Outlooks & Insights
A recent congressional investigating committee came up with the information (not startling to a great many people) that preachers are poor insurance risks as automobile drivers. Seems they tend to "drive like Jehu" when they get under the wheel.- And what a pity it is that in this day of Bible ignorance that simile will be meaningless to the majority of people! (And if you are one of that majority, look it up - II Kings 9:20.)
What with all the furor going on in some circles over the Holy Spirit and His work, perhaps some of you would like to have the series of articles by Brother Robert Welch (which we published in this journal) dealing with "The Holy Spirit; The Word; Signs In Us; New Birth," The five articles have been put into an excellent small tract, and the price is 15 cents per copy; ten copies for $1.00, and 100 copies for $8.00. We can supply you.
Does the name of Larry Schiller mean anything to you? Well, he is a high voltage Hollywood photographer, and has an incredible list of famous (and notorious) pictures to his credit - including nudes of Marilyn Monroe, pictures of Jack Ruby in his prison cell, and many, many others. Here is a quotation from the "Los Angeles Times WEST Magazine" of March 19, 1967: "Another contest won him a four-year scholarship at Pepperdine College. Instead of going to class, Schiller kept his good eye on the outside. The school did not complain because he also did pictures for the yearbook and sold photos of the campus to national magazines. "I wound up shooting nudes in the basement of the president's home," reminisces Schiller, claiming it was the only space the school could find for his studio.
Are you familiar with "Who Moved The Stone?" a book by Frank Morison, first published in March, 1930? It has never ceased tofascinate me. I was first introduced to it by Dr. John M. Vander Meulen, one of my professors at the Louisville Presbyterian Seminary; I have probably given away two or three dozen copies of it since then to people I thought would particularly appreciate it. Frank Morison as a brilliant young student set out to demonstrate from all the evidence available that the story of Christ's resurrection simply could NOT be accepted by a modern intellectual. Gradually, almost imperceptibly, as he gathered material for his book his conviction changed. "Who Moved The Stone?" tells the reasons why he came to accept the resurrection as an historical fact beyond all peradventure of doubt or question. J.D. Beresford says of this book, "The story Mr. Morison told of the betrayal and the trial of Christ is fascinating in its lucid, its almost incontrovertible, appeal to the reason. For me, he made those scenes live with a poignancy and vividness that I have found in no other account, not even in the various attempts that have been made to present the same facts in the guise of a novel." It is an old book, but if you have never read it, it is brand new to you!
If you want to order it, the price is $3.00.
Dudley Ross Spears, preacher for the Tenth & Francis Streets church in Oklahoma City told me some weeks ago that he was informed in all seriousness that the reason Roy Cogdill and I got into the business of publishing and editing the Gospel Guardian was because we saw such huge profits to be made in it that we decided we'd hook on to this "gravy train," and line our pockets with gold. (This is an insight I dare not share with my chief accountant lest it send him giggling to the local madhouse.) The Gospel Guardian is now in its nineteenth year as a weekly journal. For fourteen of those years it operated at a deficit and Roy Cogdill and I (along with perhaps a score of other men who loved the cause of truth) dug down into our pockets to keep it going. Roy worked long and hard hours - for nothing! And then contributed many thousands of dollars of hard earned cash to keep the paper going. My own contribution was likewise numbered in the thousands - both in hours and in dollars,.. which means nothing, really. We did it because we chose to do it. This has been one way in which we were seeking to discharge our obligation to the Lord. I now operate the journal as sole proprietor - for the good it can do, not for the "huge profits" which my visionary friend in Oklahoma imagined. Could he have been the victim of a psychedelic hallucination?
A recent Newsweek survey indicates that well over half the Catholic families in America think their church is wrong in its teaching on birth control. And about one-third of the families surveyed admitted birth control practices which, they said, their church pronounced as sinful. What do you suppose happens to the sensitivity of one's conscience when one deliberately, willfully, and repeatedly engages in that which he has been taught from childhood is wrong and sinful? Either he is hardened in his conscience - or he loses faith in the authority of his teacher. Probably both factors are present among the birth-controlling Catholics.
"A rose to the living is more Than sumptuous wreaths to the dead;
In filling love's infinite store, A rose to the living is more
If graciously given before The hungering spirit is fled -
A rose to the living is more Than sumptuous wreaths to the dead."
Nixon Waterman
The First Baptist Church in Liberty S. C. outgrew its building and moved to a newer one. The members sold the old structure to the city - which decided the old building was just right for the city hall, fire station... and jail. Maybe there is some sort of moral or parable there somewhere, but it escapes me at the moment. I do recall, however, the story John Abernathy, a Methodist preacher I used to know in Oklahoma City, told of one of his experiences. Seems he was coming home late, late one night (from a hospital call, naturally) when he happened to see one of his parishioners staggering drunkenly down the street. Thinking to do a good deed to the inebriated member, the good pastor stopped his car, picked up the drunk and drove him to his home. He helped the man up on the porch, rang the door-bell, and turned to leave... when the drunk grabbed him by the arm, and said, "Jesh a minute, Pastor. Don't leave yet; I wants me ol' woman to see who I been out with!"