Discerning The Times
by
Martyn Lloyd-Jones
A Two Chapter Excerpt from
his book Knowing the Times
From the Back Cover of the booklet: There are in our modern day
two developments that threaten the very foundation and fabric of Biblical
Christianity: the undoing of the Protestant Reformation and the denial of the
authority of the Bible. These two issues were masterfully addressed by Martyn
Lloyd-Jones, who was in the opinion of many evangelicals the greatest preacher
of the twentieth century and pastor of Westminster Chapel in London for thirty
years. Preaching back in 1960 and 1961, he dealt with these two concerns with
his characteristic boldness and directness, citing Scripture and history as
irrefutable proof of the need to return to the principles of the Reformation
and Biblical authority. As you read his words, you will be struck by how they
mirror our day, even though it’s over forty years later. The same needs exist
today, and we pray that this booklet will have wide circulation. We also highly
recommend the book from which this booklet was extracted, Knowing the Times
(Banner of Truth Trust).
Remembering the Reformation
[The report of an address given in the Usher Hall,
Edinburgh on 5 April, 1960, in commemoration of the Reformation in Scotland.]
Mr
Chairman and Christian friends, I would like to say immediately that I regard
this occasion as one of the greatest privileges that has ever fallen to my lot.
I prize the invitation that I received from the friends of the Free Church of
Scotland very highly indeed. This is an historic occasion. We are doing
something that I am certain is well pleasing in the sight of God and which I
trust, under God’s benediction and blessing, will prove to be of value and of
benefit to our souls and, let us hope, to the whole cause of God in this nation
and in all nations at this present time. I always say, when I have the pleasure
of coming to Scotland, that I am interested to come, not only because of my
concern about the gospel, but because of the deep feeling of admiration which I
have always had within me for you as a nation and as a people. And there is
certainly nothing in your long history which is more glorious and more
remarkable than that great movement of God which took place four hundred years
ago, and which we are met tonight to commemorate. Therefore, for every reason I
was very ready to come here to Edinburgh once more.
Now
our Chairman has very rightly put to you one of the questions that I also felt
should be put, because it is a question which does arise, apparently, in the
minds of some people. Why, they wonder, should we consider the Reformation in
Scotland at all at a time like this, with the world as it is and with the
multiplicity of problems that are pressing in upon us on all sides? Why turn
back and consider what happened four hundred years ago?
As
I understand it there are two main objections to doing this. The first is a
general objection to looking back, a feeling that the past has nothing to teach
us. For, after all, we are the people of the twentieth century, the people who
have split the atom, who are encompassing all knowledge and have advanced to
such giddy heights as our forefathers could not even have imagined. Why then
should we, of all people, look back, and especially look back four hundred
years? The whole climate of opinion today, and indeed during the last hundred
years, has been governed by the evolutionary theory and hypothesis, which holds
that man advances from age to age and that the present is always better than
the past; this whole climate of thought is inimical to the idea of looking back
and learning from previous history. That is one objection.
The
other objection is that we should not hold a meeting like this because the
Reformation was a tragedy. Now this is a view which is gaining currency very rapidly
at present. We are told that what we should .be considering today is unity, and
that if we spend our time considering the disruption and division in the church
which took place four hundred years ago, we are doing something sinful. There
is, alas, an increasing body of opinion in Protestant circles which is saying,
openly and unashamedly, that the Protestant Reformation was a tragedy and that
it is our business to forget it as soon as we can and to do everything possible
to heal the breach, so that we shall be one again with the Church of Rome, and
there shall be one great world church.
Those
are the two commonest objections, as I see the situation, which are brought
against what we are engaged in doing this evening. Why then are we doing it?
How do we justify a gathering such as this, and the other gatherings that are
to follow? Well, let me say quite frankly that there are wrong and false ways
of doing what we are doing here tonight. There are people who are interested in
the past merely in an antiquarian sense; history happens to be their great
interest in life. They like delving into the past and reading about the past,
not that they are interested in it in any kind of active philosophic or
religious sense; they just like burrowing in ancient history. There are people
who do this in other realms; some like collecting old furniture, and the glory
of anything to them is that it is old. They are not interested in a chair from
the standpoint of something to sit upon; what they are interested in is the age
of the chair. Now that is antiquarianism, and it is possible for us, of course,
to be governed by a purely antiquarian or historical motive. But there is no
value in that; the times in which we are living are too urgent and too
desperate for us to indulge a mere antiquarian spirit.
Now
the last time I stood at this desk, I said that I could not speak without
having a text. Well, I am still the same. And it seemed to me that there were
two texts which would not be inappropriate for this meeting, and for our
consideration this evening. There is a right way and a wrong way of viewing a
great event like the Reformation and the great men who took part in it. The
first, the right way, we are told of in the Epistle to the Hebrews, chapter 13,
verses 7 and 8: ‘Remember them which have the rule over you, who have spoken
unto you the word of God: whose faith follow, considering the end of [or, the
outcome of, their lives and of] their conversation. Jesus Christ the same
yesterday, and today, and for ever.’ That is the right way to do it; we look at
these men in order that we may learn from them, and imitate and emulate their
example.
But
there is a wrong way of doing this, and we find it in Matthew, chapter 23,
verses 29‑32. These are terrible and terrifying words: ‘Woe unto you,
scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye build the tombs of the prophets,
and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous, and say, If we had been in the
days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of
the prophets. Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the
children of them which killed the prophets. Fill ye up then the measure of your
fathers. Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation
of hell?’
Now
those are the words of the Lord Jesus Christ and He was addressing His own
generation, His own contemporaries. He said, in effect, You are paying great
tribute to the memory of the prophets; you are looking after and garnishing
their sepulchers and you are saying what great men they were — How noble, how
wonderful, we must keep their memory alive — and you say what a terrible thing
it was that your forefathers should have put these men to death. If you had
been alive then, you maintain, you would not have joined them in those wicked
deeds; you would have listened to the prophets, you would have followed them.
You hypocrites, says our Lord, you would have done nothing of the sort.
How,
then, does He prove it? Well, He does it in this way. He tests their sincerity
by discovering what their attitude is at the present to the successors to the
prophets. What is their reaction to the people who are still preaching the same
message as the prophets? He says, You say that you are admirers of the prophets
and yet you are persecuting and trying to compass the death of a man like
myself who is the modern representative of the same message, and the same
school of prophecy. Ah, says our Lord, it is one thing to look back and to
praise famous men, but that can be sheer hypocrisy. The test of our sincerity
this evening is this: What do we feel about, and how are we treating, the men
who, today, are preaching the same message as was preached by John Knox and his
fellow reformers?
So,
you see, this meeting is a very important one for us. You cannot do a thing
like this without examining yourself, without coming under scrutiny. Our
presence indicates that we are admirers of these great prophets of God, but I
wonder whether we are in reality? So it is a good thing, it seems to me, that
we should come together, if only so that we can examine ourselves in the light
of this word of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
Why
then are we doing this? How do we justify our action? Our Chairman has already
dealt with one of the answers. The fact is that you simply cannot understand
the history of Scotland unless you know something about the Protestant
Reformation. It is the key to the understanding of the history of your great
country in the last four hundred years. What Scotland has been she has been, directly
and unmistakably, as a result of the Protestant Reformation. So if we had no
other reason, that is enough.
