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That
pungent line,
The
Past
is
Prologue,
is
engraved on the cornerstone of the Archives Building in our nation’s
capital. When a visitor saw those words he asked the taxi driver
what they meant. His answer was, “Brother, you ain’t
seen nothin’ yet!”
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Joseph
must have had such a view of things as he revealed his identity to
his astonished brothers, which he did amidst tears. His brothers had
sold him into slavery, but in God’s providence he had become
the governor of all Egypt. But Joseph saw the deeper meaning in what
had happened to him: “God sent me before you to preserve for
you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors”
(Gen. 45:7). Years later after his Hebrew kin had settled in Egypt,
Joseph spoke as a prophet as well as a governor when he said to his
brothers: “I am about to die; but God will visit you, and
bring you up out of this land to the land which he swore to Abraham,
to Isaac, and to Jacob” (Gen. 50:24). And he made them swear
that when they returned to the promised land that they would take
his bones with them!
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Joseph
realized that the past is prologue. Yes, his brothers intended to do
him evil, but God turned it into good. God used a frightened young
man and a cruel deed to bring about his purposes for the children of
Israel. His people were to be cradled and preserved by the greatest
nation on earth until the time for them to take possession of the
land promised to their fathers. God was at work in history, “to
bring it about” as Joseph put it, and Joseph saw that all the
things that had happened to him, as bad as they seemed at the time,
were for the ultimate good of all mankind. It was this larger view
of things that lifted Joseph above pettiness and revenge. He
embraced, kissed, and blessed those who would have murdered him. If
we are petty and vindictive toward each other it may be that we do
not have Joseph’s grasp of history. He could have said to his
brothers as did that Washington taxi driver, “You ain’t
seen nothin’ yet!”
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Back
in the sixteenth century when Copernicus made the discovery that the
earth is not the center of the universe, a doctrine held dear by the
church and world alike, he could hardly have imagined our age of
nuclear science with its exploration of outer space. For thirty
years Copernicus kept his views to himself, but finally in 1543 when
death was near, he persuaded a frightened printer to publish his
Revolutions
of Heavenly Bodies.
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Galileo
took up where Copernicus left off, and in 1616 his teachings were
condemned by the inquisition in Rome. The church ruled that
Galileo’s theory that the sun is the center of the universe
and that the earth revolves around it was “foolish, absurd,
false in theology, and heretical.” He was forced to recant,
which saved him from execution, but had to live his remaining years
in prison. Even Luther joined in the condemnation, referring to
Copernicus as an “upstart astrologer” for believing the
sun to be the center of the universe.
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Alas,
how far we have come in our understanding of the universe since
Copernicus and Galileo! The past is indeed prologue, and it
continues to be, for even now we stand at the threshold of even
greater discoveries. How foolish man is to suppose that he has
arrived. In whatever area of life we are still only writing the
introduction to the book of human knowledge and experience.
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We
have been celebrating the 500th anniversary of the birth of Martin
Luther, which has reminded us of how much the world has changed in
five centuries. It was unlikely that a Roman pontiff would ever be
paying tribute to Luther — in a Lutheran Church at that! —
or that Roman Catholics and Lutherans would ever come closer
together on the doctrine of justification by faith alone.
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These
are but glimpses of changes that run deep in the life of the church
today. Carl Ketcherside will soon begin a series in this journal on
his experiences at the world evangelism conference last year in
Amsterdam, where thousands of itinerant evangelists gathered from
all parts of the world to share their experiences in reaching the
world for Christ. Carl’s account will thrill you, and you will
agree with him that such an event could not have happened even a few
years ago.
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You
seldom hear that old dirge anymore that the church is about to die.
Sectarianism may be in trouble but not the church. Only a few years
back the calamity howlers were saying that the Christian faith is on
the wane and that its only future is to shrink, wither, and die, and
they even spoke of ours as “the post-Christian era.” We
now see, however, that our age comes nearer being the pre-Christian
era, for Christian mission in the world has only begun. When I was
in Thailand last October the missionaries there received word that
literally thousands of Chinese refugees on the skirts of Red China
are turning to Christ, and it is expected that in time they will
bear the message to the heart of their homeland.
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And
in Black Africa an average of 16,000 a day join the Christian
church, causing some knowledgeable missiologists to believe that in
another two decades Africa will be the most Christian nation in the
world. And the growth of the gospel in Korea is nothing short of
phenomenal, with that nation having the largest churches in the
world. And missionaries report that even in Russia there is a
tremendous revival of faith, especially among the young people.
