Keynote Address - Charles
Colson
Thank you very much and good evening. What a pleasure it is for me to be part of this awesome gathering of theologians and church leaders, who have come from all around America to be here for this week.
Whenever I see a meeting like this, with all the distinguished names from the evangelical world, I'm reminded of one of my favorite stories, a true story of a few years back — a couple of decades ago.
Two of the best-known figures in the evangelical world, Harold Ockenga and Donald Barnhouse, went on a preaching tour across the country. Every day they preached in different cities, in different churches, for 30 days. Every day they would rotate. One night Harold Ockenga would speak first and Donald Barnhouse would speak next. The next night Donald Barnhouse would preach first and Ockenga would follow. They were great preachers.
Ockenga, at every single appearance, would preach a different sermon. Barnhouse, for 30 days, preached exactly the same message. Ockenga, who was a fine scholar, listened throughout that 30 days to the same sermon that Barnhouse preached day after day. When they got to the final stop, which was in Richmond, Virginia, at a Presbyterian church, it was packed out — much as this church is tonight with a wonderful crowd.
This was to be their final night. Ockenga, who had a great mind, had succeeded in memorizing Barnhouse's sermon verbatim. Yes, you guessed it! Ockenga went first! He gave Barnhouse's
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message verbatim and flawlessly. All the while he was preaching, he kept looking over at Barnhouse, who was sitting there stoically, absolutely impassive, not an expression on his face.
When Barnhouse, being the great preacher that he was, got up to give his message, he gave another sermon and gave it absolutely brilliantly. As they were walking out of the church, Barnhouse said not a word to Ockenga. Ockenga could contain himself no longer. As they were getting to the door of the church to leave, Ockenga looked over and said, "Donald, they seemed to like your sermon here tonight." Barnhouse said, "Not nearly so much as they did when I preached it here three months ago."
That's why I asked for the privilege of speaking first this evening.
I am indeed honored to open this gathering. Let me express my gratitude first of all to my beloved friend, Dr. Carl Henry, to Dr. Kenneth Kantzer, to this church, and to this congregation. How important it is that we come together as Christians to reaffirm that which we believe, in an era in which the Christian, the evangelical Christian, has been so tragically stereotyped and caricatured.
Make no mistake about it, we have been. I've just been in six countries in Europe, and judging by the press conferences in every country, it's very easy for me to tell you exactly who the best-known religious figures in America are today. Mercifully, Billy Graham remains number one. But close on his heels are Jim and Tammy Bakker, then Jimmy Swaggart, and then Oral Roberts. And after that, it's anybody's field.
The cynicism is wide and deep around the world toward evangelicalism today. At the very time when a clarion call to the
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gospel must be issued to the world, the world has put evangelicalism into its mold — and tragically has done so abetted by our own mistakes. I am so grateful for these men who have had the vision for this conference. I pray that these succeeding days will be days in which the Spirit will come upon them as they restate the historic confession upon which we as Christians must take our stand.
My thanks as well to Pastor Bill Hybels. The work of this church is clearly one of the great outpourings of God's Spirit in our day. We are certainly honored and thrilled that you would have us here in your church, my friend. Thank you.
"Hold fast to the Word," said Paul in the text that we have just heard. "For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins, was buried and was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures." That's the essence of the message that according to the Scriptures, and in Luke's words, "turned the world upside down," a doctrine that by the power of God was able to make the multitudes of sons and daughters of Adam's race wise unto salvation. That message 2,000 years ago was the heart of the gospel. That message 2,000 years later, today, is still the heart of the gospel.
I was in India a few years ago. I had an opportunity to speak in Bombay at a luncheon meeting of 250 government and business leaders at a hotel dining room one noon. I was told to be very careful and be very sensitive about what I said because at the time there were laws, as there are laws today, against proselytizing in India. So I decided (because I knew it would not be a Christian meeting, but largely composed of Hindus and some Muslims) that I would simply share my faith in Christ from my own personal experience.
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I spoke of how 16 years ago this summer, on a hot summer's evening, I went to my friend's house, and he shared with me what it meant to know Jesus Christ. That night in a flood of tears I surrendered my life to Christ. I did that in the first 15 minutes of my talk; and then in the second 15 minutes I talked about the historic evidence for the truth of the fact that God sent His Son to die on a cross for our sins, that he was crucified, buried, and bodily resurrected.
