VOL. 86 NO. 7 .•. . are#4,p+ 41111,11tatwir A` � A. •.:114k � 11.7"- � •-• • • * -sj • *!.. • d * -r ("44, •Zt...„, M : I •S • 114fr � Foe,. 4. • • .; � .404. , � --- • -'t:-"Nt,71'^ 4,r $;Cf..1.•< A � . � .=.011dage • • 0 or" � • � ' 4110.' 1/tbo anb 411 ttb5 "ALWAYS HUNGRY" ROME.—The world's annual production of the basic foods regarded as "the staff of life" is: 1,200 million tons of cereals of all kinds; and 550 million tons of roots and tubers. But if this huge amount of food were equally shared by every single person, no one would have an adequate amount. Such was reported by the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization [F.A.0.]. The fact is that millions of people do not get enough to eat, and many are therefore hungry throughout their lives. Yet population growth still "explodes." Estimates reckon that by 1985 demand for food will increase by two-thirds! The F.A.O. are battling with the problem. High yielding cereal varieties are being developed, and it is aimed to utilize more land whereby the "widespread famine feared by many agricultural planners and demographers over the past decade" may be avoided. But, F.A.O. warns that the battle for bread will most certainly be lost "if the world's population goes on growing." Comment.—Chronic hunger constantly claims its victims. In some eastern areas it is normal to see people dying and dead in highways and byways which are "home" for em- aciated masses. It is but another sign of the times. Before the great day of the Lord which will call a halt to the world's crazy stampede, "there shall be famines." So prophesied our Lord. Truly we need the "extra terrestrial invasion" by Christ and His angelic hosts to save humanity from the monstrous evils which threaten to throttle us. NO ULCERS WASHINGTON.—"What we need is a Church people who don't get ulcers over conflict." So said Dr. Cynthia Wethel at a National Seminar on Legislation sponsored by Church Women United. The doctor continued: "We need people who know what they believe and why, and don't get upset when challenged."—Ecumenical Press Service. Comment.—The Christian message is the finest remedy in the world for ulcers, because it enables one to adjust to any circumstance with complete equanimity. What better queller of ulcerating acid, than the Bible assurance: "All things work together for good to them that love God"? Romans 8:28. "DRUNKEN REBELS" ROME.—"Man is no longer calm. He is seized by a frenzy, a dizziness, and sometimes a madness which makes him want to turn everything upside down in a blind trust that a new order, a new world, a regeneration still not clearly foreseeable is about to emerge." So said the Pope to pil- grims attending his weekly General Audience in Rome. He spoke of rebels "drunk with a quest for change." Comment.—All the signs today indicate that the most fantastic "change" is about to burst upon us. The focus of all the Bible's great "time" prophecies, is on the "New Earth wherein dwelleth righteousness." This will be achieved not by human effort, but by the mighty power of the Creator in "the great day of God Almighty." A world purged by fire, sin eradicated, death abolished, and a world re-created that will enjoy idyllic conditions for ever. Such is the specific promise of Holy Scripture. The signs indicating the nearness of the first wonderful event in the fantastic drama of renewal— that of Christ's second advent—cannot be validly gainsaid. "WAVE OF TERROR" WASHINGTON.—The world around is witnessing a wave of political terror and blackmail, and it is feared that it will worsen. Such is the fear expressed in Washington as the wave of "guerilla diplomacy," international hostage-holding, hijacking of planes, assassinations, and kidnappings, sweeps on. One U.S. official said: "All the old rules of international conduct seem to be coming unstuck. And nobody yet has come up with solid ideas for new rules that can meet this new kind of 'war by lawlessness.— Another spoke of "a new and nasty twist to the terror." As for instance the Brazil kidnapping of the U.S. Ambassador and the rebel demands for ransom and for the release of political prisoners—which the Government eventually met. Then there are the bomb outrages, affecting planes, embassy offices, etc., the mob maulings of Government in- stitutions (e.g. 55 U.S. overseas offices in nine months), violent demonstrations by leftist agitators including the in- credible terrorism on university campuses. All this and much more adds up to a problem of violence and terror that is both baffling and unsoluble. Airline officials, for instance, say: "There is virtually nothing we can do to head off hi- jacking." Comment.—Whatever explanation there may be, the fact is that we are in a time of unparallelled peril—just as Bible prophecy predicted would be so before the end of the world as we now know it, and the second coming of Christ in glory. "There shall be a time of trouble such as was not since there was a people," says one of the prophecies focusing on these days. "In the last days," says the New Testament prophet, "perilous times shall come." UNITY PLAN Last March the Archbishop of Canterbury went to the U.S.A. to discuss an American plan for Church unity. Plans to merge the Methodists and Anglicans broke down in July last year. The American plan aims to unite Methodists and Anglicans [Episcopal] and also seven other well-known denominations including Presbyterian and Congregational. The plan continues the offices of bishops, presbyters, and deacons, and affirms the Lordship of Christ and the authority of the Bible. The unity movement is keenly interested in collaboration with the Roman Catholic Church. Comment.—Truly a united Christian Church is the ideal. It is the will of Jesus Christ, its Founder. But the modern move- ment stresses unity at the expense of cardinal doctrine. The emphasis is on ecumenism rather than evangelism. Unity which requires any softening of any part of the full Christian message, or the condoning of error, is undesirable. Christianity's supreme task is to present the Good News of salvation through Christ. Provided this is clearly and adequately done, making clear the obligations as well as the benefits, denominational tags simply do not matter. This task was made clear by Christ immediately prior to His ascension. (Matthew 28:19, 20.) ACKNOWLEDGEMENT The Editor wishes to acknowledge with sincere thanks receipt of E3 from Anonymous (Barrow-in-Furness, Lancs) for World-Wide Advent Missions. 2 ARE "ALL RIGHT"? DID you ever wonder which, if any, of the great Christian Churches are wholly right in what they teach? Many an honest person has been mystified by the variety of these Churches—each having its own unique slant or emphasis on Bible teach- ing; each with its own form of worship and government. A young woman we knew, whose con- science had been stirred at meetings held by a visiting evangelist, sought ex- planation and advice from her minister. Fearful of losing her from his own congregation, he said: "No need to worry. Though Churches differ in what they teach, all are right. The differences don't matter!" To illustrate his claim he said: "No two clocks strike the hour together. First one starts, then another, then another . . . and so on for a few seconds till aii the ringing stops. All of them are right!" But was he correct? His illustration reminded me of the blood-curdling cacophony which hourly shattered the quietude of my parental home. Father had a passion for striking clocks. There were three throaty strikers in the dining-room alone. At twelve, the decibel rating of those wretched clocks seemed to soar to a deafening level. Their performances often overlapped, but they were never perfectly together. But this did not prove the minister's point. If one was right, the others were wrong—no matter how little. Just as Greenwich Observatory's cel- ebrated chronometer is the nation's in- fallible timekeeper, so the Bible is the infallible guide for living. Clocks must be regulated by the former, and lives by the latter. Only in the Bible is revealed the ultimate truth on all that really matters. Recent centuries have witnessed the gradual recovery of Bible truth sub- merged and lost during the priest-ridden Dark Ages. It is vital that we know it: that our lives be regulated by it. Perfect restoration of it by God's "Remnant Church" is a mark of the world's last chapter. The basic features of this Church are that its members "keep the Command- ments of God, and have the faith of Jesus Christ." '(Revelation 14:12.) /(9-uctAt OUR TIMES A family journal of Christian living dedicated to the proclamation of the everlasting Gospel. Presenting the Bible as the Word of God and Jesus Christ as our ell-sufficient Saviour and coming King EDITOR � R. D. VINE CONTRIBUTING EDITORS W. L. EMMERSON, �A. S. MAXWELL, �J. A. McMILLAN GENERAL MANAGER � K. A. ELIAS VOLUME 86 � NUMBER 7 � PRICE 1/6 PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY THE STANBOROUGH PRESS LTD. ALMA PARK • GRANTHAM • LINCOLNSHIRE ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION including postage 23/6 • SIX MONTHS 11/9 Please notify change of address promptly CONTENTS EDITORIALS READY FOR DOOMSDAY? RELIGION DYING OUT", R D Vine � 4 A S. Maxwell � 5 GENERAL ARTICLES TEN COMMANDMENTS FOR PARENTS � Michael Davis � 6 MOON DUST � Albert Hamilton Watson, M.Sc. � 8 GOD IS NOT DEAD! � Edward P. Pettit, M.A. � 12 GOD'S HEALING TOUCH � Patrick Boyle, B.A. � 16 THE CERTAINTY OF SALVATION � J A. McMillan � 18 THE LUTHERAN REVOLT �. � Dennis Porter, M.A.(Lond.) � 20 MORDECAI � . . � . Dr. A. J. Woodfield, M.A., Ph.D.(Lond.) � 22 THE SABBATH—KEY TO PROSPERITY � Leslie Shaw � 26 REGULAR FEATURES NEWS AND VIEWS � 2 GEMS � � 7 SEVEN FACTS ABOUT THE MANNER OF CHRIST'S RETURN � Rex Edwards � 14 WE QUOTE Dr C. R. Anderson, M.D.29 DEVOTIONAL FEATURES ARE "ALL RIGHT—) � 3 GOD'S THREE CHOICES � R. H. Pierson, D.D. � 11 THE WANDERER WHO CAME BACK � 15 ARE YOU THERE? (Poem) � Mrs. M. Todd � 25 CHILDREN'S PAGES ALPHABET ADVENTURE � Mary J. Vine � 30 SUNBEAMS' CORNER � 31 Cover Picture: Kynance Cove, Cornwall 3 14 BIBLE CROSSWORD FOCUS ON HEALTH Myrtle Cooper � 24 Discerning the times... CURRENT EVENTS IN THE LIGHT OF THE BIBLE • BY THE EDITOR The world abounds with evidences of the first "doomsday"—that of the global flood 2500 B.C. Overwhelmed by the flood were the famous mammoths of Siberia. Here a fossil mammoth is un- earthed in Rome (1970). READY FOR DOOMSDAY? LL set for the possible "big atomic bang," are members of the 700 Club" in Albany, capital of America's New York state. Their faith is based on a super-safe underground bunker. Completed in 1964 at a cost of nearly two million pounds, it will enable the seven hundred "elite" to survive the cata- clysm, and get things going again when the atomic dust has settled and radiation hazards have dwindled. They have packed suitcases always at the ready ; and when the time comes, they will discard all clothes to avoid contamination, and don, sterilized boiler suits for the duration. They will sleep in three-tiered bunk-beds, wedged into small dormitories. For food they will exist on special "survival biscuits" (64 a day!). Who are the 700? They are chosen, not for their moral merit, but for their skills. The state Governor nat- urally heads the list, supported by ten top administrators. The rest include Christian ministers, traders, manufac- turers, writers, public relations officers, clerks, typists, and telephone operators. Included also are members of the "state liquor authority"—though liquor will be banned from the bunker. Across the State, thousands of or• dinary people are equipped with fall- out shelters, but their protective power is ninety-nine per cent less than that of the super-bunker which will house the "elite." During a heated debate in the state legislature earlier this year over who should be included in the chosen 700, one member said: "I think we'd do better to trust in God rather than put money in a hole in the ground where only a few 'Herrenvolk' would be saved." He could not have spoken more truly. Last-day perils are a major theme of Bible prophecy. Today, we are right in the midst of them. "Perilous times shall come," says the New Testament prophet. "Men's hearts shall fail for fear," says the Lord Jesus Christ Him- self. But the total power of the stockpiled atomic "Frankensteins," in Russia, America, Britain, and wherever, is quite dwarfed by the fiery spectacle of the real and ultimate "Doomsday" of the Lord God Himself. Says the Bible prophecy : "The day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which . . . the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up." 2 Peter 3:10. No super-safe bunker will then suffice for survival. Another prophecy pictures the so- called "herrenvolk" whose total un- concern about the salvation of God through Christ, has unfitted them for survival in that "great day of God Al- mighty." They who have seldom if ever directed a prayer to Heaven, now pray "to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of Him that sitteth on the throne, . . for the great day of His wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?" Revelation 6:15-17. Who indeed? Who, at that time, will be the "elite," the "chosen 700," the true "herrenvolk ?" Who, if any, will survive the ulti- mate "day of doom [or judgement]?" There's a simple answer : The Bible makes clear the one and only, all-exclusive, survival factor: "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." That's it! Nothing complicated! No argument! No equivocation! Simple enough for all! Yet too incredibly simple for multiplied millions! "Belief in Christ," of course, means that we confess our sinfulness; that we repent; that we seek His pardon and favour; and that we, as a token of true faith, obey His Command- ments. In that same prophetic chapter des- cribing the fiery purging of the world, and its re-creation by Christ the King, is the cheering assurance: "The Lord is . . . not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance." 2 Peter 3:9. WHAT A GOLDEN PROSPECT FACES us. Truly, God's "doomsday," now almost here, will purge the world of every negative element. Then a glori- ous re-creation—for all eternity. Christian music group, all members of one family, known as Los Picaflores. They are the children of Archdeacon and Mrs. Tony Barratt, missionaries to South America. Such groups aim to make the Christian message relevant and meaningful In this modem age. At long last, the solution to ALL our