HUNGER FOR GOD’S WORD IN POLAND An article in the Bible Society Record (Feb., 1983) features a large picture of a long line of people, three and four wide, stretching out of sight down the block, waiting to receive Bibles at the Bible House in Warsaw. According to the article in 1982 the Bible Society in Poland was able to print 150,000 Bibles, 45,000 New Testaments, 10,000 large print Bibles and 200,000 Gospel portions. There is no limit on the number of Bibles that can be printed in Poland, but production is restricted by the amount of paper, all of which has to be imported. The United Bible Societies have provided the paper for the printing of the Bibles printed last year and gifts to provide paper for 1983 are urgently needed.
AN OPPORTUNITY IN LIBERIA The same issue of the ABS Record reports that the government of Liberia has accepted the Bible Society New Reader Scriptures as part of the religious education curriculum in its primary schools and asked initially for 19,809 sets in English by March, 1983. Although English is the official language New Readers are also available in several other languages, among them Bassa, the tribe where the Christian Reformed Church missionaries are working.
“PRAYER IS NOT RECESS” is the title of an article by Joseph Bayly in his Out of My Mind column in Eternity (Feb., 1983). He registers his misgivings about the efforts to get prayer back in the public schools. He asks, “What is the purpose of prayer in public schools? Are we trying to compensate for what is lacking in the homes?” Quoting again: “I suspect that the reason prayer rather than Bible reading in the classroom has been targeted for congressional action is that the Bible is rigid, and unyielding, while prayer is as soft as you want to make it.” He calls attention to the fact that most “evangelical” Christians have abandoned the practice of family prayers and Bible reading—the “family altar”—so they want teachers to make up for their neglect just as they expect the schools to teach so many things that properly should be taken care of by the home.
“A VISIT TO MARS” Dr. Theodore Plantinga of Redeemer College recently visited the Mid-America Reformed Seminary in Orange City, Iowa, and gives his reactions in an interesting article in Christian Renewal (2/7/83). There are pictures of the faculty, the four original students and the building. The value of the property and furnishings is estimated at $300,000 on which very little debt remains. The Library already has 10,000 volumes and students have access to those of NorthWestern and Dordt Colleges. His personal reaction is stated as follows: “The dominate impression I received is that MARS is an old-fashioned Christian Reformed institution. As I breathed in the MARS atmosphere I was reminded of the 1950s, when I was a child growing up in the CRC . . . .”
THE LEGALITY OF A STAMP FOR THE 5OOTH ANNIVERSARY OF MARTIN LUTHER has been challenged by Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. They have asked the Postmaster General not to issue such a stamp because while they conclude Luther’s influence on secular history they warn that it might imply approval of his anti-Semitism. (Christianity Today 2/4/83)
“THE MOST FEARSOME JUDGEMENT” is the title of an article in Christian Renewal (2/17/83) taken over from Christianity Today and written by Charles Colson. His point is that the people of the United States and Western Europe are getting ripe for divine judgement. We usually think of such judgements in terms of natural and social disasters, e.g. Mt. St. Helen’s eruption, but Colson reminds us that Paul in Romans 1 teaches that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against unrighteousness especially by allowing men to become slaves of sin. He illustrates how this is exactly what is happening in many ways in our society today. The point is well taken, and we as affluent Christians do well to examine ourselves whether we are not also caught up in the self-serving, self-indulgent life style Colson describes.
SHIFT IN SEMINARIES The Editorial in the February 4, 1983, Christianity Today describes the change that has taken place in the seminaries of the U.S. in the last quarter century. Whereas in 1956 six of the ten largest seminaries were liberal, in 1982 all but one of them are conservative. Besides this many smaller conservative schools have sprung up and been accredited scholastically. Kenneth S. Kantzer cites statistics to show that the percentage of younger ministers under 30 who subscribe to such scriptural doctrines as a special creation of Adam and Eve and need of personal faith in Jesus Christ has increased remarkably. He states that this is all the more significant since this age group in the general populace is decidedly less orthodox and tends to be more liberal. This trend toward conservatism in the seminaries reflects a similar trend in the churches generally; and on the other hand, the entrance of graduates of conservative seminaries will tend to have influence toward more orthodox leadership in the churches. The facts given in this article are very encouraging and show that conservative Christianity is alive and well in much of the Church today.
“THE HISTORICAL METHOD” is the title of an article in The Christian Verdict, a newsletter of which Robert D. Brinsmead is chief editor. A few years ago this Australian author placed great emphasis on justification by faith and wrote many excellent articles in reaction to modernism and subjectivism. Lately he has become more and more enamored of “the historical method” and some of the ideas often associated with what is also called “the new hermeneutic.” He contends that many traditional interpretations of Scripture have been wrong since they did not do justice to the historical character of the Bible. He gives five illustrations, which space does not permit me to mention, of how the historical method changes our understanding of traditional interpretations of some very fundamental doctrines. It would appear that he is fighting strawmen, positions that are not really held by many Reformed scholars, but the net result of his arguments leaves us with a very attenuated understanding of the Bible as divine revelation for today.
O’HAIR LAUNCHES NEW CRUSADE An item in Moody Monthly (Feb. ‘83) tells us that atheist leader Madalyn Murray O’Hair has announced plans to fight tempts by fundamentalist Christians to influence the content of school textbooks. She feels that many textbooks are already “too Christian,” and said that attempts to combat secular humanism in the schools represent “a move to return us to the most idiotic religious fundamentalism that one can possibly suppose.” Her group plans to begin its campaign against such textbooks in Colorado and New York.