Vol.IV No.IX Pg.1
October 1967

Look Who Is "Passing"!

Robert F. Turner

Paul could say to the Ephesian elders, "For I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God." (Acts 20:27) That is, "I kept back nothing that was profitable unto you." (vs. 20) It is here that many preachers of today are failing. They preach the truth -- on such subjects as they choose to discuss -- but they do not choose to discuss, in plain understandable terms, those things that are most needful in troubled times. Israel bleeds from open wounds and they give aspirin, not bandages.

Satan's angels of light have made slighting remarks about "brotherhood policemen"; and so they have forgotten God's charge to the watchmen; and the "in season, out of season" charge to those who preach. (2 Tim. 4:2-5)

Martin Luther said, "If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the Devil are at the moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved; and to be steady on all the battlefield besides is merely flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point." Satan probes, like water at the levee, for one weak point. When he finds one point undefended, for whatever reason, he uses this opening to spread a flood of destruction. Teachers who refuse to discuss, and members who refuse to hear, the institutional and social gospel errors of the Orphan Home issue, have opened a flood-gate of digression upon the church. The silence that gave consent to the benevolent societies may have begun with strong men who stayed the sword because of tender emotions. But now these same men cringe pitifully behind platitudes or "gospel truth" on baptism; and church-support of the colleges, homes for un-wed mothers, "Carpenter" houses, and fishing camps, go marching through the land.

Saddest of all, to me, personally, is the fact that many of the stalwart soldiers of the past, from whom I learned "They Shall not Pass!" -- now march with those who pass.