FOR A CONCEPT OF LIVING IN 1971 READ: to Become a Millionaire" --remftimmeir. --Page 16 ,.._ . Ailliti,." How --..m... .. it wok THE PRODIGAL FEAST A squandered age which wants for love, While love for wants is rife, Feasts full upon its prodigal husks And calls its feasting life. The more it eats the more it wants And more of hunger knows— A cancerous age that lives upon The very life it grows. For feeding wants just multiplies The selfishness of self; It's feeding scuts that satisfies With love's eternal wealth. D. J. SILVER. HOW? by Lorna McCallum I BELL EVE in love at first sight—that uncanny sense which tells you that this stranger is a kindred spirit. It's a great beginning for a lifetime of association. You can fall in love with Christ that way, too, or you may do so much more slowly, but the problem is not so much in the beginning, or the end. It's always easy to dream of the "happy ever after," but NOW is the problem. How to develop the friendship and keep it alive NOW. It seemed to me that the quickest way to get the right answers was to observe somebody whose life showed that he had the secret. There are not as many of these around as the world needs, and even less who have written or preached about the answers. So, at the risk of reducing faith to a formula, here are my notes to confirm or complement your own observations. 1. Trust that inner emptiness that tells you He is what you're really looking for —whether the realization came as a blinding light or through a slow reasoning process. 2. Spend some time with Him every day. Talk with Him, whether you feel like it or not. If it just doesn't work out, and a thousand things come in to stop you, don't be surprised. Set a time and ask Him to help you stick to it. 3. Be honest with Him. Tell Him if you don't feel in a devotional mood today, but spend the time with Him just the same. Ask Him to give you faith stronger than your feelings. 4. Give way to Him. This is easy for the one you love above everybody else, but chances are you don't love Him that way yet—most of us love "me" more than anybody or anything else. In this case it's hard—but easy. Tell Him you're "willing to be made willing"; you want to put Him first but you can't quite make it; and ask Him to do the rest. 5. Study with a purpose—to know His will and to do it. When He reveals something to you, do it, and if you can't, go back to Number 4. 6. Commit your whole life to Him. Recognize that He has the best plan for your life, and fit into it as He reveals it to you. How does He reveal it? That's another subject. Sounds easy, doesn't it—or hard—depending how you look at it. But it works. Point could be added to point, but I'm a raw recruit myself yet, so I'll stop at what I know. If you want it simplified further, it's all tied up in Number 2. Even if you don't have much to start with, if you stay with this one you can't help but "fall in love" with Him. I've seen many different people who have only these two things in common: they are unmistakably radiant Christians, and they spend a great deal of time with Christ—which, after all, makes simple sense, doesn't it? We can try to get by without it, but it just doesn't work. Spend time with Him and it does work. The question is whether you think the prize is worth the price. If in doubt go back to Number 1. COVER PICTURE: Just a quarter of a century ago, Japan was the hated enemy. Time, however, heals all wounds, and when the Japanese held Expo 70 in Osaka, thousands of Australians flocked to the land of the cherry blossom to take in its sights and delights. One of those who went was Ivan Goldsmith, and he happened to have his camera about him one night when this sight of the Tokyo Tower just made his shutter finger itch so much that he had to take the picture. We're glad he did. Every man wants to pray the day before he dies. As he does not know when his time has come, he must pray every day in order to be safe. —Jewish Proverb. TABLE OF CONTENTS, page 31. Signs of the Times, January 1, 1971 :: Page 1 THE ULTIMATE TEST of a marriage comes when the children have grown up, the last one has married and gone off to set up a new home, and the bride and bridegroom of thirty-odd years ago, now white-haired or bald, are left alone. Now comes the moment of crisis. Has the marriage held together only for the sake of the children, or can husband and wife, as they should be able to do, look forward to the joy of the freedom of love and companionship which has been necessarily circumscribed by family responsibilities? If the marriage has been formed and developed according to God's plan, then Browning's words are gloriously real: The last article of a seven-part series "Grow old along with me, The best is yet to be." But to enjoy such an experience requires some purposeful thought and some hard work. Indeed this phase of married life demands what we are so often told today is necessary to a successful retirement. One must plan for it. And the time for planning is well ahead of the actual event. There are some pitfalls along the way to trap us into a discordance which may simmer the more intensely because it is not consciously recognized. It is an unhappy fact that most marriages settle down into a monotony of routine that kills love far more successfully than active cruelty or even impulsive adultery. Basically this series of articles has been written primarily for youth. This last one is written for those whose youth is long gone and who may well be suddenly frightened by the realization that the prospect of life for just two, who remain essentially two because they have never achieved unity, is a very daunting prospect. It is nothing less than tragedy if the dilemma is solved by each going a separate way on paths that increasingly diverge. How can one plan to avoid such unhappiness? BASIC PRINCIPLES Much of the problem lies in the relationship of the pair with their children. Nothing poses such difficulties as creating a home in which father, mother, and children form an intimate and integrated group and yet each individual preserves his own personal identity. To do this requires obedience to some very basic principles which vary with the people concerned. Let us start with mother. It is all too easy for the young mother to become so wrapped up in her child that she forgets that she has to be a wife as well as a mother. In too many cases the way is paved for an indifferent husband by a wife's failure in this respect. She treats her husband almost as superfluous, and then tearfully wonders why he loses interest in her. She then aggravates the situation by trying to create a new security for herself by forming a circle of herself and her children. She may, and often does, try to ensure their devotion by giving the children their own way and teaching them to deceive the father. "Yes, you can do it, but don't tell Dad." Such a course has two inevitable results. In time the children will despise her and they will be alienated from the father. A high price to pay for the illusion of security. Mothers, you must learn to keep your priorities right, and your husb.and must take first place! That does not Page 2 :: Signs of the Times, January 1, 1971 DARBY AND JOAN by A. L. Hefren mean that you neglect your children, but it does mean that you do not neglect your husband. It is all very well to see that his washing is done, his suits pressed, and his meals cooked, but a housekeeper can do that. A man needs a wife who never fails to let him know that she is in love with him still. That does not leave it all to the woman. In all probability men are more to blame than their wives for the decline of a marriage into a rut. We husbands too often believe that we have done our part when we earn a good living, give our wives a reasonably generous housekeeping allowance, and feel we can complain about the cooking with a clear conscience. Let me ask you, Mr. Husband in your late forties, this frank question : How long is it since you paid your wife a spontaneous compliment? Perhaps it is so long ago that you would feel a fool now if you tried it. You may astonish your wife, but you may depend on it that you will delight her. Mr. Fair-Fat-and-Forty is often charm itself when he compliments his hostess on her appearance, her home, and her table, while his wife sits there and thinks, "Outside angel, inside—no, not devil !—merely bore." The wife does not live who will not bloom and thrive under her husband's honest praise; but there is many a woman who starves for it. She then turns to the children, and the vicious circle is complete. To you men who pride yourselves on your efficiency, do you need a secretary to prod your memory about the anniversaries dear to your wife's heart, her birthday, her wedding day, and the birthdays of the children? You may be great successes as executives, but as husbands you deserve, not dismissal, but contempt as moronic failures. DOING THINGS TOGETHER Nothing is more important than doing things together. It does not matter what they are, but the more creative the better. For some it will be time spent in a garden. For others it may be wandering through the bush, and for others again it may be water-skiing. What is important is the word "together." Togetherness is the secret of family success, and children who grow up in such an atmosphere are receiving an invaluable and unconscious lesson that will help them make successful marriages in the years to come. One essential feature of this experience is that of praying together. Family crises and griefs, and the smaller problems can confer a very blessed nearness on a husband and wife who seek counsel from the Lord together. The Catholic motto, "The family that prays together stays together," has much more to commend it than a catchy phrase. Money can either divide or unite, according to the way it is considered. Husbands should never be guilty of making decisions on family finances without consulting their wives. It is even possible that their business sense is better than yours, for it is honed by the constant battle in the supermarket. If your wife cannot handle finances successfully, do not growl at her. You must have had a fair inkling of the fact when you married her, so you have no one to blame but yourself. Set yourself now to help her and to give her the training she will need if you predecease her. Teach her how to budget, but make sure that you practise what you preach. Don't deliver a lengthy homily on economy and then land home the next week with an expensive fishing rod that you can't afford. Do you make your wife an allowance of her own? Do you plan with her your budgeting for church offerings? Is she dependent on an erratic generosity for her dressing? All these are questions which help you assess if you are treating your wife as a wife or as a servant. RETIREMENT One very real problem for the later years of marriage comes with the husband's retirement. If he has neither plans for that time nor profitable occupations, then trouble lies ahead. A man faces at retirement something of the same problem that a wife does at marriage—or, at least, at the time when she gives up her employment to make the home her full time occupation. There is a sharp and often disconcerting break in the pattern of life. But the woman faces it when she is young and adaptable. The man comes to it when it is hard to teach him new tricks. If all he can do is sit around in the sun all day long or putter around the house, then on goes the red light. Within six months he will be frustratingly waiting to die, and his wife will be so irritable that she will feel like helping him on his way. Woman's place is the home, but it most emphatically is not man's. Any husband worth his salt gives a hand in the home. Any man who makes it a full time occupation will be more likely to find pepper than salt in his wife's reactions to his criticisms. Learn, therefore, to plan for those later years and to plan profitably— not in the sense of money but of satisfaction. And wives: Beware of urging your husbands into premature retirement! Robert Frost, the American poet with a homespun philosophy, muses: "A man's vocation should be his avocation." If that is the fortunate state of your husband, do not strive to separate him from it. He will know when to quit and he will be happier working on at a pace to suit himself than he will be hanging round the house. A woman learns to adapt herself to household routine and takes a pride in it, but a husband in a long-service apron is a subject not for mirth but for pity. Both of you can learn a new lesson and develop a new discipline. As your children go off and set up new homes, make it a firm rule that you will not interfere in their homes. They will make mistakes even as you did but let them find their own way without your help— spelt i-n-t-e-r-f-e-r-e-n-c-e. When the grandchildren come along, remember they are not your toys. Wonderful fun they are, of course, as you re-live in them the early days of your marriage, but neither indulge nor discipline them. In short, mind your own business—z-no easy thing to do. If you have been blessed financially, do not spoil your grandchildren by giving them too much. Love is not best expressed in dollars and cents. COMMUNICATE! Although the most essential element of these later years is communication, that is not an art easily learned then. Since it is best developed much earlier, frequently assess now its quality. In a successful marriage, communication is not dependent on words, though of course they have their place. The habits you establish now are making sharing of thought and mood easy and natural or they are setting up barriers just as effective as any curtain—iron or otherwise. Really to communicate is impossible without harmony of spirit. The greatest aid obviously lies in a shared experience in Christ. It is tragic to see people become increasingly sour as they grow older, for the inevitable result is isolation of spirit. "It is not good for man to be alone" is true not merely of the man-woman relationship. If God is omitted or carelessly and indifferently (Concluded on page 24) Signs of the Times, January 1, 1971 :: Page 3 hemp, hippies, and happiness "WE WANT PICCADI LLY to become a real people's forum—the focus for the underground as a resistance movement against all institutions like the family, school and detention centres." That's how one newspaper reported the leader of 800 hairy hippies shortly after they had moved into a mansion near Buckingham Palace in September, 1969. The Minister of State for Health and Social Security was reported as describing them as "squatting exhibitionists, anti-social rebels-without-a-cause who have no claim on the compassion of the community." The novelist, George Orwell, in his book "1984," describes a society controlled by drugs—the wonder drugs that affect human personality so obviously, or even so subtly. These are the drugs that influence human behaviour patterns. This author depicts a society that has developed an almost complete control of human behaviour by means of drugs. It is in every way a dreadful place, and a dreadful way of life. Man himself has become a pitiful pawn. He is manipulated into being a chemically impelled robot! Such ideas are no longer the extravaganza of novelists and intellectuals. Scientists are seriously proposing such concepts. It is being suggested that: "You may control all the people some of the time; You can even control some of the people all of the time . . . " As to whether you can "control all the people all the time," there are reservations. by Austen G. Fletcher PSYCHEDELIRIUM TREMENS.. Jane Goodsell Remember when HIPPIE meant big in the hips, And a TRIP involved travel in cars, planes, and ships? When POT was a vessel for cooking things in, And HOOKED was what Grandmother's rug might have been? When FIX was a verb that meant mend or repair, And BE-IN meant simply existing somewhere? When NEAT meant well organized, tidy, and clean, And GRASS was a ground-cover, normally green? When lights and not people were SWITCHED ON and OFF, And The PILL might have been what you took for a cough? When CAMP meant to quarter outdoors in a tent, And POP was what the weasel went? When GROOVY meant furrowed with channels and hollows, And BIRDS were winged creatures, like robins and swallows? When FUZZ was a substance that's fluffy like lint, And BREAD came from bakeries, net from the mint? When SQUARE meant a 90-degree angled form, And COOL was a temperature not quite warm? When ROLL meant a bun, and ROCK was a stone, And HANG-UP was something you did to a phone? When CHICKEN meant poultry, and BAG meant a sack, And JUNK trashy castoffs and old bric-a-brac? Drugs never have been the monopoly of the interest of youth alone. Aldous Huxley was an old man almost dying when he was extolling the use of drugs and experimenting in their use. Drugs have excited the interest of the men who make war. Said Major-General Marshall Stubbs, Chief of the U.S. Army Chemical Corps, to a House Committee on Science and Astronautics: "The characteristics we are looking for [in drugs] . . . are the undesirable side effects." Which makes us wonder what would happen if one pound of LSD were dropped into the city water supply of New York, Moscow, London, Paris or Sydney. The military potency of such drugs is not underestimated by men who have discovered science to be the most effective military weapon of this era. THE DRUG RANGE An amazing range of behavioural drugs has emerged in recent years, some of them taking the popular market by storm, and enjoying widespread interest and acclaim. HALLUCINOGENS are probably the best known drugs. Under their influence, the subject becomes over-stimulated in hallucinations. EUPHORI ANTS are the "funny drugs." They render the victim incapacitated by making him witlessly optimistic. People