problems—of sin, of moral de- pravity, of racialism, of political strife, of ideological and religious divisions, of war and suffering, and even of death itself ! At long last will be realized the Utopian bliss when "the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea." The millions who survive, through faith in Christ, are described as being happy "with songs and everlasting joy . . . they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away." � R.D.V. RELIGION DYING OUT? S OME people are convinced that it is. At a recent combined meet- ing in Chicago of the Associated Church Press and the Religious Com- munications Congress one speaker openly declared that "the Church is dying. . . . The death of the World Council of Churches is imminent. . . . All religious institutions have come to the end of the line. I doubt if there will be any left by the end of the 1970s. . . . The present form of re- ligion is on the way out and if the Christian Church dies it will not be resurrected." Another speaker, editor of a well- known Catholic journal, said: "The Catholic Church is no longer a mono- lith. Its whole structure is being dis- mantled. Everywhere in the Church there is conflict, fear and mistrust. It all adds up to disaster." In a workshop dealing with "The Editor and the New Decade," it be- came obvious that religious editors will soon have nothing to edit, if present trends continue. Editors of ten of the leading Protestant journals in the United States revealed staggering losses in circulation and income. One of them told of having lost 500,000 subscribers in the past ten years. Some smaller journals have already folded. Others will soon have to do the same. In the section dealing with religious book publishing, a similar lament was sounded. Some claimed that there was little demand any more for religious books. Sexless books simply won't sell, was the general opinion. One preacher stated that never be- fore had he realized the meaning of Christ's strange question : "When the Son of man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth?" Luke 18:8. "If things continue to go the way they are going," he said, "He will be lucky to find any." As we listened to the debate we were inclined to agree with him. Faith is indeed fading. Religion, as most Protestants and Catholics have pre- sented it, is dying out. Yet it will not die out completely. Faith will survive. Right to the end God will have a band of loyal fol- lowers, all around the world, a devoted remnant who "keep the command- ments of God and the faith of Jesus." Revelation 14:12. As history draws to its close and "the love of many shall wax cold," (Matthew 24:12) the Bible declares that there will come a mighty revival of true religion. The apostle John pictured it as a movement advancing with the speed of angels "having the everlasting Gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people." Revelation 14:6, 7. This movement will not declare a new religion but the same everlasting Gospel which so many religious people have forgotten and from which they have turned aside. How will it be presented? With apologies and doubts? No indeed. But with "a loud voice." A voice of con- fidence and certainty. A voice of total trust in God and His Word. And the heart of this message ? "Fear God, and give glory to Him ; for the hour of His judgement is come." Verse 7. This is the message the world needs now : a new affirmation of the existence of God ; of His reality, His person- ality, and His eternal power ; of the glorious fact that He is Creator, Redeemer and coming King. This is the message whose time has come; for today is the hour of His judgement; the hour when by great global signs He is declaring to all mankind that the climax of history is upon us. Religious journals which proclaim this message will not know the mean- ing of decline. Their circulation will grow with ever-increasing success. Books containing this message will be in the best seller class because the blessing of God will be upon them. Churches that proclaim this message will grow beyond their brightest ex- pectations because they will be doing God's work, and accomplishing His purpose, in His appointed hour. No, religion will not die out. Not true religion. Not the everlasting Gospel. Not the judgement hour mes- sage of the living God. For this is now coming into its own. It is just beginning to live. And live it will un- til God gives to it the victory He has planned. � ARTHUR S. MAXWELL. TEN COMMANDMENTS FOR PARENTS by Michael Davis I PROPOSE ten commandments for parents—command- ments which I believe dig down deep to the core of knowledge about family life. 1. Thou shalt start with training thyself. I was visiting a school principal when a teacher came in. A boy in her first-grade class had called a girl a bad name. When corrected, he seemed puzzled and said: "But my mother says it all the time." The parent who attempts to train children to have good manners, but has none himself, is fighting a losing battle. Children don't learn merely by being told; they learn by being shown. Example makes the longest, deepest impressions. Children are able to detect sham and insincerity. Don't expect your child to be any better than you are. 2. Thou shalt be more concerned about relation- ships than rules. Law is not the last word about life. Jesus believed that laws should be based on what is good for man. If a law does not help man grow into the fullness of God's in- tention for him, it is bad and should be changed. So with the family. All rules should be submitted to this test: Do they help the child grow in his relationships to God and the neighbour ? Parents need to be more concerned with building healthy relationships between themselves and their children. If the child knows he is loved and respected as a person, he is less likely to rebel against ethical standards. The child who is unsure of being loved most often breaks the rules because he is alienated and angry. 3. Thou shalt impart the faith. How many parents have forgotten this commandment! Parents have the basic responsibility for religious education. No one else. A humorist said: "An ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy." The Church can only assist parents, not replace them. No amount of Bible study in the Church school can substitute for Bible study at home. The same is true of prayer and worship. If the Christian faith is not real at home, it is not real anywhere. 4. Thou shalt learn to listen. Listening is an art. We always find it easier to talk. Listening to another person means acknowledging his worth as a person, respecting him and trying to understand his viewpoint. We know another person only as we listen to him. A common complaint of teenagers is: "My parents never listen to me." Through the dynamic of listening love, the generation gap between parents and children could be bridged. 5. Thou shalt spend time with thy children. Once a minister's wife dropped a visitor's card in the offering plate requesting a visit from the minister. In our go-go culture, it is increasingly difficult to stop and enjoy life as a family. But we must make the effort. Children need their parents to play with them, to read to them, to 6 take them on trips and hikes. Years pass quickly, and opportunities to be a family together soon pass into yester- day. Seize the moment to spend time with each other. 6. Thou shalt acknowledge thy sins as parents. We can never do all that is needed for either ourselves or our children. The family is dependent on God's grace for its life. Parents who refuse to admit their sins always end by blaming both their children and themselves for their inadequacies. Dr. Reuel L. Howe tells of a parents' study group which had come to terms with the truth that their children needed more love than they were able to give. They faced their inadequacies; and, miracle of miracles, family life improved. 7. Thou shalt keep a sense of humour. Our family was watching television. Someone was doing a funny skit, and my wife and I started laughing.. Our three-year-old son, who did not understand the skit's humour, thought our laughing was funny. So he started laughing. Soon we were laughing at his laughing at us. We take ourselves too seriously. We need to learn to laugh at our mistakes and inadequacies. Laughter releases pent- up despair and relieves hostility. 8. Thou shalt treat thy children equally. A child is a unique gift from God. There is no other child like your firstborn, or second, or third. Each has his own individual personality: extrovert, introvert, brilliant, dull. One child should not be compared to another. He should be loved for who he is—not for what you want him to become. A good parent loves in spite of imperfec- tion. Over each child we should pray: "Thank You, Creator God, for this, Your special gift." 9. Thou shalt use discipline. An astute observer of the family said that we are a child-centred culture. Instead of parents disciplining their children, children discipline their parents! Discipline may include punishment, but we should not think of it as pri- marily negative. Discipline is providing a structure for growing up which includes protection and guidance. It is yes-saying [approval of constructive behaviour) as well as no-saying [disapproval of destructive behaviour]. Discipline is closely related to love and acceptance. Parents who do not provide a disciplined structure do not really love their children; rather they are engaged in a neurotic bid for popularity. 10. Thou shalt know when to let go. This is the last commandment, but not in importance. Parents naturally want to feel needed as long as possible. This desire tempts them to overprotect their children. Being tied to mother's apron strings is like having a noose around your neck. Good parents accept their changing role, wanting their children to be freed from emotional depend- ency on them. Nothing is more pathetic than an adult who acts like a child simply because his parents did not have the grace to let go. These are ten commandments for parents. They are offered in gratitude for mothers and fathers of every generation who have kept faith with their children by equipping them for responsible living. � • ropi f=, M/JC Q:; * "Money spent on ourselves may be a millstone about the neck; spent on others, it may give us wings like eagles."—R. D. Hitchcock. * "A traveller at Sparta, standing long upon one leg, said to a Lacedaemonian: 'I do not believe you can do as much.' True,' he replied. 'But every goose can.'"—Plutarch. * "Not having enough sunshine is what ails the world. Make people happy, and there will not be half the quarrelling, or a tenth part of the wickedness there now is."—L. M. Child. * Speaking of children, the great Novelist Charles Dickens wrote: "I love these little people; and it is not a slight thing, when they, who are so fresh from God, love us." * "Speak well of everyone, if you speak of them at all— for none of us are so very good."—E. Hubbard. * "For good or ill, your conversation is your advertise- ment. Every time you open your mouth you let men look in to your mind. Do they see it well clothed, neat, business like, pure?"—Barton. * "When people once begin to deviate, they do not know where to stop."—King George Ill. * "Man proposes, but God disposes."—Thomas a Kempis. * "There is no readier way for a man to bring his own worth into question, than by endeavouring to detract from the worth of others."—Tillotson. * "What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence."—Johnson. * "There is no better way to attain to a greater measure of grace, than for a man to live up to the little grace he has." —Brooks. * "The best portion of a man's life is his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love."—Wordsworth. * "The true recipe for a miserable existence is to quarrel with Providence."—J. W. Alexander. * "He who prays as he ought will try to live as he prays." —Owen. * "Prayer without watching is hypocrisy: and watching without prayer is presumption."—Jay. * "He that would prepare for heaven, must honour the Sabbath upon earth."—D. Wilson. * Jesus said: "How blest are those who know that they are poor; for the kingdom of heaven is theirs. "How blest are the sorrowful; they shall find consola- tion. "How blest are those of a gentle spirit; they shall have the earth for their possession. "How blest are those who show mercy; mercy shall be shown to them. "How blest are those whose hearts are pure; they shall see God. "How blest are the peacemakers; God shall call them His sons. "How blest are those who have suffered persecution for the cause of right; the kingdom of Heaven is theirs." —Matthew 5:3-10. N.E.B. 7 Albert Hamilton Watson examines the claims re- cently made, that the analysis of lunar material supports the theories of its evolution What Is the True Message of the MOON DUST? PICTURE ABOVE: One of the many tiny glass spheres picked up on the Moon, magnified many times. J ONATHAN SWIFT was the dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin, but for two centuries he has been much more famous as the author of Gulliver's Travels which appeared in 1726. One of Gulliver's travels took him to the land of Laputa where he found scientists at work. He found astronomers who had discovered two . . . "satellites, which revolve about Mars, whereof the in- nermost is distant from the centre of the primary planet exactly three of the diameters and the outermost five; the former revolves in the space of ten hours, and the latter in twenty one and a half ; so that the squares of their periodical times are very near in the same proportion with 8 the cubes of their distance from the centre of Mars, which evidently shows them to be governed by the same law of gravitation, that influences the other heavenly bodies." One hundred and fifty years later an American astron- omer, Asaph Hall, discovered that Mars did indeed possess two satellites; and what is even more remarkable, they go racing around Mars in times close to those imagined by Swift: about 71 and 301/4 hours respectively, as compared to Swift's 10 and 211 hours. Our Moon takes some 27 days and 8 hours to make its circuit of the Earth {Siderial month]. But its distance from us is some sixty times the diameter of the Earth. The Martian satellites are much closer to the mother planet. If they did not rush around with such great speed they would be pulled into the planet by its gravitational field. This was clearly understood by Swift who actually applied Kepler's third law of