Dear Editor, THE OUTLOOK
We are alarmed by the prospect of a treaty binding the U.S. in an inferior position to the U.S.S.R. There are two major objections:
1. Communist policy, and the Soviet record hears this out, is to ignore or subvert any portion of a written agreement that is not to their advantage.
2. The U.S.S.R, is given a numerical superiority in weapons which is contrary to the defense of our hard-earned Freedom.
We urge all our Senators to vote against ratification of this dangerous pact. May we remind you that Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain announced on return from Munich that a similar pact would bring “peace in our time.”
Richard Wurmbrand, a minister held fourteen years in Communist prison, states in his book: In God’s Underground, “Communists all have one aim: to carry the Communist revolution through the world, and uproot religion.” “I admire no progress that is bought with tears and blood, however impressive it may look from the outside.” “A visitor to Egypt in ancient times would have been amazed by Pharaoh’s monuments, but God did not admire them. They were the work of slaves, whom God sent Moses to free. In Russia and its satellites today, slave labor is building the houses, factories, and schools you talk about. And what is being taught in the schools? Hatred of everything Western.”
More than 2,000,000 Americans have signed petitions to the President, stating they are against all aid and trade with our Communist enemies. Far from being apathetic, they recognize that there can be no real peace in joining with the Communists.
Sincerely,
DR. and MRS. DAVID KEM
Irving, Texas
Dear Rev. Vander Ploeg,
Your recent editorial “Quest For The Kingdom” came as a fresh wind of encouragement to those of us engaged in the work of world missions. I am grateful for your emphatic statement of Christian priority, though I am also sure that many will attempt to take issue with the position you set forth.
It seems clear to me that one great work of the Holy Spirit in our time is getting across to God’s people this vision of the Kingdom of God. The church, it seems to me, is growing in the awareness that the work to be done is all-embracing, involving all of God’s people everywhere, and not only certain paid agents, and certainly not only the clergy. After all, the people are the church, and they all have resources and talents to bring to bear on the task ahead as we look forward to Christ’s return.
Your detractors will try to say that such talk denigrates conversion and even smacks of the social gospel. Well, the Gospel certainly is social as well as individual, and we had better not deny either, or sacrifice one to the other. Indeed, as you point out so clearly, when we sense the priority of the Kingdom, then evangelism gets into focus, and we can truly sense the worth of men’s souls.
The danger on the other hand, of course, is to horizontalize the Gospel and then cal! such endeavor “kingdom-work.” All sorts of humanistic endeavors can acquire a pious sheen when that happens. Nominal Christians easily use the “kingdom work” appellation to sanctify projects that are no more than humanitarian. But that, of course, is not Calvinism, either.
The godly art is to steer between those two poles of unbiblical extremism. am grateful for your efforts in the practice of that art in the quest for the kingdom.
EUGENE RUBINGH
Grand Rapids, Michigan
We are alarmed by the prospect of a treaty binding the U.S. in an inferior position to the U.S.S.R. There are two major objections:
1. Communist policy, and the Soviet record hears this out, is to ignore or subvert any portion of a written agreement that is not to their advantage.
2. The U.S.S.R, is given a numerical superiority in weapons which is contrary to the defense of our hard-earned Freedom.
We urge all our Senators to vote against ratification of this dangerous pact. May we remind you that Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain announced on return from Munich that a similar pact would bring “peace in our time.”
Richard Wurmbrand, a minister held fourteen years in Communist prison, states in his book: In God’s Underground, “Communists all have one aim: to carry the Communist revolution through the world, and uproot religion.” “I admire no progress that is bought with tears and blood, however impressive it may look from the outside.” “A visitor to Egypt in ancient times would have been amazed by Pharaoh’s monuments, but God did not admire them. They were the work of slaves, whom God sent Moses to free. In Russia and its satellites today, slave labor is building the houses, factories, and schools you talk about. And what is being taught in the schools? Hatred of everything Western.”
More than 2,000,000 Americans have signed petitions to the President, stating they are against all aid and trade with our Communist enemies. Far from being apathetic, they recognize that there can be no real peace in joining with the Communists.
Sincerely,
DR. and MRS. DAVID KEM
Irving, Texas
Dear Rev. Vander Ploeg,
Your recent editorial “Quest For The Kingdom” came as a fresh wind of encouragement to those of us engaged in the work of world missions. I am grateful for your emphatic statement of Christian priority, though I am also sure that many will attempt to take issue with the position you set forth.
It seems clear to me that one great work of the Holy Spirit in our time is getting across to God’s people this vision of the Kingdom of God. The church, it seems to me, is growing in the awareness that the work to be done is all-embracing, involving all of God’s people everywhere, and not only certain paid agents, and certainly not only the clergy. After all, the people are the church, and they all have resources and talents to bring to bear on the task ahead as we look forward to Christ’s return.
Your detractors will try to say that such talk denigrates conversion and even smacks of the social gospel. Well, the Gospel certainly is social as well as individual, and we had better not deny either, or sacrifice one to the other. Indeed, as you point out so clearly, when we sense the priority of the Kingdom, then evangelism gets into focus, and we can truly sense the worth of men’s souls.
The danger on the other hand, of course, is to horizontalize the Gospel and then cal! such endeavor “kingdom-work.” All sorts of humanistic endeavors can acquire a pious sheen when that happens. Nominal Christians easily use the “kingdom work” appellation to sanctify projects that are no more than humanitarian. But that, of course, is not Calvinism, either.
The godly art is to steer between those two poles of unbiblical extremism. am grateful for your efforts in the practice of that art in the quest for the kingdom.
EUGENE RUBINGH
Grand Rapids, Michigan