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T H E K I N G ' S B U S I N E S S
April-May, 1933
THE OXFORD GROUP MOVEMENT [Continued, from page 129]
will eternally separate a man from God. There is no intimation given that it has outraged the righteousness of God, and that one day the justice of God will deal with it and with the sinner, unless a man is sep arated from it and it from him through the death of Christ. Men have lost their sense of sin today because they have lost the vi sion of a holy God. Sin, as defined in For Sinners Only, would be perfectly accept able to modernists, Unitarians, and ethical preachers. T he I ntroduction of the C onfessional The third criticism we make is that the Oxford Group attempts to introduce into the Protestant Church the confessional. ' It is a well-known fact, and admitted by even many Roman Catholic adherents, that the confessional is and always has been an abomination. The establishment of a lay men’s confessional will not prove any bet ter than that of the Roman Church. The Group bases its belief in a confessional upon James S:16 which reads, “Confess your faults one to another.” That verse is to be interpreted in the light of Matthew 5:23, 24: “If thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee; leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.” Another verse which they emphasize is 1 John 1 :9 : “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” If that verse refers to a-confession to man, then all through the centuries, the Roman Catholic Church has been right and the Protestant Church has been wrong. It does not take any spiritual insight to see that the confession referred to is to be made to our great High Priest, our Advocate, and "he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteous ness.” The Bible teaches that confession should be made. Confession should be made first of all to God. Read carefully Psalm 51, “Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight.” We are also exhorted to confess to one another, if we have wronged a brother and are able to rectify it. Confession and restitution should be made. When Zacchaeus met.the Lord, he said, “Half of my goods I give to the poor ; and if I have taken any thing from any man by false accusation, I re store him fourfold.” It is every man’s re sponsibility to do this; but as for men con fessing in a general way, rehearsing the de tails of their sins and “sharing” them, we find no such command in God’s Word. In fact, we find a command distinctly forbid ding it in Ephesions 5:3, 11, 12. It is_my opinion that the Oxford Move ment is a subtle attempt to break down that seemingly unsurmountable barrier be tween Romanism and the Protestant Church. Through the centuries, the Order of the Jesuits have realized that the objec tion of Protestantism to the confessional and its evils must be overcome if there is ever to be a united Christendom under the head of thé Roman Catholic Church. The Anglo-Catholics in England are very active in endeavoring to introduce prayers for the dead into the prayer book, and the con fessional into the church. Many Anglo- Catholics in days gone by have proved to be Jesuits.^ To say the least, it is a very sig nificant thing that the Anglo-Catholics find
a great appeal in the Oxford Movement To my mind, it is just another step in the progress of the Evil One to bring about that great religious confederacy, “the great whore,” that is described in Revela tion 17 and 18. In For Sinners Only, page H we read, “It [the Oxford Movement] may speed up the reunion of Christendom, even Catholic and Protestant.” Christians, think this statement through; it is very significant. During my conversation with members of the Oxford Group, one of the leaders of
a good father, a good mother, a good citi zen, etc. But there is in them no demand for an inward change (cf. 2 Cor. 5:17), no requirement for faith in the Christ who died for our sins and rose again for our justification. I do not care what a system does for a man, or to what degree it may change him, if that system denies the fun damental principles of saving faith, or if it ignores them, or remains passive and gives no place to them in the public utterances of its leaders, that system is not of God. In a word, to my mind the Oxford Move ment is a bundle of “wheat and tares,” made up of men who believe the funda mentals of faith and those who do not know what it is all about, and they are able to get along as well as they seemingly do because there is no doctrinal basis on which the Movement is based. What we need, what we have always needed, and will need until the coming of the Lord Himself is a message which gives to Christ and His cross the central and par amount position, which views sin as God views it as exceedingly sinful, and which accepts the Word of God as the infallible rule of faith and practice. Such a message is the gospel of the grace of God, and when preached in the power of the Holy Ghost, it opens the gates of heaven to men and women, dead in trespasses and sin. What new message can do as much? [This address, amplified and in booklet form, is available through the Biola Book Room, 558 South Hope Street, Los Angeles, at five cents a copy, plus postage in large quantities.] Of the 200 new missionaries called for by the China Inland Mission, the Bible Insti tute of Los Angeles has furnished almost ten per cent—eighteen missionaries, to be exact. One of them, John G. Fee, '30, writes of the blessed fellowship which was enjoyed in the language school at Anking, where seventy-three workers were gather ed. He has been designated to work in Hanchung, She., China. “The only way to make Christ known in China,” he declares, “is through preaching. Tracts will doubt less reach some, but there are many who cannot read. All along the road over which we traveled to our station, there were many towns and villages—to say nothing of large walled cities—utterly devoid of the gospel.” Mrs. G. Ben Swier (Martina Praetorius, ’32) is serving the Lord in Pullman, Wash., where her husband is a college professor. “Pullman is a needy field, with its thou sands of students and large faculty,” she writes, “but spiritually, it would be a bar ren waste to me were it not for the Word of God and prayer.” Worldliness prevails to a sad extent in the churches. There is no evangelistic or evangelical work being carried on among the students. Mrs. Swier and her husband have each been given a class of high school young people to teach in a church that has little spiritual fervor, and they are having a real ministry among them. They are also in charge of the high school Epworth League. They are bravely standing for the Lord in a hard place, and God is honoring their loyalty to Him. The Family Circle [Continued from page 140]
the Movement asked, “How do you account, for the changed lives? Does not that bear witness to the fact that the Movement is of God, for only God changes lives for the better ?” T answered him, “No, my friend, I would have to talk with these men whose lives have been changed before I could come to any conclusion in regard to who brought about the change.” I then quoted 2 Cor inthians 11:13-15. The ministers of Satan are “ministers of righteousness”—not ministers of un righteousness^ What is Satan’s plan and purpose? It is to give a man everything that God will give him—apart from Christ. Does God offer righteousness? Satan of fers one, too. God’s righteousness is given on the basis of the redemptive work of Christ. Satan offers a righteousness apart from this redemptive work. The Group leader gave me to understand that the change through Christian Science was a step Godward; but if I understand my Bible, it was a step toward paganism. A man who is changed or who receives any kind of benefit from a system like Christian Science is always harder to reach with the gospel than he was before the change took place. I pointed out that all the false cults that are now flourishing—grow ing because the great multitudes are un taught in the fundamental principles of saving faith—such as Theosophy, New Thought, Bahaism, Ethicalism, and Uni- tarianism, all teach righteousness: Be kind, be sweet, be good, pay your debts, be
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