No. 25, August 1997

 

THE VERSE A PRESIDENT SWORE BY

 

            I’ve known all along that Ronald Reagan grew up in the Christian Church in Dixon, Illinois, so when I saw his autobi­ography, An American Life, in our local library I wondered what it would reveal about what his religion meant to him.

 

            He reveals that his alcoholic father was a Roman Catholic who had little interest in religion, and that his mother, always a woman of prayer and piety, took her two sons with her to the Disciples of Christ church. There he was baptized into Christ in his teenage years, and it was there, a few years later, that he fell in love for the first time. It was the preacher’s daughter!

 

            The romance budded and bloomed for several years. The "PK" not only wore his college fraternity pin but an engagement ring as well. They both graduated from Eureka College, a Disciples school, and then went their separate ways to find work where they could during the Depression. While they planned to marry when they could, Reagan was aware that they were "growing apart." One day when he opened one of her letters the fraternity pin and engagement ring fell to the floor. She had fallen in love with someone else!

 

            His mother taught him two important things about religion: to pray and to tithe. He says he even prayed before his football games, not to win but that no one would get hurt. He reveals that the first time he approached the Oval Office as the nation’s new President, he paused before entering and prayed that God would give him wisdom and courage for the task before him.

 

            As for tithing, even when he made only $100 a month as a sportscaster on radio he gave $10 of it to the church. But when his brother was trying to make it through college, he asked his preacher if he thought the Lord would be pleased if he sent his tithe to his brother. The preacher assured him that it would please the Lord.

 

            His mother’s faith profoundly impressed him, especially her patience with an alcoholic husband. She never complained or criticized, and she was accepting of everyone, including blacks. When Reagan’s college football team was to play near his hometown, no local hotel would accept the two blacks on the team. And that was in the North!

 

            When the angry coach was at a loss about what to do, Reagan offered to take the blacks home with him. The coach had already ruled that Reagan had to stay with the team at the hotel and could not go home. It took some convincing, for the coach could not believe that Reagan’s mother would open her home to black football players. When Reagan arrived home with his friends, it was as if his mother did not even notice their color. She was color-blind at a time when few were, her son says.

 

            While his mother had long since gone to her reward when her son was sworn in as the 40th President of the United States, her old, well-worn Bible was there. For the first time a President took the oath of office with his right hand on an open Bible. It was opened to 2 Chronicles 7 where his mother had long since underlined verse 14, and she had written in the margin that this was a great truth for the healing of nations. Wow!

 

            I haven’t found where Reagan names this as his favorite Scripture, but it is the one he chose to swear by. It reads: "If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their evil ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will heal their land and forgive their sins."

 

            This passage is one of the high points of Scripture, and it shows God’s grace in the Old Testament. Mercy, healing, forgiveness is not only in the New Testament.

 

            And this one verse capsules the very essence of religion.

 

 

            First, it shows that all people are not "God’s people," called by His name. If God’s people will respond to His grace and do certain things, then certain results will follow. It is not speaking to the world in general.

 

            Second, it points up the basics of faith. "If they will humble themselves" refers to an attitude of seeking God’s will; "and pray" points to a sincere openness of heart, a hunger for God; "and seek my face" is a desire for His presence in our lives, a communion with God: "and turn from their evil ways" is the repentance that is always necessary to meaningful religion, and it implies a right relationship with others as well as God.

 

            "I will hear from heaven" - this is the God of grace and mercy who loves His people unconditionally. But still there are conditions to the blessings offered - humility, prayer, obedience.

 

            "I will heal their land and forgive their sins" - this is who God is, always, in all ages, in all dispensations. If God’s people in a pagan, sinful nation would but respond to that grace!

 

            Nelle Reagan must have been a remarkable Christian, a true believer, one who profoundly influenced a future President. And one who understood what is necessary for a nation’s well-being.

 

            She, too, was afflicted with Alzheimer’s.– Leroy

 

ARE WE TO WORSHIP THE HOLY SPIRIT?

 

                                Spirit, we love you, we worship and adore you;

                                Glorify thy name in all the earth;

                                Glorify thy name,

                                Glorify thy name in all the earth.

 

            Where in Scripture is the Holy Spirit prayed to, praised, and held up as an object of worship as in this hymn? Or in such hymns as: "Spirit divine, attend our prayers/And make this house Thy home" or "Breathe on me, Breath of God/Fill me with life anew." And we have "God in Three Persons, blessed Trinity."