become disposed to think better than the best of everything, to the point where they become good for nothing. For example, the worst food tastes delicious to them. These drugs seriously pervert the abilities for accurate judgment. DEPRESSANTS are more familiar to us, yet under their influence people can be rendered ineffective because they are so depressed and discouraged as to become useless. CATALEXOGENICS are drugs that permit the victim to remain conscious, but they deprive him of muscular control. His muscles become rigid, or go limp, yet he cannot control them, though his mind and thinking are not impaired. When JAM was preserves that you spread on your bread, And CRAZY meant barmy, not right in the head? When CAT was a feline, a kitten grown up, And TEA was a liquid you drank from a cup? When SWINGER was someone who swung in a swing, And a PAD was a soft sort of cushiony thing? When WAY OUT meant distant and far, far away, And a man couldn't sue you for calling him GAY? When DIG meant to shovel and spade in the dirt, And PUT-ON was what you would do with a shirt? When TOUGH described meat too unyielding to chew, And MAKING A SCENE was a rude thing to do? Words once so sensible, sober, and serious Are making the FREAK SCENE like PSYCHEDELIRIOUS. It's GROOVY, MAN, GROOVY, but English it's not; Methinks that the language has gone straight to POT. DI SINN I BITOR are the drugs which weaken control and co-ordination, at the same time causing people to behave in a pattern of excess. The best known of these drugs is alcohol. Disinhibitors lead people to talk too much, their imagination runs wild, their emotions run riot and their actions become grossly exaggerated. CONFUSAN I S cause people to lose track of all relationships and to become uncertain and contradictory. Everything is so out-of-joint as to be overwhelmingly strange and perplexing. CH RONOLEPTOGEN ICS are peculiar drugs depriving the subject of all ability to recognize time factors. He cannot distinguish between one second and one hour and is rendered ineffectual. Generally speaking, we do not hear much about the wide range of varying effects of drugs, for such information is well within the pale of military secrecy. But we do hear a lot about youth and drugs, and we are all interested in youth. Youth attract attention. People love youth and see youth as the hope of the world. Signs of the Times, January 1, 1971 :: Page 5 THE ATTRACTION OF DRUGS Why are drugs exciting such attention today? "Because they are there" and because we know more about them today. Hemp, for instance, grows in almost all temperate regions of the world, and LSD can be produced by any high-school student or back-yard chemist. The aura of being forbidden seems to impel wayward man in this direction, too. As the sign "DON'T WALK ON THE GRASS" suggests to our wayward natures that we go and walk on the grass, so society's suspicions against drugs serve to excite many into the fields of drug usage. On the other hand, we are not persuaded that the situation would be improved were drugs legalized, thus facilitating things for those who want to throw parties and serve marijuana fudge. People are at times attracted to drugs because eminent men portray their use attractively. Aldous Huxley serves as an example here. Under the influence of mescaline he seemed to have had an almost religious experience. (How hypocritical for such a rabid atheist!) In a small vase of flowers, he saw "what Adam had seen on the morning of his creation—the miracle . . . of naked existence . . . the divine sourc of all existence. . . . Words like 'grace' and 'transfiguration' came to my mind . . . " People take drugs for kicks, for thrill's sake. And people take drugs because they are desperate. Two of the most beautiful women of our age died under the influence of drugs—Marilyn Monroe and Judy Garland. They died of over-doses. Did they die happy? Were they transported with joy or were they utterly depressed? Almost the last words Marilyn Monroe wrote were, "I always knew fame was fickle." And Judy Garland?—"I've had a lousy life!" DRUGS, CRIME AND THE GOSPEL Drug use is associated with crime. It has been suggested that 80 per cent of all crime is rightly associated with drugs and their side-effects. Of this figure, only 15 per cent of the crime was related to drugs other than alcohol. This pattern seems to be world-wide. A leading Soviet jurist, Dr. G. Anashkin of the Soviet Supreme Court, revealed that 80 per cent of all juvenile law-breakers in Moscow commit their crimes in a drunken state. Among those who have worked for the rehabilitation of former drug addicts it has been observed that the only permanent rehabilitation was gained by means of Christian conversion. Evidently, people have found that Christ and His gospel supply in reality, what drugs have supplied in that phantom, de-facto experience of addiction. Within the gospel. man is provided with everything that really satisfies him. All the basic human needs are met—fully, adequately, happily and in reality. The gospel is so satisfying simply because Jesus Himself is so wonderful. This is what impressed those simple fishermen whom He called. He "dwelt among us," John said, "and we beheld His glory . . . full of grace and truth." John 1:14. Jesus loved men. He was pure and uncorrupted by money, power or possessions. He was strong in the right. The perfection of His character lends a strange, persuasive power to His words. He is unique. None can rival Him, nor excel Him. It is to descend from the sublime to the ridiculous to equate Marx, Huxley or Russell with Him. He Page 6 : : Signs of the Times, January 1, 1971 stands head and shoulders above them all, excelling them all in the magnificence of His virtue. Jesus is wonderful. "I have never felt the presence of God to be so real," a young man happily told me recently. Yes, within the gospel there is the satisfying reality of the very presence of Christ. "I am with you alway," the Saviour promised. The human heart longs most of all for a constant companionship, which Christ happily provides. "My Father will love Him, and We will come unto him, and make Our abode with him." John 14:23. This is why Christ is so satisfying—He establishes a communion, a companionship with the child of God. No other love is so satisfying as is the love of Jesus. What is more, in following Jesus there is guidance given to our lives. Being the One who never stooped to anything mean, miserable or nasty, Jesus is well able to give us guidance in life. He gives us moral guidance, keeping us from the many evils that are in the world. It is all there in His simple statement, "If ye love Me, keep My commandments." John 14:15. "HAPPINESS IS . . . " If we wish, we can steal and defraud; we can cheat and lie; we can commit adultery or make a god out of money, or power or fame. We can, if we wish, flout all of God's commandments. But that will not bring us happiness. Happiness is loving Jesus, being guided by His holy law. The happy people are those who keep the Ten Commandments the way Christ wants them kept. Being a true Christian means that "ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God." Romans 12:1. Christ wants us to be physically unspoiled, our minds alert and unfuddled. He wants us to be clean, sweet, beautiful and strong. We are to be balanced people as He was Himself. The record says He grew "in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man." Luke 2:52. Thai means Christ was alert mentally and of active and sound mind. It means He developed physically and appreciated all that goes for good health and a sound body. Such as enjoyed the favour of man, He was well adjusted socially and loved people. To Him people were wonderful and precious. And He enjoyed favour with God—He was spiritually active and mature. A life so beautifully balanced was a life radiantly happy and satisfying. - Jesus Christ does something wonderful to love and to life. Recent study has revealed that in 95 per cent of all divorces, one or both partners did not attend church regularly. Among those families where there was regular church attendance, only one marriage in fifty-seven failed. However, in those families where the family actively worshipped together—prayed together, sang together, read the Bible together—in those families only one marriage in 500 breaks up. What do these facts suggest? They tell us there is happiness in knowing Jesus! That is what Christ told us. "Come to Me, all of you who are weary and overburdened, and I will give you rest! Put on My yoke and learn from Me. For I am gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light." Matthew 11:28-30, Phillips. . „ Oh, set your sail to the heavenly gale And then, no matter what winds prevail, No reef shall wreck you, no calm delay, No mist shall hinder, no storm shall stay. Though far you wander and long you roam Through salt sea-spray o'er white sea foam, No wind that can blow but shall blow you home. —Acv,-oymotTs (Mrs. M. O'Hara). the until/co yeala Midnight strikes, and the old year's gone— We close the tablets we've written on, And torn twixt hope and doubt and fear, We open the book of an unlived year! An unlived year!—Ah, stained with tears Are the well-thumbed volumes of other years! Soiled by blunders and black regret Are the pages we read with our eyelids wet. Close in our hearts, as the leaves are turned, Is the record of passions that flared and burned; And panics and sorrows, and ghosts that leer, Look out from the page of the dying year. But, fresh in o A clean, new Unmarred. are -t = .pde Twelve new chapters, fre It is ours to write the daily tale Of how we conquer or how we fail; Of Struggle and effort and hope that wakes Like a song in the heart when a bright day breaks. Once a year, when the glad bells ring, And the Old Year nods to a Baby King, Fresh in our hands, with the title clear, And the leaves uncut, is an unlived year! ._---SEtEcTEn 1.Mrs. M. E. White). d the sighing, groaning efore a storm,. 1-Ieare e scraping of the branches bending of its form? Have you seen it sway and straighten, be swayed again, again, Seen the leaves like tiny banners, whipp dripping in the rain? it in its strength and beauty st defiant in the blast, Seen it proud and undefeated when 01 mighty winds have passed, Have you seen a fellow mortal ve down with many cares, Hertrd him sigh . when dread disas upon` tim unawares? Have'Stig,r,seeli.. him bear it bravely, overcortirhi'all his fears, Seen him turn his face to heaven, gazing upward through his tears? Seen his countenance of sorrow change and wear the victor's smile, Seen him stand complete in triumph o'er' the bitterness of trial? Winds have ne'er uprooted timber growing deep beneath the sod— Strife has never conquered mortals who are rooted deep in d. -----13vRoN E. De Bat, Bracidon)- Each month a selection is made from readers' favourite quotations. No original matter please. Indicate source, author, and your own name. Signs of the Times, January 1, 1971 :: Page 7 : i: ":'41,4 -4 IL ...1.r. .it ,. • ,P. tutIlltbsi ALIN 414 . I .rt.N. . 4- — --_. , a._', ' ;iir ',1-••—'•— . ' 6 -..:) 'k , . ' •N — • ''.1', ,c. ' - . AF.... ...i1:., 10 ,N1/4...•"" ' 41ii, ,.. '.,; t •- - ii.. ......: ........._. A, , ,T4 _,;;;; ' . :0--,=--,Tat' -- • i. ,-.1. i. - ,:• ‘. " . casting Se'arch THE ASTRONAUTS rendered mankind a conspicuous service when they let us see our world as it looks from afar. No one who saw that spectacular sight on TV could ever forget it. Glowing in the sunshine, resplendent in colour, the earth was the one beautiful object in all the vast blackness of space. After seeing the moon close up—and landing on it— the astronauts could not get back fast enough to the earth and home. What a pity that a planet so naturally attractive, so evidently made for human habitation, should be so torn with strife, so riddled with crime and violence, so utterly devoid of unity on social, religious and international affairs! If God made it perfect, as the Bible says He did, it must be an awful disappointment to Him today. For this world is in a mess, a terrible mess, and has been for thousands of years. Available history tells the sad story of almost continuous warfare from the earliest times to the present day. Crippling wounds, painful diseases, death in many hideous forms—who can begin to measure the sufferings of the human race since life began on earth? Page 8 : : Signs of the Times, January 1, 1971 Part Two of Arthur Maxwell's Stirring Series— "MAN THE WORLD NEEDS MOST" People of every generation have groaned and wept under their miseries, ever longing for deliverance, ever yearning for a way out, ever looking for a man who could lead them into a happier day. As far back as history goes, groups, communities, nations, were always on the aleart for such a person, willing to follow him with total devotion if they could find him. And so the search, the everlasting search, began. Alas, in most cases, a chosen leader's vision was almost invariably limited to the interests of his own group or nation. He thought only how that group, or nation, could be advantaged at the expense of others. From this limited outlook rose conflict, and out of conflict came conquest and subjugation. The strong crushed the weak, leaders became tyrants and the tears of the conquered flowed on down the years. Egypt and Nineveh Among the greatest leaders of ancient times were the Pharaohs of Egypt, notably Necho, whose pyramids remain to this day, and Rameses, builder of huge statues and temples. They were great men in their time, spreading their dominion far into Africa and northward to Syria and beyond. But all they did was for Egypt, not for mankind. Out of turmoil in Mesopotamia came the first of the Assyrian leaders, who chose Nineveh as his capital. Sennacherib, Sargon, Asshur-bani-pal are some of the men who swayed the world from that once-great city. But world leaders they were not. Strong, cruel, ruthless, they spent their days crushing weaker communities within their reach, blindly thinking this would enhance the prestige of their own government. It didn't. Instead it contributed to the rise of a brilliant youth named Nebuchadnezzar, who established himself in Babylon, which he made into what he thought would be an impregnable fortress from which he could rule the world. He had great capabilities and, as the Bible reveals, he was given a vision of the need for world leadership. But he didn't understand it. All he could think of was his own aggrandizement. See Daniel 2 and 3. He was no world leader, and a few years after his death God said to his successor Belshazzar, "Thou art weighed in the balances and art found wanting. . . . Thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians." Daniel 5:27, 28. Medo-Persia and Greece So the Medo-Persian empire replaced Babylon, producing leaders like Cyrus, Darius, Xerxes and Artaxerxes. All were great men in their day, but with no care for any country save their own, except for occasional sympathetic interest in the Jews. Countries outside their realm were just people to be enslaved, not uplifted, educated. and ennobled. As the years passed, the great search continued and a young man of Macedonia came to the fore. Because of his many gifts he was chosen to lead the armies of Greece, and he led them to victory after victory. Defeating the forces of Medo-Persia at the battle of Arbela in 331 B.C., he swept on in triumph to the borders of India. Then he wept, so the story goes, because "there were no more worlds to conquer." That was his trouble. He looked on people other than his own as potential slaves—people to be conquered, crushed, humbled. The idea never occurred to him that he could be a deliverer who would ease people's sufferings, lighten their burdens, and spread healing and happiness wherever he went. History books make him out to be a great person, and in a way he was, but only as a general and a conqueror. He never came near being the man the world needed at that time. And so he, too, passed away, and his empire, which was overthrown by the legions of Rome. About 200 B.C., Carthage, on the north coast of Africa, was still a city of great influence, despite conflicts with its rising competitor on the Tiber. One of its rulers was Hannibal, a general of outstanding genius and generally recognized as one of the greatest warriors of all time. He was also a man of great personal integrity and is remembered as "one of the noblest of the great men of antiquity." People of many races gladly served in his armies, and he once led fifty thousand soldiers, with many elephants —the "tanks", of those days—from Spain, across southern France and over the Alps into northern Italy, an astonishing achievement. Rome Triumphant Time and again he defeated armies sent against him by the Romans, but he failed to take Rome. Had he done so all subsequent history would have been different, especially if he had set up the same type of honest government there that he had established in his own capital. But he didn't. Something went wrong with his plans and at last, to avoid capture, he committed suicide in 183 B.C. Carthage was destroyed by Rome, which then took her place as queen of the Mediterranean and went on to become the dominant power in Europe for the next half millennium. Out of Rome came many famous men, such as Julius Caesar and his successor Augustus Caesar, both famous for their skill in battle. Indeed a Roman's fitness for the office of emperor was measured largely by his conquests and the number of slaves and other booty he brought back from foreign ventures. The chief duty of an emperor was to keep the empire intact, which was accomplished by harsh, repressive measures designed to keep the restless, subject peoples Signs of the Times, January 1, 1971 :: Page 9 from open rebellion. There was no plan to help these poor