You
are a nation of people famous for education, for knowledge, for culture.
Everybody knows that. The peasants of Scotland were cultured and able,
intelligent and intellectual people. What accounts for that? It is not merely a
matter of blood, because before the Protestant Reformation they were woefully
ignorant, backward, and illiterate. What is it, then, that has caused your
nation to be regarded, perhaps by the whole world, as supreme in her interest
in education and the pursuit of knowledge? The answer is, the Protestant
Reformation. So, apart from any religious considerations we have this mighty
and all‑important consideration.
And
then I want to add a third reason. Why are we considering the Reformation of
four hundred years ago? Well, if I am to be quite honest, I must confess that
this is my main reason: because of the state of affairs today. I am primarily a
preacher, not a lecturer, not an historian, very fond of history, but not an
antiquary, as I have said. No, I am interested in this because, as a preacher I
am concerned about the present state of affairs which is increasingly
approximating to the state of affairs that obtained before the Protestant
Reformation. You are aware of the state of the morals of this country, and of
Great Britain in general, before the Reformation: vice, immorality, sin were
rampant. My friends, it is rapidly becoming the same again! There is a woeful
moral and social declension. We are being surrounded by the very problems that
were most obvious before the Reformation took place. The moral state of the
country, these urgent social problems, juvenile delinquency, drunkenness, theft
and robbery, vice and crime, they are coming back as they were before the
Protestant Reformation.
But
it is not only a matter of moral and of social problems. What of the state of
the church? What of the kirk? What about the numbers who are members of the
church? How many even attend? We are going back to the pre‑Reformation
position. What about the authority of the church? What about the state of
doctrine in the church? Before the Reformation, there was confusion. Is there
anything more characteristic of the church today than doctrinal confusion,
doctrinal indifference — a lack of concern and a lack of interest? And then
perhaps the most alarming of all, the increase in the power, influence, and
numbers of the Church of Rome, and the romanizing tendencies that are coming
into and being extolled in the Protestant church! There is no question about
this. This is a mere matter of fact and observation. There is an obvious
tendency to return to the pre‑Reformation position; ceremonies and ritual
are increasing and the Word of God is being preached less and less, sermons are
becoming shorter and shorter. There is an indifference to true doctrine, a loss
of authority, and a consequent declension, even in the matter of numbers. I
wonder, Christian people, whether I am exaggerating when I suggest that at the
present time we are really engaged in a great struggle for the very life of the
Christian church, for the essence of the Christian faith? As I see the
situation, it is nothing less alarming than that. We are fighting for an
heritage, for the very things that were gained by that tremendous movement of
four hundred years ago. That to me is the most urgent reason. We cannot afford
the luxury of being merely antiquarian; we should be concerned about this
because of the state of affairs in which we find ourselves.
But,
somebody might say, why go back for the answer to that? Why don’t you do what
is being done everywhere else, and in every other realm of life? I read an
article in a supposedly evangelical weekly paper not so long ago, which said,
‘Why does the Church stand still?’ The man went on to say something like this:
‘I see in business and everywhere else that people are making experiments, they
are employing the backroom boys and the experimenters, and they are trying to
discover new methods, new machinery, new everything — Why doesn’t the Church do
this? The Church always seems to be looking back.’ They regard that as
something which is wrong. Now the answer to that, as I see it, can be put like
this. I am not at all sure but that the greatest of all the lessons which the
Protestant Reformation has to teach us is just this, that the secret of success
in the realm of the church and of the things of the Spirit, is to go back. What
happened in essence four hundred years ago was that these men went back to the
first century, they went back to the New Testament, they went back to the
Bible. Suddenly they were awakened to this message and they just went back to
it. There is nothing more interesting, as one reads the stories of Luther and
of Calvin, than to notice the way in which they kept on discovering that they
had been rediscovering what Augustine had already discovered, and which had
been forgotten. Indeed I suggest that perhaps the greatest of all the lessons
of the Protestant Reformation is that the way of recovery is always to go back,
back to the primitive pattern, to the origin, to the norm and the standard
which are to be found alone in the New Testament. That is exactly what happened
four hundred years ago. These men went back to the beginning, and they tried to
establish a church conforming to the New Testament pattern. And so, let us be
guided by them, as we look at them this evening and as we try to garner certain
lessons from them.
What,
then, happened four hundred years ago? Well, whatever your views may be, you
will have to admit that it was one of the most remarkable historical phenomena
that have ever taken place. It is no exaggeration to say that the Protestant
Reformation changed and turned the entire course of history, not only the
history of the church but secular history too. There is no question about this,
and it is granted by historians, that the Reformation laid the foundation of
the whole democratic view of government. That is a fact of history. All the
nations of the world at present are looking to the United States of America.
How did the United States of America ever come into being? It would never have
come into being were it not for the Protestant Reformation. The Puritan fathers
who crossed the Atlantic in the Mayflower
were men who were products of the Reformation, and it was the desire not
only for religious liberty, but also for democratic liberty, that drove them to
face the hazards of crossing the Atlantic at that time and to establish a new
life, a new state, and a new system of government in the New World. You cannot
explain the story of the United States of America except in terms of the
Protestant Reformation.
The
Reformation gave life‑blood to the whole democratic notion in the realm
of politics, and the consequences, as judged from a social and from a moral
standpoint, simply baffle description. This country of yours, from being a
dissolute, drunken, and illiterate country, became famous throughout the world
for her sober, righteous, able, intelligent people. And it was the Protestant
Reformation that led to it.
My
difficulty on this occasion is to know what not to say. The theme as you see,
is endless. But let me interject this before I proceed, for it is one of the greatest
lessons which need to be learned at the present time. Everybody today is aware
of the moral problem, and they are trying to deal with it along various lines:
acts of Parliament, prison reform, psychiatric treatment in the prisons, and
the various other expedients which are advocated. But they do not seem to be
very successful, do they? Why not? For the reason that you cannot have morality
without godliness. The tragedy of the last hundred years has been due to the
fallacy of imagining that you could shed Christian doctrine but hold on to
Christian ethics. That has been the controlling notion. But it cannot be done.
There is one verse in Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, chapter 1, verse 18, which
should have put us right on this once and for ever: ‘For the wrath of God is
revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.’ You
notice the order — ungodliness first, unrighteousness second. If you do not
have a godly people, you will never have a righteous people. You cannot have
righteousness without godliness. And the Protestant Reformation is the most
striking proof of this that the world has ever known. Once you have godliness,
righteousness and morality follow. We are today trying to have morality,
righteousness, and a good ethical conception without the godliness, and the
facts are proving, before our eyes, that it simply cannot be done. So if you
are a sociologist in this meeting, if you are a politician, if you are just
interested in the moral problem, then I say to you, go and read the history of
the Reformation. There you will see that the only way to exalt your nation, is
to put godliness first, and righteousness will then follow.
