THE CONQUEST OE FEAR By Dr. Walter A. Maier Now home in G lory , D r. .H a ler's powerfu l messages over "T h e Lutheran H o u r " w ill long be remembered fo r the challenge given around the w orld .
“Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Sav iour, which is Christ the Lord.” — Luke 2:10, 11 N o emotion that stirs the human heart is more disastrous than fear. In its intense forms it often paralyzes the brain, stuns the entire body and produces the cold sweat of terror. Less severe, in the form of a hundred worries, it helps streak the hair with gray and dig furrows into countenances. Fear besets its victims with shadowy phobias; it rides in hysterical flights; it sucks joy out of life and chokes off all peace of mind. We must understand in a personal way that all care and worry, fright and terror, pain and horror, must be traced, directly or indirectly to the influence of sin. Fear began with the first transgression when man, answer ing God’s call, “Where art thou?” confessed: “ I heard Thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid.” And be hind every fear in our lives lurks sin, either our own or someone else’s wrongdoing. Only when our iniquity is removed, can fear be successfully exiled. How then — and this search ing question arises daily from mil lions of souls — can sin be removed and its reign of terror ended? How, indeed, unless they hasten in penitent but believing faith to Beth lehem, the Judean village, and behold in the cradled Babe the Saviour of their souls? When though a hundred fears and a thousand terrors threaten them, once they hear the shepherd’s invitation “ Come, let us go even unto Bethlehem,” and, accepting this invi tation find in the Christ Child, God manifest in the flesh, all their sins are forgiven: and with transgressions removed, they need fear neither God, their fellowmen nor their own accus ing conscience. Their fear will be transformed into courage, for nothing less than this is the promise of the first Christmas carol: “ Fear not: for,
behold I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all people. For unto you is bom this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.” Because the slow centuries had run their course and the “ fullness of time” brought Him who was “ to save His people from their sins” ; because — contradicting our poor powers of understanding — the Jesus of Beth lehem is the only begotten Son of God and the virgin-bom Son of Mary; because — and this is the foundation trust of Christianity (if you believe in Him, no matter who you are and what you are and where you are, you can be saved now and forever), “ Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners,” in Him we find for giveness, granted by pure, unearned, undeserved grace. “It is,” exults the apostle, “ the gift of God.” — And with that forgiveness comes the com plete conquest over fear. In the name of Christ you can face the multiplied forces of sin and chal lenge: “ You may seek to indict men before the tribunal of my conscience and before my God; but in the new bom Saviour I have the ‘Wonderful, CHRISTMAS MEDITATION Suppose that Christ had not been born That far away Judean morn. Suppose that God, whose mighty hand Created worlds, had never planned A way for man to be redeemed. Suppose the Wise Men only dreamed That guiding star whose light still glows Down through the centuries. Suppose Christ never walked here in men’s sight, Our blessed way, and truth, and light. Suppose he’d counted all the cost, And never cared that we were lost.
Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul, to keep, if I should die before I wake, I KNOW the Lord my soul will take! Counsellor, the mighty God, the ever lasting Father, the Prince of Peace.’ ” With faith in His atonement you can confront the battalions of hell and exult: “You may hold momentary and short-lived triumph over me when in heedless moments I give the lie to my Christian conviction, but by faith in God’s Son, who descended from the realms of heavenly splendor to the lowliness of His nativity, I re ceive power to tear off the bonds that would bind me to hell.” You can meet the last enemy, death, and exult: “The paralysis of your withering blight may grasp this body in its greedy clutch when I return to the dust from which I was taken, yet by the death and resurrection of my deathless Redeemer I know that I, too, will live again in a heaven of sinless, stainless beauty.” Come, then, and whatever your problem is, follow the guiding shep herds to the manger! Believe that by accepting this Saviour, the Word made flesh, the Immanuel of fulfilled prophecy, as your Saviour, fear is transformed into radiant faith, the tears of heart-wrung sorrow into a sparkling diadem of hope, the dread ashes of rankling bitterness into the beauty of holiness!
And never died for you and me. Nor shed his blood on Calvary Upon a shameful cross. Suppose That having died he never rose.
And there was none with power to save Our souls from darkness and the grave! As far as piteous heathen know, These things that I’ve “supposed” — are so! —Martha Snell Nicholson
DECEMBER, 195B
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