Avenue Congregational Church in Pas adena, The First Brethren Church of Long Beach and the Faith Bible Church of San Bernardino. Speakers for the con ference will include: Rev. Curtis B. Akenson, Dr. Vance Havner, Dr. Herbert Lockyer, Rev. Angelo LoVallo, Dr. John G. Mitchell, Dr. Walter M. Montano, Dr. Clarence S. Roddy, Dr. Gordon H. Smith and Dr. Louis T. Talbot. The con ference director is Dr. William W. Orr, head of the Extension Department. Fold ers giving a list of speakers and hours of meetings are available upon request. Dr. John Mackay, President of Princeton Theological Seminary, has re cently reported concerning his special mission to study the status of Protes tants in predominating Roman Catholic countries. Belgium, he reports, is benevolently neutral towards religion with the Pro testants confident, happy and grateful to God and to the government for the freedom which they enjoy. France is rigidly detached from religion but the 700,000 Protestants are important even out of all proportion to their numbers. Italy, strives to impede Protestant growth although the minority are supposedly guaranteed religious freedoms by the constitution. Italian Protestantism is not only holding its own but growing some. Portugal has about 15,000 Protestants and they enjoy relative freedom. Pro testants can get permission to open new places of worship and to hold public meeings, but Spain is a Protestant ghet to, worse than can be imagined. More than at any other time since the 16th cen tury, there is that feeling in Spain which believes that unity can only be main tained with complete adhesion to the Roman Catholic Church. Spain’s 20,000 Protestants are virtually isolated from normal life. What Dr. Mackay did not report on was the continual advance of Roman Catholicism in America. Without a doubt the Roman Catholic Church is training its greatest guns upon the- American nation, hoping to control some of the stupendous ability that America possesses. But while the American con stitution guarantees open church and free distribution of the Word of God, it will be some time before Catholicism can gain the strangle hold it desires. May God enable us to realize that liberty is the direct product of a complete faith in God and His Word. NEXT MONTH A Remarkable Series of Articles entitled “ INSIDE HOLLYWOOD” written by Mrs. Dorothy Clark Haskin, who spent eighteen years behind the footlights be fore her conversion to Christ, will begin in the February issue. The European Protestant Picture
look as good as possible. It is not our purpose to berate the school system. The task of training young Americans in this day when the youths themselves are careless, irresponsible and lazy is a hereulean one. What we do want to point out is this: The close affinity be tween modem educators and the liberal camp of religious thinkers is that the two go together. It seems that those who fail to believe in the truths of the Book of God are also those who espouse the cause of modem education. They turn their backs upon God’s power and in fluence in life and turn their faces toward so-called “ advanced methods of teaching.” Does it not stand to reason that if God, in the beginning, created the men tal capacity of men and children, He would be the one who would know best how this mental capacity could be in creased to fulfill its normal purpose ? Could there be any genuine education where God’s power was left out? Is it possible to really advance in learning when you wholly ignore the source of all true wisdom ? The Scriptures are quite emphatic to say that the fear of God (reverent trust in the Lord) is “ the beginning of wisdom.” Put God back into the curriculum and you have made a good start toward education. Leave God out of your lessons and the result is confusion and chaos. There is a book in the Old Testament which is packed full of wisdom. It is the book of Proverbs which ought to be in the curriculum of every school. It has something to say about the teach ing process as it points out that children need several things. They need first to be encouraged in their study by the use of stem methods, then the learning process is one that takes concentration, line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little. The re sult is a fully-educated person. Perhaps our modem educators, in the face of this shameful exposure, will be honest and sincere enough to turn back to the Book of God and start again where America left off a hundred years ago and once more come down the road of true learning. January 13 to 20 are. the dates of the 17th annual Torrey Memorial Bible Conference to be held in Southern Cal- fomia. This yearly feast of good things in the Word of God is held in honor of Dr. Reuben A. Torrey, one of the men of God who was invited by the foun ders, Lyman Stewart and T. C. Horton, to aid in bringing the Bible Institute into a place of real usefulness for the cause of Christ. The sessions this year will be held in the large and spacious downtown auditorium of the Church of the Open Door, at Sixth and Hope Streets in Los Angeles and in the newly-enlarged Lake Torrey Memorial Bible Conference to Open
branded it a fake. He had an identical picture in color which he had obtained from an air force laboratory technician in England in 1944. It had been taken over Europe and the picture of Christ had been painted in. Burnham had spoken out in the interest of truth, feel ing that the thing was being carried much too far. What is the lesson to be learned out o f this? While it is not impossible that such a likeness should appear in the sky, if it did so what would be its value ? Who, living today, knows at all what Christ looked like ? And if His image would appear in the sky, what would be its meaning? On the other hand, we hold in our hands a most unusual phe nomenon. It is not an uncertain picture hut rather the infallible, inerrant, eter nal Word of the living God, which con tains not merely a portrait of Christ, but every last thing a poor, needy sin ner needs to know as well as the com plete rules for a life that will be pleas ing to the God of the ages. The book can be purchased for as little as 26c and even within the pages of such an inex pensive volume can be found enough vital truth to save the world. This is the important thing in life: not signs or pictures, but the rich living treasure which is the Holy Scripture. May God give us the wisdom to put our faith in the Book which has been demonstrated overwhelmingly to be what it claims to be, the Book of all books, the Word of the living God. Modern Education To say that residents of Los Angeles were surprised, shocked and chagrined, would be putting it mildly! As a result of a survey in the Los Angeles high schools many amazing conditions about the educational processes and their re sults among Southern California young people were disclosed. The tests were given to students with a normal IQ of 75 or better and were not aimed to measure the students’ scholastic achieve ment levels but were designed to test their knowledge in the minimum essen tials of arithmetic, English, history, civics and geography. Some of the results were these: Three per cent of the Juniors could not tell the time of day. Eighteen per cent didn’t know how many months there were in a year. Nine per cent didn’t know how many 3-cent stamps could be bought for 75 cents. Sixteen per cent didn’t know anything about the Fourth of July ex cept that they didn’t have to go to school on that day. Four per cent didn’t know the alphabet. Fifty per cent didn’t know how many United States Senators were permitted each state. Fourteen per cent didn’t know that the word “ writting” was misspelled. This then is the result of modern edu cation and as it comes from the edu cators themselves it is quite safe to assume that they have made the report
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