Covenanter Witness Vol. 41 - Reformed Presbyterian Historical ...

24 THE COVENANTER WITNESS July 14, 1948
God. Out of the debris, of what was once proud Germany, we do hear
voices of Christian leadership calling to us, "Except ye repent, ye
shall all likewise
perish."
Dr. Helmut Thielicke, professor of theology
sity, and a leader of the Confessing Church during
at Tubingen Univer
the war years
wrote in "The Lutheran", the periodical of the United Lutheran
Church for January this year,
in which he says:
an article on "It Happened to us First"
"If the communication of men with God is broken off, the founda
tion on which it stands, and which alone enables it to live, is taken
away from him. At the Diet of Worms a man like Martin Luther
could say, "HERE I STAND. I CAN DO NO OTHER, SO HELP ME
GOD"
for the very reason that he felt responsible to God and pos
sessed a stable and solid foundation but.... he who has lost con
tact with the living God is apt to succumb to dictatorship
easily. . . .
"I am going to repeat this sentence of decisive importance: He who
has given up communication with God is apt to fall an easy prey to
unscrupulous dictators. Would that the Anglo-Saxon nations will foe
sensitive to the warnings of the German Church. They
are standing
in the sheltering protection of a windbreak of well established sacred
traditions which seem to prevent an open outbreak of a latent secu
larism, or rather stave it off for the time being. . . .but they
must
not think that these traditions will not foe in the same manner sub
jected to the internal process of being hallowed out.
"If England and America abandon their ultimate religious founda
tion and become more and more subjected to the disease of secular
ism then the end of democracy will be liable to come quickly. The
critical point is that the ultimate basis of social life and especially
of democratic life is either a religious nature or does not exist at all.
Would that the world would give credit to the Church in Germany as
having
special experience in these things."
A book just off the press this year entitled "THE KINGSHIP OF
CHRIST"
by Dr. W. A. Visser 't Hooft,
a man who has been for ten
years secretary of the World Council of Churches, shows that the
Confessing Church of Germany found under persecution the great
need of having Christ, the Great Moral Governor, at the head of the
nation.
The main thesis of the book seems to be that the teaching of the
Kingship of Christ is a neglected truth, and that the church must
preach this great doctrine if the world is to be saved from destruc
tion. Dr. 't Hooft says of the book that it is "An Interpretation of
Recent European Theology". He quotes Dr. Karl Barth, and some
humanism is to be detected in the book, but on the one great thesis
that the preaching of the Kingship of Jesus Christ is a long neg
lected truth, it is a most challenging book. The book gives many
quotations from statements made by the Confessing Church of Ger
many of which here are a few:
The General Synod of the Netherlands Reformed Church said in a
pastoral letter:
they
"The authorities are subjects of the King of kings, by
whose grace
rule and to whom authorities and subjects alike owe obedience".
The Confessing Synod of the Old Prussian Union in Dahlem said
in 1935:
"Bound to God's word the church is obligated to witness before
state and nation to the unique sovereignty of Jesus Christ, who alone
has the power to bind and loose
consciences."
The Confessing- Synod of Schleswig-Holstein declared in 1943:
"The church cannot recognize the existence of realms which are a
law unto themselves and are not subject to the Lordship
of Christ
.... The Church must deny its confession, if it seeks refuge away
from public life and maintains silence concerning
the claims of the
Lord Jesus Christ in judgment and grace over the issues of political
and national life such as war, law, economics,
etc."
In the Far East, the Chinese Civil War goes steadily on,
with in
flation rising alarminggly by the hour. We wonder how soon some
thing will break in that severely judged nation. In Japan the ques
tion still remains as to the conversion of Emperor Hirohito to Chris
tianity. One recent encouraging feature is the fact that the Emperor
certain, as the army of Nebuchadnezzar was
already
at the walls of Jerusalem. Jeremiah
the prophet was a prisoner because of his
repeated and courageous declarations through
the years that the Chaldeans would take
Jerusalem, and that king Zedeldah would be
made a captive. It was while the prophet was
in prison that it was revealed to him that a
relative would soon come to him, telling him
that he should purchase a field in Anathoth
because, according to Jewish law, it was his
right to do so. Shortly after he had this word
from the Lord, a relative, Hanameel by
name, came and spoke the very words that
Jeremiah had heard before, so that he knew
the word was from the Lord. In fulfilment of
this command, Jeremiah 'bought the field. It
is at this point in the narrative that mention
is made of Baruch, the son of Neriah, who
was employed by Jeremiah as his secretary,
and who attended'
to the details in connection
with the closing of the land deal.
It may
seem strange that Jeremiah should
have made a purchase of real estate in a
country which, as he had foretold, was just on
the verge of falling into the hands of an
enemy
country. That this was an exhibition
of faith cannot be doubted. Verse 15 is God's
promise that Israel shall be restored to their
own land, and later verses in the chapter con
tain additional assurances of like character.
Speaking
of Jeremiah's faith in God's assur
ances one writer has said: "In the midst of all
the darkness of this dark time, here was a
man walking in the light. Here we have a
picture of the obedience of faith, of how faith
accounts for the fact that its action is reason
able, cautious, legal, accurate. Faith is never
fanatical. Jeremiah did not buy the field as
the result of his calculations of circum
stances. His reason for buying it was that he
believed God, and the certainty that whatever
God said must be right. Faith is taking God
into account and obeying Him without re
serve."
Jeremiah was another of those Old
Testament heroes who "by faith"
divine commandment, nothing doubting.
obeyed the
II. HE WRITES AND READS ALOUD THEl
PROPHET'S MESSAGE. Chap. 36.
This part of the lesson takes us back al
most twenty years to the reign of a former
king, Jehoiachim by name, king
of Judah, an
account of whose reign is recorded in 2 Kings
23-24. Jeremiah appears to have spent a good
deal of time in prison because of his faithful
ness and fearlessness in denouncing the sins
of the nation, and proclaiming future punish
ment as the penalty to be suffered as a result.
While in prison the word of the Lord came
to him, commanding him to write
what was
to be revealed to him. Then it was that he
first called Baruch into his service as his
scribe, or secretary. His duty was to write
what the prophet dictated. Just how many of
Jeremiah's previous prophecies were included
in this roll is not stated. It would
seem but
reasonable to suppose that the substance, if
not the entire contents of the first twenty