I offered evidence from my own personal experience and my own studies of the resurrection of Jesus Christ to prove its validity. I have discovered in Asian cultures what a powerful message that is! At the end of the meeting, people were coming up to me and asking me questions. One man, large rotund man with a jolly grin on his face, said, "Mr. Colson, I want to tell you what a wonderful message that was and how much I enjoyed it." He then introduced himself, gave me his name, and told me that he was the chairman of the All-Islamic Congress of India and also the editor of the Islamic Times.
He said to me with a great smile on his face, "It's wonderful to have you come here and talk about Jesus the way you do because you and I really believe the same thing."
Now I have to tell you that the first thing that went through my mind was, "I'm in a foreign country. Here is a very powerful and influential man, one of the leading Muslims in India. He's being very gracious and very friendly to me. Should I say to him what I am really thinking, or should I be equally gracious?" He was smiling with this wonderful expression on his face, all very genuine, communicating, "Welcome to India. Isn't it wonderful that you can come and we believe the same thing?" I decided I
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wasn't there to win a popularity contest, so I looked at him square in the eye and I said, "No sir, I'm sorry. We really do not believe the same thing." He looked as if I had just punched him in the stomach and knocked the wind out of him.
I continued, "We don't believe the same thing. I believe that Jesus Christ was bodily raised from the dead, and I believe it can be proven."
He said, "I know you do. I had never heard that case made before today. I had never fully understood what you Christians believe. You've made a very powerful and very persuasive case."
I replied, "Why don't you talk more about this to some of these Christian men right over here?"
He answered, "I think I'd like to do that." As I walked out of the room that day I saw the man sitting closeted with a group of Christians. I don't know what happened to him afterward. But I discovered one very important thing that day — never, ever should we back away from the truth of the central fact of the Christian faith, that is, that our Lord was raised bodily from the dead and appeared to his apostles. They saw him in the flesh. They knew that they had seen Christ risen. He is risen and he lives! And that's the pivot point of history. That's where the finite and the infinite intersect. That was when God invaded planet earth to provide redemption for all mankind. That was when the Creator of heaven and earth, through the cross and the resurrection (the central fact of human history), revealed himself in person.
Here is what I want you to be sure to take away from this conference and to understand. Make no mistake about it. The apostles were not talking symbolically. Modern critics, as you know, have said that we don't really believe that the apostles were
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talking literally or meant precisely what they said about the resurrection. Modern critics claim we don't know that they said the things they actually said in the Scriptures.
That's nonsense. The Hebrew tradition was so powerful and strong that no one would ever write anything down unless they had an actual eyewitness account, with two or three witnesses to corroborate the facts. Don't you wish the media did the same thing today?
No, we know they said those things. Were they talking in symbols, as many critics have said? No! No, they were talking as eyewitnesses. "We did not follow cleverly devised tales when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty," Peter said. "That which we have seen and heard, declare we unto you," the Apostle John said. Paul made it very clear that they had seen the risen Christ, that the resurrection, the bodily resurrection of Jesus, is a fact.
Could they have been mistaken? Could they have been lying?
Let me tell you as one who was inside the White House in 1972. The 12 most powerful men in America gathered around the President of the United States and began the great scandal known as Watergate.
One day, one of the men involved (John Dean) walked into the office of the President of the United States and said, "Mr. President, there is a cancer on your presidency." And for the first time, on March 21, 1973, he laid out for us everything he knew about the Watergate scandal. He let us know for the first time that the President of the United States could be involved in a criminal
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conspiracy. In less than two weeks (by his own account), he went to the prosecutors to bargain for immunity. As he wrote later in his memoirs, it was not to save the Constitution but to save his own skin.
I was among the most powerful men who surrounded the President of the United States. I could press a button and have an airplane waiting for me at Andrews Air Force Base to take me anywhere in the world. I could have aides coming in and out of my office saluting all day long. I could call up government officials and congressmen and tell them what to do. (They didn't do it, but I called them anyway.)