As
I have said, the Reformation was not purely a religious movement. It was a
general movement and it was witnessed, not only in Scotland, but in England,
France, Holland, Switzerland, Germany, and various other countries on the
Continent. It was a great movement of the Spirit of God in which your country
was given her share and portion.
Well,
what do we find as we look at it? I can only give you some headings. If you
want the details, I commend to you very warmly and happily the book by our
Chairman, which has already been mentioned to you. It gives a clear, succinct
account of what actually happened, and it is a thrilling and moving story. Buy
it, read it, and digest it. He gives you the general setting and shows you the
peculiar features in Scotland. The one excellence, of course, which we who come
from south of the border have to grant you is that your reformation was a pure
reformation. In Scotland, there was no question of a king trying to get out of
his matrimonial difficulties and entanglements. You were free of that. It was a
pure reformation and the result was, I believe, that you had a purer church.
But, generally speaking, what happened here was the same as what happened in
most other countries.
What
do we see then? Well, of course the first thing that attracts our attention is
the men, the men that God used. Look at them, Patrick Hamilton, George Wishart,
John Knox, Andrew Melville, John Welsh, and many others. Here are men worthy of
the name! Heroic, big men, men of granite! Our Chairman need not apologize for
being a history worshipper, I am a hero worshipper! Think what you like of me, I
like to look at and to read of a big man! In an age of pygmies such as this, it
is a good thing to read about great men. We are all so much alike and of the
same size, but here were giants in the land, able men, men of gigantic
intellect, men on a big scale in the realm of mind and logic and reason. Then
look at their zeal, look at their courage! I frankly am an admirer of a man who
can make a queen tremble! These are the things that strike us at once about
these men. But then I suppose that the most notable thing of all was the fact
of the burning conviction that dwelt within them; this is what made them the
men they were.
What
were these convictions? We have already been referred to some of them; let me
add some others. What did these men believe? What did they teach? What were
their characteristics?
Here
is the first, obviously: their belief in the authority of this Book. The pre‑Reformation
church was moribund and asleep under a scholastic philosophy that displayed
great cleverness, with intellectual and critical acumen. But it was all in the
clouds and dealt with vague generalities and concepts, while the people were
kept in utter ignorance. The men who did the teaching and the lecturing argued
about philosophic concepts, comparing this view with that, and indulging in
refinements and minutiae. But, in contrast, the great thing that stands out
about the reformers was that they were men who went back to the Bible. They
said, nothing matters but this. This, they said, is the Word of God in the Old
Testament and in the New Testament, this is not theory, supposition, or
speculation, this is the living God speaking to men: He gave His Word to the
prophets, they wrote it; He gave it to the apostles, they recorded it; and here
it is for us. Here we have something which is in a category of its own, the
living Word of God speaking to men about Himself, about men, about the only way
they can come together and live together. They stood for the authority of the
Bible, not for scholastic philosophy.
You
see, my friends, the importance of looking back at the Reformation. Is not this
the greatest need at the present time, to come back to this Word of God? Is
this authoritative or is it not? Am I in any position to stand above this Book,
and look down at it and say, That is not true, this or that must come out? Is
my mind, is my twentieth‑century knowledge the ultimate judge and decider
as to the veracity of this teaching? It is since the time, a hundred years ago,
when that notion began to creep in, that the church has been going down. But
the reformers based everything upon this Book as the Word of God to man, which
they were not to judge but to preach. And you and I have got to return to this.
There can be no health, there can be no authority in the church, until she comes
back to this basic authority. It is idle to talk about this as the Word of God
in a sense which still allows you and me to decide that certain things in it
are not true! The Book hangs together, the Lord Jesus Christ believed the Old
Testament. After His resurrection, He took His disciples through the books of
Moses and the Psalms and the prophets. He says, I am there, let me show you
myself there. Read them, why have you not understood them? Why have you not
believed all that the prophets have written? That was their trouble, it has
always been the trouble of the church in periods of declension, and we must
come back to the Protestant reformers’ position and recognize that we have no
authority apart from the authority of this Word of God.
In
this Book they found also the mighty doctrine of the sovereignty of God, which
taught them not to approach their problems in a subjective manner as you and I
are prone to do. Their concern was not, how can I get a bit of help, how can I
get some physical healing, how can I get guidance, how can I get happiness and
peace, how can I get a friend who will help me in my loneliness? No, they saw
themselves before this almighty, sovereign God and the one question was, How
can a man be just with God? They bowed before Him! They were godly men; they
were God‑fearing men. God was at the centre of their thoughts, the
controller of their activities and their lives. The sovereignty of God! They
did not talk much about free will, as I read them, but they knew that God was
over all, and He was to be worshipped and to be feared.
And
then there was the great central doctrine of the Lord Jesus Christ and His
perfect finished work. They did not feel sorry for Him as they looked at Him on
the cross, they saw Him bearing their sins, they saw God laying on Him the
iniquity of us all, they saw Him as a substitute, they saw God putting our
guilt upon Him and punishing Him for our guilt. The substitutionary atonement!
They preached it; it was everything to them. The finished, complete, atoning
work of Christ. They gloried in it! And that in turn, of course, led to the
great pivotal central doctrine of which we were reminded in the reading,
justification by faith only.
Now,
I may be mistaken, but as I see the contemporary situation, the greatest battle
of all, perhaps, at the moment is the battle for justification by faith only.
‘Works’ have come back! I was reading a religious newspaper a fortnight ago
which carried the words ‘Saint Gilbert’ as a heading to a paragraph. The writer
of the paragraph was of the opinion that this man whose Christian name was
Gilbert was undoubtedly a saint and we must accord him the name and the dignity
of a saint. Then he went on to say this: ‘Of course I know that in actual
practice he called himself a rationalistic agnostic.’ Though this man Gilbert
called himself a rationalistic agnostic, a so‑called Christian paper says
that nevertheless he was a saint. And they justified their assertion on the
basis of his life: he was a good man, he was a noble man, he had high and
exalted ideals, he gave much of his life to the propagation of the League of
Nations union, and to uplift the human race, he tried to put an end to war, he
made protests against war; therefore, the argument goes, though he denied the
being of God, though he did not regard the Bible as the Word of God, though he
did not believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, nevertheless, he was a saint. What
makes a man a saint? Oh, his works, his life!
We
are confronted again by a generation that no longer believes in justification
by faith only. We are told that ‘the greatest Christian’ of this century is a
man whose belief in the deity of Christ, to put it at its mildest, was very
doubtful, who certainly did not believe in the atonement, whose creed seemed to
be what he calls ‘reverence for life’— yet we are told that he is the greatest
saint and Christian of the twentieth century! Look at his life, they say, look
what he has done; he gave up a great profession and he has gone out to Central
Africa, look what he has suffered, look what he has given up, he might be
wealthy, he might be prosperous, but he is living like Christ, he is imitating
Christ, he has done what Christ has done! You see, it does not matter what you
believe. According to this teaching, it is the life that makes a man a
Christian. If you live a good life, if you live a life of sacrifice, if you try
to uplift the race, if you try to imitate Christ, you are a Christian, though
you deny the deity of Christ, though you deny His atonement, though you deny the
miraculous and the supernatural, the resurrection and many other things,
nevertheless you are a great Christian and a great saint!
