THE ABOMINATION OF DESOLATION - OR WHAT?

“Even though I was totally unprepared for the effect it had on me, I saw it with my own eyes,” is the way a gripping narrative begins in The Discerner, a bulletin issued by the Central Church of Christ in Pampa, Texas. Leon Odom, a preacher I have known since he was a boy growing up in Dallas, is the writer, and it is apparent that he is giving an account of a ghastly experience that may well involve ghosts and ghouls as well as mere mortals.

“I got out of the automobile and stood before the sign which read Church of Christ. As I looked through the doors of this neat little country town church building, I saw it,” he adds, inciting the reader with anticipatory anxiety.

“As I stood there looking at that sight, it was like looking into the open casket of a loved one. I stood gazing in amazement; stunned, and I confess, broken-hearted, as I literally fought back the tears,” says Leon, assuring us now that he must have seen something like a Nazi concentration camp or perhaps a vision of hell itself.

Such a woeful description caused me to think back over the things I have seen in our church buildings—or heard about from reliable sources—that would call for such a reaction. An elder and a preacher once had a fist-fight in one of our East Texas churches, and then there is the story of carnality between a minister and one of the sisters in one of the restrooms, in case one happened to be peering through that window. Then there are the tales of assassination, character assassination that is, which have been rather common among us, even emanating from our pulpits and with the blessings of the leadership. These sometimes take the form of “withdrawal of fellowship,” often from the most spiritual and most responsible of the congregation. And I have heard some debates that might merit such a description as comes from Leon Odom’s pen. Many a church wrangle might also qualify.

Then I thought of what history has to say about ghastly deeds within church edifices. Both Syrian and Roman soldiers killed priests within the confines of the temple, some of the priests falling to pagan arrows as they stood guarding the entrance to the holy place unarmed. But one Syrian general did not fair so well on his visit to the temple at Nanaea in Persia. Lured there by an extravagant display of gold, the priests locked the doors on him and his soldiers, and then stoned them to death from secret openings in the roof. They then dismembered them, cutting off their heads and hurling them, like footballs, to those outside. That should really raise the hair and enlarge the pupils of a peeping Leon Odom!

There is Jesus’ reference to Zechariah “who you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar” (Mt. 23:35), and how many martyrs have there been, like Thomas Becket, who died inside cathedrals and in the shadow of holy things? But the most gruesome story of all is that of the Syrians, led by the beastly Antiochus Epiphanes, who once destroyed 80,000 Jews in three days, including women and children, in the streets of Jerusalem, who did every abominable thing imaginable to desecrate the temple. They offered swine’s flesh at the altar and forced the Jews to eat the entrails of the sacrifices. They used the sacred vessels for their feasts of debauchery, in which they wallowed in the floor in every imaginable indecency. The soldiers had intercourse with the prostitutes of the city in what was considered the holiest place in the world. This would surely have left Leon or any of the rest of us speechless had we witnessed such a spectacle. It is understandable that it was just such as this that Daniel was describing as “the abomination of desolation.”

It was hardly anything like this, however, that found brother Odom fighting back the tears as he peered into one of our buildings. It wasn’t even a seance or any kind of fellowship with departed spirits. Nor a dance of ghouls. Not even a crap game between the elders and the preacher. Nor a bingo or a pajama party.

In somber tones he tells us: “It was sitting at the front of the auditorium next to the pulpit—a new piano.”

The scene is Mobeetie, Texas and it concerns a Church of Christ that I told about in our last issue under the title “Visiting Among Free Churches of Christ.” Lester Hathaway is the preacher there, a man known far and wide for his faithfulness to the gospel. As Leon says in his article: “This was not a so-called ‘conservative wing’ of the Christian Church . . . But this was where the body of Christ meets, in Mobeetie, Texas, twenty miles from Pampa.” And it now has a piano! Lester sent me this copy of The Discerner with Leon’s article. The party who mailed it to Lester boldly inscribed in red across the page the questions “Lester, is this true? When did you do it? Why???”

This “Say it ain’t so, John” attitude shows how disproportionate our view of instrumental music has become. One would suppose that Lester Hathaway has committed the unpardonable sin, or at least something akin to such sins that incensed the mind of Paul, like lasciviousness, witchcraft, or sodomy. Would the reaction have been less violent had Lester only gotten drunk or divorced his wife? Leon even tells us of the reaction of the piano dealer in Pampa: “The piano was purchased recently in Pampa and the man who sold it was heard to say, ‘I did something today I never thought I would do. I sold the church of Christ a piano!’”

Leon concludes his piece by assuring us that the church will go farther and farther into apostasy so long as “they continue to ignore the New Testament.” Such judgment indicates that the “deplorable scene in Mobeetie” is an outrageous disregard for what the scriptures say. But don’t we all acknowledge that the New Testament is silent about the instrument? It is not silent about hate, malice, jealousy, railing, faction—sins committed in many of our buildings—which may justly be called deplorable and they might well cause us to weep. But the scriptures nowhere say that instrumental music is a sin. If it were so inherently wicked as to cause a good man like Leon Odom to weep as if he were looking into the open casket of a loved one, it is unlikely that God would ever have said, Old Testament or New, the likes of: “Praise him with stringed instruments and organs” (Ps. 150:4).

Since the New Covenant scriptures are silent on the subject, we have to leave it to each brother to interpret that silence according to his own conscience. Whatever conclusion one reaches can be no more than his own deduction and cannot therefore be made a test for others. We must be good Campbellites and follow the advice in the Declaration and Address to the effect that nothing can be made a test of fellowship but what is clearly and distinctly set forth in the word of God.

I lay claim to my right to be non-instrumental on this question. My reasons go beyond the silence of the scriptures to involve simplicity of worship and the principle of unity, but still it is only my own interpretation and cannot be imposed upon others. I sometimes remind Christian Churches that this will be their problem as the churches of the world become more united. What will they say about the organ, not simple to us, but to the great Greek Orthodox Church, the Scot Presbyterians, the Quakers, and others who for conscience sake cannot use the instrument? I won’t have that problem. And of course you haven’t heard arguments against the’ instrument until a Scot Presbyterian gets after you!

I would urge Leon Odom and other of my brothers to save their tears for the sins that matter most. It would be a sad day if the presence of an organ meant that those who use it would reject us as brothers unless we went along with the idea. But no one does that. Leon would be as welcome as ever at Mobeetie, whether he sings or not, and knowing those folk as I do, they’d probably allow him to speak to them. So the world hasn’t exactly come to an end in Mobeetie. They still love Jesus and they still honor the scriptures as authoritative, even if they no longer interpret their silence the same way Leon and I do.

It would be well for us non-instrumentalists to visit instrumental congregations with more frequency. And let us study the piano or organ, taking a good long look at it. Then we should ask ourselves if we have not allowed it to become some kind of gargantuan symbol of apostasy far beyond what it really is. Perhaps some instrumentalists have a similar attitude in reverse, the instrument standing in their minds like a bulwark of freedom, a testimony of their liberty in Christ. One feminine enthusiast back in the early days of the controversy insisted that if they removed the piano from the building she would be straddle it.

Now that would have been a sight to have wept over.—the Editor