In spite of all that enormous power, the Watergate cover-up conspiracy only lasted two weeks. When John Dean went to the prosecutors to bargain for immunity, for all practical purposes Mr. Nixon's presidency was doomed. After that, every other aide went out to save his own skin. Imagine, the 12 most powerful men in the United States sitting around the desk of the President of the United States could not keep a lie together for more than three weeks.
You're going to tell me 11 apostles lied for 40 years? They were beaten, persecuted, thrown into jail. All except one lost their lives, dying a martyr's death. Yet they never once renounced the fact they had seen Jesus raised from the dead. That's humanly impossible — unless, in fact, they had seen Jesus. Otherwise, there would have been a John Dean in their midst who turned government evidence. The Apostle Peter had already done that once, no, three times.
The fact of the matter is, my friends, that men will give their lives for something they believe to be true. Muslim terrorists do it with terrifying frequency. But a man will never give his life for
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for something he knows to be false. The apostles, who were first-hand witnesses, knew what they had seen, and they never would have given their lives if they had not believed what they had seen to be true.
Even David Hume, one of the great intellects of the Enlightenment, an agnostic Scottish philosopher, the great critic and skeptic of Christianity, said that it is humanly impossible for 11 men, over an extended period of time, to maintain a lie without one of them cracking. It's humanly impossible. The only thing Hume thought was more impossible was for a man to be raised from the dead.
If you don't believe in the supernatural, then you obviously can't believe in the resurrection of Jesus. But if you believe that God is at work in the world, then the evidence is overwhelming that Jesus was bodily raised, and on that fact our faith must rest. If it is not true, go look for another place to worship.
I was in Japan. They have a Buddhist sect called the Perfect Liberty Church. It reminds me of some churches that I've been to in America. You can do anything you want — play golf, dance, meditate — whatever you do, it's worshiping God. It's the fastest-growing sect of Buddhists in Japan today. Look into it if the resurrection did not take place.
Christianity is uniquely a historical event. What we need to understand about our faith is that it is not based on wise writings or philosophies or books written in so-called prophetic trances. It is not based on ideologies, which come and go. It is based on the facts of history, real events. God called out his chosen people, and promised in a covenant to deliver them to the place that he had chosen for them. When his people rebelled, he brought his only
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Son to die on the cross for forgiveness of their sins. And then he raised him again from the dead. That's what Christianity is: history. The Bible is a recitation of historical events. God's dealings with man. The one true God.
Paul Johnson is one of the great historians of modern times. He's the man who wrote The History of Christianity, and more recently, The History of the Jews. He's a British historian. I had the pleasure of meeting and visiting with him when I was in London recently. He's also written a magnificent and insightful book, perhaps the most powerful history of the 20th century, entitled Modern Times.
Paul Johnson gave a speech in Dallas over a year ago. It is one of the most remarkable documents I've read. Speaking purely as a historian, he says, "Christianity is a historical religion or it is nothing. It does not deal in myths or metaphors or symbols or in states-of-being in cycles. It deals in facts and the evidence supports the facts."
Western civilization was built on the premise that men and women understand that there is a source of truth. It is the God who is, the God who reigns, the God who is the Author of history. It was not until the 20th century that modern skeptics and theologians began to quarrel over the historical accuracy of the recounting of God's dealing with man found in Holy Scripture. Modern critics began to assail the dating of documents to make them less than contemporaneous. And Christians, defensively, then began to argue only on the basis of experience. Christ is true because by our personal experience we know him to be true. Other German scholars even went so far as to question whether Jesus ever in fact existed as a man, let alone as God. By the 1920s Christians were
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on the defensive. The low-water mark was reached as higher criticism seemed to demolish the historical accuracy of the Judeo-Christian account.
But as Johnson points out in his speech, there has been a dramatic change in the past 70 years. Archaeological discoveries in the 1920s were able to validate Biblical history, including the discovery of Ur from which Abraham came. Other sources (mainly Egyptian) confirmed the dates of Solomon's reign. As Johnson says, the books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles are today regarded as the finest, most accurate, and most dependable history available.