My
friends, John Knox and other men risked their lives, day after day, just to
deny such teaching and to assert that a man is justified by faith alone without
works, that a man is saved not by what he does but by the grace of God, that
God justifies the ungodly, that God reconciles sinners unto Himself. It is all
of God and none of man, and works must not be allowed to intrude themselves at
any point or in any shape or form. The battle for justification by faith only
is on again! And if this meeting and these celebrations do nothing else, I
trust that they will lead us to a rediscovery of the absolute centrality of the
doctrine of justification by faith only.
These
reformers were also men who believed in possessing assurance of salvation. Now
I am somewhat more controversial, am I not? Do you believe in assurance of
salvation as the Protestant reformers did? I have known people who have paid
great tribute to the memory of John Knox and others, who deny the possibility
of assurance and regard it as almost an impertinence. I know that the
Westminster Confession of Faith is careful to say that a man can be saved
without assurance of salvation, that saving faith and assured faith are not the
same thing, and I am happy to agree with the Westminster Confession. But let me
say this: The Protestant reformers were so against the Roman Catholic Church
which teaches that a man can never be certain, that they did not draw that
distinction, and they would have been equally against a modern movement, which
likes to claim itself as reformed, but which denies the possibility of
assurance. These Protestant reformers said that a man was not truly saved
unless he had assurance! Without going all the way with them, we must notice
this, that whenever the church is powerful and mighty and authoritative, her
preachers and ministers have always been men who speak out of the full
assurance of faith, and know in whom they have believed. It was for that reason
that the martyrs could smile in the face of kings and queens, and regents and
local potentates, and go gladly to the stake; they knew that from the stake
they would wake in heaven and in glory and see Him face to face! They rejoiced
in the assurance of salvation!
Then,
to make my little list complete, I must add a few more of their main
convictions. They were men who believed in the universal priesthood of
believers. They held to simplicity of worship. Away with idols, away with
vestments, away with forms and ceremonies. A simple service! And not least
important, a pure church. The three marks of the church that they taught are
these: it is a place where the pure gospel is preached, where the sacraments
are administered, and where discipline is exercised. A pure church! No room for
all and sundry; no room for men who are doubtful, no room for men who show by
their lives that they love the world and its ways and its sin. No! A pure
church, because the church is the body of Christ! Those were their convictions,
those were the doctrines which they held.
The
other thing I want to note about them is this: their power in prayer. We must
not think of these reformers only in terms of doctrine, though we must start
with that. This other thing was equally notable and remarkable about them, they
were men of prayer. Did not Mary Queen of Scots fear the prayers of John Knox
more than she feared the English soldiers? Of course she did! Why? Because he
was a powerful man in prayer. Have you read about the prayer life of John
Welsh, the son‑in‑law of John Knox? There was a man who spent
nights in prayer; his wife would wake up at night and find him on his knees
almost stone‑cold. What was he doing? Praying for the townspeople to whom
he was ministering, asking for power, asking for authority. These men, every
one of them, were men of great prayerfulness; they spent hours of their lives
in prayer, knowing that in and of themselves, though their doctrines were right
and orthodox, they could do nothing. I like to hear that story of another of
these men, Robert Bruce. We read that when he was praying with some ministers
one day, he felt they were lifeless and dull. He cried to God that the Holy
Spirit might come down upon them but nothing seemed to be happening. Then as he
began banging on the table they were all conscious of God coming among them and
thereafter men spoke of Bruce as one who knocked down the Holy Ghost among
them! Is not that the kind of man we need today? Where is the power, where is
the influence, where is the authority? These reformers were only men like us
but they knew these things. They were men of prayer, who lived in the presence
of God and who knew they could do nothing without Him.
This
brings me to the last point: their preaching. We have been reminded that the
reformers re‑introduced preaching and that they put preaching at the
centre instead of ceremonies and sacraments. Yes, but let us remember that
there is preaching and preaching. Merely to speak for twenty minutes is not
necessarily preaching. Though you may have taken a text and divided it up very
cleverly, it is not necessarily preaching. Oh, there is preaching and
preaching! What is the test of preaching? I will tell you; it is power! ‘Our
gospel came unto you’, says the apostle to the Thessalonians in the First
Epistle, chapter 1, verse 5, ‘not in word only, but also in power, and in the
Holy Ghost, and in much assurance’. Who had the assurance? The preacher! He
knew something was happening, he knew God was using him, he knew that he was
the vehicle and channel of divine and eternal grace. ‘Much assurance’! And that
was the sort of preaching you had from the Protestant reformers. It was
prophetic preaching, not priestly preaching. What we have today, is what I
would call priestly. Very nice, very quiet, very ornate, sentences turned
beautifully, prepared carefully. That is not prophetic preaching! No, what is
needed is authority! Do you think that John Knox could make Mary Queen of Scots
tremble with some polished little essay? These men did not write their sermons
with an eye to publication in books, they were preaching to the congregation in
front of them, anxious and desirous to do something, to effect something, to
change people. It was authoritative. It was proclamation, it was declaration.
Is
it surprising that the church is as she is today; we no longer believe in
preaching, do we? You used to have long sermons here in Scotland. I am told you
do not like them now, and woe unto the preacher who goes on beyond twenty
minutes! I was reading in the train yesterday about the first Principal of
Emmanuel College in Cambridge, Chadderton, who lived towards the end of the
sixteenth century. He was preaching on one occasion, and after he had preached
for two hours he stopped and apologized to the people: ‘Please forgive me, I
have got beyond myself, I must not go on like this.’ And the congregation
shouted out, ‘For God’s sake go on!’ You know I am beginning to think that I
shall not have preached until something like that happens to me. Prophetic!
Authoritative! Proclamation! Declaration! Their view of preaching was certainly
not our modern idea of having a friendly discussion. Have you noticed how we
have less and less preaching on the wireless programmes? Instead we have
discussion. Let the young people say what they think, let us win them by
letting them speak; and we will have a friendly chat and discussion, we will
show them that after all we are nice, decent fellows, there is nothing nasty
about us; and we will gain their confidence; they must not think that we are
unlike them! If you are on the television you start by producing your pipe and
lighting it; you show that you are like the people, one of them! Was John Knox
like one of the people? Was John Knox a matey, friendly, nice chap with whom
you could have a discussion? Thank God he was not! Scotland would not be what
she has been for four centuries if John Knox had been that kind of man. Can you
imagine John Knox having tips and training as to how he should conduct and
comport himself before the television camera, so as to be nice and polite and
friendly and gentlemanly? Thank God prophets are made of stronger stuff! An
Amos, a Jeremiah, a John the Baptist in the wilderness in his camel‑hair
shirt — a strange fellow, a lunatic, they said, but they went and listened to
him because he was a curiosity, and as they listened they were convicted! Such
a man was John Knox, with the fire of God in his bones and in his belly! He
preached as they all preached, with fire and power, alarming sermons,
convicting sermons, humbling sermons, converting sermons, and the face of
Scotland was changed: the greatest epoch in your long history had begun!