planetary motion (which also applies to satellites, of course) to compute "correct" distances and times for the satellites. It is a remarkable piece of science fiction come true. Most of the planets in our solar system have moons. The great planet Jupiter has twelve and Saturn nine in addition to its spectacular rings. Earth is the only planet known to have just one. Because the Moon is the closest celestial body, except for the short-lived meteors which come streaking into our astmosphere, it has been more thoroughly studied than any other. Of course, more recently it has been studied with very great care because we have been planning to send our own "kith and kin" up there, and have succeeded in doing so. But those technologists and scientists who achieved the most spectacular "escape" in human history depended heavily on a huge mass of infor- mation about the Moon, its motion, and its gravitational field, which—had been accumulated by their predecessors. And now it seems that a regular commuter service to the Moon is anticipated. Lunarnauts have brought back samples of the very "soil" and rocks upon which they have walked a quarter of a million miles from Mother Earth, and many an earthling has queued up to get a glimpse through a glass screen of some "moon dust." But all this, carried out by the nation that nurtured Hollywood, is not a piece of gigantic show business. A great deal of serious scientific work is being done. The rocks and dust have been doled out to some 140 teams of eager scientists around the world, and for what purpose? So that they might have the thrill of holding a piece of the Moon in their hands? No, indeed. They are anxious to study it, anxious to find some clue to their multitudinous questions about the Moon: What is its origin? How old is it? What has happened to it since it was formed? What caused its craters, its rills and rays, and what are its "seas"? Which of the multitude of theories about the Moon and its origin is correct? It will be some time before all the results from these investigations become fully known. Scientific research is a long, patient slog; but most of us tend to lack patience; and that goes for scientists, too. In fact scientists are normal human beings. Why do you think I am jesting? Where did this strange idea come from that scientists have more in common with computers and robots than with "normal" human beings? Science fiction I fear. There has been an understanding among the scientists working on the Moon samples that the results of their work would be published simultaneously. But a scientist here and there who felt that the early results vindicated their particular theories found the temptation too strong to "let the cat out of the bag." And after all, we must all admit we would find the temptation very strong. If we had spent many hours or weeks working out a detailed hypothesis and then some evidence from the Moon came along which fitted in with it, would we not want all the world to know? But these reports have given the general impression that "this is it." They suggest that theories elaborating the concept of the evolution of the solar system have been "proved" to be correct ; that "we now know," and all that. BUT SUCH A NOTION IS TOTALLY UNWARRANTED. Let us be quite clear about this. There are many rival theories of the origin and development of our solar system and the study of the lunar rocks was almost bound to produce some evidence that fitted one or other of them. But what of the theories that ran counter to the evidence from the Moon? Naturally we hear little or nothing about them. For instance, some of these state that the Moon is a huge piece that was pulled out the Earth in one way or another thousands of millions of years ago when it was still hot and plastic. These various accounts explain the cause of the separation in different ways. A recent sugges- tion is that the Earth and Mars were originally one large body which, due to its rotation, pulled apart into two. In the process the narrow neck of material which connected the two just before they broke apart, also broke away from both the new planets, rolled up into a sphere, and began its endless journey around the Earth as its satellite. If this is true then we should expect the rocks on the Moon to show close similarities to rock here on Earth. What do the lunar rocks "say" about this? There are indeed many similarities between lunar and terrestrial rocks. The same chemical elements are to be found in each. Some forms of terrestrial crystalline rocks such as the olivines and pyroxenes have been identified in the lunar samples. But there are also very marked differences. Particles of pure iron have been found in them, and they do not appear to be of meteoric origin. On Earth, iron is always found oxidized. The lunar material contains remarkably high proportions of the elements: titanium, zirconium, chromium, and yttrium, and distinctly lower proportions of the alkali metals: sodium, potassium, and rubidium, compared with terrestrial rocks. Then again, traces of at least three new minerals unlike any known on this Earth, have been noticed. It has been suggested that one of them should be named "Kennedyite" after the man under whose administration the lunar pro- gramme was launched. Again, the Moon's surface has been found to be peppered with a large number of tiny glassy balls like minute marbles. This is one of the surprise discoveries. Another has to do with age determinations of the dust and rocks. The dust appears to be a thousand million years older than the rocks lying close by: "A major puzzle!" says one leading investigator. Puzzle indeed, if one accepts the idea that radioactivity gives true age determination. But when considering this problem for our article a few 9 A recent suggestion of how the Moon was formed. It is postulated that Earth and Mars were all one at first and when they separated the Moon formed between them. months ago, it became evident that this method was really quite unreliable. This latest puzzle is simply another illus- tration of that. This is underlined by the fact that another method of dating, known as fission track dating, was ap- plied to a glassy fragment. This method sets an upper limit to the age of any specific material, and in this case showed a maximum age of only one-tenth of the age of the other material. So anyone who speaks with confidence about what we now know is really speaking out of turn. Even if there were no puzzling anomalies about the lunar samples, and if in addition all the evidence were found to fit a particular theory,. that would by no means prove the truth of that theory. Every good scientist always bears in mind that the correct explanation for any phenomena may not yet be known. A good example of this is to be found in a recent article by the distinguished Cambridge astrophysicist, R. A. Lytleton. After commenting with restraint on three hypo- theses regarding the origin of the Moon he reserves his most vigorous statement for a fourth: "Hypothesis 4. Is it possible that the Earth-Moon system was formed by some process not yet appreciated or thought of? MOST DEFINITELY YES, but there is nothing that can be done to examine any such process until some ingenious person first thinks it up." It is much too early to be drawing anything but the most tentative conclusions about the Moon's fabric from the samples brought back. After all only a tiny portion of its surface has been brought back to Earth and could well give an inaccurate picture of the surface as a whole. In fact the samples brought back by Appolo 12 are showing distinct differences from those of AppOlo 11. A great deal of work remains to be done. Perhaps it would be banal to say that we have only scratched the surface of the Moon, but at least it is being "down to earth" about the whole problem. A very ancient record states: "And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons and for days, and years: and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night." I KNOW OF NOTHING IN THE WHOLE REALM OF SCIENCE WHICH IN ANY WAY INVALIDATES THIS RECORD. 10 GOD'S THREE CHOICES by R. H. Pierson, D.D. HEN Adam sinned, the penalty for his transgres- sion passed upon the human race. "In Adam all die." 1 Corinthians 15:22. On the awful day that Adam sinned, God had three choices: He could ignore Adam's sin; He could blot man out of existence; He could provide a way of escape. For God to ignore sin would be to impugn His justice. To destroy mankind would call in question His love. Therefore God found a way of escape for sinful man. The penalty could be paid only by One equal to God. An angel, a created being, could not pay the awful debt. Such a being could not come from the tomb as a conqueror over death. Christ alone, God's only-begotten Son, could assume the debt, could pay the price, and then come forth victor over fallen man's most implacable enemy—death. Both Father and Son were willing. "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son." John 3:16. "Christ reconciled us to God by dying for us." Romans 5: 10, Phillips. The following is only an imperfect illustration, but it may help us to understand what is involved in the pay- ment of man's debt by Christ: You owe a businessman one thousand pounds. Misfortune has befallen you, so you can- not pay. You are threatened with court action. A friend takes pity on you—and hands you a cheque for one thou- sand pounds. Provision for paying the debt is made. You hold in your hand a cheque which you may cash and thereby obtain money to pay the debt, or which you may ignore and suffer the consequences. The decision is up to you. As no one can cash another's cheque without the person's permission, so God cannot save us without our consent. When by faith we decide to accept the payment already made for our sin, we in effect cash the cheque. Our debt of sin is paid. � • 11 GOD IS \OT DEAD MAZING Story . . . God Dead !" A London newsagent had scrawled the notice to advertise an edition of Time magazine containing a report on ultra-modern theological trends in the United States. Frank statements denying the existence of a super- natural Being called "God" had been issued by some religious professors. One wrote that "the death of God" was a "final, irrevocable event"1; another confessed to complete disbelief in God—at the centre of his thoughts there was now "a void," "an absence."' In a land dotted with collapsing cathedrals and moulder- ing churches, to some the crumbling buildings epitomize the decay of Christian belief. Many share the same feeling of loss. For our generation it seems that belief in God is on the move. The cathedrals are being shorn up with concrete, but the pneumatic drills of secularism have made a shambles of the Christian faith. Through the centuries England has been noted for its depth of religious belief. Now we have reached a time of declining faith in the cardinal doctrines of the Bible. We wonder why so large a segment of the modern generation seem inclined to jettison the faith of its fathers. The great divide between modern man and traditional faith is the explosion of scientific knowledge. Like French revolutionaries we have enthroned the goddess "Reason," and decapitated "Faith" on the guillotine of scientific discovery. Scientists state that the Universe is mechanistic, rational, and predictable. They claim that nothing can occur outside of known scientific law, and that everything may be explained by correct observation, deduction, and experimentation. The supernatural claims of Scripture are excluded by this philosophy. The Creation of this world by God, is dismissed with a wave of a test tube, while B.B.C. pro- grammes blandly inform us that the world is millions of years old and that the theory of evolution is an "established fact." In other words "we" are accidental conglomerations of matter, the results of a cosmic Bingo game; there is no good reason for our being here and little chance for our survival in the Nuclear Age; there is no spiritual reality to life, man is "a naked ape" in a lonely universe. But, wait a minute! Does Science have to be such an impossible barrier to belief ? Is God to be written off so finally ? In reply, we raise another question: What is the true nature of scientific inquiry? Surely it is unscientific to be inflexible and dogmatic about unproven theories and pre- suppositions. True science will not be prejudiced against sources of truth just because they do not fit preconceived ideas, but is willing to accept truth from any place and to follow wherever it leads. Modern popular "science" does not do this. For instance it dogmatizes about the theories of Darwinian Evolution. This, in the words of a leading zoologist Professor W. R. Thompson, F.R.S., is based upon "fragile towers of hy- potheses . . . where fact and fiction intermingle in an in- extricable confusion."' And yet a theory, virtually rejected by a top zoologist, exposed by other noted men of science as unproven, is our modern scientific shibboleth.* Furthermore, the cut and dried foundational ideas of science have received a stunning blow. Some Oxford scientists, experimenting with an atom smasher, have made discoveries which "threaten to overthrow some of the fundamental laws of nature," and have "already brought much of the elaborate structure of ideas about nature, toppling to the ground." A layman's eyes tend to go into soft focus at the reports' science-fiction-like terminology concerning "anti-matter," particles travelling faster than light, and time running backward. But the meaning was made clear by a nuclear physicist's concluding statement: "We don't know where our laws are now. We don't even know whether the general framework is valid. Something big has to happen!"' [Our italic.] These amazing confessions by top scientists reveal the true nature of the barriers to belief modern scientific theories have erected. This elaborate structure of ideas, which has excluded God from His Universe, "is toppled to the ground!" Man now surveys the wreckage of his dogmatic assertions, founded, not on scientific fact, but upon "fragile towers of hypotheses!" However, the more man explores nature what amazing harmony, perfection and order he discovers! Is it such a great step for him to recognize there must "be a Supreme Mind behind such precision? And would a Being with power to create so vast a universe be a prisoner within His creation and His power confined to the limitations of man's inadequate theories? would He not be unable to stand above the laws He set in motion? It's time we realized that, despite all the knowledge man has gained in scientific development, he still does not have the answer to the meaning of existence. He has written R.I.P. over the Bible too soon. The urgent need of our modern age is for a fresh, fearless, and unbiased re-evalu- ation of the Bible and modern science. Is God giving us one last chance to do this as the onset of fantastic new knowledge in scientific thought overwhelms our fragile structure of ideas? Is this God saying as in ancient times: "Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?" "I made the earth and created man upon it ; it was •My hands that stretched out the heavens, and I commanded all their host." (Job 38:2, 4, R.S.V.; and Isaiah 45 :12, R.S.V.) • • Shibboleth: An interesting word that comes from a story in Judges 12 :6 where it was used as a test word to distinguish the Gileadites from the Ephtaimites who could not pronounce "sh" It has come to mean a cant catch word or formula used as a test of genuineness or loyalty to a certain party which embodies the principle of belief, i.e. in this case if Darwinian Evolution is not believed, one is excluded* from scientific circles. REFERENCES: 1. Radical Theology & The Death of God, Thomas J. J. Altizer & William Hamilton, Pelican, page 129. 