Then came the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, with the entire text of Isaiah, in the dry sands of Egypt. One by one over the past 70 years, the archaeological discoveries have begun to put the so-called modern critics on the defensive. Our archaeological illumination continues. Biblical revelation is being validated day by day as more and more discoveries are encountered. Today there are nearly 80 papyrus fragments dating back to the 2nd through the 4th centuries — nearly contemporaneous with the time of Christ. Some can be dated back as far as 50-60 A.D., and the gospel of John can be dated no later than 90-100 A.D.
Now stop and think about how silly this is. You go on campuses across America today and you will find people who will ridicule you. That happens to me all the time when I go on secular campuses or when I go on interview programs. They will ridicule me and say, "You don't really believe the Bible to be true. I mean, after all, the history, the scholarship is not there to support it."
Friends, there are 80 papyruses that have been dated back to the second through the fourth centuries. Written, first-hand accounts
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about Jesus! On those same secular campuses, no one questions the existence of Aristotle or anything that Aristotle wrote. And yet the oldest dated manuscript we have of Aristotle is from 1100 A.D., 1,400 years after his death! No secular scholar would question Aristotle, but they all question Jesus. Why? Because we Christians simply haven't taken our stand.
Hold fast to the truth and let the world know what we believe is historically validated.
Johnson, in the conclusion of his speech, says something truly wonderful: "It is not now the men of faith; it is the skeptics, who have reason to fear the course of further discovery." Don't shrink from it. Scripture is revealed propositional truth. God, the Author of all, is the ultimate truth, made evident in his Word and in the person of Jesus Christ.
Now, what you have to understand is that in today's environment it would be difficult to make a statement more radical than that. God is the original source of truth. The Word is true. There is an absolute! Dare you really say that we are in as much trouble as we are in American society today. The real ethos is relativism; that is, there is no truth. Truth is only what you find it to be. There are no absolute rights and no absolute wrongs.
Alan Bloom exposed this fallacy in his brilliant book, The Closing of the American Mind. In the opening chapter of that book he writes, "There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of. Almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative."
Let me give you an illustration of how far this thinking has gone in academia. Not too long ago at Harvard University there
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was a conference of educators and students. They came together from all over the United States. The discussion was the curriculum being taught in American universities. President Frank Rhodes of Cornell stood up in the midst of the meeting and he said, "I think perhaps it is time that we gave real and sustained attention to students' intellectual and moral well-being." Suddenly there were gasps, catcalls, boos, and hisses. People began to shout and say he ought to sit down.
One student stood up and said, "Who's going to do the moral instructing?" Another yelled, "Whose morality are we going to follow?" With that there was a thunderous applause and President Rhodes sat down, silenced. No one even thought to answer. Any generation before this (almost instinctively and automatically) would have answered Biblical revelation, natural law, or at the least the 2,300 years of accumulated wisdom of Western civilization.
The problem is that we've lost the capacity in this relativistic society to argue ethics or values. In a relativistic society they can't exist. As a political science professor at Bryn Mawr recently said, "The moral standards which we increasingly do not practice, the intellectual leaders of our day cannot even talk about."
That's why just a year ago at Stanford University the students marched across the campus shouting, "Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western civilization has got to go!" I mean, go where? They were protesting a great books curriculum because they were being forced to read the great books of Western civilization. Their objection was that these books were written principally by white males. As one commentator said, observing what the Stanford students did, "It's just a shame that Plato was not a lesbian Comanche."
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The tragedy is that the Stanford faculty decided that it really was discriminatory to read the great books of Western civilization because they were written by white males. So they changed the curriculum, revising history.
Here is where this trend becomes a problem for us. Not only is the decay of society taking place all around us because there are no recognized absolute truths, but those of us who step forward and proclaim that something is true are automatically labeled as bigots. You have to be. If tolerance is the supreme virtue, you become a bigot the moment you say that there is truth.
Let me tell you what happens to a society when relativism takes the sort of grip that it has upon American culture today. First, there is never a way to settle a moral debate. All moral debates become interminable. You can't say murder is wrong. All you can say is, "I prefer not to murder." You can't say it's wrong.
There was a poll in the Los Angeles Times recently concerning abortion. People were asked whether abortion was murder or not. To my astonishment, 57% of the American people said that abortion is murder. Only 35% disagreed. It was even considered murder by 1/3 of the women who have had an abortion and by 1/4 of the people who generally favor it.