There,
as I see it, were the great and outstanding characteristics of these men. What
was the secret of it all? It was not the men, as I have been trying to show
you, great as they were. It was God! God in His sovereignty raising up His men.
And God knows what He is doing. Look at the gifts He gave John Knox as a
natural man; look at the mind He gave to Calvin and the training He gave him as
a lawyer to prepare him for his great work; look at Martin Luther, that volcano
of a man; God preparing His men in the different nations and countries. Of
course, even before He produced them, He had been preparing the way for them.
Let us never forget John Wyclif and John Hus; let us never forget the
Waldensians and all the martyrs of these terrible Middle Ages! God was
preparing the way; He sent His men at the right moment, and the mighty events
followed.
Shall
I try to draw certain lessons for ourselves? The conclusion of all this is that
righteousness, and righteousness alone, exalts a nation, and there is no
righteousness without a preceding godliness. The times are cruel; the world is
in a desperate plight; there is an appalling moral breakdown before our eyes.
Marriage is breaking down, home life disappearing, little children not knowing
home and loving parents. It is a tragedy! Can nothing be done? Is there no hope?
To me the main message of the Protestant Reformation of four hundred years ago
is to point us to the one and only hope. Things were bad in Scotland when God
called John Knox and sent him out as a burning flame and the others with him.
Our position is not hopeless, for God remains, and with God nothing shall be
impossible! The conditions could not have been worse than they were
immediately before the Reformation; yet in spite of that the change came. Why?
Because God was there and God sent it. So the only question we need ask is the
old question of Elisha face to face with his problem: ‘Where is the Lord God of
Elijah?’ And I want to ask that question this evening: Where is the God of John
Knox? Our meeting will have been in vain if we do not ask that question. If we
stop with John Knox it is not enough; the question is, Where is the God of John
Knox, He who can give us the power, the authority, the might, the courage, and
everything we need, where is He? How can we find Him? I suggest to you that the
answer is to be found again in the Epistle to the Hebrews, in chapter 4 this
time, in verses 14 to 16. They seem to me not inappropriate as I end this
evening.
How
can we find this God? Here is the answer: ‘Let us hold fast the confession.’ It
does not actually mean there, of course, the Westminster Confession, though in
reality it does! Hold fast the old Scots Confession. You will never find the
God of John Knox without that. ‘Seeing then that we have a great high priest
that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast the
confession’. What is the confession? It is the confession about ‘Jesus the Son
of God’, our great high priest; the Scots Confession, the Westminster
Confession, the faith of these Fathers. We must have it because without it, who
dares go into the presence of God? As it is put there in Hebrews 4:26: ‘Let us
therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace.’ What is the ‘therefore’? The
knowledge that we possess, that we have got this great high priest that has
passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, and that He is ‘touched with
the feeling of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted like as we are,
yet without sin’. Where is the God of Elijah? How can we find Him? How can we
receive the power that we need? We must go back to the confession, go back to
the faith, go back to the Word, believe its truths, and in the light of it go
with boldness, confidence, assurance, to the throne of grace; to obtain mercy
and find grace to help in time of need. We are living in an appalling time of
need, sin and evil rampant; the whole world is quaking and shaking. Is the end
upon us? The times are alarming‑ ‘time of need’. The one thing necessary
is to find this God, and there seated at His right hand, the One who has been in
this world and knows all about it, has seen its shame, its sin, its vileness,
its rottenness face to face; friend of publicans and sinners, a Man who knew
the hatred and the animosity of the Pharisees, scribes and Sadducees, the
doctors of the law, and Pontius Pilate. The whole world was against Him, and
yet He triumphed through it all; He is there, and He is our representative and
high priest. Believe in Him, hold fast to the confession. Let us go in His name
with boldness unto the throne of grace, and as certainly as we do so we shall
obtain the mercy that we need for our sinfulness and unfaithfulness, and we
shall be given the grace to help us in our time of need, in our day and
generation. The God of John Knox is still there, and still the same, and thank
God, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and for ever. Oh, that we might
know the God of John Knox!
How Can We See a Return to
the Bible?
[An
address given at the National Bible Rally, organized by the Evangelical
Alliance, at the Royal Albert Hall on 24 October, 1961.]
As we are met together
on this great and interesting occasion, it seems to me that there are two main
things which we need to do. The first is to remember and commemorate the
printing of the Authorized Version of the Bible in it 1611. The second great
purpose of this gathering is to call back the people of this nation to the
Bible.
I will take the second purpose first. Why should we
come together in this manner and call the men and women of this country back to
the consideration of this book which we call the Bible? There are many answers
that can be given to that question. But what I regard as the most urgent reason
of all is simply that the conditions in which we find ourselves at this very
moment are, in the main, due to the departure of men and women from the Word of
God.
This
is true, in the first place, with regard to the Christian church herself. We
are here, I take it, to be honest and to search ourselves. These are no days
for coming together just to enjoy ourselves. The times are evil; the times are
out of joint. I trust we are all here animated with a desire to do something,
and to discover what we have to do, in order to deal with the appalling
conditions which prevail round and about us. I say that the condition of the
church herself is due to her departure from the authority of the Bible. The
Christian church in this country is in a deplorable condition. The statistics
tell us that only some ten per cent of the people of this country claim to be
even nominally Christian; ninety per cent of the population is entirely outside
the church! It was not always thus.
What has been the cause
of this; why the difference in the condition of our churches today as distinct
from what they were a hundred years ago? I know there are many explanations put
forward. People point to the world wars, and I do not dispute that they did
contribute to it. They also point to the wireless, the television, the
motorcar, and all these other agencies that are militating against the work and
the appeal of the church. I am prepared to grant to such causes a certain
amount of influence, but when you come to examine this question seriously and
soberly, there is only one adequate answer for the fact that the masses of the
people are no longer attending places of worship. It is due to the loss of the
authority of the Scriptures. And to what is that due? Without question, it was
the devastating Higher Critical movement, so called, which began in Germany
around the 1830s, and which subsequently came and infected this and most other
countries. This meant the substitution of the mind of men and of what is called
‘philosophy’, for divine revelation. It was claimed that this Book must be
regarded as every other book, and examined in the same way as every other book
is examined. Added to this, there was the Darwinian teaching which came in 1859
and immediately became so popular. Then psychology played its part. And in
these ways men began to look at this Book, not as they had hitherto looked on
it throughout the centuries as the Word of the living God, but as a human word.
