I'D PREACH the Bible; preach it plain, simply, without frills, and let its mes sage cut deep, right to the heart of people. Nothing else will convict, convert, and con serve like the Word. It is the living Word of the living God, and therefore it is all-powerful wherever He directs it!"
Dr. H. M. S. Richards, founder of the Voice of Prophecy and dean of Seventh-day Adventist ministers, is speaking, telling what he would do if he were a young preacher starting out in the ministry in 1970.
"There was once a doctor won to Christ by Dwight L. Moody, the famed evangelist of the past century. Someone asked him how it happened, and he said, 'I went to hear Dr. Moody preach with no other idea than to have something to laugh at. I knew he was no scholar and I felt sure I could find many flaws in his argument. But I found I could not get at the man. He stood there hiding behind the Bible and just fired one Bible scripture after the other at me until they went home to my heart straight as a bullet from a rifle and I was converted.'
"Every young preacher and all the old ones too need that kind of 'hiding place/ right there in the Word of God," says Dr. Richards. "It's the only truly safe place for the preacher if he knows it, and knows how to use it.
"I have thousands of books in my personal library, but if they were suddenly taken away from me and only my Bible were left, I'd still be a rich preacher. I'd still have the most powerful tool any preacher can have. With it I talk with confidence to the most sophisticated, to the most degraded, the most doubtful of persons."
With a shy smile playing over his venerable features, Pastor Richards warms to his subject:
"If I were a young preacher just starting out, I'd have a rock-like resolve to have a regular time each day to read my Bible, and the Spirit of Prophecy too, but most of all the Bible.
"Get off, get away. Get away from the telephone the bane of today's jet-propelled life. Find a quiet place, and educate yourself to get quiet! Too many preachers get into a quiet place, all right, but they take all the worries and problems with them there, with the result that they can never get quiet themselves never get into the receptive attitude to be blessed by the Word.
"You must be silent about everything else," he asserts. "There's just you, the God of heaven, and His Word here in this place. You talk with Him ask Him to calm you down, open your mind, give you light. Then get into the Word with your whole being!
"You'll begin to grow on that kind of diet. And your people who hear you will begin to grow too. You know, that's a wonderful thing about the preacher and the Word. If he knows the Word, really gets into it deeply, he is able to pass it along in such a way that lives are changed, hearts are softened, young people are given hope and goals for life . . ."
Shifting in his chair beside the paper-and-book-cluttered desk in his library, Dr. Richards leans forward to stress a point that has just struck:
"Young ministers, especially, need to study the prophecies of the Bible. There are two good reasons: First, the mind of God is found in such study. If God has spoken, it is our duty to know what He has said. If He has given any indication at all as to what He is now doing or what His purpose is in history, it is of great importance that we should find it out.
"Then we need to get at the prophecies because they give a right perspective of history. Through such study we can under stand our times, the meaning of the movements of our day, and the significance of the crises through which we are now passing.
"Fulfilled prophecy is a potent argument for the Bible. It's important to remember that the Old Testament, for example, contains the most wonderful chain of prophecies concerning the life, person, and work of our Lord. We need to know them better every day. The Bible is the teacher of this essential knowledge."
Dr. Richards stands up, his tall, thin frame seeming to rebel at the task, belying the fact that he walks at least three miles every day. "I just couldn't see being a minister in this confused, mixed-up day unless I absolutely stuck to a daily study of the Bible.
"Though the heavens fall, I'd study my Bible. Let them fall! Everything else seems to be falling these days. As sure as you let something come between you and the Bible you'll be weakening your ministry."
As Pastor Richards pauses before a shelf of books, topped by a shaggy bearskin, the gift of a friend, his spoken conviction about the place of the Bible in the life of the minister brings to mind the findings of a scholar who studied his life and preaching closely:
"The predominating opinion evidenced in Richards' sermons is that taken from the Bible," says Dr. Wilbur Alexander in his definitive thesis analyzing the speaking of Dr. Richards. "The multiplicity of quotations from the Bible characteristic in his sermons indicates that he considers this Book as the one great authority.