2. Ibid., page 96. 3. Introdaction to the Everyman's edition of The Origin of the Species Professor W. R. Thompson, F.R.S. 4. The Species, � April 13, 1969. Report by Gerald Leach, Science Correspondent. 13 111111•1111111111111111111111 � 111111111 II � III � =I � III 7FACTS ABOUT THE MANNER OF CHRIST'S RETURN THE Apostles' Creed enunciates: "I believe in God the Father Almighty . . . and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord who ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Faller Almighty; from hence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead." Thus for 1,800 years Christians of all lands have expressed their hope in the second coming. But how will He come? 1. He will come PERSONALLY. (Acts 1:9-11.) "This same Jesus." The expression "this same Jesus" contains demonstrative words stressing that He who returns will be the actual Jesus who ascended—in other words, "Jesus HIMSELF shall come." "I will come again, and receive you unto Myself; that where I am, there ye may be also." John 14:3. His return will not be an impersonal spiritual appearance, but open and public. The Lord will appear when He comes. (Hebrews 9:28; Titus 2:13.) 2. He will come VISIBLY. Revelation 1:7, "Every eye shall see." Carefully compare the manner of Christ's return in these two passages: Matthew 24:30, 31 � 1 Thessalonians 4:15-18 "They shall see the Son of � "The Lord Himself shall des- man coming." � cend from heaven." "His angels with a great "With the voice of the sound." � Archangel." "A great sound of a trumpet." � "With the trump of God." "They shall gather together � "Caught up together with His elect." � them." ''In the clouds of heaven." � "In the clouds, to meet the Lord." Observe that Matthew teaches a splendid, outward, public coming and Paul in Thessalonians employs exactly the same phrases and symbols. 3. He will come BRILLIANTLY. (Matthew 24:27.) "As lightning." Certainly no hint here of a secretive and private appearance. 4. He will come AUDIBLY. (Matthew 24:31.) "Sound of a trumpet." The second advent is associated with the "noisiest" text of the Bible-1 Thessalonians 4.16. Observe the three sounds. 5. He will come GLORIOUSLY. (Luke 9:26.) "He shall come in His own glory, and in His Father's and of the holy angels." Born in obscurity, He now comes in triple glory. (Matthew 25:31.) A spectacular display of celestial pagaentry without parallel. Notice the effect of the presence of an angel at the resurrection. (Matthew 28:2-4.) In view of the number of angels (Revelation 5:11; Hebrews 12:22), who can doubt the devastating effect the second advent will have upon the unsaved! 6. He will come POWERFULLY. (Revelation 6:14-17.) "Every mountain and island were moved." Earthquakes often accompanied manifestations of the divine presence. (Exodus 19:18; Matthew 27:51.) 7. He will come UNEXPECTEDLY. (Matthew 24:42, 44.) "Ye know not what hour." To the un- prepared His coming will be as "a thief in the night." 1 Thessalonians 5:2. This stresses the uncertainty of Christ's return rather than suggesting its being a secretive event. He will come "as a thief"—quietly, swiftly, suddenly. Dr. R. A. Torrey testifies to the immediate practical effect of these truths: "When I got hold of the truth and the truth got hold of me of a personal, visible, glorious, imminent return of our Lord Jesus Christ, it lifted me above the world and its ambitions." Rex D. Edwards gives . � . We Quote • "I have known ninety-five of the world's great men in my time, and of these, eighty-seven were followers of the Bible. The Bible is stamped with a Speciality of Origin. An immeasurable distance separates it from all competitors." —Prime Minister W. E. Gladstone. • "Science enables technology to do almost anything, but there is a painful discrepancy between what man aims for, and what he gets. He sprays pesticides to get rid of mos- quitoes and weeds, but he thereby kills birds, fishes, and flowering trees. He drives long distances to recapture the purity of nature, but he poisons the air, and is even killed, along the way. He builds machines to escape from physical work, but in so doing he also becomes their slave."—Dr. Rene Dubois. • "'All Chinese look alike.' This complaint tells you at once two things about the speaker: first, that he is not himself Chinese; and second, that he lacks interest in Chinese people generally, so that he never looks at any of them very hard. Similarly, if someone asks whether the world's religions are not, for all practical purposes, the same, it suggests first that he knows and cares little about religions in general, and second, that he is not committed to any one religion in particular. For if he were, he would be sure that the answer to his question is NO!"—Rev. Dr. J. I. Packer, Oxford. • "Why do miners attach such importance to their lamps? Why does the captain of a fog-bound ship attach such im- portance to his radar? Or why have Christians ever attached such importance to the Bible? Clearly, by these means certain vital information is directly and reliably available, and with- out them there would only be darkness and confusion." —Rev. Colin 0. Buchanan, London College of Divinity. 14 The Wanderer who came back A story by Jesus Himself, heart-warming, inspiring, reassuring—it is an illustration of how God deals with penitent sinners. (From the New English Bible, Luke 15:11-24.) T HERE was once a man who had two sons; and the younger said to his father, "Father, give me my share of the property." So he divided his estate between them. A few days later the younger son turned the whole of his share into cash and left home for a distant country, where he squandered it in reckless living. He had spent it all, when a severe famine fell upon that country and he began to feel the pinch. So he went and attached himself to one of the local landowners, who sent him on his farm to mind the pigs. He would have been glad to fill his belly with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything. Then he came to his senses and said, "How many of my father's paid servants have more food than they can eat, and here am I, starving to death! I will set off and go to my father, and say to him, 'Father, I have sinned, against God and against you; I am no longer fit to be called your son; treat me as one of your paid servants.— So he set out for his father's house. But while he was still a long way off his father saw him, and his heart went out to him. He ran to meet him, flung his arms round him, and kissed him. The son said, "Father, I have sinned, against God and against you; I am no longer fit to be called your son." But the father said to his servants, "Quick! fetch a robe, my best one, and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and shoes on his feet. Bring the fatted calf and kill it, and let us have a feast to celebrate the day. For this son of mine was dead and has come back to life; he was lost and is found." And the festivities began. Now the elder son was out on the farm; and on his way back, as he approached the house, he heard music and dancing. He called one of the servants and asked what it meant. The servant told him, "Your brother has come home, and your father has killed the fatted calf because he has him back safe and sound." But he was angry and refused to go in. His father came out and pleaded with him; but he retorted, "You know how I have slaved for you all these years; I never once dis- obeyed your orders; and you never gave me so much as a kid, for a feast with my friends. But now that this son of yours turns up, after running through your money with his women, you kill the fatted calf for him." "My boy," said the father, "you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. How could we help celebrating this happy day? Your brother here was dead and has come back to life, was lost and is found." � • 15 HEALIN The most terrible tragedy that can afflict us is not our own sin, but our neglect, or refusal, to come to Christ and be cleansed from it. by Patrick Boyle, B.A. I T wds the sun's rays creeping in through the window which caused the man to awake. Instinctively he put his hand on his forehead. Yes, it was still there. Quietly he slipped out of bed and knelt down to pray. His prayers were fervent and earnest. He committed his wife and children to God, expressed his gratitude for God's goodness and ended with a sincere petition that God's mercy and blessing would be with him on that day. Rising he washed himself and joined the rest of the family for breakfast. The meal ended, all united in prayer that God would bless father's visit to the doctor. To each one in turn father said good-bye, last of all to his wife whom he briefly embraced, then he quickly left the house to visit his physician. It was with a grave face the doctor faced his patient. He knew the futility of it all and quietly he began to read to the man opposite him: "If a man's hair has fallen from his head, he is bald, but he is clean. And if a man's hair has fallen from his forehead and temples, he has baldness of the forehead but he is clean. But if there is on the bald head or the bald forehead a reddish-white diseased spot, it is leprosy breaking out on his bald head or his bald forehead. Then the priest shall examine him, and . . . must pronounce him unclean; his disease is on his head. The leper who has the disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head hang loose, and he shall cover his upper lip and cry, 'Unclean, unclean.' He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease; he is unclean; he shall dwell alone in a habitation outside the camp :"1 When he had finished, the priest, for he was also the doctor in such cases, gave some brief instructions to the ashen-faced man opposite him. He told him where to go, how he would obtain food, where other lepers gathered, and carefully explained the necessity of crying: "Unclean, Unclean" whenever his path crossed that of other human beings. The interview over, the man went out, away from his children, his wife, his friends, and neighbours. Away from human society, no longer would he go to the temple at Jerusalem. He was now an outcast, a leper. The hills and barren wastes would from henceforth be his home, and the ugly disfigured creatures, blighted by leprosy, his companions. At first he stayed away from the other lepers, their disfigurement and the awful smell surrounding them, kept him away. But finally loneliness and the development of his own disease drove him to seek their companionship. It was a horrible existence—the continual reminder of his condition in the grotesque appearance of the other lepers, the stench of dying flesh, and the ever present cry "unclean" were always with him. His lot was such as to break the strongest personality. As the years passed and the disease worsened he became one mass of suppurating sore. Broken in spirit, ruined in body, he resigned himself to die. Then it happened. In the bleak Judean hills a group of lepers discussed the rumours they had heard concerning the new prophet Jesus of Nazareth. It was said He had healed various kinds of sickness, but could He possibly heal leprosy ? Surely, it was impossible. Hope was no sooner lighted than it was extinguished; however, the seed had been sown and it would soon bear fruit. Lying exhausted behind a clump of rocks the leper sees a large crowd of people moving toward him. Too weak to run he hides and listens. Suddenly he hears the name "Jesus" repeated over and over. Like lightning there crowds into his mind what he has heard about the healing power of Jesus. Doubt, hope, despair, crash and jangle in his mind. No, it's no use, even if He could help how could I ever get near Him? The crowd draws nearer. They are right opposite him. Then he sees Jesus. He sees the compassionate face. He hears the loving words spoken in a gracious manner to those who crowd around. Hope that was dead, feelings forgotten, surge to his consciousness. He has nothing to lose—he is so far gone that he will soon be dead anyway; if he is stoned, it doesn't matter! With a desperate cry he staggers to his feet and bursts in upon the startled crowd. At sight of this leprous creature with the pall of death strong upon him the crowd scatter in all directions, one thought uppermost in their minds, not to be contaminated by him. Jesus does not move. The crowd and his disciples urge Him to flee. The leper has now reached where Christ was. He does not cry: "Unclean, unclean," but the concentrated urgent compulsive plea with the shadow of death upon it burst from his lips: "Lord, if You will, You can make me clean."' Breathless, the crowd which had seconds earlier scattered in all directions, watched to see what would happen. Jesus, with infinite love and merciful compassion, reached out His hand, "touched" that body of death, and replied: "I will; be clean." And immediately the leprosy left him. Reclaimed from a living death, restored to his wife and children, once more able to worship God in the temple, enabled to express his gratitude in song and sacrifice, the cleansed leper evermore loved and adored the One who had redeemed him from ruin and degradation. The story is so dramatic, so full of goodness and mercy, so compelling in the lovely manner in which it underlines God's kindness and tenderness for the hopeless, that it strongly moves our hearts and minds and brings them into sympathy with Christ. However, it should appeal to us for other reasons also. No one, no matter how fortunate his station in life, is immune from the trials and perplexities which are the common lot of man and, much more serious, all of us are infected with the leprous malady of sin. We have all received from Adam a nature rebellious and perverted through contamination with sin. Our greatest need is restoration from our fallen state, cleansing from our sin and immunization against it. We look in vain for help within ourselves or from our fellow man. Our sole hope lies in Him who cleansed the leper and restored him. At His birth the angel declared He was to be called Jesus "for He will save His people from their sins."' page 27 _> 17 THE CERTAINTY OF Another in the "CERTAINTY" series by J. A. McMillan, in which he emphasizes the trustworthi- ness of the Bible's BASIC DOCTRINE. Acceptance of this doctrine spells the difference between eternal life and eternal death. T HE certainty of salvation is grounded in the certainty of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. If the claims of Jesus are valid and authentic, then His purpose to redeem us is equally valid and authentic. If His claims are false, then the salvation He offers is equally elusive and void. Jesus came, according to the Scrip- tures, to bring salvation. "This salvation was the theme which the prophets pondered and explored." 