 

            Is this biblical language? Is the Holy Spirit the Giver or the gift? Is it the Sender or the sent? Does the Spirit attend our prayers, and is its name (what is the Spirit’s name?) to be glorified in all the earth? In the Bible it is Christ who breathed on the disciples and they received the Spirit (In. 20:22).

 

            And where does it say that God is in three persons? True, Jo. 1:1 says the Word (Christ) was God, but it goes on to say that "No one has seen God at anytime. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, has declared him." And where is the Holy Spirit called God?

 

            The Spirit’s mission seems rather to help the believer worship God, who is always the object of worship in Scripture. In Rom. 8:26 the Spirit is described as "helping us in our weakness" because "we do not know how to pray as we ought," and so "the Spirit makes intercession for us." Here we have the Spirit praying for us to God, not our praying to the Spirit.

 

            In Jo. 14:16 our Lord says, "I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper," and he goes on in verse 26 to identify the Helper as the Holy Spirit. Why didn’t Jesus pray to the Spirit itself, asking it to come and help the apostles?

 

            Did not Jesus always pray only to God? Should we not pray only to God? In Acts 7:59 the martyred Stephen does say while dying, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit," and in Revelation the slain Lamb (Christ) is worshipped along with God, but usually God alone is the object of worship. Jesus himself usually turned worship away from himself to God. He insisted that "You shall worship the Lord your God and Him only you shall serve" (Mt. 4; 12).

 

            1 Tim. 2:5 assures us that there is "one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus." Heb. 7:25 depicts Jesus as a High Priest "who lives to make interces­sion for us" to God.

 

            Jesus is in heaven as our Mediator and Intercessor. What a blessing to have one like ourselves praying to God on our behalf! This is why we normally pray to God through Christ or in Christ’s name, but not to Christ directly.

 

            But we joyfully sing hymns of praise to Christ and otherwise worship him, for he is both our Savior and the Son of God. Early on the pagans, like Pliny, recognized that the early Christians "sang hymns to Christ as unto a god."

 

            And we can sing "in the Spirit" and "with the Spirit," but do we sing to the Spirit, as if it were an object of worship? The Spirit is our "Helper" or our "Comforter" or our "Anointing" or our "Intercessor" or our "Teacher," and even "the guarantee of our inheritance" - the Scriptures teach all this - but is the Spirit our Savior or our God?

 

            I realize that I am not being exactly a Trinitarian, who postulates: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. This is the invention of a church council and not the language of Scripture. In our Stone/Campbell heritage we have always said that we accept whatever the Bible says about God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit, but not necessarily the dogmas men weave from those terms. And that is where I stand.

 

            When Jesus says, "If you have seen me you have seen the Father" (In. 14::9), I believe it. When he says, "My Father and I are one" (In. 10:20), I believe it. And when Paul assures us that Christ "being in the form of God did not consider it robbery to be equal with God" (Philip. 2:7), I believe it. I also believe it when he says, "The head of Christ is God" (I Cor. 11:3).

 

            And I accept everything the Bible says about the Holy Spirit. But I do not necessarily accept "the Triune God," for that is but a theological deduction. The Bible does not identify the Holy Spirit as God but as the Spirit of God or as the Spirit of Christ.

 

            The earliest creeds were not so presumptuous as the Nicean council. The so-called Apostles’ Creed (began to be formed in the third century), for instance, begins:

 

            I believe in God,

                        the Father Almighty,

                        Maker of heaven and earth.

            And in Jesus Christ,

                        His only Son our Lord

                        Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost,

                        Born of the Virgin Mary,

                        Suffered under Pontius Pilate,

                        Was crucified, dead, and buried;

                        He descended into hell;

                        The third day he arose again from the dead.

 

The creed goes on to say:

 

            I believe in

                        The Holy Ghost;

                        The Holy Catholic Church;

                        The Communion of Saints;

                        The forgiveness of sins;

                        The resurrection of the body;

                        And the life everlasting.

 

            I like creeds like that! Facts! Truths! No theories, no deductions!

           

            "I believe in God, the Father Almighty/ Maker of heaven and earth." Beautifully true and beautifully simple!

 

            "And in Jesus Christ, His only Son our Lord." What a glorious truth! No theories about how the Son is related to the Father. No "Very God and very God."

 

            "I believe in the Holy Ghost (Spirit)." That’s all! No Triune God or God the Spirit.