people, or alleviate their hardships. All good things, such as free food and free entertainment, "bread and circuses," were for Roman citizens. The rest could toil to pay taxes to the Roman treasury. Power went to the leaders' heads. They considered themselves gods and insisted on worship by their subjects. But there was nothing godlike about them. Great and famous though many of the Caesars were, not one of them came within a million miles of being the true leader of men that, with such unlimited authority, he might have been. Absolute power at last brought total corruption in both court and country, until moral and political weakness left the empire a prey to the people it had persecuted. These now swarmed across Rome's borders, led by men whom they thought were deliverers. However, these spoilers of Rome were soldiers rather than statesmen and today their names are known only to historians. During all those tumultuous years the search for a great leader went on. Always the hope persisted that someone would arise devoted to ideals of justice, kindness, unselfishness and sympathy, yet with power enough to make such noble principles a basis of lasting government. Charlemagne One man challenged attention. His name was Charlemagne—Charles the Great—who lived from A.D. 742-814. He was king of the Franks but was so greatly respected that he was crowned by the pope as head of the "Holy Roman Empire," a position he held till his death. An imposing figure, "towering and powerful," he was held in veneration by half of Europe. Not only was he an invincible warrior, but also a dispenser of justice and a patron of the arts. He provided centres of culture and education throughout his empire and was known as "a man of many enthusiasms." Sometimes his enthusiasms would go a bit too far, as when, in his eagerness to extend the kingdom of God, he would drive conquered people into a river to speed up the process of their baptism. He linked all conquered lands with the church, dividing them into bishoprics, and it was but natural that men should speak of him as the champion of Christendom. Hopes were raised that he might bring in a better day everywhere, but when he died, his reforming zeal died with him. As one historian wrote, "His sceptre was as the bow of Ulysses, which could not be drawn by any weaker hand." The Crusades About two centuries later the era of the crusades began, when thousands of people were persuaded by church leaders that if only Palestine were to be liberated from the Mohammedan Turks, and Jerusalem made into a Christian city, there might well come a millennium of peace and happiness on earth. The idea fired the imagination of high and low, rich and poor, who rushed to join the first such expedition (1097) under the mistaken belief that it was specially blessed of heaven. It wasn't. In the second crusade Jerusalem was captured and, after a shocking bloodbath of the inhabitants, a "Kingdom of Jerusalem" was set up. It didn't work. Following Page 10 : : Signs of the Times, January 1, 1971 the eighth crusade (1289) the last of the Crusaders' conquests in Palestine was abandoned. One of the best remembered leaders of those days was Richard the Lionhearted, King of England, who was largely responsible for the third crusade, 1189-1192. Greatly beloved by his countrymen, he was one of those charismatic leaders whom men gladly follow to battle and death. However, as every schoolboy knows, on his way back from Palestine he was captured by a wily foe, who held him prisoner for years until his subjects paid a fantastic ransom. As history moved into the Middle Ages, other great leaders arose, but all had serious limitations. There was Charles V of Germany, for instance, who spread his dominion over most of Europe. He was one of the few men who almost fused the broken parts of the old Roman Empire together. It was said of him that "no monarch until Napoleon was so widely seen in Europe and in Africa. He had more influence, prestige and power than anyone else in his day—wonderful equipment for great leadership. Yet in 1555, because of failing health, he was compelled to abdicate his throne and sign away his vast possessions to others. Those were the days of the great explorers, Columbus, Magellan, Drake and others. These men were brave, skilful, imaginative—but they were not the type to give the world the leadership it needed. They changed the course of history by their discoveries, but they could not bring the day for which human hearts were for ever longing. France in the Ascendency In the seventeenth century, Louis XIV became the dominant figure in Europe. He reached out in all directions for more and more authority, overrunning the Netherlands, laying waste the Palatinate, and exclaiming, "There are no longer any Pyrenees." How much good such energy might have accomplished if it had been used to better purpose! But Louis thought of little else than his own glorification. Finally a combination of opposing forces brought his grandiose schemes tumbling about him like a house of cards. By the treaty of Utrecht in 1713, his dominions were "pared away on every side." As the eighteenth century faded, there strutted onto the world stage a dynamic little man whose first ambition was to save France after her great revolution. This accomplished, he set out to save the world—for France. He, too, had the ability to inspire others to believe in him and follow him. He raised a great army of devoted soldiers and for eight fearful years swept over nation after nation. He placed his brother Louis on the throne of Holland, his brother Jerome on the throne of the new kingdom of Westphalia, which he created, made his brother-in-law Murat sovereign of the newly-established Grand Duchy of Berg, and gave his brother Joseph the throne of Spain. No other conqueror ever made such thorough preparation for the establishment and perpetuation of a united Europe as did Napoleon. It was his plan first to dominate the European continent, then the world. Yet it was but a figment of his imagination, soon to dissolve like a dream at dawn. Even before his plans were completed, rumblings of coming disintegration could be heard. In 1805 the French fleet was defeated at Trafalgar. Seven years later came Napoleon's Russian expedition, his retreat from Moscow, his subsequent defeat at Leipzig in October, 1813, followed by his final overthrow at Waterloo in 1815. The First World Ruler In the nineteenth century the dominant figure was undoubtedly Queen Victoria. In a sense she was the first world ruler, for she reigned over an empire on which the sun never set. For sixty years she presided over the •- • •-• • •,• . , : 41, Sport & General ' Pax Brittanica, one of the most peaceful periods of world history. To help keep the peace she encouraged the marriage of her relatives to other royal houses and, for a while, it worked. As long as Grandma Victoria was around there was no danger of strife in the household. Scarcely was her funeral over, however, than old rivalries were resurrected, leading at last, in 1914, to the start of World War I, a war so costly in manpower and material that her empire never recovered from it. The nineteenth century also saw many great figures arise on the American side of the Atlantic, men like Lincoln, Andrew Jackson and Teddy Roosevelt. Thoughts of world leadership did not enter their minds because they were too busy cementing the diverse states into one harmonious whole and solving the problems of a growing nation en route to greatness. After World War 1, people everywhere began to think more definitely in world terms. Had not tens of thousands from almost every country died in all parts of the globe? Were not the ocean depths crowded with the wrecks of sunken ships of every nationality? Surely it was high time to work toward world government. So the League of Nations was formed and many treaties signed. There was even one which sought to outlaw war for all time. Hitler's Plans Then came Hitler. Many of his own people thought he was the man of destiny. Millions followed him, shouting "Heil Hitler!" and believing he could make his dream of a master race—German, of course—and world rule from Berlin come true. For a time it all looked good—to Germans—until word leaked out about concentration camps and human incinerators. They then discovered that Hitler wasn't a great man at all, but instead a very little man, proud, selfish, cruel and sometimes demented. What a providence he did not become a world leader! He didn't because the whole world rose in wrath against him, ultimately destroying both him and everything to which he had set his hand. Also in the twentieth century came the beginnings of a new and powerful movement supposedly to promote the interests of the poor at the expense of the rich. It was an effort to establish the kingdom of God on earth without God, indeed without religion, which was termed the "opiate of the people." Among its early leaders were Karl Marx and Vladimir I lyich Lenin. Millions of the downtrodden looked hopefully toward them for deliverance. They are still looking, though the leaders themselves are long since dead. When half the century was past there arose an eager young man by the name of John Kennedy, who possessed most of the essentials for world leadership. Above all he had charisma—lots of it. For a while he had everybody and everything going for him. He conceived plans to help the poor of his own country and of the world. Indeed he was on his way to real greatness when he was assassinated. And so the search for a man has gone on down the ages, with hope and disappointment for ever intermingled. This brief glance back across the centuries reminds us how some men have emerged from the crowd into positions of leadership and great opportunity—some of them men of high purpose and great ability—only to fade into obscurity, their dreams shattered, their hopes and plans laid low. Today the question still faces us, Where is the man who can save us? To whom shall we turn for deliverance? Meanwhile the problems of the world become more and more complex and the odds against staving off a third world war are greater than ever. Most people have a presentiment of approaching disaster on a prodigious scale. If anyone is going to help, and has the ability and know-how to accomplish this Herculean task, he must appear on the scene soon. There's not much time left. lc* Signs of the Times, January 1, 1971 :: Page 11 EDITORIALS New Year Resolution THE NEW YEAR, as we all know, is a first-class time to turn over a new leaf, to start afresh, to give up the old, bad habits and to take on new and better ones. And there is something very satisfying about telling yourself that, as from January 1, you shall no more be rude to your mother-in-law, or that, as of New Year's Day, you will not swear loudly and earnestly when, on taking the milk bottles down to the gate, you step on one of Junior's roller skates and finish up on the flat of your back. As satisfying as making the resolution—or even more so—is the feeling of achievement which comes when you have actually carried out your resolution. If, by, say, January 4, you have NOT been rude to your wife's mother, or if, by January 6, you have stepped on that roller skate three times yet without profanity, you will experience a sense of well-being and achievement that few people will be able to match. There is, perhaps, one resolution that is made more than any other, whose fractured fragments litter the days of January. It is simply that hoary old evergreen: "I resolve that, in the New Year, I shall give up smoking." Looked at in the cold light of print, that is an apparently innocuous sentence. There seems nothing to it, really. You simply take the weed and throw it away. You just pick up the packet of tailor-mades, and toss it in the rubbish bin. You merely stuff that malodorous pipe into the incinerator, and that is that. No trouble at all. UNTIL THE CRAVING STARTS, that is. No one but those who have determined to give up smoking can tell what tortures of the damned can be endured from the simple enunciation of such a resolution. And after all, that is what you should do, if you're serious about giving up the habit. Tell everybody. Then, perhaps, you will feel some kind of moral obligation to keep on with it—even if it is merely the motivation of the desire to save your own face. Now this matter of giving up smoking is not as simple as you might think. Some people give it up for half an hour (or half a day or half a week) every New Year's Day, and several times in between. They are deadly serious about it, because they hate themselves, they despise themselves, they abominate themselves for sucking on a stupid tube of shredded weed. They chew gum, they suck sweets, they even walk about (as we saw one man actually doing) with a length of string, tying knots in it—to keep the hands busy! Then there was the group of people a couple of months ago who were the first starters on a Caribbean cruise (paying from $700 to $1,700 for the thirteen-day voyage) for the single hoped-for accomplishment of getting rid of that dreadful craving for a cigarette. The response so quickly filled the quota of 180 that there was a bank-up of would-be non-smokers, which made the promoters rub their hands together in anticipation, and announce that this would be a monthly service from now on. The cruise is being planned to make non-smoking the IN thing, the organizer, Mr. Joseph Blasco, said. "Passengers will have so much fun, they won't yearn for Page 12 :: Signs of the Times, January 1, 1971 cigarettes." And just in case that all that fun, fun, fun is NOT the answer, there will be ten psychiatrists and psychologists on hand to talk addicts out of reaching for their cigarettes and lighters. And if all else fails, there will be hypnotists on board to hypnotize the longing for one long, deep drag out of the customers who are seriously hoping for a miracle in the thirteen days on board. To create the atmosphere of fun and hi-j inks, there will be several professional entertainers along as part of the therapy. Phyllis Diller, the comedienne, will be there spoofing the cigarette habit, and lampooning the nicotine addict. Perhaps all this will be successful, but there is, we believe, a better way. But first, let us look at this antisocial habit. We use the word "anti-social" advisedly. Only a non-smoker can tell you how offensive tobacco smoke is to him. Only a non-smoker can tell you how he hates the reek of stale cigarette smoke in his clothes when he has been cooped up with a smoker in, for instance, a car or a lift. And only a non-smoker would believe how many otherwise good, sound, sensible, well-mannered citizens will calmly and casually blow smoke over their friends and acquaintances as if conferring upon them something roughly equivalent to an apostolic blessing. The world recently mourned the passing of General Charles de Gaulle, last surviving member of the "Big Four" of World War II. He will be remembered as the leader of the Free French and as first President of the Fifth Republic. Why not give up such a thing as will destroy your manners, put a brown taste in your mouth permanently, burn holes in your clothes, turn your home into a smokehouse, and generally foul up the atmosphere and your taste buds as you puff and gag and cough your way through packet after packet? Why not give up this habit which has been proved to be heart disease's best ally, and lung cancer's firmest friend? And if all else fails to convince you, there is, if you will pardon us for mentioning it, a text, a simple text, which ought to convince you that smoking is not for anyone who professes to be a Christian. Here is the text: "What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's." 1 Corinthians 6:19, 20. How can any man, realizing that his body is, indeed, the temple of God, knowingly pour poisons into it day after day? How can we glorify God in our bodies if we suck foul pollutants into our lungs without a thought for our own health? And how can we say, "It's my life; I can do what I want with it" in the light of this reminder that we are not our own, for we are "bought with a price"? "If any man defile the temple of God," Paul says in another place in the same letter, "him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are." 1 Corinthians 3:17. Could it be that God is fulfilling this promise when lung cancer is on the upsurge, thanks to this innocent-looking cigarette? Could it be that the increased rate of coronary trouble is simply the outworking of this text? If men so lightly regard their bodies, described by the apostle as "the temple of God," how can they expect any other result? But back to that New Year resolution. Don't, please, determine that YOU will give up the habit. Put your hand in the hand of God, and together tackle the problem. It is His temple that you are destroying when you smoke that evil weed; He will therefore come to the aid of every Christian who reaches out a hand of faith, and cries to the Almighty to give him the strength he needs to break the bands of a lifetime habit. This is the only safe way to carry out that New Year's resolution to a successful conclusion. gdeia H . P440 Vale, Arthur Maxwell IN MID-NOVEMBER, Arthur S. Maxwell, contributing editor of this magazine, passed away. Mr. Maxwell was an Englishman, British to the marrow of his bones, yet whose work took him to live in the United States for something more than thirty years. Mr. Maxwell was an editor for more than fifty years, a record term, surely. He commenced his editorial work in England, moved to the United States to edit the American "Signs of the Times" and retired from that post only four and a half months before he died. Top-line editor and commentator though he was, it is not, however, for this that Arthur S. Maxwell will be