1 Peter 1:10, N.E.B. The great apostle of this Gospel was Paul. He assures us that he was "a chosen envoy, assigned to the proclama- tion of God's news, which He had previously announced by His prophets in the Sacred Writings, concerning His Son, Jesus Christ our Master, born in the physical sense of the line of David, but potently demonstrated to be God's Son in the sanctified spiritual sense by resurrection from the dead." Romans 1:1-4, Schonfield's translation. 18 SALVATION It is undeniable that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, of the line of David. It is also a fact that His coming was the theme of all the prophets of the house of Israel from Samuel to Malachi. They foretold the manner of His birth, the place of His nativity, the scope of His ministry, the purpose of His death, the certainty of His resurrection. Writing after these events, Paul could call them "facts" : "And now, my brothers, I must remind you of the Gospel that I preached to you; the Gospel which you received, on which you have taken your stand, and which is now bringing you salvation. . . "First and foremost, I handed on to you the facts which had been imparted to me: that Christ died for our sins, in accordance with the Scriptures ; that He was buried ; that He was raised to life on the third day, according to the Scriptures." These are the facts on which our salvation rests. A BRAHAM has been revered by countless generations of Jews, Muslims, and Christians as "the friend of God." On what ground did his integrity and charac- ter anchor? The scripture tells us that "he believed God and it was counted unto him for righteousness." All he had was the naked Word of God. God made him a promise, and in the face of forbidding circumstances, he believed that promise. Read the fascinating story in Genesis chapters 12-21. What has this to do with our search for certainty about salvation? J. B. Phillips' translation of a passage in Hebrews tells us in vivid language: "Among men it is customary to swear by something greater than themselves. And if a statement is confirmed by an oath, that is the end of all quibbling. So in this matter, God, wishing to show beyond doubt that His plan was unchangeable confirmed it with an oath. So that by two utterly immutable things, the Word of God and the oath of God, who cannot lie, we who are refugees from this dying world might have a source of strength, and might grasp the hope that He holds out to us. This hope we hold as the utterly reliable anchor for our souls, fixed in the very certainty of God Himself in heaven, where Jesus has already entered on our behalf." Hebrews 6:13-19. Confidence and credit are the foundation of the very fabric of society and commerce. And faith in the Word of God is the foundation of spiritual experience and re- ligious truth. The veracity of God's Word, the Bible, has been established by a thousand prophecies actually ful- filled. Its promises have brought comfort and consolation to seeking hearts in every age. God's Word and God's oath, given to Abraham, are backed by His character and constancy. "Only that which is bound up with His purpose, and expresses His character, can endure. His principles are the only steadfast things our world knows."—E. G. WHITE, Education, page 183. John, the beloved disciple of Jesus, put it like this: "If we are prepared to accept human testimony, God's own testimony concerning His own Son is surely infinitely more valuable. The man who really believes in the Son of of God will find God's testimony in his own heart. The man who will not believe God is making Him out to be a liar, because he is deliberately refusing to accept the testimony that God has given concerning His own Son." 1 John 5 :9, 10, J. B. Phillips. Are we prepared to flout God's promises and doubt His Word? If so, we must abide the consequences in poverty of soul and denial of salvation. "The four great facts in the Gospel record—the Incarnation, the Resurrec- tion, the Ascension and the Intercession of Jesus Christ— that form what may well be called the Gospel quadrangle, have as their centre an uplifted cross. They face that cross, point to that cross, have no worth and no significance apart from that cross." So wrote Dr. Herrick Johnson in The Ideal Ministry, page 60. These are the facts that have constituted the ground of our salvation throughout the ages and throughout the world. Back in the early years of Christianity, Irenaeus wrote of the essentials of the Gospel: "For the Church, though dispersed throughout the world unto the ends of the earth, yet bath received from the Apostles and their disciples THE FAITH, believing in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth and seas and all that is therein ; and in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God, made flesh for our salvation; and in the Holy Ghost, who by the prophets preached the dispensa- tions, and the advents, and the birth of a virgin, and the passion, and the resurrection from the dead, and the as- sumption incarnate into the heavens of the well-beloved Christ Jesus our Lord, and His return from heaven in the glory of the Father, to gather all things to Himself, and to raise to life all flesh of all mankind."—Contra Heresies. 1, cap.x. To accept this, and to allow God's Word to change our lives, hearts, and motives, ensures our salvation. Salva- tion is not the acceptance of a doctrine, but of a Person. The search for certainty of salvation leads us to Him. "It is He who brought us salvation and called us to a dedicted life, not for any merit of ours, but of His own purpose and His own grace, which was granted to us in Christ Jesus from all eternity, but has now at length been brought fully into view by the appearance on earth of our Saviour Jesus Christ. . . . I know who it is in whom I have trusted, and am confident in His power to keep safe what He has put into my charge, until the great Day." 2 Timothy 1:9, 10, 12, N.E.B. "Other refuge have I none, Hangs my helpless soul on Thee; Leave, Ah! leave me not alone, • Still support and comfort me: All my trust on Thee is stayed, All my help from Thee I bring; Cover my defenceless head With the shadow of Thy wing." CHARLES WESLEY. • 19 THE LUTHERAN REVOLT THE CHURCH IN THE WESTERN WORLD � by Dennis Porter, M.A.(Lond.) H OWEVER much some historians may depreciate the human factor in history and insist upon the over- riding operation of impersonal forces, it remains inescapable that the most climactic movements in history have been but the lengthened shadow of a man or group of men. It is man who has the vision and dreams the dream (or nightmare) and who in his awakening trans- lates it into fact for weal or woe to the world. It is one of the most profound ironies of history that the modern age, which has been marked by a steady declension of religious belief and its parallel, a progressive rise in man's assumed self-sufficiency, was inaugurated by one man's sense of his own helplessness in the face of God's right- eousness. Martin Luther's search for spiritual identity; the years he had spent in agonising with God over the lost state of his soul; the scourgings, the penances, the fastings he had inflicted upon himself "to gain favour" with his Maker— all these came to a head when he learned that people were being persuaded that a coin in the offertory could effect what they could not. For Luther had made one of the great spiritual re-discoveries of all time, namely : that God's relationship to man is a personal one, through a Person Jesus Christ, who is at once both divine and human and that it is a man's connection with Christ immediately— not through pope or priest or Church—that determines his salvation. Luther had found out from the Bible that the "just shall live by faith" and if the Church taught otherwise and demonstrated its teaching by condoning the supposed pur- chasing of salvation for money so much the worse for the Church. Attack it he would—and did. His attack fell in a favourable hour. In earlier articles in this series we have noted the growing weakness of the papacy especially in the face of rising nationalism in Europe; morally, too, as we have seen, it was in decline; and intellectually also some of its foundations had been badly eroded by Renaissance scholarship. Moreover, the time was right technologically. No sooner had Luther's ninety-five theses been posted on the Witten- berg church door than copies of them were multiplied and distributed, at first throughout Saxony, then Germany, then Europe. Once more, as in the case of Wyclif, a scholarly quarrel was to percolate down to the masses and stir them profoundly. The difference, however, was in the rate and coverage of the percolation. In Wyclif's day, the message could be carried only by word of mouth ; Luther had the advantage of the printing press. He was to put it to good use. A steady stream of publications began to come from his pen—one a fortnight it has been estimated. In them (particularly those published in 1520) he defined his doctrinal position. The Pope and a general council could err; indeed the former and the system of which he was head were Antichrist who should finally be overthrown at the second Advent of Christ. Canon law, he claimed, had no validity (after all, it endorsed indulgences) ; the Bible was to be accounted the supreme authority for Christians. Of the seven sacraments of the medieval Catholic Church (marriage, ordination, extreme unction, confirmation, penance, the mass, and baptism) only the last two were really sacraments and the mass was transformed into the Lord's Supper, although in such a way that room was left for at least a partial retention of the medieval idea that the bread and the wine in some sense became the body and blood of Christ at consecration. In his treatment of baptism may be seen an example of the inconsistencies which are to be expected in so large and rapidly-produced a literary output. Hitherto, faith had been the keynote of Luther's preaching and writing. In- dulgences were condemned because they promoted a belief in salvation by merit ; Canon law went because it enshrined the idea of a treasury of good works upon which the repentant believer could draw ; The Pope and Church themselves, because the eccles- 20 People discussing Luther's theses In the market-place, Wittenberg. iastical system which they typified was based upon the con- cept of salvation by works, had to go; Penance followed them into disfavour for obvious reasons; The Lord's Supper was retained but was effective for the communicant only insofar as he had faith in the sacrifice of Christ on the cross symbolized by it. Yet when it came to baptism, Luther, after much vacillation, retained the rite for infants, who are too young to have faith, claiming that those who sponsored them at the font would exercise it for them. If baptism meant (as Luther was sure that it did) entrance into the number of God's elect, what was this but salvation by proxy, and as such, in what degree did it differ from the salvation acquired through the merits of another, whether saint or virgin? Of all Luther's inconsistencies this one was perhaps to have the most fateful consequences for Christendom. Protestantism was soon to fragment and initially its frag- mentation was upon this very question of infant versus adult baptism. UTHER'S teaching—among so much that was desirable —had another unfortunate effect, which when carried to its logical conclusion in practice was to alarm Luther a little later and was to have an enduring and baleful impact upon Christian practice to our own day. If man was saved by faith alone what need was there of law? The Middle Ages had over-emphasized works (of a sort) ; now the pendulum swung to the other extreme. Works were "out," and Luther, for all his Biblicism, could not stomach the epistle of James with its emphasis upon the co-necessity of faith and works. The result was that penances, pilgrimages, and pardons disappeared from the Protestant corpus of belief and practice, but the same wind that carried them away blew away also the Ten Command- ments, a loss from which the bulk of Protestant Christianity still suffers. Were another Luther to arise in our day his primary task would be to reverse his forebear's flight from Sinai, and to fill the void of spiritual anarchy opened up by Luther's rejection of law by a reassertion of those laws which are truly binding upon the Christian. The opinions for which Luther had come to be known by 1520 were not quietly thought out in his study. They were forged in the cross-fire of hearing and disputation. The papacy had quickly decided to silence him, but Frederick the Wise of Saxony refused to allow his subject to leave Germany and therefore the papal emissaries had to come to him. A hearing before Cardinal Cajetan at Augsburg in 1518 and a debate with John Eck at Leipzig in 1519 marked successive stages on Luther's road to a full break with Rome, especially the latter in which Eck forced him to acknowledge affinity with the avowedly heretical Hussites. The final breach was marked dramatically in December, 1520, when Luther consigned to the flames page 28 --> 21 T;} MEN OF LIKE PASSIONS by A. J. Woodfield, M.A., Ph.D.