All Articles For Studies in Depth

WORLD VISION International is an interdenominational missionary service agency organized to help meet emergency needs in crisis areas through existing evangelical agencies. Its deepest concern is for the great masses of people who have never heard the Gospel. Along the way of its many Red-Cross-style activities it sponsors evangelistic crusades, Bible study, Bible memory courses and distribution of Scripture portions.

The Lord’s Day Alliance of the United States is the name of this organization. It is a coordinating agency, once of various Protestant ecclesiastical organizations, now of “Christian” churches, since the Roman Catholic church is included in its representation, It has been established for the cultivation and maintenance of the first day of the week as a day of rest, renewal, worship and religious education.

Bernard Levin, one of England’s leading newspaper columnists, commented in the London Daily Mail on November 8, 1965, that “The only thing you always seem to find in an hotel room of any quality, wherever you are, is the Gideon Bible.” The columnist added that the Gideon practice of placing Bibles is one “which only does good, and which has never hurt anybody in the doing of it.” The object of the Gideons in performing this task of Scripture distribution is stated simply as “that of winning men and women, boys and girls to a saving knowl

The American Scientific Affiliation is a Christian organization established for the fellowship of Christian men and women of science. The organization offers “scientific counsel to Christian teachers, ministers, students and others” presenting the Christian position “to a generation characterized by materialism and skepticism.” A service is provided to aid Christian writers and publishers toward maintaining scientific accuracy in their works.

You visit me from out of town. Engaging my attention has been a matter of curious interest. To have you share it with me, I request that we go to a place, the identity of which you shall discover when we arrive. We take a fifteen minute drive on a bitterly cold wintry evening, and pull up in front of what you immediately see to be a modern public high school complex. We approach the auditorium building, enter, and from the cloak room grope our way down an aisle of the darkened amphitheatre to our seats.

The World Council of Churches and the National Council of Churches go to no trouble to appear thoroughly orthodox in theology and point of view. In this regard they make no claim to being anything but ecumenical machines of modernism and liberalism. But to day liberalism is practically synonymous with leftism. Why then do these councils occasionally bother to make a feeble attempt to leave the impression that either one or both of them are opposed by the communists?

A rather recent religious movement is the Campus Crusade for Christ, International, with headquarters in San Bernardino, California. To draw a comparison, the organization is somewhat in the line of Child Evangelism, Youth for Christ or the Billy Graham Crusade. Therefore, while neither in the modernist nor the liberal side of the ecclesiastical field, its proper sphere is not within the Reformed perimeter, much less in that of Fundamentalist circles. It is a branch of Neo-evangelicalism.

Campus Crusade for Christ believes it has come up with not only a legitimate but a unique way of presenting the biblical truth of the gospel. Continually and everywhere crusaders are raising the question, “Have you heard of the Four Spiritual Laws?” Law One says in part, “God loves you . . .” Law Two states that sinful and separated from God, no one can know and experience His love. Law Three: Anyone can know God’s love through Christ, God’s only provision for man’s sin.

Campus Crusade for Christ claims to do work for Christ, and in proof points to the results it obtains. But the appeal is not valid, for results do not prove a doctrine, a cause or a movement. Dazzling productions with an imposing array of “stars” are not necessarily adjuncts of the truth. Moses learned this in connection with the divinely directed use of his rod. Jannes and Jambres also produced astounding results. Apparently good results may be obtained by application of the poultice or salve of a modern cult.

One is not and never ought to be surprised at being severely criticized for standing on the sure foundation of Reformed truth. But it is something else when, out of a clear blue sky, one who uncompromisingly takes such a stand is charged with committing no less than the unpardonable sin. By the March 15, 1970 issue of The Standard Bearer intelligence of this pitiful attack comes, revealing its source to be the March issue ofMissionary Monthly, which rarely, and not in this instance either, comes to our hands.