remembered, we believe, but for his wonderful stories for children. "Uncle Arthur," as he has been to two generations, has written a whole series of books of "Bedtime Stories" which have run into literally dozens of edi- ions and have been translated into several languages. More than forty million of them have been sold. And "Bedtime Stories," it seemed, begot bedtime stories. There was no danger of the supply ever running ou+ for, so very often, the reading of a story by some chil (or its parents) prompted them to write to the author a similar exciting tale from their own experiences, and so "Uncle Arthur's" files bulged more and more as the years went on. "Bedtime Stories" would have gone on and on for ever, it seemed, for every new generation of youngsters enjoyed the stories just as much. Only the death of the author, who took each story and remodelled it with his own deft expertise, could bring such a wonderful series to an end. But advancing years were to bring Arthur Maxwell's greatest idea to him, and he cherished the dream for a decade or more that a whole big series of books would one clay come from his hand, telling the whole of the Bible story in a readable and yet authentic way. "The Bible Story," product of some seven years' work, ten volumes of it, was the result of this dream. It has sold its millions, too, and is still selling. And it readily finds entrance to homes, schools, colleges and convents. Protestant and Catholic leaders have endorsed it wholeheartedly. There is nothing sectarian about this work, for it is the simple retelling of the great stories of the Scriptures. This magnificent set will be Arthur Maxwell's memorial for many years to come. Children yet unborn will delight in the fresh and lively approach he has given to the old, old story. We mourn-the passing of this good man, one who could --and did—"walk with kings, nor lose the common touch." We salute his genius, but most, we miss him as a friend, a genial correspondent, a man of God. He sleeps until the trumpet shall sound, "and the dead in Christ shall rise first.' Roka H. PM,. NEM MONTH: )4.. From Sin to Salvation. By Linda Driscoll. )4.. Irene—the story of an underprivileged, under-nourished little girl--who does not realize )4.. that she lacks what you and I consider the necessities of life. By Carol D. Smith. This Topsy-Turvy World, by W. R. L. Scragg. Signs of the Times, January 1, 1971 Page 13 ON JANUARY 13, 1963, I celebrated my forty-first birthday by walking to the end of a pier and throwing five bottles of pills into the ocean. On a chaotic day eight months prior to that occasion, I experienced a compulsion to take a much different kind of walk on the same pier. My intended mission then was selfdestruction. This frantic decision wasn't brought about in a day, a week, a month, or even a year. It started some three years before when the officers of my company gave me a promotion along with the announcement that they were preparing me for an executive position. The inducement of improved status, prestige, and material gains generated a drive within me of which I was unaware. Earnest devotion to regular hours was not enough. Nights and week-ends were occupied with company paper work in the privacy of my home. My family, of course, was neglected. All went well, I thought, until a continued shortage of sleep rendered me sluggish during working hours. Worried, I consulted my doctor, who prescribed some pills containing a mild stimulant that would counteract drowsiness. For six months they worked well. But there came a time when my system had apparently reached saturation point, and unless I doubled the dosage, my daily "lift" let me down. I tried to compensate for this by getting more sleep. However, there were times when the pressure of my selfpropelled ascension left me so emotionally stimulated that sleep became elusive. Another trip to my doctor produced a different prescription—this one for sleeping pills. The doctor admonished me to slow down and start taking better care of myself. But the ever-present knowledge that I had a pill to fall back on steered good intentions astray. Several more months elapsed, and I was awaiting another promotion. It didn't come. Feeling that I had not lived up to expectations, I foolishly augmented my work load. Shortly thereafter a disturbing pattern took place as I discovered that a combination of stimulation and sedation was playing havoc with my nervous system. Extreme Nervous Tension Once more the inevitable return to my doctor. Being quite concerned about my condition, which he diagnosed as extreme nervous tension, he again cautioned me to slow down. This time tranquillizers were added to my pillbox collection. Then one morning I overheard my secretary jokingly tell a co-worker, "My boss is taking pills so fast that he reminds me of a juggler." Obviously my "diet" was showing. And why not? I was using five different kinds of pills which were designed either to put me to sleep, keep me awake, quiet my nerves, relieve my indigestion, or lower my blood pressure. Without a continual twentyfour-hour reserve on hand I was as insecure as a deepsea diver with a fouled air line. Something had to give—and finally did. The president of the company called me into his office and without any preliminaries got right to the point. "Bartlett," he began, "something grave has been troubling you for months. You are not the same man Page 14 : : Signs of the Times, January 1, 1971 HEALTH FEATURE PEACE WITHOUT PILLS John Bartlett—as told to Allan Clark we started training for an executive capacity. I have seen you so jumpy that you should have been sent home. "Furthermore, you often appear to be in a trance. Perhaps you have been pushing too hard. The company has considerable time and money invested in your career and wants everyone to be protected. . . . I am asking you to take a month off and get yourself straightened out. The rest will do you good. You may draw two weeks' pay from the cashier." My first reaction was one of shocked resentment. The rug had been pulled out just when I thought the company needed me. But what bothered me most was the blow to my pride and the worry of how I was going to save face. Somehow I had to get into shape for a return to the job. And like everything else it would have to be done in a hurry. During the first week of my leave, I tried the pill ration system, but the plan didn't work. I was hooked much worse than I realized. Then one morning fear took complete command, and I went to pieces. My wife called the doctor and he confined me to bed with a round-the-clock male nurse in attendance. Three years of progressive addiction to barbiturates, accompanied by the pressure of pace of my mode of living, had rewarded me with a violent crack-up. The Road Back Every negative thought, from getting out of town to committing suicide, entered my mind during my violent stage. On the eighth day of the ordeal I was lying in bed, my nerves in a jangled state, when I cried out, "Oh God, when was I last free? Please restore me to the peaceful days of my life." With the realization that this was the first time I had come close to voicing a prayer for many years, I prayed as I never had before. How deplorable that a man has to wait for disaster to strike before he communes with -God! On the following day, with my doctor's enthusiastic approval, I went to the Y.M.C.A. and enrolled in the adult division. Upon being introduced to the gym instructor, I told him with complete honesty I was to take light work-outs three evenings a week. He also recommended calisthenics, half-mile walks, and deepbreathing exercises in the mornings. While my newly-found diversion left me physically tired the first month, my mental attitude was much improved. I was able to return to the job and, with sensible scheduling, I conformed to a regular eight-hour day. Sleep came more naturally now. My eating habits were regular and my energy had returned. The insanity of my addiction was on the wane, but the roots still had to be removed. However, I had made progress, and I continued my programme toward a positive frame of mind. I have since endeavoured to give thanks to God every day for coming to my aid. With my family I attend church services regularly—not that I feel it compulsory, but because I want to. Now that my problem has been conquered, I know that it is far more constructive to try a prayer than a pill. And it's available without a prescription. Signs of the Times, January 1, 1971 :: Page 15 How to g IVIillionai by John F. Knight Page 16 Signs of the Times, January 1, 1971 I WENT TO a funeral last night. Strange to say, it wasn't really a sad occasion. There was no mournful music, and there weren't any flowers. In fact it was more like a party. It really was a party! A groovy, gay swinger. You see, it happened to be the death knell for another year. Somehow or other, a whole twelve-months' segment of time had died. It was rolled up and tossed into eternal oblivion. In its place came a sparkling new baby. Innocent and warm, and full of vibrant life and vitality. It simply leapt into existence, quite unlike the usual human ones that come with much groaning and anguished expressions. Baby 1971 was vital from the instant the church bells tolled. I t came in, supercharged, grappling with a great huge calendar that proudly asserted in glaring bold letters: "JANUARY 1, 1971." "I'm the new era," he started shrieking the moment he put in an appearance. "I'm the `with-if boy. Come my way, friend, and we'll swing along." At that very moment, my human computer system (although a little harrowed and care-worn from the previous twelve-months' span—it wasn't quite so new as Baby 1971) started to click over. 1971? 1971? So what? Here was Baby 71 defiantly screeching, "Success! Achievement! Problems Solved!" when he was barely sixty seconds old. Hold it, master, you have another 364.9 days to go yet! But my computer system kept clicking on. I wonder if Baby 71 had something that I lacked? Was it courage, or vision, or some new, unscathed, dynamically positive approach to life that had been strangely absent in my life of late? "The Positive Approach !" That must be it. "Goals in Life!" "Achievements!" Click, clack, click, clack! The computer wheels keep on turning. Those wee cogs spin round with stunning rapidity. The system which men copied but which we received for nothing (its real name is "the human ecome a e brain") is invariably correct. Give it a chance and it will mathematically regurgitate information that is frighteningly accurate. Suddenly the answer seems to loom up. It doesn't come out in the form of punch tape, nor typewritten on endless sheets of paper with those inevitable holes down each side. But loud and clear the answer comes through. In words, or word pictures, it goes something like this. "Goals . . . get motivated . . . think positive . . . work hard . . . get moving . . . don't sit there thinking how lucky the other fellow happens to be . . . forget the green grass on yonder distant hill . . . worry about the bare patches in your own backyard first!" Maybe you're in business. You're in a state of complete penury. You've a run-down outfit to pull out of the red, a bunch of useless employees and a heap of equally difficult debtors and customers. Or maybe-you're one of the employees. Your boss is hard as nails. Promotion? Promised three years ago along with a reasonable salary increment. It is still as far distant as ever. You've slaved your fingers to the bone for this merciless, overbearing, financial giant who gets bigger and greedier whilst you get worn through the concrete and further in debt. Utterly hopeless! Despair. Resentment. Oh, so you're a college student? With problems? A stack a mile high. Hard work. Competition. Hours of ceaseless study. Getting absolutely nowhere fast. Or so it seems. Years of unending grind and mental exhaustion before you even start to earn a subsistence wage. And by then the profession will probably be nationalized, and you'll be fighting to earn bread and water. Unhappy, disillusioning thoughts of despair. Mother of four? Well, you certainly have your hands full. What, the kids are an ungrateful bunch of nogooders? Take your money, your love and affection? Greedily grasp every morsel of life from you? And give you absolutely nothing in return but a king-sized headache. Not even a jot of respect for the unending years of toil and grind you've devoted to their eternal welfare. Aha! You're a doctor? Plenty of loose change made the easy way? You don't say. A doctor with problems? Can't imagine it. What was that? Money isn't everything? You would like to see a bit of reciprocal humanity in this hard old world? Mmmmm! School-teacher, factory worker, university professor, old lady in a convalescent hospital. Nurse in a huge, faceless hospital; cook, entrepreneur, professional pianist, chemist, estate agent, hairdresser. The unending sad stories go on and on and on. Problems are unending, as well as of a tremendous magnitude. So what? Baby 71 happens to have problems, too. Only he's in for a lot, lot more, and events much worse than you could ever envisage. And so has every other millionaire around town. Don't forget, nobody had a cent the day he was born. I've a horrible (but inwardly pleasant) feeling my computer is right. So is Baby 71. COUNT YOUR CHALLENGES Don't count your troubles this January 1. Rather, count the challenges that are already stacking up higher than a pyramid before you. As your inbuilt computer system will tell you, give it half a chance. Whether you want to make a million this 1971 or not, it is entirely up to you. It is in your hands completely. And by a million, I don't necessarily mean dollars. I mean all the other things besides. Like friends, kindly acts, gestures of goodwill to those who need them most. A prospective millionaire is about the luckiest person in the world. (Forget the dollar magnate—he's terribly unhappy, as well as unlucky. He's already arrived, so there isn't any further stimulus for him. How sad.) Set your sights high. Make a goal, and thereupon work at it with frenzied non-stop effort. Aim at becoming a "Goal-achievement Millionaire." That means in Signs of the Times, January 1, 1971 :: Page 17 twelve months hence you'll have reached your goals, solved your problems, secured inner peace of mind, mental refreshment. You'll have made more friends than ever before. And, in turn, you'll find you're on the friendship list of a greater-than-ever range of people, too. This is a wonderful start. Oh, yes, you've probably made a few more dollars as well. But suddenly you find this is not so important. Your new concept of living, working out simple solutions to your vexing problems, finding that negative thoughts have no place in your mental environment, solving problems on a day-by-day basis with a strong, forthright, positive approach-these have suddenly converted you into a mental millionaire. Intimately associated with all this, come important facets in your spiritual life. This is a basic key to help solve all problems. Ever tried browsing through the Scriptures on a regular daily basis? Remember, you used to until a year or two ago. What happened in the interim? Bowed down by the cares of the world? Couldn't be bothered? Too tired? Taking Christ into your life as a working Partner is a top way to achieve your goal. He'll help keep your computer working steadily and accurately. He'll keep it oiled with the balm of enthusiasm, a sweet nature, a sober spirit and Christ-like temperament. There will be no more need to go mad at your offensive contemporaries. The well-adjusted computer is programmed to cope with such difficulties as they rear their ugly heads. But it is essential you walk hand-inhand with the Master-mind at all times. With His aid, success is never more assured, never more gratifying and overwhelming in volume. The time to set your goal for 1971 was two or three months back. But Baby 71 wasn't around then, so he didn't. More than likely, neither did you. So what about taking stock this very instant? Set that goal! Apply it to paper in the written form for greater clarity. Think about it well. Make additional notes and comments as they flash through the computer system. Once the list is complete, it's then a case of motivation. "At precisely 12 noon my working Partner and I shall start together," you thereupon stoically tell yourself in tones loud and clear. And from that point on, with Baby 71 still shouting in your ears, hand-in-hand with your new-found Partner, with your computer clacking in the background, with your imagination fired, your renewed, re-energized, supercharged, power-driven system will leap ahead. Wowee! I can hardly wait. I think I've almost reached Goal Number One already. Think positive right through 1971 and, without doubt, with Christ in your life your goals will spin into reality with frightening rapidity. Try it this coming 365-day span and see! ** Page 18 :: Signs of the Times, January 1, 1971 BY R D. EDWARDS "Prayer is the most powerful force of energy one can generate; it's a force as real as terrestrial gravity. When we pray we link ourselves with the inexhaustible power that swings the universe."-Dr. Alexis Carell. 1. ITS NATURE a. Supplication-Calling on God. Psalm 116:4; Acts 22:16. Pouring out heart to God. Psalm 62:8; 1 Samuel 1:15. Drawing near to God. Hebrews 10:22. b. Praise. Psalm 66:17. c. Intercession. James 5:14, 16; (1 Timothy 2:1). "Prayer is the opening of the heart to God as to a friend."-E. G. White. 2. ITS CERTAINTY a. God hears. Psalm 10:17; 65:2 (Psalm 17:1). b. God answers. Psalm 99:6; Isaiah 58:9 (Psalm 143:1). Therefore boldness is invited. Hebrews 4:16. "Prayer does not need proof; it needs practice." 