They began to talk more and more, not about the power of the Holy Spirit in the
preacher, but of his scholarship, of his knowledge of philosophy and the
sciences, and of psychology. Human reason was put upon the throne, and the very
pulpits of the church herself were engaged in undermining the faith of the
masses of the people in this Book as the Word of God.
It
is time we face these facts. We are trying to do all we can to improve the
existing condition. But, if this is the major problem, is it not obvious that
nothing except a rectifying of this can
deal with the situation that confronts us? There is no question about the
reason for what has happened. Men began to talk about ‘the assured results’ of
scholarship and of criticism, and the masses of the people believed these
‘great experts’. Tonight, of course, we know that ‘the assured results’ are not
quite as assured, and increasingly, we find the scholars having to abandon the
positions which were put with such dogmatism before the people at the end of
the last century and in the first fourteen years or so of this century. Not
only so, we know that liberalism, the modernism, so called, which was so
popular up until 1914, has become utterly outmoded. The First World War
shattered it; the confidence in man and in man’s own ability ended with that
war. The old liberalism which emptied our churches is as dead as the dodo and
utterly discredited.
Unfortunately,
that does not mean that people have returned to the Book. They seem to be
prepared to do everything except come back to the Book and submit themselves to
it. Some of them are cleverly trying to say that you must take the message of
the Book, but not the facts. Others say that God speaks in the Book through
great acts, but not in propositions and not in teaching. In other words, they
still will not submit to the authority of the Book. It is they who decide what
to accept and what to reject, what to believe and what not to believe, so that
though the old liberalism and modernism are utterly discredited, the position
in reality is no better. I am here to assert that this is one of the main
causes, if not indeed the main cause, of the decline of the Christian church.
There
is one other cause of present conditions which I add with regret, and that is
statements made by Christian ministers from Christian pulpits, which are
nothing but blank contradictions of the basic teaching of the Bible. We hear
the ridicule that is poured on the doctrine of sin, the rejection of the
miracles and of the precious blood of Christ, and, to cap it all, recently, a
statement to the effect that we can ‘expect to meet atheists in heaven’. If
this is true, if we are to expect to meet atheists in heaven, if a man who does
not believe in God can go to heaven, why should we ask him to believe in the
Bible? Why should we have a Christian church at all? If an atheist who lives a
good life is to go to heaven, there is no need for the Christian church and all
the organizations, and there is absolutely no need for the Scriptures. The
masses of the people are outside the Christian church because they have been
given the impression that the Christian church herself no longer believes in
the Book as authoritative.
I
say that this is the explanation not only of the state of the church, but also
of the world in general, and conditions in general in this country. Look at our
industrial problems which are so acute at the moment and so dangerous. Look at
our social and moral problems, to which reference has already been made. What
are these due to? It seems to me that there is only one adequate answer: it is
that the whole notion and concept of law and of duty, of punishment and
retribution, has gone. As men have ceased to believe in the Bible, they have
ceased to believe in law, in justice, and in righteousness. So the whole notion
of punishment and retribution is derided and dismissed. Indeed, I am afraid we
can go a step further and say that one of the major problems in this country
tonight is this, that the whole idea of responsibility is disappearing rapidly.
We are approaching a state in which a prisoner standing in the dock in a law
court will be examined in terms of disease, or what they call ‘diminished
responsibility’, rather than in terms of crime. The whole notion of crime is
going out. A man behaves as he does, it is argued, because of the odd
combination of the ductless glands in his body, or because he was not well at a
particular moment. Today it is a case of diminished responsibility; there is no
such thing as a crime, there is no such thing as a criminal; it is all a
problem for the doctors. So with the disappearance of the law of God goes the
disappearance of belief in any law, in the notions of punishment, correction,
and discipline. Thus — and I could elaborate so easily — the state of the
church and of the world in general is due to this one major cause: there is no
authority, no ultimate sanction, to which men feel compelled to bow.
If
that is so, the question that should be uppermost in our minds here tonight is
how to get the people back to the Bible? How can we bring them back again to
this Book? There are many suggestions put before us on this subject, and I want
to look at one in particular. We have been reminded tonight, and very rightly,
of the part that this Book has played in the history of the life of this
country. There is no question about it; the true greatness of this country was
laid down and established, whatever you may think of it politically, in the
Cromwellian period and by men in the House of Commons who believed this to be
the Word of the living God. You do not understand the history of this country
if you do not know something about the influence of this Book.
However,
I do not hesitate to say tonight that it is not the appeal to history that is
needed. There are people who are so ignorant that they are not interested in
the past, or in the past glory of this country. They think they have got
something better. Others — and the statesmen particularly are very fond of
doing this — talk about the Bible and praise it as literature. Of course, as
literature, it is incomparable, but merely to tell people that this is ‘great
literature’ is not going to make them submit to its message. Look, they say, at
the influence it has had upon the great masterpieces of our literature.
Perfectly true, but the average man is not interested in that sort of thing; he
is out for his bingo, or whatever he may chance to call his pleasure. That is
not the way to bring them back.
What
else can we do? Well, there are many who are engaged in a kind of defence of
the Bible. That is sometimes called apologetics. I am not here to say a word
against it. Archaeology comes into that department, and we thank God for it and
for Professor Wiseman as one of the distinguished people who are practising in
this realm. But that is not going to be enough either. I agree with what
Spurgeon said about this: ‘You don’t defend a lion, you just let him loose’,
and the same is true of the Bible. Apologetics are all right as far as they go
and they can be helpful in strengthening the faith, but we are living in a
period when we need something much more. Still less must we fall back upon any
tendency to accommodate the teaching of the Bible to modern learning and to
modern views. Sometimes, I fear, I see a tendency to do that, even among
evangelical people. Why should we be afraid of the scientist? He has no facts
which interfere with this Book. We must not accommodate them; we must not try
to placate people and please them. That is not the way to handle this Book.
And
now I must say a word — and I do so with considerable hesitation and
trepidation — but it seems to me that, if we are to face the facts, this is
unavoidable. I suppose that the most popular of all the proposals at the
present time for bringing people back to Scripture is this: Let’s have a new
translation of the Bible. We have had one in this year, 1961 [The New
English Bible]. The argument is that the people are not reading the Bible
any longer because they do not understand its language, its archaic terms.
‘What does your modern man, what does your modern Teddy boy know about
justification, sanctification, and all these biblical terms?’ That is the
question. No, they say, it is no good; they cannot understand the Bible. And so
we are told that the one thing necessary is to have a translation which Tom,
Dick, and Harry will understand. I began to feel about six months ago that we
had almost reached a stage at which the Authorized Version was being dismissed,
to be thrown into the limbo of things forgotten, no longer of any value. Need I
apologize for saying a word in favour of the Authorized Version in this gathering? Well, whatever you may
think, I am going to do it, and I am going to do it without any apology.
As
I read the Christian periodicals earlier this year‑and I am sorry to have
to add, even the evangelical ones — and all the articles about this new
translation, I almost began to think for a moment that the letters NEB stood
for New Evangelical Bible. Everybody seemed to have succumbed to the ballyhoo,
the propaganda, and the advertising. I began to wonder whether evangelical
people really had lost the vital spark; but, thank God, by tonight I think I
see signs of a recovery and a return to sanity.
