King's Business - 1920-08

738 hell of the Bible, and I do not know any worth while preachers who do.” Wm. E. Gladstone said that he had known sixty great intellects during his lifetime, and that all but six of the men who possessed them were firm believers in, the Bible. The author of the para­ graph above evidently classified him­ self as “ worth-while,” but Gladstone was not! Neither were the fifty-four men of great intellects he had known! And Paul was not worth while, nor Luther, nor Knox, nor Wesley, nor Adoniram Judson, nor Charles Finney, nor H. Clay Trumbull, nor A. T. Pier­ son, nor Andrew Murray, nor Dwight Moody, nor Wilbur Chapman! And there are intellectual and spiri­ tual giants in Evangelical ranks in these days of 1920— hundreds of them— in our pulpits that have not been invaded by modernism, in our great Bible schools and on our Bible-conference platforms. We refrain from naming them only be­ cause merely an approach to an adequate list would of itself fill a volume. The Evangelical Creed The Evangelical Church Basis or Creed is held in common by all Evangel­ ical Denominations, Baptist, Methodist, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Orthodox Congregational, Disciples and others. It consists of six great fundamental Bible truths, as follows: (1) the deity of Jesus, (2) the deity of the Holy Spirit, (3) the efficacy of the death of Christ as an atonement for sin, (4) the necessity for the regeneration of the sinner, (5) the actual resurrection of the body of Jesus, (6) the verbal inspiration of (the original manuscripts of) the scriptures,, generally expressed in the formula, “ we maintain the Holy Scriptures to be the only infallible rule of faith and prac­ tice.” Evangelicals or Conservatives are Christians who avow their faith in the Evangelical Church Basis, and who in accordance with Scriptural require­ ments commit themselves to the defense

THE K I N G ’ S B U S I N E S S

and proclamation of these fundamentals, and therefore of all the Bible, since the “ inspiration of the Scriptures” includes its every book and chapter. It is true, therefore, that if any mem­ ber of an evangelical church preaches or teaches anything contrary to the Evan­ gelical church basis, he classifies him­ self in the judgment of the spiritually discerning in his community as a man who professes one thing and lives an­ other. The Battle Field Scriptural Truth, being of heavenly origin and authorship, is on a plane so far above that of secular truth that it is on a mountain range lifted above the low level of all attainable earthly knowl­ edge; but the necessity for the New Birth a3 the condition of entrance into the safety and happiness of eternal life with God is as a peak rising from the crest of the range to the very heavens; for of all truths in all the universe this is, to man, the most important. The other five fundamentals of the Evangelical Church Basis are as it were, five pillars on which this, to man, su­ preme truth, rests. Without any one of the five, it were an impossibility. To render this peak truth ineffectual, by pulling away the pillars it rests upon, is the final aim of the great enemy of human souls. It is around this truth, therefore, that the war is raging; here is our battle­ field, though attacks may seem to be made only on the authorship of the Penateuch or of Isaiah or John, or on certain Chapters of Genesis or Luke. Evangelicals have many difficulties to overcome. Modernists have gained both numbers and ground. But our sky is not wholly overcast. We see blue enough for more than one sailor’s coat. Up to this time and especially in the half century just past, Modernists have been bold, aggressive, successful. They have captured many of our pulpits, our

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