The power of the Gospel

The piece before this was taken from a book entitled ‘On the Indian Trail in Paraguay and Brazil’. It was written by Rev Harry Whittington who went out to Paraguay in 1907 with a Scottish society called ‘The Inland-South America Missionary Union’, a forerunner of several other missions including the ‘New Testament Missionary Union’. His book remarkable in many ways; it is also understated and, at times, infuriating in that vital pieces of information are not supplied. All that can be forgiven as it was written in old age, probably in the early 1960’s after its writer had retired from the pastorate of Shettleston Free Church of Scotland, Glasgow. Whittington went on a highly dangerous trip to the ‘wild, dangerous, bloodthirsty tribe’ of the Cavegeas with two companions. Joao had been a hit-man and was responsible for three murders, his wife Elena, a witchdoctor, responsible for only one. She had fled from the Cavegeas to escape revenge, but after the extraordinary conversion of both of them she wanted to return to tell the gospel to her own people who she had left thirteen years before. Unable to read or write, she had translated in her head Frances Ridley Havergal’s hymn, ‘I gave my life for thee’ (presumably out of Portuguese) and she wished to sing it to them:

‘In the evening we held our first service among the Cageveas; there, tight up in the mountains, we endeavoured to sing the songs of Zion. Then Elena began to sing the hymn she had translated. Although the music resembled a witch-doctor’s wail more than the original tune, her people were keenly interested and listened most attentively. Then we tried to tell them in the simplest language the story of man’s fall, his rebellion against his Creator, and his separation from God through sin, and of God’s love for sinful men and women. It was a wonderful, yet humbling, experience to stand in the midst of those who had never heard the Gospel, to bring before them the reality of sin, of death, and a coming judgment, and of an eternity that will never end, then to tell of God’s marvellous love revealed in the gift of His Son to pay the price of man’s redemption by His death on the Cross, and point them to the Lamb of God whose blood alone can cleanse the guilty soul from every sin. When finished, one felt somewhat embarrassed (perhaps through lack of faith) to see all present, men and women, trooping forward to express their desire to follow the Lord. Fearing that they did not understand the message given and what it entailed, we attempted to point out some of the difficulties they would encounter in the path, and what following the Lord meant; then we asked Elena to explain to them in their own language that the Christian life was one of self-denial; but to no purpose. On they came until every one in the audience expressed his or her desire to follow Christ as their Saviour. Never before had I such an experience’

The same happened in every village they went to, and went fierce opposition broke out later ‘in spite of the adversary many were standing true, desiring to follow the Lord cost what it might.’

On the Indian trail

I have just recently read a most fascinating book about gospel work in Paraguay and the Matto Grosso region of Brazil. I would like to quote from it further on another occasion, but here is an extract that appalled me for more than one reason:

‘One of the saddest things we encountered among the Cageveas was the small number of children to be seen, in a community of fifteen or more families, the children of school age and under could be counted on one’s fingers. The greater number of little ones are killed either before or after birth. On enquiring the reason for such wholesale murder of little ones, we were told that owing to their custom of unfaithfulness (as a rule, two never live very long together) the mother, being deserted by the father and not wishing to be encumbered, breaks the little one’s neck at birth, if it is not successfully destroyed before birth. The tribe, as a consequence, is rapidly dying out.’

How wonderful is progress; now it can all be done in hospital!

Cum privilegio

Further to my little piece on the AV – authorized or appointed – I see that the first edition of the 1611 Bible had in its considerable list of preliminaries a woodcut of the coat of arms of James1 and underneath, Cum privilegio Regiae Maiestas. In current AV’s this is reduced to Cum privilegio beneath a different coat of arms, and means nothing to most of us. According to Gordon Campbell (Bible – The Story of the King James Version, Oxford University Press) the full Latin inscription means ‘By the authority of the king’. We might quibble slightly with that translation, but I think there is little doubt that this is its intent; in which case those scholars who say that the AV was never ‘authorized’ are mistaken. Personally, I find any reference to King James inappropriate; all he did was make provision for a new translation of the Bible to take place and he had no authority for doing that anyway. I find it strange that most Bibles have on their cover ‘The Holy Bible’, yet that is the one thing you never hear anyone call it. Why don’t ministers announce the reading thus: ‘Hear the words of the Holy Bible from…’?