We
must examine this for a moment. Let us, first of all, be clear about the basic
proposition laid down by the Protestant reformers that we must have a Bible
which is, as they put it, ‘understanded of the people’. That is common sense;
that is obvious. We all agree too that we must never be obscurantist; we must
never approach the Bible in a mere antiquarian spirit. Nobody wants to be like
that, nor to defend such attitudes. But there is a very grave danger incipient
in much of the argument that is being presented today for these new
translations. There is a danger of our surrendering something that is vital and
essential.
Look
at it like this. Take the argument about the terms that the modern man does not
understand, the words ‘justification’, ‘sanctification’, and so on. I want to
ask a question: When did the ordinary man ever understand those terms? I am
told the modern Teddy boy does not understand them. But consider the colliers
to whom John Wesley and George Whitefield used to preach in the eighteenth
century. Did they understand them? They had not even been to a day school, an
elementary school. They could not read, they could not write. Yet these were
the terms which they heard, and the Authorized Version was the version used.
This is a very specious argument, but it does not hold water. The common people
have never understood these terms.
However, I want to add something to this. We must be very careful in using such
an argument against the Authorized Version, for the reason that the very nature
and character of the truth which the Bible presents to us is such that it is
extremely difficult to put into words at all. We are not describing an animal
or a machine; we are concerned here with something which is spiritual,
something which does not belong to this world at all, and which, as the apostle
Paul in writing to the Corinthians, reminds us, ‘the princes of this world’ do
not know. Human wisdom is of no value here; it is a spiritual truth; it is
something that is altogether different. This is truth about God primarily, and
because of that it is a mystery. There is a glory attached to it, there is a
wonder, and something which is amazing. The apostle Paul, who probably
understood it better than most, looking at its contents, stands back and says,
‘Great is the mystery of godliness’ (1 Tim. 3:16).
Yet
we are told, It must be put in such simple terms and language that anybody
taking it up and reading it is going to understand all about it. My friends,
this is nothing but sheer nonsense! What we must do is to educate the masses of
the people up to the Bible, not bring the Bible down to their level. One of the greatest troubles in life today is
that everything is being brought down to the same level; everything is being
cheapened. The common man is made the standard and the authority; he decides
everything, and everything has got to be brought down to him. You are getting
it on your wireless, your television, in your newspapers; everywhere standards
are coming down and down. Are we to do this with the Word of God? I say, No!
What has always happened in the past has been this: an ignorant, illiterate
people in this country and in foreign countries, coming into salvation, have
been educated up to the Book and have begun to understand it, and to glory in
it, and to praise God for it. I am here to say that we need to do the same at
this present time. What we need, therefore, is not to replace the Authorized
Version with what, I am tempted at times to call, the ITV edition of the Bible
[in 1961, ITV was the only British television channel financed by advertising]
We need rather to teach and to train people up to the standard and the language
and the dignity and the glory of the old Authorized Version.
I
am here to suggest that we ought to protest against the dropping of great words
like ‘propitiation’ and ‘redemption’ which are very essential to a true
understanding of our gospel. And I protest against a translation that
translates 2 Timothy 3:16 like this: ‘Every inspired scripture has its use for
teaching the truth.’ That is an obvious statement but it is not what the
apostle Paul wrote. The correct translation is ‘All Scripture is God‑breathed
and is profitable’. Paul does not speak of ‘every Scripture that is inspired’
because every Scripture is inspired. The translators have perpetuated
the error of the Revised Version, which even the Revised Standard Version of
America has corrected and brought back to the translation of the Authorized
Version.
As I leave this aspect
of the matter, my only remaining comment upon this new version, which is so
popular, is to quote two statements, first from the Times Literary Supplement of the 24 March. This is not a Christian
publication, but it is a very scholarly one, and a very learned one, and this
is what a contributor says: ‘What then is lost in this new translation is
dimension in depth and in time, and with dimension, beauty and mystery. In
short,’ he goes on, ‘insofar as religion is rational, social, simple, communal,
historical, the new Bible may help. Insofar as religion touches and satisfies
men’s deepest aspirations and needs, it is almost all loss.’ Such is the
opinion of the Times Literary Supplement.
It is not the view of some ignorant evangelical like myself, or of Mr
Terence Brown [The General Secretary of the Trinitarian Bible Society] who has
been so vilified. Here is a learned writer in the Times Literary Supplement. But let me also quote to you an
Archbishop of the Anglican communion, the Very Rev Philip Harrington who is the
Anglican Archbishop of Quebec, a learned, scholarly man and the author of two
massive volumes on the early Christian church. This is how he writes: ‘The
intelligent reader will find much of it that is helpful and even illuminating,
but he must keep his old Authorized Version by his side in order to find out
what the apostles or prophets actually said, if that is what he wants to know.’
I am free to confess that I came nearer to becoming an Anglican when I read
that than ever in my life! But the Archbishop does not stop at that point —
there are archbishops and archbishops it seems to me! — he adds: ‘When the old
and new differ in meaning, King James, at least in the Revised Version of 1881,
will be correct ninety‑nine times out of a hundred.’ That is the opinion
of the Anglican Archbishop of Quebec, writing this year on the New English
Bible.
Very
well, my friends, let me say a word for the old book, the old Authorized
Version. It was translated by fifty‑four men, every one of them a great
scholar, and published in 1611. And here is another thing to commend it to you:
this Authorized Version came out at a time when the church had not yet divided.
I mean by that she had not yet divided into Anglican and Nonconformist. I think
there is an advantage even in that. They were all still as one, with very few
exceptions, when the Authorized Version was produced.
Another important point to
remember is this. The Authorized Version was produced some time after that
great climactic event which we call the Protestant Reformation. There had been
time by then to see some of the terrible horrors of Rome and all she stood for.
The early reformers had too much on their plate, as it were; Luther may have
left many gaps; but when this translation was produced, there had been time for
men to be able to see Rome for what she really was. These translators were all
men who were orthodox in the faith. They believed that the Bible is the
infallible Word of God and they submitted to it as the final authority, as
against the spurious claims of Rome, as against the appeals to the Church
Fathers, and everything else. Here, I say, were fifty‑four men, scholars
and saintly, who were utterly submitted to the Book. You have never had that in
any other version. Here and here alone you have a body of men who were
absolutely committed to it, who gave themselves to it, who did not want to
correct or sit in judgment upon it, whose only concern and desire was to
translate it and interpret it for the masses of the people.
In
view of all this, my argument is that the answer does not lie in producing new
translations; they are coming out almost every week, but are they truly aiding
the situation? No, and for this reason: men no longer read the Bible not
because they cannot understand its language, but because they do not believe in
it. They do not believe in its God; they do not want it. Their problem is not
that of language and of terminology; it is the state of the heart. Therefore
what do we do about it? It seems to me there is only one thing to do, the thing
that has always been done in the past: we must preach it and our preaching must
be wholly based upon its authority.