(Lond.) He sought his people's welfare T HE fame of his beauty-queen cousin lives in every Esther that breathes, but his name is seldom heard at the font. Yet had there been no Mordecai there could have been no Queen Esther; there might not have been a Jew left alive to carry on the line of Abraham. The man who sought the welfare of his people secured the welfare of mankind, for in so doing he saved alive the people from whose loins sprang the Seed in whom all the families of the earth have been blessed. His story is one of the great epics of the world— more stirring, more dramatic, more ethically satisfying and strange than anything spun out of the fantasies of the most inventive creator of fiction. It glitters with an opulence that beggars the treasures of Aladdin, it removes sackcloth for purple, its heroine beggars description for beauty, its villain out-herods Herod—his confusion is doubly confounded, his malice is irreversible but frustrated in the nick of time. What more could the most exacting of readers demand? What could fiction devise to outdo its wonders? But every word of it is true, every character made of the same clay as we. They have a cuneiform tablet in the Berlin Museum that names him. His Ahasuerus lives in history too—none other than the luckless King Xerxes the Great, the king who "sat on a rocky brow, that looks o'er sea-born Salamis." Ships in thousands and men by nations all were his, mustered only to be scattered like corn before the onset of the heroes of Greece. Fabulous the men and the times, but human and real the passions that were engaged. He was shrewd about time and opportunity, was this unremarked Jew in exile, by a quirk of destiny he used both to visit judgement on the foe whose forebears his own ancestor had defiantly spared. See 1 Samuel 15. The "serpent" which Saul's folly had but mutilated, rose up in the person of the villain of this piece, to destroy the people who had spared it. But it died, crushed under the foot of Mordecai, son of Shimei, son of Kish. Read the full story in the Bible's book of Esther. The months spent by King Xerxes preparing des- truction for the Greeks were months of ostentation and heady excitement. Susa thronged with princes and nobles, with captains and commanders, with the flower of an empire stretching from Ethiopia to India. As Goliath was nerving himself to strike down another David, an in- vincible armada was preparing to crush the life out of free peoples across the Aegean. For six months the great king spread out in exhibition "the riches of his royal glory and the splendour and pomp of his majesty.- Already the Greeks were beaten down and subdued; Persian soldiers and mercenaries gloated over looting and rapine to come. Then a week of banqueting princes and governors, army chiefs, and nobles. Wine flowed like water from costliest goblets of gold, drink was lavished with the bounty of a king. As the revelry grew faster the king grew more reckless, he boasted the beauties of his harem, of the pre-eminence of his queen. Then he called for her to show off her paces—rumour has it she was to strip before the fuddled assembly. She refused, and the king's drunken boasts turned in an instant into insane rage. Soon Queen Vashti was stripped with a vengeance; her crown was torn from her brows, she was deposed from her throne. For the time being the king consoled himself with the women that remained; he had Greece to think about and the replacement of a queen could wait. Harem squabbles over precedence could keep the concubines engaged till he got back. So Xerxes departed for Greece and the ignominy of defeat at Salamis, Plataea, and Mycale. But at length he was back and when the shame of his defeats had worn itself into tedium, there came the time to deal with the harem. An imperial beauty contest would be good for morale, glitter and sex would drive disaster from his people's minds. Soon the girls were assembling in Susa, the most beautiful the world could muster. City and people were agog with excitement: who would be the favoured one, who was to queen it over harem and empire? Mordecai saw his opportunity. Was not his cousin Esther beautiful and gracious enough to hold her own with any? Why should not a Jewish princess grace the Persian throne? But he must have known what he was subjecting his beautiful cousin to in entering her among the contestants. This was no ordinary beauty show. For twelve months Esther would have to submit herself to un-Jewish purification and anointing in the royal seraglio. Unlike that other exile in a foreign court, Mordecai insisted that she conceal her nationality, which meant concealing her religion. She would have to eat of the royal fare, conform to Persian rituals, while Mordecai paced anxiously day by day in the royal precincts, fearfully inquiring as to to how she fared. At length came her return to undergo the royal scrutiny and share the royal couch. But unlike her fellow competitors, she was not relegated to the secondary harem after her performance in the 22 pleasures of the night. She ravished the monarch with her charm and beauty, as she had established her ascendancy over the harem officials before him. Mordecai's venture had paid off; in due course his future would grow bright. Fortune conspired to make it even brighter. As he hovered about the palace precincts, ear ever open and eye alert, Mordecai picked up a scrap of dangerous gossip. Xerxes was to be assasinated. Quickly the rumour passed to the queen, palace police pounced swiftly, and soon two unlucky conspirators were dangling at the rope's end. With traditional Persian punctiliousness the whole affair went down in the palace records ; Moredcai's services were duly noted and later paid off in the moment of destiny. Precisely why Mordecai chose to affront, Haman, the most powerful man in the capital is hard to say. Jewish law did not forbid the showing of proper respect to authority. Besides, he had apparently said little to Esther, "Star of Persia" as she became, about revealing her Jewish- ness. Perhaps he remembered the folly of Saul, and could not, as a patriot Jew, bring himself to bow to the son of the Amalakite whose ancestor the prophet had cut in pieces. They tried—his friends among the palace staff —to make him see sense, but he was adamant. When he reminded them he was a Jew they gave up and made sure they were in the clear by reporting him to Haman. The next time the Agagite passed through the palace gates he made a point of looking out for the surly Jew. Sure enough, there he was, bolt upright, and every- body else bending in discreet obeisance. "So," thought Haman, "that upstart Jew despises the grand vizier. But let him beware, times have changed since the days of his prophet Samuel. The wheel of fortune has come a full turn. I shall make a better job of our ancient feud than a stiff-necked king. When I have finished no Jew will remain for ever to bring re- prisals on my descendants." And soon by dint of flattery, skilful playing on racial animosities and fears, the timely whisper of ten-thousand talents of .silver in the royal exchequer, and a diplomatic platitude or two, the terrible decree to exterminate the Jewish nation stained the pages of the Persian statute book. Then, as has been the custom from time immemorial, monarch and plotter sitting down to drink to success. The shock of the edict wrung a wail of despair from Jewish throats all the way from Ethiopia to India. In Susa, Mordecai stripped off his clothes, covered himself with sackcloth, blackened his hair, face, and hands with ashes, and sat rocking himself in an agony of woe, wailing like the rest with a loud and bitter cry. Royal ladies-in- waiting hurried the news into the queen, she heard the wailing of Mordecai, she sent fresh clothes out to him, but he cast them away and sped the royal messenger back with urgent orders that the queen intercede for her people. But not even a queen dared approach the monarch and distrub his seclusion unbidden; it was death to the intruder unless the royal sceptre should indicate royal indulgence. But the fate of a nation hung in the balance; not even the life of a kinswoman could stand in the way of duty. Mordecai's message was harsh and menacing: "Think not that a queen's crown will save you. If you keep silence, you and your father's house will perish." Once again Mordecai had seized his opportunity and succeeded. With bemusing swiftness the wheel turned once more; his apparel changed from sackcloth to royal blue; the lamentation of the Jew was forgotten in the Agagite's bitter heraldry: "Thus shall it be done to the man whom the king delights to honour." The following day the villain was suspended fifty feet up at the end of the rope he had hoisted for the Jew; his wife and kindred were weeping below; and the grand vizier's ring was glittering on the finger of the queen's cousin. Two months and ten days after the extermination order went on to the Medo-Persian statute book, the royal secretaries were taking down another decree. This time Mordecai was phrasing the edict; Mordecai was speeding the couriers to the ends of the empire. As they left the imperial palace, Mordecai himself came out to bid them godspeed, gorgeous in robes of royal state, blue and white, mantled in purple and linen, crowned with a great diadem of gold. Susa's Jewish community cheered themselves hoarse; disaster had changed into salvation. page 27 --> H. CROSSWORD PUZZLE by Myrtle Cooper PLACES IN THE BIBLE 6 1 2 3 I 4 NII 7 9 I 10 11 12 I 13 I 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 I 24 21 11111 I 22 25 23 I • iii 27 28 ACROSS : 1. Babylon was built upon this river that formed a boundary both of Eden and of King Solomon's alleged dominions. (Genesis 2 :14.) Australian bird. It was in Perea that to an earnest inquirer Christ said : " � thing thou lackest." (Mark 10:21.) 10. The longing for this heavenly place is expressed by all who repeat our Lord's prayer. (Matthew 6 :110.) 14. A centre of moon worship left by a patriarch of faith. (Genesis 15 :7.) 16. Territory belonging to one of the tribes of Israel. (Job 17 :7.) 17. An exclamation. 18. This was not a feature of Christ's tunic that became the property of His executioners at Golgotha. (John 19:23.) 19. Historical periods. 20. Because of our Saviour's love in coming to this world, this abbrevia- tion is often written by historians. 21. Condensed solution. 23. Egyptian sun god, (frequently represented with the head of a falcon) worshipped at Heliopolis where, according to tradition, Christ lived as a child. 24. A place name meaning "acacias," where the Israelites worshipped Midianite gods. (Numbers 25 :1 .) 26. It was at Shiloh where this priest blessed the future mother of a prophet. (1 Samuel 1 :a7.) 27. In Babylon Daniel saw this period of time in a vision by God, and was able to bring hope to those who love their Creator. (Daniel 8 :19.) 28. The "House of Bread," home of Boaz and David, and the place where the greatest event in history took place. (Matthew 2:1.) DOWN: 2. Babylonian name for the Hebrew word Ereck-a city that was part of Nimrod's kingdom. (Genesis 10:10.) 3. These represent kings and kingdoms in one of the most fascinating prophecies. (Daniel 7 :24.) Spoken by two disciples walking to Emmaus, this word was used in a sincere request of a Stranger who made plain the Messianic prophecies. (Luke 24:29.) 5. The rock fortress of Petra was the capital of this land founded by the descendants of Esau. (Numbers 20 :a 8.1 6. A holy city of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, it is figuratively used to describe the temple of God's presence. (Revelation 21 :2. 3.) 7. It was near this place that many were satisfied physically and spiritually while Christ was on earth. (Luke 9:10-17.) 11. In Midian, God revealed Himself to Moses by this name which distinguishes Him as the true, self-existing One. (Exodus 3 :14.) 12. It was here that Caxton learned the art of printing. 13. Gold extracted from this was used to make an image 100 feet high on the plain of Dura. (Daniel 3:1.) 15. Descriptive of the waters of Egypt before Pharaoh gave permission for his valuable slaves to go and worship the true God. (Exodus 7 :49.) 17. Made from the oaks of Bashan. (Singular.) (Ezekiel 27:6.) 21. A place named by Isaiah when rejoicing over the promised deliverance from Assyria. (Isaiah 10:28.) 22. Symbol of God's kingdom that will never be superseded. (Daniel 2:44, 45.) 24. On the shore of the sea of Tiberias, Jesus used this word in giving expert advice to fishermen. (John 21 :6.) 25. An inhabitant of an insignificant Median kingdom. (Daniel 5:28.) (Solution on page 27). 