The American public realizes that to take the life of an unborn child, consciously and deliberately, is murder. But the same poll asked whether they agreed or disagreed with this statement: "I personally feel that abortion is morally wrong, but I also feel that whether or not to have an abortion is a decision that has to be made by every woman for herself." Seventy four percent agreed! The same people! Can they really understand what they're saying? "I think it's murder, but I think you ought to be
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able to go ahead and murder if you want to because I'm not going to impose my views on you"! No wonder this society is in trouble! That's what relativism has done to us. You can't settle any moral argument because there is no standard by which it can be settled.
Ultimately this logic leads to the total dissolution of a society. The fact of the matter is, brothers and sisters, that, if a person has no transcendent standard above himself, he will always do what is in his or her own self-interest. Grasping ego and selfish desire become the only yardstick by which a society's behavior can be measured.
I love the wonderful story told of Samuel Johnson's reaction when informed that a guest in his home arrogantly maintained that all morality is a sham. Johnson said, "Why sir, if he really believes that there is no distinction between virtue and vice, be sure to count the spoons before he leaves."
A society depends upon the elements of character for its very existence: duty, valor, honor, justice. These virtues simply cannot exist if the only measure of value in life is grasping ego or self-interest.
I read another poll recently in Rolling Stone magazine that shocked me. Forty percent of the so-called baby-boom generation — the leadership of America over these next several decades — when asked whether there was any cause for which they would fight for their country, said no. The social contract is eventually torn asunder when the only value system in a society is self. That's what happens in a relativistic value system. And the societal horrors that flow from this are simply endless. If we no longer believe that God is truth and the basic premise of life, it not only gives us a distorted view of God; it gives us a distorted view of ourselves.
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That's why people can't understand what happened up in Central Park recently. It's a horrible story. Young men randomly and brutally assaulted, beat, raped, and mutilated a 28-year-old woman who was out jogging. Everyone has tried to come up with a plausible explanation for this tragedy because it defies explanation. These young lads were doing well in school. These young lads were from an apartment house that had a doorman out front.
What was the explanation? It's something our society has totally lost sight of because we have taken God and the truth of God out of society. The answer is that we are desperately wicked and depraved. Sin! Sin! Man's sin is the answer.
I was recently in a country (which best remains unnamed) visiting its prisons. There were 100 inmates in the prison in which I preached. The prison psychiatrist came out after I preached and gave those of us who were visiting the prison a briefing. She said 72% of the men in that prison are classified as psychiatric cases. They are mentally unbalanced. I went up to her afterward and said, "72% of the people? Is this a mental hospital?" She said, "No, no — it's because of the crimes that they have committed." I said, "What do you mean, because of the crimes?" She said, "Well, when anyone in our country commits a crime as heinous as rape and murder or any violent act, we automatically classify them as a mental case."
You see why? Because people are basically good! We've lost sight of the basic Christian truth that man is a sinner in need of the grace of God. Therefore, if a man commits a terrible crime, we should give him therapy, not punishment. That's precisely what they did in this prison.
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Two days after I preached there, a beautiful young corrections officer, 26 years old, blonde hair, an attractive woman — came up to me and said, "Mr. Colson, that was the most marvelous message today. Thank you for bringing the gospel into this prison. These inmates don't hear it very often." She said, "I'm a Christian and I witness to them every chance I get." Two days later, that same correctional officer was required to take one of the inmates downtown to see a violent movie. Neither she nor the inmate ever came back. A few days later they found her mutilated body in a ditch a mile from the prison.
Why? Because we believe a distorted picture of man as basically good, and that's not true! But that's what happens in secular society today. If you take God out, you get a wrong view of man. Instead of punishing people and treating them as the sinners that they are, in need of redemption, we treat them as sick people in need of therapy and cures. So we take them to movies. That's what is happening in society.
The greatest tragedy of all is what relativism does to the church. Robert Bellah, the sociologist, conducted a poll recently of 200 average, middle-class Americans, to try to find out what American values currently are. He found out that 81% of Americans believe that an individual should arrive at his or her own religious belief independently of any church or synagogue. He quoted one young woman by the name of Sheila who said, "I believe in God . . . but I can't remember the last time I went to church. My faith however has carried me a long way." It's Sheilaism. Just my own little voice. Do-it-yourself God kits. Make up your own God. Worship as you wish.
