In this confused age when all thinking men and women know the possibilities of race suicide, when far-seeing statesmen are echoing the words of the Pope in his address before the United Nations: "War must not be, never again," the ministers of the Advent Movement have been called to proclaim to all the world the everlasting gospel of Jesus Christ. People not normally interested in apocalyptic prophecy to whom the idea of a catastrophic end of the world was regarded as a joke are now facing the fact in all seriousness that an end of all things may indeed be at hand and that something like our Lord's return may truly be imminent. And if so, then people should be preparing to meet Him.
Lift Up Christ
The clear-cut message God has given us leaves no room for doubt. Never since the days of Noah has a message been so desperately needed. Above the catcalls and sneers of those who hate and despise truth, in the face of those whose amused contempt leads them to feel superior to God's Word, we are charged to lift up Christ that men of all races and classes may be drawn to Him.
Each time one visits Athens he comes under the spell of those wondrous masterpieces of architecture. To watch the Pentelic marble turn from the gleaming white of the noonday into the glorious rose red at sunset is unforgettable. What must it have been like in the days of Paul?
Close by the Acropolis is the rocky spur known in those days as the Areopagus, where one day a "foolish babbler" named Paul appeared. He spoke to men well versed in Plato and Aristotle, and from where he stood on Mars' Hill he could see the beauty of 15 pagan temples. But in a few swift, well-chosen sentences he lifted his hearers far from the immediate scene to the God of the universe who "dwelleth not in temples made with hands." Then step by step he came at last to the story of the resurrection. That was too much for the Athenians. It seemed too foolish and too insignificant for discussion. They scorned the very idea. They turned their backs on truth.
But we will let history be the judge. What that unknown itinerant evangelist preached smashed ancient paganism, undermined its philosophy, set aside its rituals, and made its lovely temples mere monuments. In less than four centuries even the glorious Parthenon itself became a Christian church and continued as such for a thousand years.
Life With a Capital "L"
Paul preached Christ, not philosophy. He declared a living Saviour, not a psychological change in human thinking. To declare the news of God is the greatest privilege on earth. To witness before all ranks and races that the great God of heaven came to earth in Christ that He might give new life to everyone who will receive it is indeed a high calling.
What Christ came to do He still does in the hearts of those who will accept Him. To be able to tell a poor, stained, and stunted sinner that his blighted life can be united to the life of God; that the old self can be crucified; that he can live victoriously over sin now and later live forever, is a privilege beyond the power of words to describe. Paul said: "For me to live is Christ." The life of God was his life. It was more than the power of Christ, or the help of Christ, or even Christlikeness. It was Christ Himself. That gospel changed the world. Life could now be written with a capital "L."
The Romans were the masters of the world when that gospel first spread throughout the empire, and in those early decades many Christians were cast to the lions, others were persecuted or burned. But they were able to face anything because they had Christ and He was their life.
Louis Bertrand in his Sanguis Martyrum describes the sufferings and triumphs of some of those early martyrs. To be thrown to the lions, while spectacular, was not the worst that could happen to one. The bitterest, most terrible sentence that could be passed upon Christians in those days was damnatus ad matella—"condemned to the mines." Under the scourge those unfortunates rowed those Roman galleys to North Africa, then under the scorching heat trekked through the mountains to the Numidian mines. Reaching their destination their chains were shortened so that they could never again stand upright. They were branded on their foreheads with red-hot irons. Usually one eye was gouged out. Then thrusting a lamp and a mallet in their hands these unfortunates were whipped and sent underground, never to return. Their sufferings beggar description. Working beneath the lash they toiled on day after day, for months, even years. Those more fortunate caught the prevalent fever and died, or perhaps got killed for amusement. But many lived on. Some wrote messages with charcoal on the smooth rock. In those messages one word appears again, and again, and again. Abbe Dimnet says it runs in long black lines "like a flight of swallows chasing one another toward the light." That word is Vita, Vita, Vita. Life! Yes, they had it, even in the midst of death. And theirs was the abundant life, life that was life indeed.
The Gospel Timeless
How glorious to know that the evangelistic note is ever the same in every age. As heralds of God to this last generation we are commissioned to preach the gospel "once delivered to the saints." While the deeper needs of men in every age are the same, yet they have to be reached in different ways because they cloak themselves so differently today from what they did in Paul's day. The gospel is timeless but as preachers we must present truth to men and women garbed not as they were in the fourth or even the nineteenth century but as they are in the sixties of the twentieth century.
Has Science Disproved God?
It has been well said: "The tooth of time cannot gnaw truth but it gnaws the trappings of truth." Ours is an unbelieving age. When a certain type of science declares it does not require the hypotheses of God, we reply that science can never disprove God, much less displace Him. In an age of unbelief it is our privilege to say to the multitude: "Behold your God." But how can we declare Him unless we know Him; unless we see Him towering o'er the wrecks of time?
One of the most impressive statements ever penned by the messenger of the Lord challenges us as teachers and preachers of the Advent message. It is found in Fundamentals of Christian Education, pages 374, 375:
When the human agents shall exercise their faculties to acquire knowledge, to become deep-thinking men; when they, as the greatest witnesses for God and the truth, shall have won in the field of investigation of vital doctrines concerning the salvation of the soul, that glory may be given to the God of heaven as supreme, then even judges and kings will be brought to acknowledge, in the courts of justice, in parliaments and councils, that the God who made the heavens and the earth is the only true and living God, the author of Christianity, the author of all truth, who instituted the seventh-day Sabbath when the foundations of the world were laid, when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted together for joy. All nature will bear testimony, as designed, for the illustration of the word of God.
How profound! To win in the fields of scientific and theological investigation requires men of deep thought and tireless study. Are we that kind of men? Soon some will be called before rulers to bear witness to the veracity of God's Word. Are we ready for such a challenge? And if the persecutions of the early centuries were to be repeated would we "endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ"? Ours is indeed a high calling and it could yet be a perilous calling. Never was a generation so privileged and none so responsible.
R. A. A.
