JAC Online

The Main Thing
by Major Howard Weber

In the early days of The Salvation Army, back in East London, leaders were referred to as ‘evangelists’, and that, indeed, was their role: to reach and lead the lost to Christ. Many confined themselves to evangelism and nothing else, so that the problem was not that of getting people saved, but rather what to do with them afterwards. Social work and the relief of physical and material deprivation was often a part of the work of salvation, but always in the minds of those dealing with the immediate wellbeing of a person was concern for his or her ultimate wellbeing. Even in 1866, (pre-Salvation Army days), with a cholera epidemic, continued unemployment and its intense accompanying distress, William Booth and his workers kept their heads and did not allow themselves to be stampeded either into distributing food, clothing, blankets, etc, indiscriminately, or losing sight of the Christian Mission’s first objective, that of the eternal salvation of the people.

Even the extensive organisation of this growing Movement did not impede the evangelist. Rather, it provided a means of retaining and channelling new converts, a problem that few of the missions of that time had resolved. The evangelist continued to concentrate on reaching the lost, the Mission’s priority. Though the discipling and care of converts were very important, the priority was always that of getting more of the unsaved saved. When a person got saved they were immediately discipled, mobilised and encouraged to get their friends and families saved. Taking his son to an unsavoury, smoke-filled public house, William Booth said to young Bramwell, ‘Willie, these are our people; these are the people I want you to live for and bring to Christ.’ Obviously a word from a God-fearing father to his son, but surely as we look at the eternal state of those around us who live without Christ, is it not a word from God to us all?

One thing I think is true of most of the Church in this country, its emphasis on eternal issues has changed/moved. The thing that was, at one time, the main thing of the Church is no longer the main thing anymore. There are a number of reasons for this.

1. Churches are too busy doing ‘churchy things’ with the limited resources of money and manpower they have.

2. They are more concerned about maintaining the institution than being mobilised for mission. Often more time and energy is spent on maintaining some outdated delivery vehicle than the thing that the Church was created to deliver.

3. It is easier to see and then respond to a person’s physical and material needs than their spiritual need.

4. Confidence has been lost:

a) Confidence in the Bible as the word of God.

b) Confidence in the truths of God’s righteousness, the seriousness of sin

and God’s wrath and judgment.

c) Confidence in God’s longing for, and power to penetrate hearts and save

the lost.

This process of moving away from the ‘main thing’ began over 100 years ago. In his lecture entitled Why Did The English Stop Going To Church?, based on in-depth research, Dr Michael Watts stated that the highest recorded voluntary[1] church attendance in England was that recorded in a census taken on Sunday 30 March 1851, when almost 40% of the population attended Sunday worship. He discovered that this was as a result of the education provided for children by the Church of England and the subsequent evangelism carried out by the Nonconformists when that generation reached adulthood.

An analysis that Dr Watts made of the conversion experiences of 670 Nonconformists who claimed to have been converted between 1780 and 1850 revealed that over one third had been brought up as Anglicans and were taught in their childhood that everyone had ‘sinned and come short of the glory of God’ and deserved to be punished with eternal damnation for breaking God’s moral code.

Dr Watts concluded, ‘It was left to the Evangelicals to point out that Hell could be avoided by accepting, through faith, the sacrifice that Christ had made for sinners at Calvary.’ From his analysis, Dr Watts discovered that it was that ‘fear of death, fear of judgment, fear above all of the eternal torment in the fires of Hell’ that was the major factor that caused those 670 to consider and then respond to the evangelists’ message.

To discover exactly when and why the decline set in, Dr Watts then carried out detailed research of denominational records and other sources, ensuring that he was comparing like with like, as there was not a similar universal church census for quite a number of decades. He discovered that the maintenance of the high attendance of Sunday worship for more than 30 years following the 1851 census was mainly due to the reawakening that began in 1859, and that the decline began in the mid-1880s.

So what caused the present decline which started all those years ago? Some people have suggested that the shadow cast by Charles Darwin’s On The Origin Of Species was the cause, others, the flowering of British science, while still others proposed that it was German biblical criticism, or a combination of all three. But while these may have blunted the churches’ message, they were not, as we might have expected, the main concern of the churches back then. According to the religious press of the 1860s and 1870s, the far more worrying cause of concern seems to have been the ‘reinterpreting if not rejecting of the orthodox doctrine of future punishment’. Certainly those churchmen who resisted this change in the doctrinal stance of many clergy at that time saw it as the most dangerous threat to the church’s progress.

Although the conviction that those without Christ would spend eternity in Hell was a major factor in people being converted in the first part of the century, by the latter part many Christians regarded the doctrine with distaste. When F. W. Farrar published Eternal Hope, in which he rejected the idea of an eternal punishment, he received many letters stating that the reason so many working men rejected Christianity was because it held on to the belief in the ‘everlasting damnation of the overwhelming majority of mankind’.