3. ITS CONDITIONS a. Faith. Matthew 21:22. b. Submission. Luke 22:42; 1 John 5:14, 15, T.E.V. c. Obedience. Proverbs 28:9; John 9:31; 1 John 3:22. d. In Christ's name. John 14:13. "No good thing will He withhold from them that walk uprightly." Psalm 84:11. 4. ITS HINDRANCES a. Wrong motives. James 4:3. b. Doubt. James 1:6. c. Sinfulness. Psalm 66:18; Isaiah 59:2. d. Repetition. Matthew 6:7. 5. ITS PLACE Private. Matthew 6:6 (Jesus' example-Matthew 14:23). Public. Psalm 95:6; Matthew 18:20. Family. Jeremiah 10:25. 6. ITS POSTURE a. Kneeling. 2 Chronicles 6:13; Luke 22:41; Acts 20:36. b. Standing. Mark 11:25. c. Bowing. Psalm 95:6. "Kneeling in prayer keeps you in good standing with God." 7. ITS TIME a. Night and day. 1 Timothy 5:5; Psalm 88:1. b. Constancy. 1 Thessalonians 5:17; 1 Chronicles 16:11; Luke 18:1. c. Everywhere and in everything. 1 Timothy 2:8; Philippians 4:6. "No man is safe for a day or an hour without prayer."E. G. White. "More things are wrought by prayer Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice rise like A fountain for me night and day."-Tennyson. The Virgin: A Trilogy—Part 2 by Meryl Totenhofer 104010.10100-01110-Noor- A PALL OF DARKNESS h e v Darkness, suffocating in its intensity, so oppressive it could almost be felt. Huddled in the strangeness of an unfamiliar room, Mary might have been terrified had she the strength to feel emotion; instead, her mind sought refuge in the memory of happier days. The return from Egypt had brought such joy. even though they could not settle in Bethlehem, "the city of David," but must retreat to peaceful little Nazareth. Baby Jesus must be protected from the malice of kings. He had been such a lovely little babe, so blithe, so good; His childhood all that a mother could wish, well almost all. Willing and obedient, His bright, sunny nature had endeared Him to all. The young village boys could not resist Him, frustrated though they were by His steadfast refusal to join in their mischief or teasing. They liked Him in spite of themselves, she had often thought. Clearly to her mind came the memory of His first visit to the temple. How impressed were the doctors of the law with 1-lis knowledge and intelligence! She had expected that now He would ee,f-i sent to go to the schools of the rabbis, but lie ha Signs of the Times, January 1, 1971 :: Page 19 had firmly but respectfully dis-' s Joseph, remaining, nevertheless, claimed kinship ,, an Obedient . hard orking son- for another eighteen years, even after the death of His supposed father. When word came that Elisabeth's son, John, had become a prophet by the river Jordan, preaching and baptizing, Jesus had put away His tools and left home. Then followed three puzzling, anxious years. The mother, hearing of the miracles He had wrought, the hours spent in teac g, healing and prayer, the long journeys 1ee and Judea, worried lest He break throughout Tales of His disputes with the scribes under the perturbed her. Why wasn't He more and Phar conciliand why wouldn't He let the people form to make Him King? Hadn't the angel, a ITIOV id He would occupy the throne of His anGalati d? Only last Sunday there had been a sponcest emonstration for that purpose. When He ap, tame pJerusalem riding an ass in the manner of her Icings, the people responded with a tumult of an enthusiasm. Shouting praises they threw their garments on the road or cut down palm branches, making a carpet for Him to ride over; but instead of capitalizing on His popularity He stopped to weep over the city. He had exercised kingly authority in driving out the merchants from the temple, accepted the adoring praise of children, but permitted nothing more spectacular. IN PILATE'S PALACE It had been an uneasy week; one could sense the mounting tension. Mary hated leaving the peaceful Galilean hills to visit Jerusalem; it had always been a city of bloodshed and strife. Maybe a widow wasn't bound to attend. the Passover Feast, but she wanted to be near her son. She had heard of His disputes with the leaders, and a sense of doom possessed her—hadn't He told His disciples He would be put to death? It had been no surprise, then, to find John at the door in the early morning light of this Friday, the preparation day. The mother was shocked by the expression on his face—drawn, haggard, he was almost too overcome to speak. "They are going to crucify Him. Today! Now! I don't think you should come, but I thought you should know." "Of course I must come. Where do we go?" "To Pilate's palace." As they hastened along the lanes of the awakening city, the news seemed to be disseminated by the very air. They had just reached the gateway to the courtyard of the palace when a group of soldiers emerged To Mary's horror she saw Him in the centre, her son, His face bruised and bloody, the drops still welling from wounds in His brow. He had been scourged, she realized, for He could scarcely walk; blood still flowing from the stripes which stained His garments. Three crosses were brought, one placed on the shoulders of each prisoner. Jesus took a few steps then fell, His tortured body too weak to bear the load. Shouts of abuse and ridicule filled the air. Desperately the mother looked about her. From whence had this mob come? Some were hardened criminals, some the fringe element who joined every protest, but some were scribes and Pharisees, usually too fastidious and dignified to join forces with the "lower classes." She saw Him cruelly goaded to His feet; unprotesting, He again took a few steps, only to fall prostrate once more. Cursing angrily, the soldiers considered the matter, then noticing a stranger who had paused to express pity, they compelled him to carry the cross. Freed from His burden, Jesus looked round upon the women who had broken into bitter lamentation for His suffering. "Daughters of Jerusalem," He said, "weep not for Me, but for yourselves." Why? What did He mean? In the midst of His own torment how could He spare thought for the sorrows of others? BETWEEN TWO THIEVES But there could be no delay. Forced on by the soldiers, the procession stumbled painfully over the uneven pavements until it reached the place of crucifixion, a short distance from the city. Struggling violently, the two thieves were bound to their instruments of torture. Christ was to occupy the central position, an indication that He was the greatest criminal, and He was to be nailed to His cross. The mother shuddered. Surely He would not permit this—He was the Messiah, of that she was convinced; how could He submit to death in Page 20 :: Signs of the Times, January 1, 1971 such a horrible form—this would be the end of their hopes for the redemption of Israel! Her anguished, silent protestations went unheeded. A pain-killing drug was given to each, but having tasted it, Jesus refused to drink. From that moment the scenes became blurred to the mother. She remembered hearing Him say, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do"; "she saw His arms stretched upon the cross, the hammer and nails were brought and as the spikes were driven through the tender flesh, the heart-stricken disciples bore away from the cruel scene the fainting form of the mother of Jesus." But to be away was more painful than to be there, so she prevailed upon John to take her back. It was then that she noticed the inscription, "This Is Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews." Was this His only crime? There were so many people, most abusing, ridiculing or cursing Him, but some would have come from curiosity, pity or despair. She noticed His few blood-stained garments lying in a heap, the soldiers quarrelling over them until eventually lots were cast for the best. Was this to be the disposition of His only property? One event comforted the mother. One of the thieves who had long ago stopped cursing her son suddenly called to the other, who had continued his tirade of abuse, "Don't you fear God? We are all under the same sentence and ours is right, but He has done nothing wrong." They had nothing more to fear from man, but was there a further judgment to face? The woman trembled as she heard the hope mingled with anguish in the pleading voice, "Lord, remember me when you come as King." Quickly came the answer; soft and melodious the tone, full of love, compassion and power, the words: "It shall be so! I tell you today, you will be with Me in Paradise." Today! That He could make such a claim when He was dying the most shameful of deaths was incomprehensible, yet it eased her pain. Even so, she wondered how much longer she could bear the agony; at any moment she might faint again. Then the mother realized that her son was looking directly at her as she stood, supported by John, at the foot of the cross. His beautiful eyes clouded with pain, but full of love and tenderness: "Woman, behold thy son," He said, and to John, "Behold thy mother." "IT IS FINISHED" At once John had brought her to his place in Jerusalem, but having seen her settled, returned to Golgotha. Now there was nothing to do but wait. The hours dragged by. About midday, a fitful gloom had descended, frightening the little servant-girl who, with trembling fingers, lighted a lamp. Was it the Sabbath lamp? Mary wondered. The little circle of light seemed to intensify the gloom which lasted for hours. Suddenly the building shuddered, caught in the convulsions of an earthquake, and the pall of blackness fell upon the city. "It's all over," Mary thought numbly. Slowly the darkness lifted and daylight returned, bringing with it the confused commotion of awestruck crowds. A shame-faced Peter slunk into the house, but where was John? And his mother? Before long the sun would set, ushering in the Sabbath. Where were they? It was then the disciple returned, exhausted, distraught, no longer a fresh-faced youth, but suddenly a mature adult. Wearily he came to Mary's side. "He is at rest now," he muttered. "What happened?" she pleaded. "Tell me." Laboriously he collected his thoughts. "It was wonderful, right at the end—though not what we had been expecting. While the darkness was around the cross He cried 'My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?' but then the gloom lifted and He called 'I thirst.' The priests mocked Him, but one of the soldiers held a sponge of vinegar to His lips. Then in clear, trumpet tones that seemed to resound throughout creation, Jesus cried, It is finished. Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit.' A light encircled the cross and His face shone with a glory like the sun. He then bowed His head upon His breast and died. It is no wonder the centurion exclaimed in awe, 'Truly this was the Son of God.' " "WHERE IS HE NOW?" Silence fell. Then Peter spoke up: "They say at that moment the heavy temple curtain separating the holy place from the most holy was torn in two from top to bottom. Somehow the one at the entrance must have been brushed aside, for people could see right into the most holy place." He paused. "Not that there's anything to see there now. They say, too, that the high priest was just going to kill the lamb for the evening sacrifice, but he was so horrified he dropped the knife and the lamb escaped." If our society continues to become less livable as it becomes more affluent, we shall end up in sumptuous misery. —John W. Gardner in "Executives' Digest." "Caiaphas had already slain the Lamb." Had John really muttered that, or was it just the echo of her own thoughts? puzzled Mary. John had repeated to her the remark of the prophet at her son's baptism. Silence fell once more, to be broken by the mother's beseeching voice: "Where is He now? What happened to Him?" "We could hardly believe that He really was dead. Until the last we expected Him to come down from the cross and take vengeance on His persecutors. The soldiers broke the legs of the two thieves to hasten their death, but when they came to the Master He was already dead. To make sure, one of them pierced His side with a sword and from the wound there flowed blood and water." A sob escaped Mary's lips. That sword had pierced her own heart also. John gulped and hastily continued. "We didn't want to see His body thrown out with the criminals—but there was nothing we could do. Then two important men came to help us; Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus. We knew that Joseph was one of us but had kept it secret because being a member of the council he could use his influence to protect Jesus; as indeed he did. But Nicodemus! That was a surprise. We had seen nothing of him since the time months ago when he had come to the Master by night. He came now bringing a linen cloth and spices, for Joseph had approached Pilate and received permission to bury the body." IN JOSEPH'S TOMB The disciple's voice faltered. Mary's body trembled in sympathy. She pictured the wounded, lacerated form taken from the cross, lovingly but hastily wrapped in the aromatic linen and taken away. "Where, where?" her voice refused to frame the question. "To Joseph's new tomb—in the garden not far away. The three of us laid Him to rest there." "The three of you ?" Amazement sharpened her voice. "Yes, and the women were there, too, not far away. My mother, your sister, Cleophas' wife, Mary Magdalene and others. They stayed to the very end; until we had rolled the stone across the entrance to the tomb. They were just leaving as I hurried away because it was nearly the Sabbath." "I should have been there, too. I shouldn't have left others—" the pitiful voice faded away. "You couldn't have borne it. Neither could He. He gave you to my care." It was true, but as the Sabbath lamp flickered in the darkness she wondered, as mothers do, if this, in some obscure way, were her fault. Should she have acted differently? In His childhood? In His youth? In His adult life? But hadn't Simeon warned her? The sword had pierced her heart. He was at rest now, sleeping in Joseph's tomb, but would she ever sleep peacefully again until she was laid in her final restingplace? And unless Christ is to us a living, abiding reality we will never have peace. After air and water, the power of a kind and pleasant word is the best and cheapest thing God gives us, His children. —Canon Sheehan in "My New Curate." Signs of the Times, January 1, 1971 :: Page 21 by Roy Allan Anderson cit ot —•.......ear. Il INen in the I ruled Sint% hat, taken 4 tiara urp ttomAtti t,,,,,,,, 1.......!....... lintti.Alt unite it At it. 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IT WAS A BRIGHT, sunny afternoon in October when a brilliant young university professor seemed to be acting strangely. Those who watched him could not understand what was going on, for the words on the paper he was nailing to the church door were all in Latin. Scholars, however, understood, for this was Martin Luther's challenge to the leaders of Christendom. The year was 1517. The world has moved a long way since then. But the spirit of the revolution is just as real in our day. The generation he represented could well have been called "The Now Generation." The blows of his hammer were soon heard in every country of Europe, for what he nailed there was not merely a list of academic questions. These theses represented the deepest convictions of his heart. He had been stirred by the selling of indulgences. "It is a travesty on the gospel," he said, "to claim that for a price a sinner could be assured of forgiveness not only temporarily but eternally, and that an indulgence was effective even in purgatory." "This," declared Luther, "is corruption of the highest sort." Forgiveness of sins, he said, "could not be bartered about, bought and sold" like a loaf of bread. Luther handed a few copies of his document to his academic friends, and one fell into the hands of a printer, who forthwith published a German translation. Soon the whole country was aware of his challenge, for it was read in castles, cloisters, universities, everywhere. Page 22 :: Signs of tile Times, January 1, 1971 Erasmus and Reuchlin, as well as other scholars, applauded Luther for his courage in attacking established religion and exposing abuses in the church. WAS IT A MISTAKE? The Reformation was real. But was it just an event in history, or does it have significance for us today? Was it needed, or was it, as some say, a big mistake? Not long ago, a group of Protestant ministers were discussing the question of mergers among different churches—a popular topic these days. Many spoke of the advantages of the ecumenical movement, which aims at getting all the churches together to make one worldwide church. This naturally led to the question of disunity, which most declared was really sin. Soon some were wondering if the Reformation was also a sin. Some hesitated to call it a sin, but the majority decided it was at least a grave misfortune. This, of course, is exactly the position Rome has taken for over four hundred years. But was the sixteenth-century Reformation a misfortune or mistake? Perhaps we should ask what caused this great upheaval in the church. Was it just a desire to be different? No. It resulted from the rediscovery of great truths. Clear-thinking, consecrated men and women rediscovered the gospel of grace. They found it to be "the power of God unto salvation." "The Bible and the Bible only" became their watchword. Philip Schaff, the distinguished church historian, declares that the Protestant Reformation was the greatest event in history, next to the birth of Christianity itself. In many countries of Europe earnest students gathered around God's Word, comparing scripture with scripture; and the light of truth broke in upon their souls. Not all saw the same light at the same time. As time went by, others discovered increased light on certain beliefs. It was this that led to the many different denominations of Protestantism. But the guidelines for each group were the Old and New Testaments. Every Reformer recognized the authority of God's