August, 1942
T H E K I N G ’ S B U S I N E S S
284
Significance of the News By DAN GILBERT Washington/ D. C.r and San Diego, California ___________' •' ---------- -------------
THE "BE-DISCOVERY OF HELL"i • Voltaire said, “If there were no God, it would be necessary to invent one.” If there were no hell, it would be necessary to invent one! This is the conclusion to which even our un believing editors and magazines seem to be driven. When Heydrich “ the hangman,” torturer and murderer of innocent peoples, was slain, one of our most “ liberal” journals published an edi torial on the subject, “Heydrich in Hell.” Another p u b l i s h e d a long article under the caption, “Heydrich Died and Went to Hell.” The implication, whether fully ac knowledged by the writers or not, was that there had to be a hell to take care of persecutors and torturers. Yet It was only a few years ago that these liberal journalists were telling us, “No civilized person believes in hell” ; “The idea of eternal punish ment even of the most wicked of men is barbarous,” and “There is no room for a hell in a universe controlled by a loving God.” Those who argue against the ex istence of hell on “humanitarian” grounds are sentimentally concerned to make the hereafter pleasant and comfortable for those who willfully reject Christ. But God’s concern is to make eternity safe and secure for those who love Him and His right 1 eousness and His truth. An eternal, escape-proof hell is n e c e s s a r y to maintain the moral integrity of thè universe. In the midst of conditions which have unleashed upon mankind almost unprecedented waves o f S a t a n i c cruelty and inhumanity,^ thoughtful men are “re-discovering” Sell, and are coming to a new realization of the justice and necessity of its existence as a final abiding place for the ene mies of the God of truth and right eousness.
What About I •.
Re-discovery of sin Re-discovery of hell
THE "BE-DISCOVERY OF SIN"! • A thoughtful Senator recently ob served: “ In the midst of the indescrib able horrors of this incredible war, we have ‘re-discovered’ the awful fact of sin. That, at least, is a positive gain.” For two decades, the so-called civi lized peoples of the world have lost sight of sin. In our schools, it has been explained away as a rtiere by product of ignorance, which would inevitably be dispelled as scientific knowledge increased. Modern psychologists, denying the Satanic origin of sfn, maintained that misbehavior is wholly the result of “ complexes,” “ emotional immaturity,” “ glandular disturbances,” “bad en vironment,” “ lack of proper person ality-integration,” “ unbalanced ado lescent orientation,” etc. By the very technical words employed, the idea was conveyed that sin is some sort of mental or bodily maladjustment which is to be corrected by glandular extracts, vitamins, psychoanalysis, ed ucation, or social reform. It was slightly le s s .than fifteen years ago that a noted university pro fessor proclaimed, “What is called sin is simply a temporary phase of ado lescent emotional development.” The “ experts” might differ in their defini tions and descriptions, but they were agreed that sin was not to be taken seriously, that the advance of sci ence and culture were certain to effect the emancipation of humanity from its grip. As a malady mainly a f fecting youth, sin was viewed as a minor ailment, c o m p a r a b l e with measles or whooping cough. The misconception of scientists and educators regarding the nature of sin was largely due to their blind accept ance of the evolutionary theory that man is only a highly developed ani
Re-discoyery of the devil Re-discovery of the Bible
mal. According to this view, sin is supposed to be the manifestation of our “ brute inheritance.” Those who take this view are uniformly opti mistic over the future of mankind. They argue that as man evolves fur ther and further away from the jungle from which he originally sprang, he w ill slough off or leave behind ,more and more of the elements of his “ ani mal heritage.” But the war has upset all these conceptions of the character of sinful, unregenerate human nature. Com mentators still describe the tortures and outrages of the Gestapo as “ bes tial’.’ or “ brute-like” savagery. But could beasts be so brutal or savages be so savage? Only “ civilized” men, with highly trained minds and highly developed imaginations, possessed of all the devices of- modern science, could be so ingeniously fiendish. The conduct of the Nazis in Czecho slovakia and of the Japanese in China is not “ brute-like” ; it is Lucifer-like. It is not “ bestial” ; it is diabolical. It is not “savage”.; it is'Satanic. It is-not the outworking of an “ animal nature” ; it is the result of original sin. It is not the manifestation of “a heritage of animalism” ; it is the man ifestation of an inheritance of sin. , Unregenerate man misbehaves as he does, not because he “ belongs to the animal kingdom,” but because he belongs to Satan. The vicious deeds that he commits are not those of re mote “ animal ancestors” ; they are the deeds of his father, the. devil.
THE “RE-DISCOVERY OF THE DEVIL":
• “ Intellectual” m e n h a v e 1 0*1 g laughed at those who have been old- fashioned enough to believe in a personal devil, a literal hell, and original sin. As there is a revival ofTbelief in sin and hell, so is there [ Continued on Page 292]
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