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In a relativistic society, the church is no longer looked upon as the repository of truth. It is looked upon as simply a place where people come to feel good — for personal fulfillment. The reason the New Age movement is sweeping America; the reason that 25% of the American people say they believe in reincarnation; the reason they listen seriously to Shirley MacLaine and go off on mountain tops and talk about harmonic convergence; the reason they go into these ridiculous things is because they no longer see the church as the one place where there is a repository of truth.
They simply see religion as "being" — finding something that will make you feel good. Believe me, friends, you can do a number of things that will make you feel much better than the news of Jesus Christ, which convicts you of your sin, that is, before it becomes the good news of redemption. And that's the tragedy of a relativistic society.
What's the challenge? The challenge for us today, Christians, is to hold fast to the truth, to know and believe that there is a God who lives, who has spoken, and who reigns in his heaven today. A God who sent his Son, who was bodily raised from the dead. And that's a fact of history. What we believe in is not philosophy or ideology or myth. We believe in the facts of God, who has revealed himself. We need to take our stand on doctrine and hold fast to that truth as a beacon of light and truth in a world that is in disarray. We need to offer a compelling apologetic to a world that's collapsing around us. The world desperately needs this. No society has ever been able to survive that eliminated a transcendent standard of truth by which people could live, one which provided harmony, concord, and justice, as Cicero put it, even in pre-Christian times.
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That's why we are here tonight. That's why this conference is gathered here, that we might reaffirm our orthodoxy, the classic doctrines of our faith rooted in objective truth, truth revealed by God and confessed by the saints down through the centuries from Athanasius to Augustine, from Aquinas to Calvin to today. Several thousand of you gathered in this church tonight perhaps are saying, "That's all well and good for the theologians and scholars, but what's that got to do with me as a layperson?"
It's fascinating to me that church people never question the need for conversion, for faith, for commitment, or sacrifice, or Bible study, or prayer, or holy living, but they always wonder about doctrine. Why is doctrine so important? Doctrine is important because as Christians we believe in the historic validation of our faith and of the truth that is handed down to us through the centuries, originating with those who were eyewitnesses to the truth. Doctrine is crucially important. It's important because all knowledge of God comes from him for the purpose of his glory and the salvation of those to whom it is savingly committed. John says in his gospel, "Eternal life is found in the knowledge of God."
First, the knowledge of God is essential to our own salvation. How can you worship a God whom you know nothing about? There is no proper loving of God without a proper knowledge of God. It's the fuel that fires our devotion.
Second, Christianity is a missionary religion. We are told by our Leader to go and make disciples, "teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you." If we're going to get the message out, we had better get that message right.
Third, how can we possibly present an apologetic to the world today if we do not understand the truth of the timeless
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message of the gospel? Not that we interpret it in today's light, but that we understand the essence of that truth so that we are able to present an essential apologetic to a world adrift.
This is no small concern. This is no idle matter. This is not just the business of theologians and church scholars and people who write books. This is the business of every single Christian layperson, because when we fail to stand on solid doctrine, we undercut individuals, we undercut denominations, we undercut our witness to the world.
Some years ago, a Christian leader (whose name I will not mention tonight), and I were in a Bible study together. He was out speaking at prayer breakfasts. I had just discovered the difference between Arminianism and Calvinism. I had just read about Jacob Arminius and something of his work. I was excited. I came to the Bible study one day and said, "This is really interesting, have you ever thought about whether you are an Arminian or a Calvinist on this view of Scripture?"
This fellow looked at me and he said, "Don't get into those discussions." I said, "Why not? I'm fascinated. I'm really interested. I really want to study about this." "No," he said, "That's not what matters. What matters is that we love Jesus and follow Him and live the way He teaches us to live." Later, that man left his wife, literally left the church, and now says he's trying to struggle to go on with the Lord. But his witness has been destroyed.
Doctrine gives us the foundation of what we believe, and if we haven't the minds to seek it, we haven't the heart to worship it.
