An Open Reply To An Open Letter (II.)
Dear Brother Reese:
I respond now to the second instalment of your "Open Letter To Yater Tant" which appears in this issue. Again, I remind you that your project, "Herald of Truth," is splitting churches of the Lord from one side of our nation to the other. These churches were working in peace and harmony and with love and good will toward one another until the advent of your program. Now they are torn in strife and bitterness. You and the brethren promoting the project have tried in vain to find scripture to permit a thousand congregations pooling their resources under one eldership to evangelize the world, and failing to find it, have attempted to justify your project by discrediting those who have questioned it. One such attempt is the perversion of my testimony in the Bakersfield court trial concerning that
"Flip Of A Coin"
In Bakersfield the testimony of those who support and promote your extreme and radical views of church cooperation was to the effect that no decision of an eldership is final and binding until it is passed on and ratified by a majority of the congregation. This, as you know, is the old "digressive" plea for MAJORITY RULE. This was the instrument by which the Digressives split hundreds of churches and stole buildings from faithful brethren. This is what was being defended by the "sponsoring church" advocates in Bakersfield. Being placed on the stand, I testified that the Bible teaches that when elders act in harmony with New Testament teaching, their decision is FINAL, and not subject to any further action by the congregation.
The attorney for the "sponsoring church" faction, trying to break my testimony, pressed me with question after question as to the METHOD by which elders are to reach a decision. He was trying to get me to say that the ONLY METHOD they could rightfully follow was to take a vote of the congregation, and abide by the majority ruling. I steadfastly refused to make such a statement; but on the contrary kept insisting that ANY method they followed WHICH WAS IN HARMONY WITH NEW TESTAMENT TEACHING was permissible. It was in this connection that the expression "flip of a coin" was used. If elders can reach a decision IN HARMONY WITH NEW TESTAMENT TEACHING by "the flip of a coin," they have the right to do so! As a matter of fact, Acts, Chapter 1, indicates clearly that the Lord's apostles did do exactly that!! Would you, Brother Reese, accuse these holy men of "gambling"?
Whose Famine?
You want me to tell you "whose famine" it was which came to pass in the days of Claudius Caesar, and which was prophesied to take place "over the world." I am not sure I understand what you are driving at, but will answer that it seems perfectly obvious that such a famine did come (as Agabus had prophesied; and as Luke verified); that the disciples in Antioch, in spite of the famine, had "ability" to send "relief" to the brethren that dwelt in Judaea. They did so. You ask if it was not Antioch's famine the same as it was Judea's, and if the church in Antioch was not "equally related" to the famine as the churches in Judaea. While the famine was "over all the world," that does not mean, obviously, that all the world was equally in need of "relief." The brethren in Antioch were able to weather the famine better than the brethren in Judaea. They may have been wealthier to start with, or perhaps the long strain on Judaea of caring for so many destitute Christians from foreign lands had sapped their resources. Anyhow, they needed "relief"; Antioch brethren had "ability" to send the relief, and did so. What is your point?
Will Highland Church Be Lost?
You ask me to put a "check mark" after your statements as to whether Highland Church will be "eternally lost for producing and presenting with the help of sister congregations a radio program known as Herald of Truth." Such ignorance of the Scripture astounds me! Brother Reese, are you an elder in God's church, one who is to teach others, and still yourself ignorant of the fact that the final judgment will be on an individual and not a congregational basis? I thought there was no one in the whole church who did not know better than that.
If I may make a suggestion in all kindness, I would propose to you that you go into the class of your third-grade pupils in your own Highland Church Sunday School, and there be instructed as to the nature of that final judgment. If you have a single teacher in your Bible School who does NOT know that individuals will be judged in that final day, then you have an unqualified teacher! I venture there is not a ten year old child in your Sunday School who could not set you straight on this.
And you a teacher in Israel! God pity the church that has no more qualified pastor or bishop than one who is ignorant of so simple a matter.
The Violated Contract
You ask me to give you the "exact statements" that were garbled and deleted from the Chronicle Publishing Company's version of the Harper-Tant debate. Well, they deleted my whole booklet of Abilene debate notes, which the contract SPECIFICALLY provided should be incorporated in the published version. They deleted my chart on the "Church and the Individual Christian"; they deleted my chart on "Bible Authority Analyzed"; they deleted my whole argument on Bible Authority, some six or eight pages of it; and they thus made my many references to the charts and diagrams unintelligible to the reader. When I in my speeches refer to such and such a chart or diagram on a certain page of my booklet and the reader turns to study it, behold! there is no such chart or diagram there.
Not only did they delete my material, but more than sixty pages of new material by Brother Harper was added. This addition was NOT provided for in the contract, but on the contrary, was specifically excluded by the definitive statement that the printed volume was to contain "the text of said (Abilene) debate in book form." Harper's sixty additional pages were not a part of the Abilene debate, but were his attempt to answer the LUFKIN debate arguments which he had so miserably failed to answer at Lufkin.
The contract is so clear and specific as to what was and was not to go into the printed volume that it was necessary to make special provision in an added paragraph to include my "brief" or charts. Without that special provision, my charts could not have been made a part of the volume. No such provision was made for Harper's material!
Nichols violated that contract. He refused to publish my debate brief (which the contract specifically provided for), and published other material of mine which the contract did NOT call for, using this over my written protest and without my consent. And then he published the sixty additional pages by Harper of material which was NOT used in the Abilene debate — and most of it not even used in the Lufkin debate!
His action was dishonorable, dishonest, illegal, and contemptible. Business men who have lost thousands and thousands of dollars because of Nichols' taking his company into bankruptcy tell me that this same unethical and dishonest kind of dealing on his part contributed in no small measure to his financial debacle. What he did to me was exactly the same kind of trick J. Frank Norris tried to pull on Foy E. Wallace some twenty years ago. And, Brother Reese, you may be assured of this: If James Walter Nichols' advertising agency "promotes" the Herald of Truth and the Gospel Press like he "promoted" the Chronicle Publishing Company, showing the same unscrupulous disregard for truth and honor with them that he did with his own company, their ruin is inevitable.
How long a step is it, my brother, from defending dishonesty in another to condoning it in oneself? You have handled and are handling millions of dollars of other people's money — with no check or safeguard at all. So far as I know, except your own integrity. Do you think your defending dishonesty in James Walter Nichols will increase the confidence of brethren in your own reliability? Have you never heard the old proverb that "birds of a feather flock together"? Have the elders of Highland Avenue taken any action at all to discipline Nichols for his wicked behavior? Have they not, on the contrary, condemned, excused, and even defended him, regardless of the fact that the Lord's church in Abilene and over the country has been irreparably injured by what he has done?
When a man goes wrong doctrinally, once having known the truth, it is not to be wondered at that he will progressively go wrong morally. Nichols' disreputable behavior regarding the printing of the book is only the beginning. We are certain to see a progressive deterioration of his moral character unless he repents. And you, and Highland Church, as well as Herald of Truth and the Gospel Press will be pulled right down into catastrophe with him. I pray God that all of you may realize what you are doing before it is too late!
Sincerely yours in Christ,