Devoted to the Propagation and Defense of New Testament Christianity
VOLUME 10
February 5, 1959
NUMBER 39, PAGE 7a

Whistling Past The Graveyard

A. Hugh Clark, Baytown, Texas

There are certain who treat us with more or less regular frequency in some of the religious journals to an altogether presumptive conclusion which is based upon wishful thinking and not upon facts, and which, I opine, is intended further to propagandize and to anesthetize the uninformed and fainthearted and press them into line. These writers inform us with obviously affected jubilance, that as regards the institutional questions and the sponsoring church cooperation combines that the fight is all over now, that the battle has been decisively won; that now, with these troublesome questions and their proponents thoroughly resolved, vanquished, and exposed for what they really were, "Much ado about nothing" created by a small group of reactionaries, personally ambitious partisans, seeking for recognition which they could not otherwise achieve, the church should now forget the whole matter and go right on even multiplying their schemes and their promotional combines until they have realized "Unlimited Horizons" in every direction!

No wonder that with such effervescent froth fed into the veins of the churches for twenty five years we are beset with the problems and difficulties that confront us today. But, I write to inform this group of propagandists and promoters in the churches that their presumptive conclusion is too premature to survive no matter how carefully they incubate it! They are simply "Whistling past the grave yard" and I, for one, think they know it.

God has again left himself, "Seven thousand that have not bowed the knee to Baal" and neither will they do so. And these range in age and experience from those who have been in the fray for half a century and more, but in whom there is still sufficient strength and will to fight even unto death, to a host of valiant younger men who acknowledge the sovereignty of the Lord only and do obeisance to none but Him.

We did not enter this fight for pecuniary reasons nor were we otherwise prompted by personal ambition. The opportunity for the satisfaction of all such motives was on the other side in this fight, and don't think that such has not been used, and basely so, to create duress and pressure to break the wills and bend the knees of the young and the weak. Private appeals emotionally based, public intimidations, ostracism, quarantines, cancellations, et cetera; all have been used to gain accessions and secure names for the "Confessional column". And in some instances the pressure has been strong enough to succeed, genuflections have been made, the oligarchy satisfied, another peon born and added to the ranks of those who are, "On the march"!

But there are many, make no mistake about it, and their number is increasing both in the pulpit and in the pew, who cannot be intimidated and whose allegiance to their convictions is not for sale, no not even for the necessities of life.

And so, we shall continue to fight with never a thought of yielding. We stand in TRUTH and TRUTH can never be conquered. Kill its advocates and destroy its proponents and its virile seed will rise from the very dust where their blood was spilt and propagate itself to the ends of the earth and to the last sunset of time.

Man, any man among us, is nothing compared to the cause for which we stand; our fortunes or our misfortunes, life or death, we are all expendable where TRUTH and the Lord's church are concerned. And these assertions are not the mere heroics of words.

Just you keep on "Whistling past the graveyard" if you will, my friend, but if you think the battle is won and the fight is over, all I have to say to you is, WAIT AND SEE'!