Ignoring doctrine can undermine denominations. Ronald Nash writes about one denomination where people were not
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concerned with doctrine and curiously neglected it. The laypeople talked about holy living and prayer and Christian experience, but meanwhile the professors in the seminaries were moving farther and farther away from the classic doctrines of that denomination until the entire denomination was lost. Why? Because it's teaching centers were no longer teaching solid, orthodox Christian doctrine.
I was in Sri Lanka some years ago. When I landed at the airport, I was met by an Anglican priest. He was the head of our ministry, Prison Fellowship, in Sri Lanka. We were on our way into the city when I asked a question I ask everywhere I go, "Desmond, how is the church doing here in this country?" He said, "Not well; we're doing very badly. The Muslims are just killing us."
He said, "They're going from village to village taking the statement of Bishop Jenkins in England that the resurrection was nothing but a conjuring trick with bones. They are saying to all the Christians, 'You see, that's what we've always told you. You can be a Muslim and still believe in Jesus. Look at what the Anglican Bishop in England is saying.' " Christians were being swept away by the Muslims in village after village because some woolly-headed bishop in England had made an absurd statement about the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Abandon doctrine and you undercut the witness of the church.
Look at the ideologies today that have crept into the Christian church. All through Latin and South America liberation theology is exploding, yet it is nothing but an ideology in gospel language. People have lost their traditional stand on doctrine. So the church has been corrupted. Both the right and the left have made exactly the same mistake.
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I would warn you, however, that when you take your stand on historic, classical doctrine, be prepared for one thing. People who have stereotyped evangelical Christians will say, "Oh, you're one of those backward Bible thumpers, aren't you?"
I was at a banquet a few years ago where I was receiving an award. I happened to be sitting next to one of the mainline church people. We were talking all through dinner about books we've read. About two-thirds of the way through the evening, this man turned to me and said, "Mr. Colson, you've read Bonhoeffer and you've read this and you've read that — all these works that we've talked about tonight. You seem like a very educated and intelligent person. You're certainly not a fundamentalist, are you?"
I said, "How do you define 'fundamentalist?' The five fundamentals of the faith? The virgin birth, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the deity of Christ, the fact he's coming again, and the authority of Scripture?"
He said, "Yes, my view is much more modern than that. You don't believe all that, do you?"
I looked at him square in the eye and I said, "Well, of course! Don't you?"
Don't back away. Don't be defensive. What virtue is there to something being modern? Does that mean it's enlightened?
A great systematic theologian, one of Princeton University's greatest theologians, Charles Hodge, once said, as if to describe a great virtue, that during his many years at Princeton, the institution had never brought forth a single original thought. He was ridiculed at the time. But what he was saying was we stand on the great historic confessions of faith. Our communion is not sitting with the people who are only at the table today. It is sitting
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with the saints down through the ages back to the apostles. We believe in the historic confession of Christian truth, and we are not afraid to say that we aren't modern in that sense. Don't be intimidated. Don't be put out.
I love what Joseph Sobran, the columnist, said, "It can be exalting to belong to a church that is five hundred years behind the times and sublimely indifferent to fashion; it is mortifying to belong to a church that is five minutes behind the times, huffing and puffing to catch up." Wonderful!
It is no overstatement for me to stand here tonight at the outset of this conference and to tell you that we must adhere to Scripture and the classical confessions of faith; to truth; to what we might broadly call orthodoxy; to what C.S. Lewis called "the central core of what we believe"; to "mere Christianity"; if we are to present Christian truth today to a dissolute culture.
Secularism can only advance as orthodoxy retreats. That's why this conference, which reaffirms the historic evangelical statement of belief and truth, is so absolutely vital.
What happens when we take our stand on doctrine? Nothing is more revolutionary.
When I first became a Christian, I started to read the Scriptures. Now people say to me, "Isn't it a wonderful ministry you're in, Chuck Colson — 34 countries around the world, 500 prisons across America, 30,000 volunteers? Isn't that wonderful?" A stewardess on the airplane flying from Denver today stopped to talk to me. "What a wonderful ministry it is that you have." They all say, "Isn't it wonderful that you're doing all that good?" Do good. You're looked upon as a do-gooder.
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No! That's not why I do what I do. I don't do what I do because I think I can reform the prison system. I don't do what I do because it's my way of making contrition for what happened during Watergate. I don't do what I do out of any set of human motives at all.
