Red-HotRattlefortheHumanMind
By Ralph Bell
E VIL ideas are the devil’s specialty. As an expert vendor of this mer chandise, he sees to it that these ideas are well concealed. He makes cer tain that the barbed hook is completely hidden in good-looking material. His first sale to the first human pair was a true pattern of his successive exploits. “ Ye shall not surely die . . . ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil,” was the misleading label on the first evil idea he ever sold to man. Paying more attention to the sugar- coated subtility of the devil than to the plain statements of the Lord, Adam and his wife swallowed the lie in one fast gulp. Immediately they started on the downward plunge. Today, after thousands of years of listening to Satan rather than to God, the human race now finds itself totter ing on the precarious edge of a jutting precipice. This is impressive evidence of Satan’s success in peddling his well- stocked shelves of evil ideas to men. None can deny the powerful influence of ideas. We are essentially creatures of reason. Everything yet invented is but the representation of an idea. Every book, every painting, every automobile, every farm implement is but an idea worked out. The whole world rolls along on the well-oiled wheels of either good or bad ideas. The serious side of this is that man has the power to turn his mind to other things than those God intended. This abuse of liberty carries with it an awful penalty. Woe be to the man whom God gives over to a “reprobate mind!” Woe be to the nation which God leaves to its own evil inclinations! Woe be to the world when God permits it to sink into a hell of its own making! Today the “battle for the mind” is raging on all fronts. To seize control of the control room itself is the main issue. This goal is a great prize. He who con trols human thinking controls the race! Taking every advantage of modern com munication and information, the devil is making a determined effort to feed his thoughts into human minds. The issues are plain. The battle is be tween those who believe all things can be explained by natural laws, and those who believe God has a hand in the nat ural universe. The struggle is between the forces of secularism and evangelical Christianity, those who are satisfied with formality and dead orthodoxy, and those who want an aggressive church fired by the Spirit of God. Everywhere it is a battle between those who want to liberate the human mind into a God- ordained freedom, and those who want to groove human thinking into an evil and regimented rut.
The international scene has become one vast contest of propaganda. The air is filled with it. So great is the volume of words that Mr. Average Citizen is confused by the mass of charges, coun tercharges, and name-calling. This “war of words” is designed to capture the thinking and attention of the masses. It is subtle, evil and god less. Recently a man in high office prayed, “ Lord help us to do something about the problem of lying, called propa ganda.” Nowhere is the “ battle for the mind” hotter than on the international front. How carefully the Lord cautioned His ancient people to guard their thinking! “ Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.” The Old Testa ment system of sacrifices, ordinances, feasts, rituals and sabbaths was de signed to keep the people’s minds occu pied with the Lord. Today we need urgently the strength of the Holy Spirit to keep our minds concentrated on heavenly things. Perhaps more than any other person, the Apostle Paul experienced what he wrote, “We wrestle not against flesh and blood.” The Scripture does not speak in vain of “ the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world.” He who was a “murderer from the beginning,” now has master-minded a plan to throw the whole human race in a fearful cauldron of blood and slaugh ter. Lashing the nations with jealousy, hatred, greed, and fear, the great antag onist of humanity is whipping up the nations to an Armageddon of self- annihilation. “ Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature,” is a com mand to convert the world to God’s way of thinking. True, it is a message of salvation. But what is salvation? Is it not accepting God’s ways for our ways? Does He not say, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord” ? In a couple of sentences Paul summed up the rec ord of man, “ Destruction and misery are in their ways: And the way of peace have they not known.” Charles Finney once said, “ What is history but the shameful chronicle of human wicked ness?” How we think, or how it is possible for us to think, is still pretty much of a mystery. But somehow we do think. And what we think has a powerful effect upon society. What .floods of evil a few godless dictators have wrought in the last few years! What evil has been (Continued on Page 23) T H E K I N G ' S B U S I N E S S
Clarence Roddy
Vance Havner
of the world and declared that all gov ernments and institutions and systems existed for man and not man for them. He declared man to be created in the image of God and stated that His pri mary end was to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. Thus He stated the essence of democracy and true religion.” And Dr. Vance Havner said: “We are not to be open-minded about some things. If you go around with your mouth open and never clamp down on solid food, you’ll starve. And if you go around open-minded and never close down on dogmatic truth, you’ll starve spiritually. “We must get beyond hot-chocolate huddles in church basements and boldly preach a gospel that is dynamite, not sachet-powder, if we are to move this generation. “ God does not say, ‘Tolerate that which is evil’ but ‘abhor that which is evil.’ “Judas betrayed Jesus with a kiss —not a slap. More people are betraying the Lord with a show of affection than any other way. “ Paul was faithful to the faith (‘I have kept the faith’) ; faithful to the fight (‘I have fought a good fight’) ; and faithful to the finish (‘I have finished my course’ ). “ Some think they are mystics, when they are just mistakes.” So “the blessings came down” and the conference was a success. Just how great was that success will not be fully deter mined until we stand before the throne of God and see the effect of God’s Word in Christian lives. Without doubt some “other lost sheep” will be there because young people heeded the call presented by the missionaries and gave their all for the evangelization of the lost world.
J. Arthur Mouw Page Twelve
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