Rhetoric over reality

Reading some Evangelical literature recently I was struck by the rhetoric being used – and this by good and wise Christian leaders. You would think that the gospel was really affecting the people in the towns and cities of our country. Yet, reading the secular newspapers I cannot help being struck by the way in which the standards and values that are the legacy of Christian influence in the past are more and more rejected and a rampant secularism embraced. How is it that we can be so exuberant in the face of the ignorance of Christian truth and basic morality that we see on every hand? Of course, it is true that the gospel is still the power of God for the salvation of all who believe, but it is not gospel victories we are seeing in our nation. There are some conversions, but it is the powers of darkness that are triumphing today. When are we going to face the situation seriously?

Ernest Kevan - sin and law

Near where I lived at one time there was an open common, through the middle of which there ran a busy main road. It was the custom of mothers to permit their little ones to play on the part of the common near their homes, but to forbid them to cross the busy road to the other section. The road was the boundary, and if a child crossed it in order to play in what seemed the more attractive part of the common, his action would be transgression – ‘trans’ (across) ‘gression’ (going). The drawing of the boundary line was not with the view to denying the child any pleasure; it was a boundary of loving wisdom. In the same way, the boundary of God’s holy law, that has been put like a vast circle around our lives, is a limit of love drawn by infinitely wise and tender goodness in God. This boundary – the law of God – is nevertheless authoritative, just as the word of a parent to a little child, and the transgression of this boundary is a breaking of God’s commandment.

Authorized or Appointed?

22011 sees the 400^th anniversary of what we know as the Authorized Version of the Bible. However, scholars seem to differ about the accuracy of that title. According to David Daniell it was only in 1842 that this appeared on its title page; previously it was always ‘Appointed to be read in churches’ – Anglican churches, of course. Oddly enough I have a Cambridge AV – whoops! – which sticks with ‘Appointed’, while one printed by Oxford adds ‘Authorized King James Version’, which gets in just about everything that could be. The translation itself was authorized by King James, but that is covered by ‘Translated… by his Majesty’s special command’.

If you look carefully you will see this actually says: ‘Translated out of the original tongues: and with former translations diligently compared and revised.’ In fact the KJV is essentially and intentionally a revision of the earlier Bishops’ Bible. Either by design or good fortune this was a master-stroke. The revision, which was certainly an improvement, lost the earlier name thus making it more acceptable to those who did not believe in episcopacy (though it still had the word ‘bishop’ in the translation).

It is a fact that the KJV was slightly archaic even when it appeared; it did not reflect ordinary English usage of the day. In addition, in those days ‘thou’ was not a term of respect or reverence, but of familiarity. It was equivalent to ‘tu’ in French and in Spanish. To pray ‘Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be THY name’ emphasized the familiarity with which a child would speak to a father. It is surprising, as well as irritating, that people today sometimes plead for the exact opposite of the sense which ‘thee’, ‘thou’ and ‘thy’ once had and which became redundant long ago.

LBC reunion!

Last weekend I was preaching at the Anniversary services of Broughton Evangelical Church. Great Broughton and Little Broughton lie more or less at the centre of the Maryport, Cockermouth and Workington triangle in north-west Cumbria. What is remarkable is that for all the services there were five old students from London Bible College present and six on the Saturday evening: Gordon Taylor, Brian Campbell, Elizabeth Campbell, John Fisher, myself and my wife Mary. Of these all but Elizabeth were at LBC in the late 50’s; she started her course in 1965 just after the death of Dr Kevan. It was a great pleasure to renew old acquaintances and also to be thankful for God’s preserving mercy over the years. I hope to be able to include a picture of five of us later. The small chapel was well-filled on the Saturday evening as friends came from other churches to give thanks and encouragement. I tried to emphasize the importance of the historicity of the Gospels for apologetics and, in particular, apologetic preaching, especially as this leads directly to Jesus Christ himself. In adopting this approach I was influenced by some words of Dr Kevan when was speaking to missionaries in India, in 1960: ‘We have to remember that our Christian faith is historically based. In my short journeys in India I had a number of conversations with educated Indian gentlemen, in the aeroplane and in the train, and one of the hardest things I found in these conversations was to get these men to admit the historical basis of our faith. They would say, “Everybody has his own ideas about religion”. My answer was to confront them with the facts, the historical facts of God incarnate in the Person of Jesus Christ, who lived and suffered under Pontius Pilate. I tried to show them that the saving work of Christ is a thing that can be placed geographically, and be pinpointed chronologically. They would then go off again on some philosophical discussion of religious abstractions.’