I do what I do because I read this Book. I read the classic doctrines of the faith. I believe them to be true. I read that my God cares about justice. Because he calls me to take a stand and to do his work, I am compelled by the living Word of the living God to obediently go and do what I do in the prisons. Not because I'm a do-gooder, but out of gratitude to God!
I read Dr. Henry's books. I studied at his feet every chance I had. I came to see the truth. I thought I'd been something of a scholar in college. No. Nothing compared to understanding what God's truth means. One day I took a set of tapes out by R.C. Sproul on the holiness of God. I played them on my VCR. Before those tapes were over, I found myself down on my knees before the majesty of a holy God, in awe that he would call any one of us to be his own. When we really understand the truth of Scripture, it drives us to our knees and it compels us to live in obedience to Christ.
That's what's at the heart of the Right-to-Life campaign today. I've been talking to people all across America who have been arrested. They have been in prison because they have taken a stand — not out of convenience, not because they're comfortable doing it, not because they are trying to grandstand; but because they believe the Word of God to be true. They believe that human dignity is rooted in the fact that man is created in the image of God and that as Christians we must take our stand on that truth.
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Two centuries ago that conviction caused a man by the name of William Wilberforce to stand on the floor of the House of Commons as a member of Parliament and denounce the most barbaric practice of man in his time, the slave trade. Black bodies were put in the holds of ships in Africa and taken to the Western hemisphere. He stood alone against what was then the primary source of revenue to the British government, the slave trade. Why? A do-gooder? No. A social conscience? No. He'd been converted by the preaching of John Wesley. He had fallen on his knees and surrendered his life to Christ. He had written a magnificent book about Christian living. It had 26 words in the title. It has been reprinted today under the title of Real Christianity. The actual title was Real Christianity as Practised and Preached in the Scriptures as Contrasted With That Practised and Preached in the Churches of England Today. Wonderful.
We could use a book like that in America today. Moved by that book and by the desire for holiness, he stood as one man against the slave trade. The battle raged for 20 years, until eventually England declared the slave trade illegal. Six days before Wilberforce died, slavery was abolished in Europe. Why? Because one man took his stand upon God's truth and believed the Scriptures to be real.
That's what changes the world, and that's what the Christian church needs today — to take our stand on the holy Word of God; to believe God's truth; not to be dismayed or detoured by ideologies of the day; but to stand on the truth and to be motivated by it to follow God accordingly.
It is significant that we gather tonight, isn't it? On this day, Pentecost, the Christian Church celebrates that momentous event
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when the Holy Spirit came upon 120 believers huddled together in an upper room in Jerusalem. And beginning from Jerusalem, a company of Christ's disciples plunged themselves into a world blinded by its own self-imposed darkness. They embarked on a mission given to them by the One who had claimed all authority in heaven and on earth. Under the power of the Holy Spirit, they made disciples by teaching the truth to those entrusted to them by the One who is truth. And Christ, as he promised, was with them. On the rock of the apostles' confession and proclamation that "Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God," the church was built and the gates of hell crumbled before it.
Is it too much to dare to pray that the Spirit might fall afresh on us and on the church today? Think what that might mean if we were called and responded to a new commitment to the truth of the doctrine of God's Word. Yes, Holy Spirit, come. Come, Holy Spirit. Give us that courage.
If you are rooted in the Word of God, having taken up the whole armor of God that he has provided, you will stand strong and tall in this evil day. Martin Luther captured it, the solid hope of all believers when he wrote in 1529:
That Word above all earthly powers,
no thanks to them abideth;
The Spirit and the gifts are ours,
through Him who with us sideth;
Let goods and kindred go,
this mortal life also;
The body they may kill:
God's truth abideth still;
His kingdom is forever.
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Don't you see? We stand under God's authority. It was because of Luther's great conviction that God is truth that he was able to witness to that truth. He had the courage to boldly and disdainfully cast aside even the threat to his own life. My brothers and sisters, a generation that does not share that conviction will never share that courage. And so I call upon you, if you would serve the living God in your generation, amidst the terrors and dangers that threaten on every hand — hold fast to the truth! Hold fast to the truth, that God may be all in all. Amen.
