That evening, a group of Christian businessmen gather in a frame house in Ridgefield Park, New Jersey, and go to their knees in prayer. They are the Home Council of the L.A.M. Men like lawyer Jacob Stam, insurance magnate Richard Woike, pastor Herrmann Braunlin, veteran mis sionary William Thompson, men who take an unusually in tense interest in every move of the Mission. All major decisions pass through their monthly councils, and every one is made carefully and prayerfully. Thus ends another day for just one of the faith missions that are doing such a noble job for Christ throughout the world. Oh, how much the prayer support of Christians in the homeland means to these.young churches, these national Christians, these missionaries and mission executives! May each one of us purpose to be more faithful in doing our part, whatever it may be, in the missionary enterprise of the world.
And in other parts of the Spanish-speaking world, the influence of the Mission is felt in a multitude of ways. In the capital of Nicaragua, a city-wide evangelistic campaign with opera star Anton Marco is in progress under the sponsorship of the L.A.M. Already more than a hundred have professed Christ in the co-operative series, and the open-air meetings have been attended by as many as 2,000 a night. A boat sailing from Panama to Chile carries a load of Editorial Caribe books; an airplane leaving Costa Rica has a new series of Bible correspondence studies for a pastor in Argentina; a young man in Venezuela is praying for funds to send him to seminary in Costa Rica next year. In Chicago, a young bride writes her family that she and her husband have just been accepted as missionaries to serve in the children’s home in Costa Rica.
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By I. B. MARCHBANKS
R omans 5:14, refers to Adam as “the figure of him that was to come.” This section of Romans is dealing with the first sin of the first man, Adam, and tells us that “ as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned” (v. 12). For it was upon the occasion of the sin of the first man Adam, that Jehovah God promised that One should come, One designated as the seed of the woman, who would deal a death blow to “ that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan” (Rev. 12:9), the author of sin. Jehovah God spake thus unto the serpent: “ And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel” (Gen. 3:15). In reading the creation account in Genesis 1 and 2, we see that man is the direct creation of God. He did not start ages ago as some small protoplasm or other form of life, and gradually evolve into his present state. Rather, “ the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul” (Gen. 2 :7). Man is absolutely distinct from the animal creation, “ for Adam there was not found an help meet for him” (Gen. 2:20). Being the direct creation of God, and deriving his life from Him, man was responsible to God, and that responsi bility remains the same. But our main interest in Adam in this .article is as a type of Christ “ the figure [ type ] of him that was to come.” The fact that Adam’s career parallels Christ, is further brought before us in the fifteenth chapter of First Corin thians, where we read: “ For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be
sinned” (Rom. 5:12). So by Christ comes life and restoration. “ Our Saviour Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel” (2 Tim. 1 : 10 ). When Adam sinned, he carried the whole creation down into ruin with him self. Of that fair creation, of which it is written that “ God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good” (Gen. 1:31), He now says unto Adam; “ Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; Thoms also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return” (Gen. 3:17-19). In contrast, we read of Christ, that, instead of bringing a curse, as did Adam, He was “made a curse” (Gal. 3:13), and we read that the Roman soldiers “ platted a crown of thorns [the symbol of the curse], and put it about his head” (Mark 15:17). When He comes again, “the creation [which] was subjected to vanity, not of its own will, but by reason of him who subjected it, in hope” (Rom. 8:20, A.S.V.), then “ the creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God” (Rom. 8:21, A.S.V.). By Adam, ruin; by Christ, deliverance. For, Adam was made lord over crea tion, and when he fell, it fell with him.
made alive . . . And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit” (w . 22, 45). As we seek to see a pattern of Christ in Adam, let us re member that types teach us by contrast, as well as by parallelism, and, in the main, Adam is a contracting type of Christ. Of the untold billions of people who have walked this earth, only two, Adam and Christ have had bodies which did not come of natural generation. As we have already noticed, Adam was created directly by God. “ So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them . . . And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul” (Gen. 1:27; 2:7). The Lord Jesus Christ, when He came into this world to die for our sins, took a body “ prepared” of God. “ Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me” (Heb. 10:5). He was conceived in the womb of the virgin by the power of the Holy Spirit. He came into this world mirac ulously, as the virgin-born One, and not by ordinary generation. As the angel of the Lord said unto Joseph: “ Fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus: for he shall save his people from their sins” (Matt. 1:20, 21). The human race was plunged into death and ruin by Adam. “ Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have
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