect for government, sharing of radio time or a joint religious directory in the Sunday paper. In fact, we can cooperate with anyone in the forwarding of any truth. But we cannot compromise with anyone.”

That theory which he has expressed will permit the churches to cooperate with the denominations in a joint evangelistic campaign just so long as it is left to each group to teach the respondent who has chosen that group the plan of salvation as each sees it. The theory places the church on a par with the denomination. The theory actually makes the church a denomination among denominations. It suggests union, with each participating member group retaining its own peculiar characteristics; in that way there is no “compromise with anyone.”

There was the time only a few years ago when brethren in general found it repulsive that a preacher here and there would join the ministerial association of his town. Now, of course he made it clear that he was not compromising anything! (?). But that is precisely the kind of thing which our ecumenical editor is advocating. “Lock arms with religious groups”? When the churches were making their greatest strides of steadfast growth, they locked horns with the religious groups. And we ought not to allow the teachings of such men as Reuel Lemmons lead us to forget it. If we accomplish anything for the Lord we are going to have to “Come ye out from among them, and be ye separate” (2 Cor. 6:17).

In a recent article (Truth Magazine, March 9, 1972) I called attention to a meeting designed by A. C. C. for discussion of differences of more recent origin than those involved with the Christian Church. Brother Lemmons thought it good that no tape recordings of the meetings were being permitted. I suggested the possibility of, some who were engaged in the discussions being afraid to have what they said on permanent record. Brother James Adams suggested that I was judging motives. Actually I did not think it necessary to document my reason for such a suggestion. But Brother Adams has given us the proof of my suggestion. He tells us that Brother Thomas “said there were men of exceedingly unorthodox views who were sensitive about their presentations being tape recorded . . . in deference to their feelings and to induce them to appear and speak, it was considered advisable to ban tape recorders from the meeting” (Truth Magazine, March 9, 1972). Now that is just what I was suggesting all along. It still is “disconcerting” to me that brethren will agree to go into the lions den operating on the lions rules; it is downright dangerous; no impugning of or judging the motives of my brethren; but from a sense of concern for them, I expressed my observations.

For many years the proponents of premillennialism among brethren were not willing to have their views tested in the open. They averred that they did not preach on it from the pulpit, and most did not wish to engage in public debate. They wanted to do their work in private. It is now clear that some of the proponents of “exceedingly Unorthodox” views of today want to do their work under the cloak of privacy or at least, of limited publicity.

There is a difference in a discussion with no arrangements made for publicizing it, and in planning that it cannot be publicized. Certainly, this writer has engaged in many discussions with no publicity given them, but he does not intend willingly to walk into a trap where he agrees that a discussion of public doctrinal differences cannot be made public. Once again, I neither impugned nor judged the motives of my brethren who were engaged in these discussions; I did express concern and warning. Brother Adams documentation of the reason for the rule against recording the meetings is appreciated by me, for it shows the very thing I questioned.

TRUTH MAGAZINE, XVI: 25, pp. 5-6
April 27, 1972

By Luther Blackmon

For hundreds of years the Bible has been the world’s best seller, in the book field. The life of the average novel is about one year, and it is “gone with the wind.”

The first book printed, after the invention of the printing press with movable type, was the Bible. This was about the middle of the 15th century. It was called the Guttenberg Bible, after the name of the man who invented the printing press. A copy of this book, if you could buy one at all, would sell for $100,000. The British government paid Russia $510,000.00 for a single copy.

The longest telegram ever sent was the New Testament. When the revised version was completed, the whole book was sent by wireless from New York to Chicago. Several years ago the “British and Foreign Bible Society” was printing 22 Bibles every minute, day and night, to keep up with the demand.

Enemies, scoffers, doubters, fanatics, neglect and destruction have sought its termination. Diocletian thought he had effectively done away with all “Christian ‘Scriptures.” But when Constantine came to the throne, 28 years later, he issued an edict to have all the scriptures that could be found, brought forth. In less than forty-eight hours, fifty copies of the Bible had been found.

Celsus, Voltaire, Gibbon, Hume, Ingersol, Paine, Robespierre and many others have hurled their “witticisms” and sarcasm against it, to no avail. Even its friends have sometimes caused it to be looked upon with suspicion and disdain, because they have tried to make it a sort of theological grab-bag. “Choose the kind of religion you like and then find some scripture that can be made to appear as though it confirms your choice.”

Unity of The Bible

The Bible was written by about forty men, over a period of 1600 years. They came from all walks of life. Ezra the priest, Solomon the poet, Isaiah the prophet, David the king, Daniel the statesman, Amos the herdsman, Moses, Luke and Paul the scholars; From the cliffs of Arabia, from the hills of Palestine, from the courts of the Jewish temple, from the dungeon of Rome and from the Isle of Patmos. Most of these men never saw each other. Yet, their writings, when brought together, form a perfect and harmonious whole.

We have never heard anyone say, “I was a thief, drunkard, liar, a moral leper, but I read Shakespeare and Darwin’s writings, and I am a changed man.” But this has been said of the Bible thousands of times.