24 My Father, are You there When darkness falls, And vain I grope for light and find No ray of hope to soothe my soul's despair And lift my saddened thoughts to higher plains- 0 Father, are You there? And Father, can You see when tempests blow, And storm clouds press and batter hard against my soul Till I no longer know the path to tread, But blindly stumble on With faltering feet and Iow'ring head Into the vast unknown? And Father, do You care? When past misdeeds and trifling sin Becloud and fog my mind Till I no longer find that strengthening pe That links my soul trr-IneecINI harmony with Thine ( History of the Lord's Day by Leslie Shaw Enjoy the weekly Sabbath it is the KEY TO PROSPERITY / N ancient Israel, the Sabbath was to serve not only its original purpose of holding man in close touch with God, but of providing the opportunity of needed rest and physical refreshment. Moreover, besides the humanitarianism of the Sabbath provision—which has an obligation binding upon all people of every age and every nation in its seventhness, as far as Israel was concerned the Sabbath was to be all the more faithfully observed because of their deliverance from Egyptian bondage, Moses emphasized this in Deuteronomy 5:15. He pointed out that their deliverance from slavery increased their obligation of obedience, which was, as it were, a debt of gratitude to their God, their Deliverer. But would Israel repay God their debt? Would they, as a nation, be true to Him? Would they honour Him by upholding His laws, and observing His Sabbath? Apart from a faithful few, Israel's national history can perhaps best be summarized in the words of the prophet Hosea to Ephraim: "I have written to him the great things of My law, but they were counted as a strange thing." Hosea 8:12. Israel's history is indeed a tragic one, for the Bible frankly records neglected opportunities and wasted privi- leges. To a very large extent Israel's failure to rest and worship on the true Sabbath, led to failures in other direc- tions. Hence God repeatedly spoke to them through His prophets, reciting their failures, rebuking them for their sin, and appealing to them time after time to repent and reform. With these messages, the prophets emphasized that only as Israel heeded these admonitions could God fulfil His promises of blessing to them. These messages also warned of threatened judgements should the necessary re- form not follow. "Repent and turn yourselves from all your trangressions; so that iniquity shall not be your ruin." Such was the tenor of every message. (Ezekiel 18:30.) The Scripture with which we have concluded the above paragraph applies the promise and the warning in a general way; but, the following message from Jeremiah shows the particular pre-eminence of the Sabbath, and its key position in helping maintain national and spiritual rectitude; "Thus saith the Lord unto me; Go and stand in the gate of the children of the people, whereby the kings of Judah come in, and by which they go out, and in all the gates of Jerusalem; And say unto them, Hear ye the word of the Lord, ye kings of Judah and all Judah, and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem that enter in by these gates: Thus saith the Lord ; take heed to yourselves, and bear no burden on the Sabbath day, nor bring it in by the gates of Jerusalem; neither carry forth a burden out of your houses on the Sabbath day, neither do ye any work, but hallow ye the Sabbath day as I commanded your fathers. But they obeyed not, neither inclined their ear, but made their neck stiff, that they might not hear, nor receive instruction. And it shall come to pass, if ye dili- gently hearken unto Me, saith the Lord, to bring in no burden through the gates of this city on the Sabbath day, but hallow the Sabbath day, to do no work therein; then shall there enter into the gates of this city kings and princes sitting upon the throne of David, riding in chariots and on horses, they and their princes the men of Judah, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem: AND THIS CITY SHALL REMAIN FOR EVER. And they shall come from the cities of Judah, and from the places about Jerusalem, and from the land of Benjamin, and from the plain, and from the moun- tains, and from the south, bringing burnt offerings and sacrifices, and meat offerings, and incense, and bringing sacrifices, of praise, unto the house of the Lord. But if ye will not hearken unto Me to hallow the Sabbath day, and not to bear a burden, even entering in at the gates of Jeru- salem on the Sabbath day; then will I kindle a fire in the gates thereof, and it shall devour the palaces of Jerusalem, and it shall not be quenched." Jeremiah 17:19-27. This passage of Scripture, written only a few years before Jerusalem was destroyed by the Babylonians, deserves our careful and prayerful attention, for it reveals that SABBATH DESECRATION IN ISRAEL WAS THE CENTRAL CAUSE OF ISRAEL'S DOWNFALL. That this was so, was recognized by Nehemiah, and is clearly stated by him when he rebuked Israel for these 26 same sins after their return from the Babylonian captivity. "Did not your fathers thus, and did not our God bring all this evil upon us, and upon this city? Yet ye bring more wrath upon Israel by profaning the Sabbath." Nehemiah, as Governor took appropriate action to prevent future such behaviour. (See Nehemiah 13:15-21.) In the light of this sacred record it is a fatal mistake to say that the Sabbath is only of minor importance, or to claim that it does not matter what day one keeps. What happened in Israel, is an example to us, and the Sabbath was of such importance that if it had been consistently kept it would have brought about such a relationship be- tween God and His people that God could promise them that their city would "REMAIN FOR EVER." (See Jeremiah 17:25. In all earnestness we ask: Could God have made such a tremendous promise if true Sabbath-keeping was not the key to both a man's and a nation's allegiance to the true God? Patently God sees far more in faithfulness to the SEVENTH-DAY SABBATH than man does, and it is necessary for men today to try and see things from the divine standpoint. Too often we think of little importance what God treats with great importance. "What is there," they ask, "in a day ?" Or: "How is one day any different from an- other ?" All else apart, who are we to question God? It is not what man thinks but what God says that is im- portant. Our duty is to hear and do. � • 80;31)12,a,2 page 24 Six month after that on the very day that Jews every- where were to have been liquidated, they turned with a king's authority on every hand raised against them. Five hundred perished in Susa alone; seventy-five thousand throughout the Persian realms. It was sex and violence then, with all our sex and violence now, who are we to criticize Mordecai? His world was' not all that different from ours. To name Jehovah his God could overnight become capital offence, as the lions' den of Daniel proclaims. God's name does not pass his lips in the whole of the story, he hushed up his nationality and religion until the crisis forced it into the open. The courageous defiance of Daniel does not characterize Mordecai's advice to Esther,' but who dare suggest that their piety was not just as great? Who knows what silent prayers went up from the Jewish community in Susa during their three-day fast? Theirs was an under- ground faith-like that of the Christian Church in "cur- tained" lands today. He met the crisis when it came, without flinching. His trust in the God of his fathers was no less firm for being silent. And, should we wonder at the violence, let us remember that he was the child of his times and resolve not to be the children of ours. Through him, in spite of human faults, the divine purpose worked itself out, because: "He sought the welfare of his people and spoke peace to all his people." �• GOD'S HEALING TOUCH page 17 At the commencement of His public ministry Christ again declared in a simple and touching manner the nature of the mission He came into the world to accomplish. He said: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me to preach the Gospel to the poor ; He hath sent Me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliver- ance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised."' These lovely words of our Lord speak mercy and hope and deliverance for all who are victims of the power of sin. The apostle Paul also contrasted man in his sin separated from God, and his restoration through Christ in these words: "Aliens . . . strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world: but . . . in Christ Jesus ye who sometime were far off and made nigh by the blood of Christ." To men and women in their misery and sin, bruised and beaten, with hope dead, and blackness and despair crushing out the last vestiges of life, Jesus comes as the Healer and Restorer. It matters not how vile or debased nor how deep men and women have sunk in evil and wrong-doing, Christ can help. He restored the leper and reclaimed him from his impossible condition, He also forgave the thief, the murderer, the adulterer, the blas- phemer, and the proud. He healed the sick and gave the dead back their life and all of His merciful works are recorded for our encouragement. The hymn writer echoed this truth by saying: "Down in the human heart, crushed by the tempter, Feelings lie buried that grace can restore; Touched by a loving hand, wakened by kindness. Chords that were broken will vibrate once more."' To all of us in our human frailty the tender and in- finitely compassionate voice of Him who loves us, who died for our redemption, says: "I will; be thou clean." We can come with our sins and sorrows and through His divine power find release from them, and experience forgiveness and discover through the love of God the gateway to a new life. The most miserable tragedy which can afflict us is not our sin, but our neglect or refusal to come to Christ and be cleansed from it. � • 1. Leviticus 13 :40-46 R.S.V. 2. Luke 5:12 R.S.V. 3. Matthew 1 :21 R.S.V. 4. Luke 4 :.1 8 A.V. 5. Ephesians 2:42. 13 A.V. 6. Hymn. Rescue The Perishing, by Fanny 1. Crosby. SOLUTION TO BIBLE CROSSWORD (See page 24) ACROSS : 1. Euphrates; 8. Emu; 9. One; 10. Kingdom; 14. Ur; 16. Asher; 17. 18. Seam; 19. Eras; 20. A.D; 21. Ans; 23. Ra; 24. Shittim; 26. 27. End; 28. Bethlehem. DOWN: 2. Uruk (Ereck); 3. Horns; 4. Abide; 5. Edom; 6. Jerusalem; 7. Bethsaida; 11. 1 AM; 12. Ghent; 13. Ore; 15. Red; 17. Oar; 21. Aiath; 22. Stone; 24. Side; 25. Mede. Oh; Eli; 27 THE LUTHERAN REVOLT page 21 the bull Exsurge domine which the pope had issued against him six months earlier. There was now to be no turning back. The election of a new emperor, Charles V, gave a new turn to the situation. Frederick the Wise, friendly toward Luther but somewhat embarrassed by his intransigence, arranged for the reformer to appear before the emperor and imperial diet at Worms in 1521. Here Luther was invited to retract what he had written, most particularly in the books of the previous year. He refused, appealing solely to Scripture and concluding with the famous words: "I cannot and I will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. God help me. Amen." The earliest printed version of the hearing added before the words "God help me," "Here I stand; I can do no other." Charles placed Luther under the imperial ban (he had not yet been formally excommunicated by the Church, so that he was in fact an outlaw in the civil sense before he was one in the ecclesiastical), but it is significant that of the six electors of Germany two did not sign the edict and one of these was Frederick the Wise. Frederick, indeed, had already anticipated the ban and had made arrangements without Luther's knowledge for the reformer to be spirited away to a hiding-place so secret that even Frederick himself chose to remain in ignorance of it. This was the castle of the Wartburg and there Luther remained incognito for ten months, occupying his enforced exile chiefly in the supremely important- task of translating the Greek New Testament into German. He might have stayed longer had it not been for developments in Wittenberg. S with many revolutionaries there was a hard core of conservatism in Luther. His reforms had reached their limit: now the gains must be consolidated. But others did not agree with Luther that the system of 1.520 was necessarily the best stopping point. Foremost among those was Andreas Carlstadt, who has had a ''bad press" from historians who usually describe him as "woolly," "muddle-headed," and "unstable." Carlstadt was probably none of these things, but rather that most devastating of thinkers—a fundamentally simple- minded man who reasons to logical conculsions! Carlstadt, in the absence of Luther, set about reforming Wittenberg's religion. The mass was changed in that the one officiating wore plain clothes and spoke in German, and the bread and wine were both offered to the laity. Priests and monks began to marry. Images were denounced and iconoclasm broke out. Carlstadt, it is said, even went so far as to advocate a return to the observance of the seventh-day Sabbath as commanded in the Bible. Communion in both kinds (bread and wine), and clerical marriage, Luther could support (he was himself to marry a former nun in 1525): but the logical outcome of his demand for a return to the Bible when demonstrated in the re-establishment of the validity of the commandments against image-worship and desecration of the Sabbath, revolted him. He took his life in his hands and hurried back to Wittenberg. Carlstadt was banished, and the main- stream of Reformation theology kept within a well-defined and strictly limited compass. The slogan of the Lutheran reformation was: "Back to the Bible" but, one must add, "Only some of it." It was left to smaller and less in- fluential groups to carry on where Luther left off. Back in Wittenberg Luther not only undid much of what Carlstadt and his followers had carried through, but also began almost unconsciously to establish a new Church and, what is more, a state Church. The papal writ no longer ran in Electoral Saxony, but the violence that had threatened, and indeed to some extent occurred, during Luther's absence, demonstrated the need for authority. Into this vacuum stepped the prince, the more especially when in 1525 Frederick the Wise, at most an unwilling supporter of Luther, was succeeded by the convinced Lutheran elector, John. While the elector's visitors saw to it that order was restored and maintained in the churches of Saxony, Luther busied himself with the instruction of the faithful. His New Testament in German was published in the autumn of 1522 (the complete Bible followed in 1534) and the following year appeared his first hymn book, the importance of which in spreading reformation teaching cannot be over-estimated. Books for the young followed and were climaxed in 1529 by Luther's own catechisms. Along with all this went an immense outpouring of books and tracts. The latter, with their woodcuts depicting the Pope and Luther's other enemies in various unbecoming guises, were particularly potent pieces of propaganda. To what extent such propaganda was a cause of the Peasants' War in Germany in 1524-5 cannot be assessed. Perhaps it contributed nothing more than the general at- mosphere of revolt ; perhaps, inasmuch as some of the worst landlords were bishops and monasteries, its attacks upon the ecclesiastical authorities encouraged their tenants to seek by force to redress their economic grievances. The 28 series of unco-ordinated risings which made up the war were a failure and were savagely suppressed. The main importance of this tragic episode for the history of the Reformation lies in the denunciations which Luther heaped upon the peasants. He has been much criticized for these, but they are consistent with his emphasis upon the over- riding importance of eternal salvation as against the claims of economic amelioration. Political solutions must ever seem at best inadequate and at worst a distracting illusion to those who have caught the vision of new heavens and a new earth