 

            Too bad the divines could not have left it that way when it came to creeds. They had to give us "the Trinity." But where is the Trinity in the Bible? It is a deduction at best, a theological theory.

 

            Understand, I am not saying it is wrong for you to sing to or pray to the Holy Spirit, or to worship it as God. And if I’m , in your church when you do so I’m not going to walk out, though I might quietly skip those lines. I am only saying that it may not be good theology, or, it may not be biblical, if you prefer to put it that way.

 

            My concern is that we be God-centered in our life of worship. The "Jesus movement" gave us the "God is dead" theology ("Jesus is my kind of a guy, but I’m not so sure about this God thing"). The Charismatic movement so emphasized the Holy Spirit that God was lost in the shuffle. In the worship of many churches today, including our own, God has competi­tion.

 

            Does Satan tempt us to worship anything except God?

 

            I identify with that angel in Rev. 22:9. The apostle John was so "high" over what the angel had revealed to him that he fell down before the angel to worship him. "You must not do this," the angel told the apostle (an apostle, mind you!). Worship God!, the angel charged.

 

            That’s not bad! Not bad at all! – Leroy

 

OUR CHANGING WORLD

 

            Ouida and I were recently in Arkansas City, Ks. where we helped the Random Road Chapel celebrate its 40th anniversary, We were there for their 20th, as were other speakers, so we reminisced as well as luxuriated in the study of Scripture, It was great! Out-of-town visitors, readers of this newsletter, included Lee Whitney, M/M Alvin Keene, and Gene/Joyce Bohnenblust. Other speakers who were present for the 20th included Larry/Gloria Bradshaw of ACU and Larry Sullivan of Manhattan Christian College, Ouida and I were guests of Max/Rose Foster, dear friends of longstanding, When you celebrate in segments of 20 years you are not only forced to admit you are getting older, but that there can’t be all that many segments. So, we might do a 50th at Random Road, which will be challenge enough for some of us! What a great little congregation they are, always reaching out with their resources. I told them, borrowing from Shakespeare, that they were like a tiny candle burning in a castle window on a dark night, guiding wayfarers. As Shakespeare put it, "What a glorious light on so dark a night from so small a flame!," or some such words.

 

            I went without Ouida to the Speedway Church of Christ in Indianapolis where we had sessions on "The Stone-Campbell Move­ment: Two Centuries of Diversity." The participants themselves, representing different segments of the Movement, illustrated the "unity in diversity" that formed the basis of the unity plea of our pioneers. These included James North of Cincinnati Bible Seminary (Christian Churches), who is as irenic as he is capable, and Carson Reed (Westlake Church of Christ in Indianapolis) and David Langford (Quaker Ave Church of Christ in Lubbock), younger men of unusual talent from whom we can expect much in years to come. The Speed­way church, where Kent Ellett ministers, is of the non-Sunday School background. It is to be commended for initiating a study of this kind that reaches across the lines and takes a stand for unity.

 

            I finished my course in Ethics at Richland College July 3 and gave passing grades to all 31 students, though two Asians dropped the course lest they score too low. The Asians in particular are fierce competitors and value high grades as if they were gold. A low grade is a disgrace. For this reason I gave frequent quizzes so they always knew where they stood. But it was a demanding course. One of them, planning to go on in science, tested me with, "I can stand one C on my record (He had all A’s and B’s) but not a D," eyeing me. I promised nothing, so he dropped out. When the dean, whom I taught for 20 years ago, asked me how it went, I told him that I could detect no difference in my capability as a professor, including recall, at 78 than 20 or 30 years ago. He said he could believe that but that I had nonetheless set a record in being the oldest person ever to teach a course at that college. The oldest! And I never noticed, and I don’t think the students did.

 

            When you are reading this issue Ouida and I will likely be on our way to London on the Queen Elizabeth 2nd, the Lord willing. Such luxury is out of our class, but for once we are going for it. We will be at sea for six nights, and we are advised that it will be fabulous, like an elegant hotel afloat. In all my travels to all parts of the world I have never taken an ocean voyage. I never dreamed that my first would be on the QE2. If it is allowed, I plan to continue my early a.m. "two miles" by running around the deck of the royal lady. That should be something! We will be in London for a week and then fly home. We’ll have to tell you about it in our next. (Ouida is concerned about gaining weight, so she’s on a diet!)