Not Affected by Surroundings

Moses, who wrote the Pentateuch, was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. They then believed that man sprang from worms along the Nile River. Then, when man spat on the ground, a woman sprang up. Where the woman spat, an animal sprang up. No such foolishness as this is found in the writings of Moses.

The writers of the New Testament were all Jews, except Luke. Yet they describe their Messiah as being entirely different from that which the Jewish people expected him to be.

Archeology

Critics of the Bible said Moses could not have written the Pentateuch, because writing was not known in Moses’ day. Archaeology has long since exposed this fallacy. Archaeologist M. de Morgan uncovered a black diorite upon which was written nearly 400 lines of writings, giving 248 laws written by Hammurabi a king of Babylon, about 2250 B.C.

Skeptics once insisted that no such nation as the Hittites ever existed. Records have now been found which show that the Hittites, for about seven centuries occupied parts of Syria and Asia Minor. No originality is claimed for this article. It is all borrowed. “Nuff Said.”

TRUTH MAGAZINE, XVI: 25, p. 2
April 27, 1972

By Joe Neil Clayton

When God gave the command to abstain from eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, He warned Adam and Eve, “. . . in the day that you eat thereof you shall surely die” (Genesis 2:17). We conclude that He meant spiritual death, because Adam and Eve lived for a long time after their sin, physically. So, spiritual death is the condemnation for sin. A man can live physically, while being “dead in trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2: 1).

By his sin, Adam set the precedent which introduced this punishment for it. Paul confirms this, by saying, “Therefore, as through one man (Adam) sin entered into the world, and death through sin; and so death passed unto all men, for that all sinned” (Romans 5:12). When I sin, today, I have followed in the pattern of Adam’s sin, and must be punished by the same means, death.

When Paul was describing the deterioration of those who “refused to have God in their knowledge,” in Romans 1: 28-32, he concluded that “they that practice such things are worthy of death.” In the list of sins, those who were merely envious, boastful, and disobedient to parents were as worthy as murderers and inventors of evil things. No distinction was drawn, because all deserved the same punishment, death. When one of the angels who poured out the bowls of wrath in Revelation 16 saw the result, he exclaimed, “Righteous art thou, who art and who wast, thou Holy One, because thou didst thus judge: for they poured out the blood of saints and prophets, and blood hast thou given them to drink: they are worthy.”

Our natural reaction to this might be that God is too severe in requiring the punishment of death for sin. We make our judgments by a more moderate standard, and decide that a little envy should not be condemned with the same severity that murder should be. After all, the murderer takes a life, but the envious person is simply negatively “ambitious.”

What we do not realize in all of this is that God is trying to show His attitude toward sin. He is not trying to reflect our standard, He sets His own! When Paul considered this problem, he learned the lesson, and passed it on to us. He tells us that Law serves the purpose of causing us to know what sin is. However, because we then have knowledge, we grow more aware of the sins we commit. What brings it home to us most effectively, finally, is the fact that the Law condemns sin, and pronounces the sentence of death. Paul says, in the Spirit, “So … the law is holy, and the commandment (is) holy, righteous and good. Did then that which is good (the Law) become death to me? God forbid! But sin’ that it might be shown to be sin, by working death to me through that which is good;-that through the commandment sin might become exceeding sinful” (Romans 7:12-13).

The fact that God pronounces the sentence of death for sin, and makes no distinction between sins in regard to this condemnation, helps us to realize the exceeding sinfulness of sin. If the punishment is severe, it is evidence of the extreme offense of sin to God.

When we consider again the sins of Adam and Eve, we have two ways to consider it. In the eyes of men, all they did was to eat of a fruit that was not good for them. In the eyes of God, however, their action was one of rebellion. In one sin, they turned from their creator to obey Satan. As if that were not bad enough, they also sought to attain to prerogatives that belonged exclusively to God. A God of the stature of our Creator cannot endure such offenses, and His punishment of Adam and Eve, and all subsequent sinners, teaches us to respect His commands.

We cannot escape the fact, however, that we have sinned, and we may still stand under the condemnation of death. In the death-row atmosphere of such knowledge, any sinner must seek to escape through an appeal to the mercy of God. Adam and Eve had only the consolation of futile sacrifices of animals, whose blood could never take away sins (Hebrews 10: 4). Their confidence had to be placed ultimately, with ours, in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. This escape plan is cause for great thanksgiving, as the Apostle Paul said, “O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting? The sting of death is sin; and the power of sin is the law: but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (I Corinthians 15:55-57).

Let every sinner therefore come to realize the sinfulness of sin, as it can be known by its punishment, death! Let us avoid all sin, as we would the plague. Holiness is much needed in the church, today. The sinfulness of professing Christians has brought great shame on the church, and the cause of Christ. Let us take a long look at the punishment for sin, the next time we are tempted.

TRUTH MAGAZINE, XVI: 24, pp. 11-12
April 20, 1972