"This is further evident from the categorical statements he makes which reveal his opinion of the superiority of the Bible to all other sources of authority. It is considered important at this point to quote several of Richards' statements to illustrate his implicit deference to argument by scriptural authority:
" 'We turn to the Holy Scriptures as authority.'
" 'These are the words of Jesus and they are true.'
" 'There is only one source of information on these questions ... we turn to the Book of God for light.'
" 'Christ's words and messages have authority because He is the Son of God.'
" 'If we are ever to really know anything at all about the origin of the world it must be by revelation. The Holy Scriptures claim to be this revelation.'
" 'We can say on the authority of God's Word that . . .'
" 'The Holy Scriptures are the only source of information on the nature of man, his origin, and his destiny.' "
The Bibles, scores of translations of them, line the shelves closest to Dr. Richards' desk. Battered, worn-looking, they have obviously been used many times. Even the newer translations have the look of much-used books. There are the "preaching" Bibles, with their large letters, the better to be read by Dr. Richards' eyes which were forever weakened by a child hood accident; and there are the "studying" Bibles, some of smaller type. Each bears testimony of being used, underlined, and marked.
"It is every 'power tool' the preacher has, all rolled into one," shrugs this man as he lifts one of his Bibles. "Take the Book away from the minister, and what you have left is but a collection of philosophical ramblings at best, and downright boring conjecture at worst. People today do not need to be philosophized or existentialized. They need to be evangelized from the Word of God.
"People aren't interested any more in the complex. The sophistication of our computer-programmed society, with its unnatural luridness and unprecedented lawlessness, sends people running for some thing sure, something on which they can rely. The Bible is their answer, and the Bible-preaching minister their hope. If I were a young minister today I would spend more time with my Bible, draining it of the answers to today's frustrations, spending far more time with it than with any other thing in my ministry. I'd devour the Book in search of ever more effective ways to answer these great problems that are sending millions into beds as mental patients, breaking up homes, causing wide spread confusion.
"We need preachers of the Word today as we have never needed them before; just look around at the problems you'll find every one has a Bible answer for the preacher who will marry his life to the Book."
Dr. Richards' daily life is, indeed, married to the Book. Telling of a typical Richards' day, Dr. Alexander writes, "When he first awakes in the morning;, he prays while lying in bed, during which time he gives thanks to God for another day and plans with Him the work of that day. Then before arising, he reads several chapters in the Bible which he keeps on his night stand.
"On arising, he goes to his study and spends time in prayer on his knees before he dresses to begin his work. From Billy Sunday's devotional habits he adopted the idea of praying while working, studying, or walking. He remarks: 'Every time my mind thinks of God I pray, thanking Him for life and asking Him to open my heart to things. I ask Him to help me in what I am doing. I assure Him often that I love Him and that I wish to represent Him, and to serve Him and be loyal to Him. I ask His forgiveness for failure many times during the day. This helps to keep me close to the great Source of life and power which is always available.'
"In this frame of mind Dr. Richards prays as he works on each part of his radio sermons and over many personal letters that come to his desk as he answers them.
"Since he spends a part of each day walking for exercise, he prays as he walks. Where it is possible and he is alone on his walks he likes to pray aloud. In the evening Richards conducts family worship and after that spends time reading the New Testament in bed and prays once more be fore he drops off to sleep."
"Feeding on the Word really makes the preacher," says this servant of God. "I wouldn't be anything if it weren't for the knowledge I've received from the Bible. Oh, of course the biographies and anthologies and dictionaries and commentaries and all the rest have had their place; but they are secondary in importance, to my thinking, to what the Bible has taught me. How many preachers can you name really great preachers in terms of soul winning who have not been consistent and deep students of the Bible? The answer is, 'Not one!'
"With the record of transformed lives men and women who have moved the world for Christ that comes from feeding on the Word of God, I don't see how any young minister today could neglect a daily time with the Scriptures and expect to win souls to Christ.
"Think of the transformed lives, from Saul of Tarsus to John Bunyon, to Kata Rangoso, and to the rest of the great, glorious host of God's witnesses of yesterday and today. The testimony of each life is the same: there's power in the Word to convert both preacher and his hearers.
