The Overflow
Improvement Desired
We hope we aren't supersensitive, but we still can't help feeling a bit uncomfortable when at the close of the first service of a gospel meeting some good brother leads the dismissal prayer with the petition, "May the audiences grow from night to night and may the preaching get better and better."
"Great Issues Facing The Church"
Dr. E. V. Pullias of Pepperdine College has recently been featured on the front page of the Firm Foundation with a series of articles under the above caption. Yup. This is the self-same brother Pullias who was the featured speaker in a lectureship put on by the Christian Church in Bakersfield, California, in opposition to a gospel meeting being conducted there by brother G. K. Wallace. No doubt brother Showalter feels that Dr. Pullias is well qualified to write concerning "great issues." But it is our judgment that any man who would betray the cause of Christ as brother Pullias did is himself one of the "issues"!
Congratulations
While we're on the subject, we'll just offer congratulations to brother J. Herman Campbell for dissolving his connection with Pepperdine College. He had been with the school from the beginning, and has worked under a lifetime contract. But the spirit of modernism and compromise has become too rank for him; he can stay there no longer. The same news clipping that announced brother Campbell's resignation also announced the addition of three new members to the Pepperdine faculty—not a single one of them a member of the church of Christ.
They Can't Do It!
One of our sympathetic readers sends the editor a word of encouragement, urging us not to be disturbed by the efforts of certain belligerent brethren who "are just trying to get in your hair." Ha! We've got a secret weapon there; we assure our solicitous friend that "getting in the editor's hair" will soon be beyond the abilities of even our most determined and rabid baiters—that'll be a job for a magician!
The Iron Curtain
Last summer brother Cecil N. Wright wrote nine lengthy articles in the Gospel Advocate and Firm Foundation entitled "The Cooperation Controversy." We reviewed the material, pointing out the dangerous and heretical position to which brother Wright's argument forced him; and then offered brother Wright whatever space he might desire in the Guardian to reply to our review. Both the Advocate and the Foundation had refused to publish our review, fearing to lift the iron curtain of censorship, lest their readers be made aware of the false position they had espoused. Brother Wright has now replied to our review—but refused our offer to print his material, sending it rather to the Advocate and the Foundation, where he knew we'd have absolutely no chance at all to expose his errors. We think such manifest unfairness is its own best answer to his continuing campaign. When one is secure in his conviction that he has the truth, one does not desire, nor seek, such an advantage.
In Memoriam
One year ago this week our associate editor, R. L. Whiteside, closed the door on his earthly labors. How sorely he is missed! We honor his memory, and shall be ever grateful for the influence he had on so many of us younger ones who are seeking, however feebly, to serve that same Lord whom he served with such valor and success. We shall not soon see his like again.
Ouch!
The showing of sacred relics is, and for centuries has been, one of the most lucrative sources of income for Catholic churches. In his recent declaration of the "Doctrine of the Assumption" (i.e. that Mary ascended bodily into heaven) the Pope jerked the rug out from under the feet of a large number of his clerical dignitaries in Europe. No doubt a painful (though inaudible) howl must have gone up from those churches over there which have for many years been exhibiting various parts of Mary's body—bones, teeth, hair, even a vial of milk from her breast! We wonder what has become of these gruesome relics now?
Henry VIII.
In 1531, while Henry VIII was still giving allegiance to the Vatican, a plague broke out in England. Hoping to stay the destruction, Henry paid an exorbitant price for some sacred relics, among them being "a tear which our Lord shed over Lazarus, preserved by an angel who gave it in a phial to Mary Magdalene," and "a phial of the sweat shed by St. Michael when he contended with Satan over the body of Moses." Yes, you do hear strange things about the Catholics—and nearly all of them are true, too!
"Green Apple Theory"
For years the atheistic evolutionists held to what was called the "green apple theory" of sin, i.e.: "sin" is only the imperfection and lack of development in an emerging, growing, developing humanity. The race is like a green apple; it will ripen into perfection if given enough time. We see where Ernest Beam has adopted and adapted this out-worn sophism in his own present crusade to destroy the lines that have been drawn against the heresies of digression. He believes that some (the digressives) have "matured" spiritually beyond some others. And he points out varying degrees of maturity among the non-instrument brethren—all the way from the one-cupping bread pinchers of New Mexico to the broad liberalism and institutionalism of certain middle Tennessee brethren, and the Pullias-Pepperdine attitude of California. Well, we think brother Beam is off the beam; the apple is not green, it is over-ripe: so ripe, in fact, that it is rotten—and wormy.
Jackpot
A Roman Catholic Church in Stourbridge, Worcestershire, England, has hit the jackpot with a new idea for raising money. It is even better than bingo, the traditional gambling game by which so many Catholic churches are supported. But the priests in Stourbridge have gilded the lily; they have secured the help of some kindly bookies and handicappers (in their own congregation) and are now putting out a regular racing tip sheet. The sheet goes only to their own club which they call the "Church Development Society." At last count they had some five thousand Catholics who were paying regular fees for the service: It helps them to place their bets on the horses with a better chance of winning.