In Psalm 22, we find these five words that have much meaning for us today : "Our fathers trusted in Thee." These cries from the cross would never have been uttered but for the terrible burden of the world's sin that was focused fiercely on the Saviour. Faced with the hatred of His own people, as of the whole world, He uttered from the cross some cries which represent the fearful loneliness and abandonment of the sinner. For example, verse 1, "Why hast Thou forsaken Me?" is by itself a picture of a lost world utterly unrelieved by the victory at Calvary.
As Jesus faced this rejection of God, and despite the dreadful penalties He was vicariously paying, He went back to the past and aligned Himself with the God-men in His ancestry: "Our fathers trusted in Thee . . . and Thou didst deliver them." (Verse 4.) He was so to speak, living in the world of Abram ("I have lifted up mine hand unto . . . the most high God," Gen. 14:22) ; of Jacob ("then shall the Lord be my God," Gen. 28:21) ; of Joseph ("the Lord was with Joseph," Gen. 39:21) ; of Moses ("the God of your fathers hath sent me unto you," Ex. 3:13). We can catch the challenge of His courageous soul as, confronted with His own godless generation, He reminded the Father, "Our fathers trusted in Thee." With irrevocable and triumphant determination, that was where His own faith lay—in the God of His fathers.
It is the fashion to reject the past. Our grandfathers were too simple; their scholarship was limited; their theology too narrow. On this basis we have cut loose from almost everything of the past. Not long since I sat on Sunday morning in a large church in the north of England. Thirty or forty years ago that church was always crowded to capacity. Fifty to eighty years ago that whole district rang with the triumphant news of the gospel of salvation, and that country from the days of John Wesley and George Whitfield had produced a sturdy race of lay preachers and ministers whose fundamentalism kept them close to the cross and close to the people.
But as I sat there, a young and polished modernist preacher was holding forth to row upon row of largely empty pews. As I looked around and listened to a gospel which bygone days and worshipers knew not in that place, I heard a cry of lament: "Our fathers trusted in Thee." Modernism has well high stripped religion of God and of faith in an almighty Father. It has surrendered the faith of its sturdy forebears.
A few days ago I visited the United Nations meeting in New York. I had also visited the previous gathering in London. I listened and watched and noted the same speeches, the same hopes, the same tactics, the same lack of confidence among the nations, as they struggled with their insoluble problems. Walking away, and meditating on the past and present, I thought of those reproachful words, "Our fathers trusted in Thee," and I added, "but we trust in nothing."
When Harold Nicholson, famous British leader, was broadcasting from Paris at the time of the long-drawn-out foreign ministers' meeting in that city, he commented on the present disillusionment in France as follows : "In 1919, we, all of us, possessed faith and hope. There is no faith or hope in the Luxembourg today. They do not believe in what they are doing; they do not believe in each other ; they do not believe even in themselves." Against that fear.ful pessimism we must place, to the lasting credit of men we are apt to despise, this fact, "Our fathers trusted in Thee."
One of the best-known New York City churches held a special meeting to welcome United Nations delegates, and advertised a sermon on unity by an able preacher. During his address a certain secret society was held aloft as an example of world unity, and only once was any Biblical reference used, and that was at the end of the discussion. I left that building with but little good from that sermon. The words "Our fathers trusted in Thee" were ringing in my ears, but I was left wondering in what we are trusting today.
We Adventists have spiritual fathers—men of faith and courage. They had no General Conference organization behind them, no facilities except such as we would disdain. Yet they worked on when they had little or no money or equipment—in fact no armory except prayer, the inspiring truth of the Word in their hearts and a strong faith in God.
I feel almost afraid today to ask people to sing the hymn with which we opened this worship ("Faith of Our Fathers") because stanza two seems so utterly beyond the faith of this faithless generation—
"Our fathers, chained in prisons dark,
Were still in heart and conscience free;
How sweet would be their children's fate,
If they, like them, could die for Thee!
Faith of our fathers! Holy faith!
We will be true to thee till death."
If all we believe and teach of the final conflicts between .truth and error means anything to us personally, we surely need the heroic faith of our loyal fathers.