There is a definite groundswell of interest in Jesus Christ among
the youth both in the universities in the Soviet Union and in the
satellite countries of Eastern Europe.
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To
say that the past is prologue is to have a positive, optimistic view
of the future, even if it be a realistic one. John Dewey thought the
word meliorism to be better than optimism, for the meliorist
acknowledges the severity of evil in the world but still believes
that conditions can and will be improved, while the optimist tends
to minimize the dimension of evil. Use what word we will, in seeing
the past as prologue the Christian is saying that there is a
glorious tomorrow in the plan of God and that his church upon earth
is an important part in its realization.
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If
it is true that the past is prologue and that “you ain’t
seen nothin’ yet,” it would follow that the world is
getting better, allowing for some ups and downs. In spite of the
devastating evils that continue to assail us a good case can be made
for an ever-improving world. H. G. Wells’ gloomy prediction
that while man began in a cave he will end up in the ruins of a slum
has hardly proved to be the case. The truth is that there are not
only fewer slums today than ever before in the world but that man’s
lot is generally better than ever before.
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This
may not be clearly the case when we compare today with yesterday or
this year with last year, but it becomes evident when we compare
this century with the last century. Take prison reform in England as
an example. A century ago hundreds of prisoners, half-naked, were
crowded into cold, small wards. Even women and children had to cook,
eat, and sleep on the floor. Those conditions no longer exist. In
both England and America the mentally ill were treated as criminals,
children worked in mines and sweat shops, and women commonly died in
child birth. And in both countries men, women, and children were
sold as slaves on the auction block like cattle. These things are
now unthinkable. In fact many people in the world today have several
“servants” around the house in the form of gadgets and
appliances. I recall how hard life was for my own mother, who spent
one day a week over a wash tub doing the laundry and another day
doing the ironing. One of my older brothers, who had to help mother
with the washing back in those days, is still teased about the way
he would ask, “Mom, are they all wet yet?”
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That
is one way of recalling the hardships of yesteryear,
Are
they all wet yet?,
for
even when they were all wet there was a long way to go. Whether it
was diseases that plagued us, poverty, difficulty of travel, limited
communication, or scarcity of reading matter, it is now a different
world. I have traveled the world somewhat, and everywhere I go
Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Thailand, Europe, South America, Canada,
Mexico — the people are better off than they were in decades
past.
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And
as stubbornly slow as it might seem, there is moral progress as
well. Yes, Russia callously shot down a jet full of innocent people,
but look at the outcry there was against it around the world. Yes,
we have 25,000 murders a year by drunks on our highways, but there
is emerging such an outrage against such irresponsible carnage,
including an army of mad mothers, that this evil may soon be
virtually eliminated.
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All
this means that the kingdom of God is gradually breaking in upon our
world. Like the tiny mustard seed that imperceptibly grows into a
giant tree, the kingdom of God is gradually becoming a reality,
scientifically and technologically as well as spiritually. That
there is a spiritual awakening around the world is especially
evident. The world hungers for God perhaps more today than at
anytime in history. There is a renewal movement in virtually every
denomination. The underdeveloped countries are not only making
substantial gains in technology but they are also looking to
spiritual values. And those highly sophisticated nations that now
seem so indifferent to spiritual things, such as Japan, may soon
experience a religious awakening that will eclipse their scientific
advancements.
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This
does not mean that human nature is changing and that sin will soon
be a thing of the past, but it does mean that the God who sits upon
the throne, declaring that he will make all things new, is at work
in our world and that his promise of “new heavens and a new
earth” is written in the script and will one day be a reality.
And like that mustard seed its coming may be imperceptible in terms
of weeks or even years but more evident in terms of decades and
generations.
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Observe
how our own Churches of Christ-Christian Churches have changed in
the past generation. While we may lag behind others in this respect,
we are nonetheless far less sectarian and far more open than just a
few years ago. Like Marxism that has gradually been losing its hold
over men’s minds in recent years (another sign of a coming
spiritual renaissance?), our people are no longer buying the old
bromides of the Church of Christisms of a bygone era.
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The
past is prologue. You haven’t seen anything yet. As for
Churches of Christ, the renewal that is coming, one that will boggle
the mind of our most hardened skeptics, may not be just around the
corner but it is certainly down the road. And we can help make it so
by following Jesus Christ, who also believed that the past is
prologue, when he said, “My Father is working until now and I
am working.” —the
Editor