Word. Luther's constant appeal was, "Show me from the Scriptures that I am wrong." Today Protestantism is facing a new crisis. In one sense it is not really new, for the Reformation sprang from one basic question: How does a sinner make peace with God? The Scriptures answered, "The just shall live by faith"—faith in Christ's atoning sacrifice, faith in the Word of God. The great apostle's message, "By grace are ye saved through faith," rang out above the clang and clamour of opposing voices. Rome had taught that men are saved through faith and works, but Luther wrote in the margin of his big Latin Bible, sole gracia, "grace alone." His message was clear: We are saved without the addition of any works or human merit. A SOCIAL GOSPEL Many leaders in so-called Protestant circles today have ceased to preach individual and personal salvation. They insist that the work of the church is to bring about socio-economic reform rather than to bring sinners to Christ. Man does not need to be saved, they say, but society needs to be reformed. Social questions are being equated with the gospel. Some insist that social reform is the gospel. True, the gospel has social implications. James in his classic epistle on "true religion" stressed the importance of supplying the needs of those in want, for "faith divorced from deeds is lifeless as a corpse." James 2 :26, N.E.B. But he emphasized the basic truth of the gospel when he said that "He [the Father of lights] gave us birth by the word of truth, so we might be a kind of first fruits of His creatures." James 1:18, Berkeley. Like all the writers of Scripture, James recognized the absolute authority of God's Word. The Apostle Paul spoke of some "which corrupt [margin, "deal deceitfully with"] the Word of God." 2 Corinthians 2:17. He also wrote that some "profess that they know God; but in works they deny Him." Titus 1:16. This points up the basic problem in many Protestant pulpits today. It is not just a different interpretation of certain passages of Scripture, but a denial of the very authority of the Scripture itself. In many circles the Bible is a fallen oracle. This is the fruitage of the instruction in many seminaries whose teachers regard the Bible, not as the work of God, but as the work of man. THE NEW GENERATION A new generation of preachers has arisen shorn of the authority of a "Thus saith the Lord." The Belgic or Netherlands Confession of Faith sets forth the doctrine of the Word of God clearer than perhaps any other confession or church creed. Under the heading Of the Written Word of God, Article III declares, "We confess that this Word of God was not sent nor delivered by the will of man, but that holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, as the Apostle Peter saith. And that afterwards God, from a special care which He has for us and our salvation, commanded His servants, the prophets and apostles, to commit His revealed Word to writing; and He -Himself wrote with His own finger the two tables of the Law. Therefore we call such writings holy and divine Scriptures." Again, under the heading Whence Do the Holy Scriptures Derive Their Dignity and Authority? Article V says: "We receive all these books [the sixty-six canonical books] . . . for the regulation, foundation, and confirmation of our faith; believing, without any doubt, all things contained in them, not so much because the church receives and approves them as such, but more especially because the Holy Ghost witnesseth in our hearts that they are from God whereof they carry the evidence in themselves." It is the witness of the Holy Spirit in a man's heart that convinces him that the Bible is indeed the Word of the living God. Unless that witness is set in a man's soul, then no arguments, however sound, will convince him. The real issue then is: Can we believe the Bible today? If so, how much of it? Are the Scriptures authoritative in this Space Age? Signs of the Times, January 1, 1971 :: Page 23 SCRIPTURES A MUSEUM? Liberal theologians speak of the Bible as an earthen vessel which contains some treasure. They suggest that somewhere in the Scriptures the true Word of God can be found, but that it is intermingled with so much folklore and legend that it cannot be taken at face value. But the figure of the "earthen vessel" is taken from the writings of the Apostle Paul, who said, "We have this treasure in earthen vessels." He applied this figure not to the Bible but to the preacher. It has been well said that to regard the Scriptures as a kind of museum, a collection of ancient legends and folklore, is to reduce Bible study to a kind of mining operation. Iron ore to be useful must be crushed, screened, and smelted; it must be purged of all impurity. Only what remains is of value. And that is how liberal theology treats the Bible. But if the Bible is to be treated that way, then, we ask, who is to determine what is truth and what is legend, what is to be retained and what is to be discarded? If the Bible cannot be relied upon, if it is not absolutely trustworthy, then in what can a sinner believe for salvation? All we know of our Lord—His deity, His incarnation, His atoning death, His resurrection, His ascension, His ministry at the throne of grace, His imminent return in power and glory, the judgment, the millennium, our eternal reign with Him—all these and a hundred other vital truths we get from the Bible. Historic Protestantism accepted "the Bible and the Bible only" as its textbook of belief. To the sixteenth-century Christians the Bible was the authoritative revelation of God. Bible-believing Christians today rejoice in the same truth that God is their Creator, Sustainer, Redeemer, and coming King. But many others look upon God as "a kind of trickster who intervenes in human affairs in a quite arbitrary way," to quote Dr. Edmund Leach of King's College, Cambridge, England. This scholar, in his article in The Saturday Evening Post of November 16, 1968, declares that "the scientist must be the source of his own morality." "We ourselves have to decide what is sin and what is virtue, and we must do so on the basis of our modern knowledge and not on the basis of traditional categories." RELEVANT TODAY? While this man speaks as a scientist and not as a theologian, yet this kind of thinking has led many ministers as well as laymen to regard the Word of God as the product of a bygone age with no relevance for this generation. But we ask, Has man become his own god, making his own laws, deciding his own destiny? These questions lead to the very heart of the issue today. Time was when universalism taught that all men are or will be saved. But the universalist of today claims that man does not need a saviour at all, for he was The difference between listening to a radio sermon and going to church, someone has said, is almost the difference between calling your girl on the telephone and spending an evening with her. —Moody Monthly. Page 24 :: Signs of the Times, January 1, 1971 never lost; his long evolutionary struggle has been but an "outreach to fulfil his potential." Thus the great teachings that brought about the founding of the Protestant churches are being eroded. The words of Jesus have particular relevance today. Speaking of Moses, He said, "If ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe My words?" John 5:47. And again, "If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead." Luke 16:31. The greatest Teacher of all time had no question about the veracity and authority of Scripture. "It is written" was His weapon against the devil. And the Apostle Paul declared that we shall be able to stand against the wiles of the devil if we "take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God." Ephesians 6:17. That was the doctrine and the defense of the early Christians. It was the unequivocal position of the sixteenth-century Reformers. Nothing short of this can meet our need today. ** DARBY AND JOAN (Concluded from page 3.) ignored the later years of life are very prone to bitterness of spirit. You may need then to find a new start in the Lord together, and in doing so recapture the happiness of earlier days. For every marriage there looms in the senior years the realization that death will break the tie that nothing else has had the power to sever. One will be left to walk on alone, and the loneliness can be very insistent. This inevitably raises the question of re-marriage. Some will want to have mated once and for all, and some will find in a new marriage a solace for lonely hours. Nothing so marks the utter egocentricity, the possessiveness of a jealous love as an endeavour to bind the survivor to a pledge not to re-marry. Leave that to the one who is left and to God. It is probably true that if a man marries again after his wife's death, it is a tribute to her character. Surely only one who has been happily married would want to try a second time. So, too, with the disposition of one's estate. It is a poor compliment to your wife's ability and to your training if you must tie her actions up so completely in your will that she has no power of discretion. Perhaps the recipe runs thus: First find a mate whom the Lord approves for you. Continue to show unfaltering love throughout the years. When your times comes, thank God for the blessing He has given you and look forward to reunion in the kingdom of God. In short, for as long as you live, keep your wedding vows both in the letter and in the spirit. Great will be your reward. ** The land is under water, the ocean is under oil, and the campuses are under siege. I got so discouraged I called Dial-a-prayer--and they hung up on me. —Governor Ronald Reagan of California, joking with a group of automobile industry workers. A Children's Story PAPUAN 30-MINFY by Myrtle O'Hara AN OLD PAPUAN cannibal lay alone in a tiny grass hut in the steaming New Guinea jungle. He had been there for four days without food or water. He was unable to move and soon his sufferings would be over. Four days before, the people of his village had carried him to this lonely spot, built a rough shelter over him, and left him there to die. He was too old and sick and feeble for them to be bothered with him any longer, so they followed their age-old custom and removed him from among them. He accepted this treatment without any ill feeling. It was the way of his people. In times past a missionary, Pastor White, had now and then visited his village. The old man had listened to the gospel story and learned about the God in heaven. He had felt that perhaps this God was better than the spirits whom he worshipped, but had never done anything about changing his ways. Now as he lay helpless and forsaken, during the terribly long, lonely, painful hours, he wished to see the missionary once more. The spirits he worshipped gave him no comfort and he was afraid to die. He wanted to belong to the missionary's God and tried to pray to Him as he had heard Pastor White pray. He asked God to send the missionary to help him. He did not worry over the fact that Pastor White knew nothing of his plight and that he could be anywhere on a walkabout, or that it would take days to reach him if he did know. In his simple faith he believed he would come, and he lay there and waited. About the time the man was carried from his village, in another village many miles away Pastor White made up his mind to go on a walkabout and visit the natives scattered throughout the area. He prepared for his journey, engaged some carriers, and took with him a young man called Bill who had recently come to the mission station. For six or eight hours each day they stumbled along a track of sorts which led up and down the rough, steep mountains till they were 6,000 feet above sea level. Still other mountains towered above them for another 3,000 feet. The travelling was exceedingly hard. They had to wade through hundreds of streams and cross raging torrents. They tripped over roots and boulders in the tangle of undergrowth. They slipped and fell in the thick, sticky mud. Sometimes they fell down almost vertical slopes and then painfully dragged themselves up the opposite hillsides by clinging to whatever support they could find. They were soaked by tropical rainstorms and shivered in the gloom of the valleys where the sun never shone. Then they roasted on the hilltops and their clothes were plastered to their bodies with perspiration. They were bruised, scratched and bleeding and Bill's feet were covered with blisters. They were so weary that at times they could scarcely keep going. But a few miles further on they hoped to reach a village (the sick man's village) and rest. Presently the track divided. The three carriers who were ahead turned to the left, but when Bill reached the fork, he turned to the right. He didn't know why. He had never been there before and did not know the way to the village. It seemed to him as if some power compelled him to turn to the right. The surprised natives called to him to come back. Then Pastor White called: "Hey, where are you going? Come back. That path doesn't lead anywhere. You will get lost if you keep going. We have to turn to the left." But Bill hurried on. He had to go on. Something was urging him forward. He simply couldn't turn back. His companion became alarmed. "Don't be silly. Come back," he called, then, as he began to run after Bill, "Are you crazy? That is NOT the way. Come back, I say." Just then, by the side of the track, Bill saw a small leaf hut almost hidden by the undergrowth. He went over to it and parted the leaves on the roof. He peered through the hole and saw an old, wrinkled, filthy Papuan who looked like a skeleton, lying on the ground inside. The man raised his dull, red-rimmed eyes to the patch of light and tried to smile at the person looking in. By this time Pastor White had arrived. He took one look through the hole, then quickly crawled into the wretched, stinking little hut and bent over the dying man who tried to speak a few sentences. "I have been waiting for you. I want to belong to your God—to—our—Father," he said as he remembered what the missionary had taught him long ago. The men made him a hot drink. Then in a few simple words they told him of God's love for him and of his wonderful heavenly Father who would receive him as His son. They comforted him and prayed with him. Soon his fears left him and he was filled with happiness. After about a quarter of an hour the poor old man, with a smile on his face, died in the arms of the missionary. Then Bill and Pastor White looked at each other. Now they understood why Bill had taken the right-hand track and why he couldn't turn back. They understood why Pastor White had decided to make the trip when he did. They felt that the days of toiling up and down the mountains had been well worth while and they thanked God that He had led them in time to the place where they were so urgently needed. God is just as interested in each one of us as if there was not another person to claim His attention. It does not matter where we live or what is the colour of our skin. If we are rich or poor, educated or uneducated, it makes no difference. Our Father in heaven knows all about us, and when we ask Him for help we know that He will answer our prayers just as readily as He answered those of the poor old man in New Guinea. ** CO-OPERATION CORNER P.H.C. Foreign Missions ;10.00 L.P., Vic. Tithe 2.00 A.H., N.S.W. Tithe 40.00 A.H., N.S.W. Foreign Missions 10.00 Anon. Foreign Missions 2.00 Tithe 17.00 Anon. British and Foreign Bible Society 2.00 P.H.C. Foreign Missions 10.00 Anon., N.S.W. Foreign Missions 20.00 Mrs. V. Bernardi Signs of the Times, January 1, 1971 :: Page 25 strcIgrI from the SnOU ARE YOU A GRASSHOPPER? NO! I AM NOT talking about the habit aimless people have of flitting erratically from place to place and never settling anywhere for long. My concern is with the grasshopper mentality which first finds inspired notice in the last verse of the thirteenth chapter of Numbers. "And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, which come of the giants: and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight." The tribe of Anak is certainly not extinct, and even more surely are the grasshoppers still alive in our land. Anak's sons do not matter. Goliath was of their stature, wearing an armour that weighed the best part of a ton, and carrying a spear that looked like a piece of four by three; but a small stone hurled by a slight teenager gave the giant fatal concussion. One moment Goliath was sneering at the shepherd lad then—one can almost hear the cry, "Tim—b—e—r!" as the giant toppled and the go went out of Goliath. David, you see, may have looked like an insect in Goliath's sight, but he refused to consider himself in those terms. He saw God, and Goliath seemed so contemptible that the stripling could not demean himself. That is really the key to the problem. How do you see yourself? It was because the Israelite spies saw themselves as 'hoppers that the sons of Anak saw them thus. The text makes that very clear. So it is still. You are out with a group of young people who have made no decision as to who rules their lives. His satanic majesty is always ready to oblige, of course. Suddenly someone suggests some illegal activity. You know that you have neither such a desire nor purpose, but you fear to say No! in unmistakable terms of rejection. You play the grasshopper, and your companions take you at your own valuation. If you had the courage to stand out, many of the mockers would cease their sneering and follow you as the leader. You are urged to experiment with drugs. The consequences are uncertain and the ultimate bill is likely' to be heavy; but you wobble. "Come on. . . . Try anything once." Strangely enough I have never found any of the apostles of that philosophy who were prepared to try arsenic. The