What then followed was that clergy shifted in their view and their preaching, from a focus on the eternal destinies of the saved and unsaved to focusing on an improved life here on earth in an effort to present a more attractive, acceptable, amenable and tasteful message to the non-Christian. However, instead of churches seeing their congregations increase, this change of emphasis saw the gradual erosion of their numbers. Dr Watts remarked, ‘Liberal Christianity did not fill the churches, it helped empty them.’ In focusing on offering commodities such as ‘fellowship, entertainment and knowledge’, as George La Noue and Dean Kelley put it, they offered no more than many a secular agency, while doing away with the one incentive that Christ gave to his Church: salvation, the promise of eternal life and a supernatural life after death.

Charles Spurgeon, the great Baptist preacher, was very concerned that the orthodox faith was being eroded or ‘downgraded’, with the truths of the atonement and eternal punishment being rejected. He believed that it would lead to the decline of the Church. This had an historical precedence. In the previous century a similar liberalisation of the English Presbyterians had taken place which had led to their decline.

Spurgeon’s stand, which began in 1887, resulted in his resignation from the Baptist Union. He and his ilk, with their continued emphasis on the eternal punishment of the unsaved, became an embarrassment to those who embraced the new thinking. William Booth must have been aware of the change taking place in the doctrine of the Church around him for, when asked by an American newspaper at the dawn of the 20th century what he saw to be the chief danger of the coming century, his reply was, ‘In answer to your enquiry, I consider that the chief dangers which confront the coming century will be religion without the Holy Ghost; Christianity without Christ; forgiveness without repentance; salvation without regeneration; politics without God; and Heaven without Hell.’

It seems logical to me that if there is not an eternal punishment for sin, then sin is not as serious, obnoxious and repulsive to God as the Bible says it is and,  consequently, God’s wrath would appear irrational, unreasonable and unjust. If there is no eternal punishment, why did God need to go to such enormous lengths at such enormous cost to save us from such a non-existent punishment? In short, why would people need a Saviour if there is nothing, other than their ills in this short life, to save them from? If God is indeed God, would he have even contemplated the total humiliation of himself that entering human flesh entailed, never mind the rest, unless both the result of our sin and the enormity of his love and heartache for us all were not so great?

If we were but closer to him we would know the truth and we would share his burden, see the issues from his viewpoint and realise that the Bible and what Christ had to say on the subject of sin and punishment there is true. Yes, there are things that we don’t understand, things that are difficult to digest. That is nothing new. We in this enlightened, more knowledgeable, scientific age are not the first to see difficulties or unanswerable questions. But, as with our forefathers, it need not prevent us from regaining confidence in the fact that the Bible does not contain the word of God, it is the word of God.

While academics theorise as to what is myth, fact or mere parable in the Bible, we must hold solidly to the truth we claim, which is that God himself brought together the Bible in the form we have it, to be accepted as his word and, aware of this continuing debate. William Booth himself said it was to be treated as ‘the only authorised and trustworthy revelation of the mind of God’ (The Bible, Its Divine Revelation, Inspiration And Authority).

The truth is that often theories treated as fact in one generation are discarded like a fashion garment by a later one. The fact is that God himself has done and still does extraordinary things, supernatural things through his word, the Bible. He transforms minds and hearts and lives and even whole communities through the reading of it, the exposition of it and obedience to its teaching. God himself confirms that it has his approval and bears his authority by what he does when it is accepted as his word.

Also, when we came to know God himself through Jesus, we recognised the God of our experience in the God of the Bible and it came alive. What previously may have been dull and boring became exciting to read. Has there ever been another book that has done and can do what this book can do?

When Susan Budd analysed the experiences of 150 secularists who rejected Christianity between 1850 and 1950 she found the crucial factor leading men and women in her sample to renounce Christianity was a conviction that what the churches taught was morally wrong, ie, eternal punishment, Hell, the Atonement and damnation for unbelievers.

So what are we to do with regards to those who find the message unacceptable, unpalatable, repugnant? Alter the truth because it does not suit or fit a person’s concept of the issues? Trying to ingratiate ourselves with the world and its view has done the gospel no favours. In trying to make Christianity more relevant to men and women of the modern world, the Church has actually made itself irrelevant. The history of Christianity and the Bible tells us that the soul-saving gospel message has always been both a stumbling block and foolishness to many. It has always been distasteful and an offence to the majority. It has always provoked hostility and rejection – we only need to look at the Acts of the Apostles and the lives of people like John Wesley to see that. But at one and the same time, where it has been faithfully presented, uncompromised, in all its fullness, God has always responded and blessed it with fruit.

Let us all return with confidence to the Bible as the word of God, God’s truth. Let us accept with confidence what it says regarding God’s righteousness, the seriousness of sin, God’s wrath and judgment and God’s merciful remedy provided for saving people from their just deserts. Let us have confidence in God’s longing for and power to penetrate hearts and save the lost.