We
must not come to the Bible to find out whether it is true or not; we must come
to find the meaning of the truth that is there. That has been the fatal error
of this so‑called Higher Criticism that has come to the Bible to find
which part is true and which part is not. The moment you do that you are
already wrong, irretrievably wrong! We do not come to the Bible to discover
whether it is true; we come to discover its meaning and its teaching. And
therefore I say the only hope is that we preach its message to the people. We
must preach it to them as the Word of God. Yes, this Book is the very thing
that it claims to be. Look at its original writers! Did any one of them say it
was his own idea? No, they are all unanimous in saying that it was given to them.
Some of them did not even want to write it. Isaiah, given his commission, says,
‘I am a man of unclean lips’; I am not fit to do this. It is not a question of
a great man, a great philosopher, a great thinker, who has got to tell the
people what to do. No, Isaiah is given a mission and a commission. He says, I
am not fit. Jeremiah says, ‘I cannot speak: for I am a child.’ Ezekiel, when he
was given his commission and message, sat stunned and amazed for seven days,
and it needed the Holy Spirit to put him on his feet again. Amos said, I am a
herdsman, a man tending sycamore trees. I am no prophet, nor the son of a
prophet. That is what they all say. They say it is not their message. Well, what is it? Oh, they say, it is ‘the burden of
the Lord’, the message of the Lord; the burden of the Lord came unto me.
Jeremiah did not want to speak, but he could not refrain; it was like a fire
burning in his bones. God had given him a message and was sending him out with
it. You and I must come back to this: ‘No prophecy of the scripture is of any
private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of
man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost’ (2 Peter
1:20-21). That is the authority. Look what our Lord says about it. He refers to
the Scriptures using phrases such as ‘It is written’. He believed the Old
Testament; He believed it all. He says, ‘the scripture cannot be broken’ (John
10:35): who are we to dispute it? And the apostles — look at their attitude to
Scripture; they constantly refer to it and quote it. For them it is the final
argument; it settles all disputes.
We
must present the Bible as the Word of God, not the words of men, but the Word
of the living God: God speaking about Himself; God speaking about men; God speaking
about life; God telling us what He is going to do about a fallen world. That is
what we need to preach with certainty, with assurance. Let us tell the people
about its marvel, that though it contains sixty‑six books, written at
different times and in different centuries, there is only one message in it.
Let us tell them about fulfilled prophecy. Let us point out to them how things
prophesied and predicted hundreds of years before the events were actually
verified in the fullest and minutest detail. Let us tell them: they do not know it. It is for us to proclaim the Word
of God, and especially at this critical time in our history. Let us tell people
something about its message. It is the only book that explains life. It is the
only book that explains the world as it is tonight. We have been told now for
nearly a century that the world is advancing, that man is becoming more and
more perfect, that with more and more education and scientific knowledge there
will be no more war. The problem was, they said, that people did not know one
another. They did not meet. If only they met they would all love one another
and embrace one another; but now that we are meeting so constantly, we cannot
live together for even a few seconds! You see, there is no explanation except
the explanation that is given in this Book.
‘There
is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked’ (Isa. 57:21). You can be clever,
you can be mighty and great and strong, you can be a great philosopher, and be
very wealthy, you can own the whole world — but you will never know peace,
either as an individual or among men and nations, while you are wicked. The
Bible alone has the explanation. It is man’s sin, man’s rebellion against God.
You see, you must come back to theology; you must seek the Book and discover its message, its theology, its doctrines. If you evangelical people are against doctrine you will never get people back to the Bible. It is not enough just to read a few verses. You must dig down and get the doctrine, the doctrine of a wholly absolute God, who is the creator of the ends of the earth, and who is the judge of the whole earth. Man is not something that came out of some primeval slime, but a creature made in the image of God, given something of the stamp of the eternal Lord of creation, meant to live in communion and correspondence with his creator! But man has fallen into sin, has asserted his own will‑power, has said that he is autonomous, that he can arrange his life, that he does not need God, he does not need God’s direction and God’s Word: that is why the world is in trouble.
This
is what we must tell people; we must try not just to defend the Bible but to
preach its truth. Tell men that they are in their present state because the
world has turned its back upon God. That is why this twentieth century is so
appalling. It is the century of all centuries that has asserted itself and its
own will and, its own understanding over and against God and His truth and His
eternal will. We must tell, them this, we must tell them very plainly and
without any apology that the wrath of God has been revealed from heaven
‘against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men’ (Rom. 1:18). We must tell
them that the very history of this century, with its two awful wars and all its
present horrors, is due to the same thing. These things are a part of the
judgment of God. The apostle Paul puts it thus in Romans 1, that one way in
which God punishes men is, that He abandons people to themselves. He ‘gave them
over to a reprobate mind’ (verse 28). I believe this is what is happening
tonight; it is to me the only explanation of this present century. God is
saying to us, Very well, you said you could live without me; you said you could
make a perfect world without my laws, without my Word, without my truth — get
on with it, see what you make of it! And this is what we have made of it: man a
creature of lust, self‑centred and selfish, fighting all others. War is
inevitable while man is in that condition. The Bible alone explains this. And
when you turn to the future it is exactly the same thing: there is no light for
the future anywhere except in this Book. There are people who, in the name of
Christianity, are still saying that if we only preach this message we can put
an end to wars. Never! The Bible asserts that there shall be wars and rumours
of wars right to the end. While man is evil and sinful and the creature of
lust, there will be wars. Christianity has not come into the world to put an
end to war; it has not come to reform the world. What has it come for? It has
come to save us from the destruction that is coming to the world. This Book
asserts a judgment, an end of history. God in Christ will judge the whole world
in righteousness, sending those who have turned their backs upon Him, refused
His offer of salvation in Christ, to everlasting perdition, and ushering the
saints into the glory of ‘new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth
righteousness’ (2 Pet. 3:13).
Christian
people, we must proclaim to the world that we are not afraid of the morrow. We
are not afraid of what the nations may do. We know that an evil world is under
condemnation, and that the only course of safety and of wisdom is to come in
penitence and contrition to the Son of God, our blessed Lord and Saviour, who
came out of eternity, who died for our sins, and who will come again to receive
His own unto Himself. That, it seems to me, is the thing to which we are
called. We must preach the Bible’s message without fear or favour and with the
holy boldness of the apostles of old, not merely to say it, but to have the
Holy Ghost upon us as we do so. Pray for power to proclaim it so that it shall
become like ‘a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces’ (Jer. 23:29). Or in the
words of the apostle Paul, the message must be seen to be ‘mighty through God
to the pulling down of strong holds; casting down imaginations, and every high
thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into
captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ’ (2 Cor. 10:4, 5).
That is our calling.
O Word of
God incarnate,
O wisdom
from on high,
O truth
unchanged, unchanging,
O light of
our dark sky!
O make thy
Church, dear Saviour,
A lamp of
burnished gold,
To bear
before the nations
Thy true
light as of old.