results are grimly permanent! Your response measures whether you are a man or an insect. The tobacco companies would be seriously impoverished if every boy and girl, urged to try the first cigarette, responded by a refusal to be a grasshopper. The cigarette habit would largely disappear within a generation. Remember, the assessment lies not in what the urgers think you are, but in the estimate you place upon yourself. Page 26 :: Signs of the Times. January 1, 1971 d r How many times have I heard young people say, "What a fool I was to do that! I knew it was wrong, but I just went along for the ride." What they really mean is, "Because I was small in my own sight, the others ignored my feeble protests." What is the solution if one is afflicted with a 'hopper disposition? The answer is absurdly simple. Follow the leader, but make sure he has proved himself worth following. There is only one leader who fits the bill. His name—Jesus Christ! See Him standing before Pilate, the Roman of brutal instincts, who doubted if Jewry could produce a man—a real man. He cannot browbeat Christ and he cannot seduce Him, though he tries both tactics. In a moment compounded of frustration and admiration he voices a judgment that is more than ever pertinent today. Ecce Homo! Behold a man! A man's man who has been able to take without complaint everything inflicted upon Him. A Roman flogging with the thongs tipped alternately with whalebone and lead; the bone to cut and the lead to bruise, wielded by a past-master in the art of torture. But there is no moan. No grasshopper here, but a man standing TALL! The cynical centurion watching the events of the crucifixion has to admit, "Truly this man was the Son of God." Mark 15:39. Christ proved His right to claim pre-eminence in our manhood. Neither torture nor taunt could move Him; nor pain nor the gates of hell could shake Him. And He invites you to follow Him. But you say, I cannot; He was superhuman but I am desperately, merely human. His answer rings out clearly, "If any man will open unto Me I will come in." No one who accepts that dare ever again behaves like a grasshopper. Men and women achieve a new dignity which rests not upon the shaky foundation of human pride but upon the immovable rock—Christ, the Man superlative—the man who enshrined God. Here is a man who could throw out the challenge, "Which of you convinceth Me of sin?" and the carping critics who would so gladly have hurled an accusation are silent. This is the man who gives you strength so that looking within, you see not a grasshopper but a giant whose strength is such that the powers of hell cease their raving and fall back muttering. The tragedy of the defeatism of the craven spies, "We were in our own sight as grasshoppers," was not their humanity but their dependence upon it. The other two, finding the same leader as David would later, could say, "We are well able to possess it." To which party do you belong? Find the answer in the question, "Whom do you follow?" HOW CAN WE KNOW? We are all brought up from childhood to believe in something—Christianity, atheism, for instance—that life is meant to be lived in a certain way. From childhood some kind of belief is fed into us. How then can we know that our particular belief is the right one? Because our thinking is influenced by concepts gained in earlier life, we cannot think in an unbiased or unprejudiced way. How can we solve this problem? • Yes, we are all prejudiced, but we don't have to stay that way, entirely. The solution to the problem may be handled thus: 1. Recognize that your background does bias your outlook. (You've done that? Hooray!) 2. Listen to people with different points of view—try to find out why they think as they do. 3. Weigh up the facts that you glean. 4. Form your beliefs on the basis of good reasons. Here's a "for instance": If you do not believe there is a God, what are your reasons for this conclusion? If you reject Christian behaviour, on what basis do you reject it? On the other hand, if you accept the claims of Jesus Christ, or anyone else, what are the reasons for accepting these claims? Jesus urged men to accept Him on this basis—see John 14:10, 11. A word of warning. Do not confuse "I will do this because I like it," with having a reason. This is doing something because of a feeling, not because of a reason. Having a reason frequently keeps us from doing things because of a feeling. THE BIG DECISION. There are so many religions, both Christian and nonChristian, that it is almost impossible to know who is right. How can an honest young person decide? • To be sure, there is quite a cafeteria of beliefs. If you begin with Christianity and decide in favour of it, you won't have to go into non-Christian beliefs in great detail. Why? Because Christ said: "I am the way, the truth and the life, no man cometh unto the Father but by Me!" John 14:6. That's pretty unbending isn't it? He made numerous other statements just as uncompromising. So if you say "Yes" to Christ, you have to say "No" to the rest. If you say "No" to Christ, you'll need all your life to go through the maze of other beliefs. To gain an insight into the influence of a religion, the best way is to consider the life of a person who really practises the principles taught by the system. What is the fruit of a particular belief? How does it tell people to live? What value is placed on human life? Unfortunately, it isn't always safe to take others' word for these questions. You need to know for yourself, and you need to know whether a person is a good representative or not. QUESTION Box Young People's Questions Answered by GORDON BOX ARE WE FOOLS? I cannot accept the idea of believing things by faith. This it seems is too close to being nonrational. If God gave man a mind, will He condemn him for using it? or are we expected to ignore what it says or even act contrary to what it clearly indicates? If the gospel is said to be foolishness, does this mean we have to be fools in order to be Christians? • No doubt there are fools both inside and outside of the Christian church, but the teachings of Christ won't make a man a fool—not in the long run anyway. It could be said that a man is a fool to give up a good medical practice and go into the jungle to help his fellow men in need. That kind of foolishness you will find among Christians. The minds of some others are far too keen to do such a silly thing. Real faith is belief because of reason, not in spite of it. Clark Pinnock in his book "Set Forth Your Case" makes this very clear: "The heart cannot delight in what the mind rejects. . . . Christian faith does not take place in a vacuum. . . . Faith is not the opposite of knowledge. . . . The gospel makes sense, not nonsense. Its offence lies in its moral unmasking of the sinner, not in its supposed uncertain truthfulness. . . . The 'foolishness' of the gospel (1 Cor. 1:21) is not the offence it renders to the ratio (reason) of man, but to his hubris (over-weening pride). The gospel dissolves all his sand castles, and bursts all his balloons. . . . In salvation the Spirit creates the capacity for receiving God's truth, but truth it is. . . . The facts backing the Christian claim are not a special kind of religious fact. They are the cognitive, informational facts upon which all historical, legal, and ordinary decisions are based."—Chapter 1. If by faith you have understood those things which are contradictory to fact and empirical truth, it is little wonder you can't accept it. From the preceding paragraphs you can see that faith can mean something entirely different. IS THIS WEAKNESS? Do you think it is a sign of weakness to go and ask for help and advice from someone older than yourself? A friend of mine says she longs to do this but won't, because she wants to be strong enough to handle her problems by herself. Does it weaken your character to take advice? • That would depend on the advice, wouldn't it? By and large everyone takes advice some time or other for the simple reason that no one knows everything. It's a funny thing, you know, people are not embarrassed about asking advice on how to fix a lawn-mower or how to grow artichokes, or how to cure bunions, or how to make beef taste like chicken, or where you can buy $2 worth for 50 cents or anything else under the blue sky (grey if you live in some places), but when it comes to how to live, how to do right, how to know right, everyone is supposed to know all the answers. In the area of religion, most people seem to think they are born with "a fully-indexed, 'simple guide to all problonious problems" yet this subject has taxed the minds of the greatest intellects. If your friend wants to learn everything the hard way she's entitled to play the game to those rules. To say it's a sign of weakness to seek help, however, is a sign of weakness above the collar line. The only way to really be self-sufficient is to live in solitary confinement. The human personality is dependent on other personalities from the moment of birth unless it is going to develop into a weird distortion of what man is supposed to be. The longing your friend feels is quite normal and ought to be satisfied. This is not saying people should seek help every time a problem comes along, but it is saying that everyone needs a friend. No man is an island, or should we say in this space age of 1971, a sputnik. Signs of the Times, January 1, 1971 Page 27 Roy Naden's series THE CONTEMPORARIES a This Month: tn courcgcous "AT AGE EIGHT, strapped in a hospital bed with a pelvis disease similar to polio, my ambition was to play football like my famous father," said the well-known footballer Haydn Bunton. " 'Never,' said the doctor. At eleven, I discarded crutches and body splint and started out. At sixteen, I played my first league game, with the North Adelaide club. I was on the way and nothing would stop me. Three years in bed with a bone disease hadn't. Nothing could. "I told myself this again and again, as they pulled me from the wreckage of my car . . . and as they wheeled me into surgery at Hobart Hospital that Easter Sunday morning in 1959 . . . and as the doctor said: `We've removed fragmented bone from the knee joint and replaced it with grafted thigh facia—it's the very best we can do, but it means you'll never play football again . . . ' "I began painful weight-lifting leg exercises—eight hours a day, day in and day out . . . "In six months, I was back on the football field. My bad leg was much weaker than the other one; I couldn't kick with it or bend it fully. But it was getting me around. At Portsea . . . I spent torturous months running along the bush tracks and sandhills until I was satisfied that the leg that had wasted to half its normal size, was once again ready to take part in the game it had been bred for. "Today, after 280 league matches, I can only say— you can generally do what you want to do if you will it. Many times I've sat there in the change room before a match and wondered how I was going to see it through, because of injuries that had not healed in time. "The point is—you can overcome hardship and handicap if you're of a mind to."—Reader's Digest, June, 1969. Everyone needs courage. The slum dweller needs courage to cope with monotonous food, overcrowded rooms, and the claustrophobic horizon of bricks, asphalt and concrete. The white-collar worker needs courage to keep up with ever-present time payments, and the spiralling costs of clothes, food, and the occasional holiday away from the relentless tedium of inescapable routine. The sick need courage to be patient. The bereaved need courage to face life with a diminished circle of companionship. The rich need courage to cope with the risks of investments and the demands of the Page 28 : : Signs of the Times, January 1, 1971 tax man. Soldiers need courage to risk everything in a supreme act that may or may not affect the course of history. We all need courage. But how to find it, that's the question! Most of us lack confidence. We act a little like a frightened youngster on his first day at school. We are somewhat awed with the scene. It seems too big for us. We are strangers. We are far from capable. Hardly cut out for the struggle. We doubt we are equal to the demand. So we retreat into a shell and say, "The quicker this is over, the better." We paint a mini-picture of ourselves, hang it in the front window of our minds and say, "That's my limit. So far—no farther." It is all so wrong! You have tremendous abilities. You have outstanding capabilities. You have limitless opportunities. You have enormous potential. And there is a formula that can revolutionize the rest of your life. A lack of courage causes most of your difficulties, so a formula that shows how to regain courage will resolve most of your problems. The word courage comes from the word "coeur," which means "heart." The great English king "Richard Coeur de Lion," was in reality Richard with the heart of a lion. He entertained only big concepts. He never allowed his thinking to become small. He looked beyond the problems to the potential solutions. During the last war, Winston Churchill wrote these words of Queen Victoria on a piece of cardboard, and placed them in his underground cabinet room, "Please understand there is no pessimism in the house, and we are not interested in the possibilities of defeat. They do not exist." With that attitude, small wonder England rallied behind Churchill. Seneca wrote, "Courage leads starward. Fear towards death." You need courage for a positive, satisfying and fulfilling life. Richter said, "Courage consists not in blindly overlooking danger, but in seeing and conquering it." What then is the key to courage in life? It is based on a changed way of thinking, because as a "man thinketh in his heart so is he." Proverbs 23:7. The way we think, determines the way we act. The way we act determines how we get on in life. Most people fail to make great progress because they don't dare to do so! Their restricted thinking cripples progress. They don't expand in business, because they think in terms of a small business. They don't excel in sports because they think of themselves as being mediocre. They don't get promotion at work because they think of themselves as being one of the lesser workers. They don't get top marks at school because they think of their mental capacity as ordinary. But in this life it is not I.Q., or being born with "an aggressive attitude," or being a "born leader" that counts. IT IS HOW YOU THINK that determines where you will go, how fast you will go, and what rewards you will get as you go. Change your thinking and you change everything. "It sounds too simple," you say. "I'm just an ordinary sort of person. It might work for someone else, but it would never work for me." If you think that way, it will be that way! The limits of your thinking are the limits of your development. You might say, "I never get any breaks." But that is just not true. Everyone has similar opportunities, only some recognize them, others don't. Opportunity knocks at every door. But you have to be awake to hear the knocks. Opportunities come more by being aware than by waiting. When you dismiss negative, defeatist thoughts, thoughts of imagined or real fears, and think positively, it will do three things for you: First, you will accept each new situation as a challenge not a burden. Face the problem. Say, "I'm going to find a way through this." This attitude will take you halfway to the answer. Remember, "Problems are only solutions in disguise." Pierre and Marie Curie had to use a ton of pitchblende, fifty tons of water and five tons of chemicals to produce just six grams of radium. Edison said, "I speak without exaggeration when I say I have constructed three thousand different theories in connection with the electric light, each one of them reasonable and apparently likely to be true. Yet in two cases only did my experiments prove the truth of my theory." The positive attitude which says "I will succeed" is the one that gives you courage to tackle each new situation as a challenge. Second, a positive attitude promotes good physical health which makes it easier to tackle life as it comes. Doctor Kline once said, "More human suffering has resulted from depression [that is, negativism] than from any other single cause." When a person loses the WILL to live, then medical science is greatly handicapped. If a man is sick, thinking can be as important as medicine. Len Barnard is a pilot. He is one of that strange breed of men called missionaries. He has been happy to exchange the comforts and conveniences of modern life for a small mission station in the highlands of New Guinea. In November, 1966, while testing the compression in the cylinders of his little plane prior to takeoff, by a million to one chance some heated carbon caused the engine momentarily to spring to life. The spinning propellor virtually severed one of his legs above the knee. Miraculously the surgeons at Goroka successfully stitched it back on and today he is back in the cockpit of his plane. Medically speaking he should not have that leg. But through faith in God and a firm will, he regained its use. And, incidentally, while lying in bed, weights dragging on his foot to stop the injured leg shrinking, he turned author and wrote a captivating best-seller called "Banish the Darkness." Which brings us to the third aspect, a positive mental attitude. That is, allowing the mind to act as God originally made it. Resources are available that can change your way of thinking. The Bible says, "God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind." 2 Timothy I :7. We are born with a negative nature. Modern psychiatry has tried to devise means of making it a positive nature— with varying degrees of success. But God has a plan where you can quit this nature, so