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A modern conception of the Christ of history teaching His disciples
Christ in History
He fitted into the scheme of things with marvelous precision
(Fifth in a Series on the Spiritual Interpretation of History)
By Keld J. Reynolds
HE most important person in history is
)| Jesus Christ. All of the major events be-
fore His incarnation were a preparation
for that supreme event. The rise and fall
of nations, the tutoring of each world em-
pire, as it arose, in the ways of God, the
line-upon-line building of religious knowledge and
experience—these were all parts of the stage setting
for the most amazing act in the human drama, when
God became a man and died for the sins of the world.
This Man for all the ages came in the fullness of
time. That is, He came exactly upon the stroke of
the prophetic clock. But He came in the fullness of
time in another sense. He came when the world
needed Him and His message with a need so great
that had He not come the civilization of the age
would have been wiped out. He came to seek and to
save lost men. He came also to salvage the better
elements of the civilization of the classical world, and
to personally organize His missionary forces for the
task the succeeding centuries held for them.
He came to a world whose need was a prepara-
tion for His coming. He did not find men up to His
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spiritual level. Therefore He was not the product of
His age, as all other men, great or insignificant, have
been the products of their respective backgrounds.
The Christ was not the product of history, but He
is the surprise of history, because He is so much less
and so much more than His environment would lead
us to expect. He is what His heredity as the Son of
God leads us to expect, the Man who makes history.
All the rest of us have been made by history.
In view of the paramount importance of the two
appearances of Christ in history, the first as the Son
of man, the second, and still to come, as the King
of glory, without which appearances the human
story would have neither plot, direction, nor satis-
fying conclusion, it is astonishing that historians
give Him so little space. It is not that they deny
His existence. Few go so far as to do that. It must be
because of His insignificance, as men count impor-
tance, during His lifetime in Palestine. Unlike the
figures that strut through the pages of history in
burnished armor or resplendent in gold braid and
cocked hats, the youthful Carpenter and Preacher
lived and died in comparative obscurity. But the
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