 

            We are blessed with lots of interesting house guests, sisters and brothers in the Lord whom we dearly love. So far this year 51 people have "signed in" from six different states and one foreign country. We’ve had two families to visit us from Australia, both from the state of Victoria. Ron/Dot Brooker were traveling the states in behalf of the Australian Committee of World Convention of Churches of Christ, who are conducting the World Convention in Brisbane in 2000. Graeme/Eileen Chapman were here teaching at Phillips U. Ouida and I think of our visitors as royalty, princes and princesses of heaven, and consider their time with us as a foretaste of heaven. So don’t disappoint us when you come this way. But Ouida prefers that you not all come at the same time!

 

READER’S EXCHANGE

 

            Richard T. Hughes will present the Reed Lectures in Nashville on Sept. 26-27. The subject: "Founding Vocation and Future Vision: the Self-understanding of the Churches of Christ." They are sponsored by the Disciples of Christ Historical Society and hosted by Lipscomb U., where they will be given. Call DCHS in Nashville for further info at 615-327-1444. – Ed Dodd, DCHS, 1101 19th Ave. S., Nashville 37212

 

            I am thankful to Alexander Campbell and his father Thomas, along with Barton Stone and countless others, who took the sword of peace to do battle with sectarianism. I am thankful that they did not live to see their unity movement become one of the most divided in Christendom. – Allen Dennis, Cleveland, Ms. on the Internet

 

            Jubilee was a great success, but limited support from area churches in Middle Tennessee has apparently caused its demise. This is a pity. – James A. Dillon, McMinnville, Tn.

 

            Our dear brotherhood continues to "shoot itself in the foot"! All the rancor, division, false accusation, and ostracizing! Whatever happened to the great truth that all people will know we are His disciples by our love for one another? Our plea for the unity of all believers is now a farce. I guess that’s why we don’t hear much about this "plea" any more. - Waymon Miller, Tulsa, Ok.

 

            I could spend all day giving thanks for all that you have meant to me, you and Carl Ketcherside. You two were at the right place and the right time to bring me through my "grace awakening." I was undergo­ing some bitter attacks from brethren. Although I never got to meet Carl, nor you as yet, I’ve loved you for being fathers to me. I want Carl’s set of books, and I want you to autograph it where your "Prefatory Essay" occurs. Being a nurse and your brother in the Lord, I urge you and Ouida to get plenty of rest and don’t over do it in these geriatric years of yours. - Matthew Mark McGinn, Bristol, RI.

 

            May the Lord grant you good health! All over the world your students like myself are praying for your health and ministry. Together in the Blessed Hope! - Motoyuki Nomura, Yamanashi-Ken, Japan

 

            College Press, our beloved publisher, has my book Gullible’s Travels coming out the first of the year. Be looking for it. I’ll send you a copy in gratitude for all the years of your encouragement. - Steve Goad, Blythe, Ca.

 

BOOK NOTES

 

            We now have only four bound volumes of Restoration Review, and only a few of one of those. The years are 1983-92, except for 1985-86. The price for the four is $60, postpaid. If you are unacquainted with these bound volumes, you might order but one of them, such as the 1991-92 which is entitled "What the Old Testament Means to Us," for only $15.

 

            We can supply loose copies of Restoration Review at only 20 cents each, postpaid. We have 50 different issues ranging over many years. We’ll select at random however many you order.

 

            The Stone-Campbell Movement: The Story of the American Restoration Movement by Leroy Garrett has been out of print for several months. A new edition will be ready by the end of August. The list price will be around $30 plus postage, but we are still taking orders at $25, postpaid.

 

            Ouida and I have been reading a book aloud to each other that we find fascinating, Inner Work, which tells one how to use dreams and active imagination for personal growth. It provides a four-step way to bring the conscious and unconscious together in a way that enriches life. $12 postpaid.

 

            A Miracle Named Jesus by Gary Hollaway invites you into the heart of Jesus. By walking with him in his ministry you can experience his miraculous power in your own life. By storytelling it shows how Jesus continues to minister to hurting people. $9 postpaid.

 

            Tom Olbricht’s Hearing God’s Word: My Life with Scripture in Churches of Christ is worth the while for two good reasons: it provides insights into a better interpretation of Scripture; it is recent Churches of Christ history as made by one of our most thoughtful leaders. $13 postpaid.

 

            We are pleased that the 12-volume set of The Works of Carl Ketcherside is selling as well as it is. It could go out of print sooner than supposed. The retail price is $200.00 plus postage, but we are selling them at $185, postpaid.