to speak. Get rid of it because it's negative. He says, "Start again"—be "born again" is the Biblical phrase—and in this new life, here and now, you will automatically have a positive, progressive, expansive, successful way of thinking, and then life will automatically follow the same vein. The Christian life, the Christian philosophy, is the only realistic answer to today's problems. It gets right to the root of the problem—wrong thinking. By allowing God to take over the controls you will receive a positive attitude, and a dynamic in your life that nothing can stop. And a limitless world with all its fascinating possibilities is yours for the taking. Signs of the Times, January 1, 1971 :: Page 29 BIB BIBIB QUESTIONS] ANSWERED Readers' Questions answered by DESMOND FORD, M.A., Ph.D. The Ark of the Testament Revelation 11:19 mentions the Ark of God's testament. Is this the same ark as contained the Ten Commandments on earth? Why is this ark in heaven? M.K. Three terms are applied to the Ten Commandments in Scripture. They are called "the Commaridments," "the Covenant," and "the Testimony." Note the following passage which uses all three terms: "And He wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the ten commandments. And it came to pass, when Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tables of testimony in Moses' hand, . . . that Moses wist not that the skin on his face shone." Exodus 34:28, 29. The first two of these expressions can at times include more than just the commandments written on the two tables of stone, but the third expression "the testimony" always means the Sinaitic ten when the context employs allusions to the sanctuary such as the ark. The word "testament" in Revelation 11:19 is a translation of "covenant" and the reference to the ark makes it certain that the Ten Commandments are in focus in this passage. The purpose of this revelation given to John is not to tell us that the lost ark has been taken to heaven but rather that the moral requirements spoken by God's voice, and written by His finger, are still the basis of His government. Because of God's immutable law, sin is an ever-present possibility with us and therefore we need the Saviour of Calvary. Had there been no law, there could have been no sin and no Saviour. Calvary was necessary because even God could not abolish His law. Revelation 11:19 is a reminder to all men that in the Judgment our lives are to be compared with this divine standard, and that therefore our only hope is to be found in Christ who is "our righteousness." Jeremiah 23:6, 7. A literal Number? Are we to understand the number 144,000 (Rev. 7:1-4) as a W.J.N. literal number? There have always been some who have so understood this reference, but the evidence seems against this possibility. The number is found in a symbolic context in a symbolic book. Revelation describes Christ as a Rider on a white horse and as having a sharp sword proceeding from His mouth. The church is pictured as an expectant mother clothed in the sun, and the moon under her feet. Satan is represented as a great red dragon. See chapters 19, 12, 13. In the context of Revelation 7:1-4 we read of a symbolic angel, symbolic winds, a symbolic mark, and symbolic Israel. None believe the mark to be literal and there is no evidence that the number descriptive of the company receiving the mark is literal. On the other hand the Book of Revelation and the rest of Scripture provides abundant evidence that the number twelve has to do with the kingdom of God. The Old Testament presents the Page 30 :: Signs of the Times, January 1, 1971 twelve patriarchs as the progenitors of the kingdom people, and in the New Testament the twelve apostles take a parallel place. The kingdom city described in Revelation 21 is also stamped with the number twelve. Therefore the symbol of 144,000 is a way of alluding to the kingdom people who, in the last days, will live to see the visible rule of God established. Revelation 14:1-4 describes them as a company victorious in the last conflict between the law of God and the traditions of men. They overcome "the beast, his image, and his mark." See the last verses of Revelation 13. They will stand through the seven last plagues (see Revelation chapters 15 and 16) without an intercessor, clothed in the righteousness of Christ and filled with His Spirit. The most significant point about the company is their absolute dedication to Christ. They are described as "following the Lamb whithersoever He goeth." Revelation 14:4. Because they do this even while they can see Him only by faith, their eternal reward will include a closeness to Christ beyond that of any other group of the saved. Are Do-Gooders Good? Is a do-gooder just as good as a Christian? S.L.F. "Whatsoever is not of faith is sin." Romans 14:23. All socalled "good" actions have in them the element of sin because they are performed by sinful beings and therefore are imperfect. But those "good" actions performed by individuals who have not surrendered to their Creator and Redeemer are not only imperfect but guilt-creating. "He that believeth on Him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already." "He that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him." John 3:18, 36. What King would accept the so-called good offices of a rebel? Such a summing up seems contrary to our natural inclinations of judgment, but we need to keep in mind that God does not see as we do. To us a beautiful crystal might be more appealing than a worm, but God beholds life in the latter but not in the former. The roughest or youngest Christian has life, but the most refined, educated, meticulous unbeliever is "dead in trespasses and sins." Ephesians 2:1. An Erroneous Interpretation? Seventh-day Adventists say that the prophecies of the 2,300 days and the seventy weeks begin with the date 457 B.C. and they use Ezra 6:14 to support this position. However, there is a significant difference between the K.I.V. and N.E.B. translations of this verse. The New English Bible describes the commandment as having been given by Cyrus and Darius alone—not by Artaxerxes as well. This is reasonable because Ezra 6:14 describes only the decree to rebuild and restore the Temple—not the whole of Jerusalem. Artaxerxes gave no such decree. Therefore is it not a human and erroneous interpretation to say that the "command. ment to restore and build Jerusalem" of Daniel 9:25 refers to the date when Artaxerxes gave Ezra permission to go to Judea, i.e., J.W.C. 457 B.C.? The case of 457 B.C. as the starting point of the prophecies in Daniel eight and nine does not rest on Ezra 6:14, though it should be noted that the R.S.V. retains Artaxerxes in the verse and with good reason, that the Aramaic is supported by Ezra 7's accounts of the beautifying of the temple made possible by Artaxerxes— the beautifying does not refer merely to the work of building. There are four decrees in connection with the Jewish restoration from which interpretation must choose. One from Cyrus, one from Darius, then there are two from Artaxerxes. Of these four, only two are principal decrees: those of Cyrus and Artaxerxes Longimanus in his seventh year. The permission granted in Artaxerxes' twentieth year is but an enlargement and renewal of his first decree. Similarly, that of Darius merely confirmed that of Cyrus. While the decrees of Cyrus and Darius relate to the rebuilding of the temple, those of Artaxerxes had to do with the condition of Judah and Jerusalem. The temple was already built when Artaxerxes issued his decree. He gave a special commission to Ezra to investigate Judah and Jerusalem and to establish magistrates and judges. These civic rulers appointed by Ezra had power of life and death, banishment, confiscation, and imprisonment conferred upon them. It looks as though the people were in a state of disorganization and Ezra had full powers to organize in ecclesiastical and civil matters. The little colony which he took with him of 1,683 males (with women and children, some 8,400 souls) was itself a considerable addition to those who had previously returned, and involved a rebuilding of Jerusalem. This rebuilding of the city and reorganization of the polity, begun by Ezra and carried on and perfected by Nehemiah, corresponds with the words in Daniel, "From the going forth of a commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem." (See Pusey's "Lectures on Daniel the Prophet," page 170 f. for additional matter on this subject.) It is true that there is no express mention of rebuilding the city of Jerusalem in the commission of Artaxerxes, but Ezra himself seems to refer to this passage of Daniel 9, and to affirm that he fulfilled it. He says in 9:9 of his book, "Our God hath not forsaken us in our bondage, but hath extended mercy unto us in the sight of the kings of Persia, to give us a reviving, to set up the house of our God, and to repair the desolations thereof, and to give us a wall in Judah and Jerusalem." This also explains the surprise of Nehemiah thirteen years afterwards when he heard that the gates and wall of Jerusalem were not yet rebuilt. See Nehemiah 1:3, 4; 2:8-15. Nehemiah received no special decree but merely permission to complete that for which the decree to Ezra had provided. SIGNS VOLUME 86 NUMBER 1 JANUARY 1971 A family rnagaaine dedicated to promoting evangelical Christianity, upholding Jesus Christ as man's only Saviour and soon-returning King, and presenting the Bible as the inspired Word of God and our only rule of faith. EDITOR - - - CONTRIBUTING EDITOR EDITORIAL ASSISTANT CIRCULATION MANAGER LAYOUT Robert H. Parr Arthur S. Maxwell Jean Bedford Allan Maberly Alan Holman Contents Poems with Power 7 The Everlasting Search A. S. Maxwell 8 12 Editorials Peace Without Pills How to Become a Millionaire 14 John F. Knight 16 Rex Edwards 18 Seven Facts About Prayer The Sword What's Happening to the Reformation? Papuan Journey John Bartlett M. Totenhofer 19 Roy Allan Anderson 22 M. O'Hara 25 Arch Hefren 26 Gordon Box 27 The Courageous Roy C. Naden 28 Bible Questions Answered Desmond Ford 30 The Power of Patience Arthur Hedley Straight from the Shoulder Question Box 32 Believe Anything? Can a person believe everything he reads in the Bible? S.F. The Bible is entirely trustworthy, but the usual literary rules must be employed in its study. For example, when one reads, "Curse God, and die," or "There is no God," it is important to notice the context. In the first instance, a faithless woman is talking and admonishing her more consecrated husband, and in the second case it is the fool who is characterized as denying the existence of God. See Job 2:9 and Psalm 14:1. Similarly the line, "Command that these stones be made bread," Matthew 4:3, is not a challenge for us to attempt a conjuring trick. It merely tells us how Satan tempted Christ to use His divine powers. Thus time and place factors must be taken into account in the study of Scripture. Many of the laws given to Israel were local and temporary and not obligatory upon us, whereas others by their very nature are eternal in obligation. It is possible to "rightly divide the word of truth" as we study the Word diligently, wholly, and prayerfully. 2 Timothy 2:15. • A publication of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, the SIGNS OF THE TIMES is printed and published monthly by the SIGNS PUBLISHING COMPANY (Australasian Conference Association Limited, Proprietors), Warburton, Victoria, Australia, and is registered as a periodical in Victoria. • All subscriptions should be accompanied by cash, such remittances being made payable to the Signs Publishing Company. All New Zealand remittances should be made by Money Order, as N.Z. Postal Notes or Stamps are not negotiable in Australia. Please notify changes of address promptly, stating both old and new addresses. -gabietiption Natei: .20 Single Copies One-year Subscriptions: Paid in Australia for mailing to addresses in Australia, Mandated Territories, and Pacific Islands $2.25 New Zealand (N.Z. Currency) .... $2.25 Single Copies .. .20 $3.15 Siens of the Times, January 1, 1971 :: Page 31 The Power of Patience by Arthur Hedley WE ARE APT to regard patience as a passive virtue—the exercise of meek endurance when sorely tried by others or when we suffer some grave misfortune. From the same Greek root for "patience" also comes "endureth" in Matthew 10:22 and I Corinthians 13:7. But patience is also a victorious quality. The Apostle James says: "Let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing." We are to allow it full scope, doing nothing to hinder its beneficent work in our lives. It leads to spiritual maturity. It is the work of patience to make us "perfect in every good work to do His will, working in you that which is well pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ." Hebrews 13:21. It is the work of "patience" to keep us trustful and tranquil in time of storm, to wait God's moment of deliverance. See Acts 27:20-25. It is the work of patience to keep us self-controlled under suffering, to enable us to continue in well doing despite obstacles and discouragements. The Apostle Paul's prayer for the believers in Thessalonica was that the Lord would direct their hearts "into the love of God, and into the patient waiting for Christ." 2 Thessalonians 3:5. Daily we have need to exercise patience with ourselves, with others, and with God in respect to prayer and the fulfilment of His promises. We are exhorted to "be patient toward all men." 1 Thessalonians 5:14. As our heavenly Father bears patiently with us and with all men, so we are to be Page 32 :: Signs of the Times, January 1, 1971 patient with our fellows. He is "long-suffering to usward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance." 2 Peter 3:9. There are some who try our temper and patience to the uttermost. At home or at work there may be those who make heavy demands on our small stock of patience, and we shall need that special grace which is promised to us in time of need. See 2 Corinthians 12:9, 10; Hebrews 2:18; 4:16. Some try us sorely by the slights and wrongs they inflict on us, by their want of consideration, their selfishness, their hasty speeches, their discourtesies, harsh judgments, sarcasm, neglect. We are apt to be discouraged and lose our patience, and thus our influence for good, because all our efforts to win others for Christ seem vain. Yet if we try to sit where they sit (Ezekiel 3:15), and by an effort of sympathetic imagination put ourselves in their place and consider their disadvantages, we will be able to maintain a true Christian attitude toward them and be in a position to help them. If only we knew the history of some, the secret battles fought with self and sin, the seasons of remorse witnessed by God alone, we would be far more lenient and sympathetic than we are. Chrysostom called patience "the king of virtues." It certainly brings many a blessing to those who practise it. It is the work of patience to keep us quiet, trustful, and unprovoked under the pressure of suffering, hostility, and injustice. We are reminded of the patience of Christ "who, when He was reviled, reviled not again; when He suffered, He threatened not; but committed Himself to Him that judgeth righteously." 1 Peter 2:23. There is a special need to exercise patience in respect to prayer. We pray for divine guidance as to our future, for the conversion of a loved one, a friend, a fellow worker, for the recovery of one stricken with some disabling weakness, but too often we lose heart and patience and give up praying. The psalmist said, "I waited patiently for the Lord"; and his patience was rewarded, for he added, "He inclined unto me, and heard my cry. He . . . set my feet upon a rock . . . He hath put a new song in my mouth." Psalm 40 :1-3. When all is against us and we are tempted to be impatient, to lose heart and hope, remember how patiently, tenderly God has dealt with us. Truly He is the "God of patience." Romans 15:5. We have "grieved Him by a thousand falls," but He has never cast us off. Truly "it is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is Thy faithfulness." Lamentations 3:22, 23. ** 2UE-950 kc. 2GN-1380 kc. 2LT-1370 kc. RADIO Tune in Every Sunday "These Times" weekly broadcast. 10.05 p.m. 8.30 p.m. 7.45 a.m. NEW SOUTH WALES 7.15 a.m. 2BS-1500 kc. 8.00 a.m. 2CA-1050 kc. 7.45 a.m. 2KA-780 kc. 8.15 p.m. 2KY-1020 kc. 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I ILI ti. l!5! 1, 1 1.1,1 PJIMILL.; 111.111111h STORIES AND PICTURES THAT MAKE THE BIBLE LIVE Parents, teachers, church and youth leaders, judges all agree: Good Books build Good Character and help young people to successfully meet the realities of life. - • 4 7,14e 0*.eatest Stogies ev,e*. 74061 itie Quatest Book ev,a, W4itteft In these ten beautiful BIBLE STORY volumes will be found : • More than 400 stories unexcelled in clarity of presentation. • Nearly 2,000 pages. • Full coverage of the Bible narrative. • Exquisite full-colour illustrations by nationally known artists at every page opening. • Reading enjoyment for every member of the modern family in clear easy-to-read type. The writer of these ten marvellous volumes, THE BIBLE STORY, Arthur S. Maxwell, is a worldrenowned editor, author, and lecturer. He is known and loved the world over by scores of millions who have read his everpopular BEDTIME STORIES series. nipuBLE is loved by boys and girls of all ages, for it is written in easily understood words. It is more colourfully illustrated than any other story of the Bible ever published, regardless of price. STORY Fill in and post to SIGNS PUBLISHING COMPANY Warburton, Victoria. 3799 Please supply without obligation further information on these ten wonderful volumes of THE BIBLE STORY. Name Address Postcode Actual Book Size
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