beyond time. In the same year, 1525, in which he alienated many of the lower classes, Luther also lost the support of Erasmus and the humanists by quarrelling with the former over free will. Humanism, however, was for the time being a spent force, many of its luminaries having been frightened back into the arms of Rome; and as for the peasants, their day was not yet (and indeed never would be, in Germany). Far more important than either were the imperial princes and cities, and there was a steady progression of both into the Lutheran camp. So alarmed did the emperor become over this, that at the imperial diet of Speyer in 1529 he insisted upon the enforcement of the edict of Worms (1521) by which the princes of the Empire were called upon to destroy the Lutheran "heresy." This was too much for six princes, and also for the representatives of fourteen imperial cities. They banded together and signed the Protestation of Speyer in which they declared their religious responsibility to God alone. THE MOVEMENT BEGUN BY LUTHER NOW HAD A NEW NAME "PROTESTANT- ISM." It was just as well, for by now that movement had ceased to be solely German and Lutheran. It was becoming European. (To be continued.) FOCUS ON HEALTH HOW TO AVOID DEGENERATIVE DISEASE C ENTURIES ago the wise man gave us a great scien- tific truth when he said, "A merry heart doeth good like a medicine." This is absolutely true. It is the optimistic person who usually makes a good re- covery from sickness. Because he is happy in himself and confident in the future, his health naturally begins to im- prove. His whole body responds to the sheer joy of living. But the wise man did not stop there. He also added these significant words: "A broken spirit drieth the bones." This observation is just as true as the other. A pessimistic attitude soon affects the whole body. It slows down the circulation of the blood. It interferes with good digestion. It takes all the joy out of living. In the end, it may so com- pletely change the individual that he becomes old and worn out long before his time. Our mental attitudes are very important, particularly as they affect this question of diet. Many of us are shorten- ing our lives without fully realizing what we are doing. Some of us eat too much, often for no other reason than to soothe our injured feelings. Or perhaps we do not take time to eat sensible meals. We grab something and run. We are in too much of a hurry. Then we wonder why we are weak and sick. We do not seem to realize that our diet has much to do with our endurance and also with our ability to resist disease. All the vitamin pills in the world will not make up for the lack of a sensible way of living. Millions of people are spending fortunes trying to win back their lost figures and restore their flagging energies. All they needed was to apply a little common sense in the first place. No one can hope to have an attractive appear- ance, a healthy skin, and a clear mind unless he is willing to use discretion in choosing his meals. Even good foods, if taken to excess, may destroy the vitality of the body. Anything that is overdone may cause trouble, even too many vitamins. A balanced diet is the very foundation of good living. To keep the body functioning smoothly and efficiently, it must be supplied with a constant stream of essential nutrients. Yet, it is a shocking fact that many farmers and dairymen are more interested in how they feed their cattle than in how they feed their children! Of course, it pays to see that cattle are well fed. But isn't it time we began to think about ourselves and our children as well ? Today, thanks to modern medical discoveries, we have less to fear from serious infections. But degenerative dis- eases are becoming more frequent on every hand. How can these be avoided in your own particular case? This is some- thing you should feel free to discuss with your own family doctor. But there is no question that a good, sen- sible diet will always help. And when we follow such a pro- gramme, we will feel stronger and more energetic, our mealtimes will be happier, and we can look forward to enjoying better health for years. � • PICTURE CREDITS Dover: Jane Miller; Keystone, pages 4, 5, 8; Studio Lisa, pages 6. 29; Jane Miller, page 12; Review and Herald, pages 11, 15, 23; Three Lions, pages 16, 30; Jack Scheerboom, page 25. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The Editor acknowledges with thanks a receipt of £5 from Anonymous, Bristol for Medical mission Work. by Clifford Anderson, M.D. 29 • IV. `• % 94.tior � 411111 -0 • , ' • 4 THE CHILDREN'S PAGES ALPHABET ADVENTURE by Mary J. Vine G IS FOR GIANT G is for GOLIATH too Of course you know the story of David, and of how he killed Goliath with a small, smooth stone from his shepherd's sling. It is a splendid story, and the really splendid part about it is that it is not a fairy story like "Jack the Giant-Killer"; it is a true story. David was a real boy, and Goliath was a real giant. Even though Goliath had a mighty sword and a huge spear and a great shield, and David had only five small stones, he was able to kill Goliath. He could sling a stone from far away, you see, out of reach of Goliath's sword, and when David slung stones, they hit their mark. He only slung one of his stones, and it hit Goliath, so that he died. David could have said: "Oh, what a clever boy am I." But he didn't. Find what he did say and do. The story is in your Bible, in the first Book of Samuel, chapter seventeen. H IS FOR HEART It's an odd thing. It's a very odd thing. Everything belongs to God. You can find what He Himself says about it if you look in your Bible. In Psalm 50, verses 12 and 6, for instance, He says: "If I were hungry, I would not tell thee: for the world is Mine and the fullness thereof." "Every beast of the forest is Mine," He says, "and the cattle upon a thou- sand hills." And again, in the little book of 30 Haggai near the end of the Old Testa- ment. He says: "The silver is Mine, and the gold is Mine, saith the Lord of Hosts." Everything belongs to God in fact, except one thing. And that one thing is what He wants more than anything else. All the riches of the world are worth nothing at all to Him in com- parison. And that is what's so odd. He's dependent on us, because it's your heart and mine He wants so badly, and He can only have them if we are willing to give them to Him. He says: "My son, give Me thine heart." Let's be sure that we do give them to Him gladly. They are the only things that can be kept from Him. your letter Winter seemed so long this year—we wondered if it ever would come to an end! But then, suddenly in early May, came some wonderful sunny days. Im- mediately we all felt a 'hundred per cent happier, the birds sang more heartily, the leaves quickly opened on the branches of the trees, and flowers appeared in gardens, fields, and hedgerows. Everything looked fresh and green—winter was over at last! Now you are nearing the end of the school period and holidays face you. What are you planning to do with your spare time, Sunbeams? Of course there are the little jobs you can do in the home to help Mummy and Daddy, errands to be gun. Tasks that you, as real Sunbeams, will gladly do to ease the burdens of your parents. There will still be plenty of time Name left for you to enjoy the fresh air and sunshine. If you live in the country there are so many things to look for that will help to make the time pass in a most interesting way. Look for the flowers of field and hedgerow. See how many trees you can identify. Watch out for the many varieties of birds—there is a dear little wagtail gaily strutting past my window now— watch for the wild animals such as hedge- hogs, rabbits, squirrels, etc. See if you can spot a house martin's nest and note its shape and size, and how beautifully it is made. See if you can spot a thrush crack- ing open a small shell to get at its juicy contents. Look out for the beautifully-col- oured butterflies that are about at this time. If you live near a pond, look for the bulrushes that stand so stately—and the moorhens, which you may be fortunate enough to see proudly making their way across the water followed by several wee ones. You may see a pair of swans with their cygnets, or a kingfisher flashing over the water. He knows better than the fisher- men how to catch fish. Did you know that he and his wife make their nest out of fish-bones? Then for those of you who will be lucky enough to go to the sea, there are many things you can look for—various seaweeds, many-shaped shells, tiny crabs, star-fish, and limpets clinging to the rocks. So many things for us to enjoy wher- ever we go. No need to be bored. So many things for our enjoyment if only we look for them. When God had finished His work of creating this earth of ours, He looked upon it, and pronounced it very good. Everything was beautiful. And though sin has done much to spoil and destroy, we are still surrounded by many lovely things. "'God is love' is written upon every open- for you to paint See how nicely you can colour this picture and send it with your name. age, and address to: Auntie Alice, The Stanborough Press Ltd.. Alma Park, Grantham, Lincs., by August 5th. But in case "Our Times" arrives late, stilt send your entry. Age ing bud, upon every spire of springing grass. The lovely birds . . . with their happy songs. The delicately tinted flowers . . perfuming the air, the loftly trees of the forest with their rich foliage of living green—all testify to the tender, fatherly care of our God, and to His desire to make His children happy." So, Sunbeams, keep your eyes open for the next few months and let me know what you have seen and heard. I know you are in for an enjoyable time. Yours affectionately, Cv agAx_s2.., RESULTS OF MARCH COMPETITION First Prize.—Sarah Sikes, Porthcurnick, Ports- catho, Nr. Truro, Cornwall. Age 14. Julie Rich, 63 Albany Road, Enfield, Middx. Age 4. Honourable Mention.—Anne Crawford (West Moors); Jayne Dilks (Rickmansworth) ; Alison Smith (Sidcup); Angela Wood (Kettering) ; Robert Hayes (York); Rosemary Southcott (Luton); Malcolm Franklin (Norwich); Jane Seal (Folkestone); Wendy Anthony (Ilford); Helen Anthony (Ilford); Pauline Southcott (Luton); Lynne Fenton Oath); Carolyn Chalcroft (Colchester) ; � Kevin � Warren � (Grantham) ; Roderick Crawford (West Moors); John Vesey (Chipperfield); Margaret King (Ipswich); Penelope Gardner (Watford); Peter Murray (Eastbourne); Steven Markley? (Barrow-in- Furness) ; Alan Sharp (Hornchurch);Joanna Gordon (Hyde Park) ; Philip Freeman (Clapham S.W.4); � Michelle � Kalisiak � (Nottingham) ; Andrew Chesters (Sale); Alec Burnett (London S.W.8); Paul King (Ipswich); Carole Cassells (Co. Armagh); Kay Nundy (Norwich) ; Sharan Wakelin (Blidworth) ; Jonathan Doyle (St. Annes); Udith Smith (Wolverhampton); Andrew Hills (Broomfield); P. J. Goyder (Rawdon); Elizabeth Goyder (Rawdon); Anne Dillon (Rainham); Lynne Turner (Barnsley); Peter Secker (Castle Bromwich) ; Maria Taylor (Ply- mouth); Carol Joseph (Ashton-u-Lyne); Neil Saunders (South Ockendon) ; Elaine Simmons (London S.E.11); Diane Campbell (Lowestoft); Elizabeth Boyd (Lowestoft); Anita Saxby (Hawnby); Paul Murray (Eastbourne) ; Nicola Bennett (Cornwall); Nigel T. Sheldrick (Bicester); David Johns (Wadebridge) ; Anthony Bassett (Birmingham 10); Rosemary Jordan (Norwich); Jill Hort (London W.7); Fiona Thompson (St. Albans) ; Teresa Barratt (Grantham) ; Sue Sloper (Christchurch); Ann Bonham (Kettering); Alison Gilson (Thorpe Bay) ; Elma Morgan (Birmingham 27) ; Martine George (Grantham) ; Derek Warren (Grantham). Those Who Tried Hard.—Sandra Cockerill (Sheffield 1.1); Dorothy Bodescott (Cockermouth); Yvette Reddall (Queniborough) ; Alan Mapper (Southend-on-Sea); Julie Peevor (Birmingham 32): David Vesey (Chipperfield) ; Anita Dixon (Nor- wich); Mark Thomas (Tredegar); Clement Morgan (Birmingham 27); John Seeker (Birm- ingham 36); Anne Turner (Barnsley); Stephanie Coleman (Kettering) ; Maureen Smith (London- derry) ; Susan Hall (Norwich) ; Teresa Ellis (Basildon); Jocelyn Harrison (Wolverhampton); Joy Newton (Nottingham); Olivia Hanna (New- buildings) ; Clive Goodfellow (Bath); Narinda Kalsy (Leeds 8) ; Victor Hulbert (Plymouth); Julie Harris (Redruth) ; Tony Tamura (Wade- bridge) ; Deborah McCleery (Lisburn); Cameron Franklin (Oldham) ; Julie Mould (Cardiff) ; David Goyder (Rawdon) ; Miss C. Reynolds (London N.17) ; Elizabeth Watts (Watford); Stuart Rainbow (Bradford); Carole Hale (Bristol 7); Geoffrey Smith (Londonderry); Christine Williams (London E.17) ; Kyle James (Rearsby); Colin Gittens (Oldham) ; Cherie Trodd (Clapham S.W.4); Ann Bannister (St. Annes-on-Sea); Karen Bullen (Matlock) : John Pilgrim (Nottingham) ; Pat Ennis (Whiston) ; Debra lllingworth (Basildon); Carolyn Whiting (Stroud); Christine Hampton (Nottingham); Carol Evans (Birmingham 12) ; Ian Whiting (Stroud); Joy Oliver (Goxhill); Amanda Hillman (Norwich); Dmytroter Lecryj (London N.16); Joanne Lee (Norwich) ; Phillip Morgan (Birmingham 27) ; Maria CoMiskey (Leeds 11) ; Lynnsey Roberts (Luton); Andrea Wightman (Wakefield); Alison Waller (Hessle) Sally Pentreath (Cornwall); Deborah Armistead (Pudsey) ; Elaine Bradford (Banbridge) ; Pauline Thompson (London E.10); Martin Hayword (Luton); Debbie Watson (Thundersley) ; Ann Harper (Mickleton) ; Patric... Breen (Camden Town N.W.4); Heather Taylor (Scunthorpe); Paul Waller (Hessle) Tune Collymore (Watley); Andrew Edwards (Birmingham 21); Monica von Ehrlich (Watford). 31 Address � AT 7 Where do you point the rocket to break through to heaven? . In what direction would you point your rocket to find the Creator of this vast universe? To the Sun? Along the Milky Way? To the constellation Orion? Or to the cross? If you would choose the cross, then we invite you to enrol in our free Bible study plan. These easy outlines will help you break through the morass of tradition, mythology, and scepticism to the pure. simple reality of salvation through Christ. The Bible teaches that worship Is not to be born of fear and ignorance, but of love, trust, and admira- tion—because we know God so well. With this easy-to-follow Bible-study guide you can learn to know God better through the clear revelation of His Son. Just fill in this coupon and post to �rT � Free Bible Study Course The VOICE OF PROPHECY BIBLE SCHOOL STANBOROUGH PARK WATFORD, HERTS , WD2 6JU Tick Course Desired Hope of the � Ej Youth � Great Teachings of the World � Course � Bible Name Please print The lessons will then be sent to you. Address L _ _ _ I