GIFT OF .... ... .. ./. WILL CHRIST COME AGAIN? An Exposure of the Foolishness, Fallacies and Falsehoods of Shailer Mathers By! R. A. TORREY Dean of HTxe Bible Institute of Los Angeles BIBLE INSTITUTE OF LOS ANGELES 536-558 South Hope Street LOS ANGELES, "CALIFORNIA Copyright, 1918 B>> R. A. TORRET "WILL CHRIST COME AGAIN?" AN EXPOSURE OF THE FOOLISHNESS, FALLACIES AND FALSEHOODS OF SHAILER MATHEWS. One of the most dangerous and harmful pamphlets or books published in the last year or two is the leaflet of Shailer Mathews entitled, "Will Christ Come Again?" The American Institute of Sacred Literature, with the large resources at its command, seems to have put forth its strongest efforts to get this pamphlet into the hands of every minister and prominent Christian worker in the land. In this attempt they have had the earnest and active co-oper- ation of many influential ministers and religous bodies. When the pamphlet first appeared it seemed to many thoughtful people as though the reasoning of the pamphlet was so weak and many of the statements so manifestly false that the pamphlet would do good rather than harm by serving to open the eyes of many to the weakness of the cause of the postmillenarians, who felt compelled to resort to such methods as those illustrated in the pamphlet to prop up their waning cause. In point of fact this pamphlet has had this expected effect upon a great many; but on the other hand many were so determined that they would not be premillenarians that they have been ready to cordially welcome anything that attacked premillenarianism, even though it was full of the poison of unbelief. Further than this, not a few have been blinded by the subtleties of the pamphlet. A striking illustration of this is found in the fact that the Women's Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, one of the most honored and influential missionary societies in this country, has sent a copy of this pamphlet to every one of the five hundred mis- sionaries that they support in different parts of the world, earnestly commending the pamphlet, and the wife of one of the Bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church, a gifted and influential woman, Mrs. Clotilda L. McDowell, has 392686 written a letter ^9.. each, of th^se missionaries, sending it with til?, ^ffcplllEt.-ariq Sctyjrig' .in it: "The enclosed leaflet, stating as it does, with substantial accuracy, the position of the Methodist Episcopal Church on this important ques- tion." It certainly is startling when a foreign missionary society, led by a woman of Mrs. McDowell's influence, endorses officially a pamphlet which not only attacks the premillennial theory of our Lord's return, but denies in the plainest terms that He will ever come again at all personally and bodily, and furthermore, discredits and sneers at the clear teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ and the Apostles, and constantly seeks to undermine confidence in the abso- lute reliability of the Scriptures of both the Old Testament and the New. On page 21 of this pamphlet are found these words : "Will Christ come again 1 We answer in all reverence, not in the sense in which the early Christians (and from the whole pamphlet it is evident that in "the early Christians" Shailer Mathews includes Jesus Christ and the Apostles) . . . expected. Never in the sense that the premillenarians of today assert (i.e., as the imme- diate context in the pamphlet makes clear, personally, vis- ibly, bodily)." We are informed by another Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church that Mrs. McDowell and the Board had no right to take this action, and we presume that this Bishop is correct in his statement, but neverthe- less the Board took it, and it is a striking illustration of the peril that there is in the pamphlet. It is not pleasant to say about any man, but especially about a man who has occupied so high a position in the educational world and in the organzed church as that occu- pied by Dr. Shailer Mathews, the things which we shall be forced to say in this review of his pamphlet, but Dr. Mathews has himself compelled it. He has attacked, not openly it is true, but none the less really because insidiously, the honor of God's Word, the Bible, and of God's Son, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. He has said most con- temptuous and slanderous things about both, as we shall show further on, and the man who attacks the honor and truthfulness of my Lord Jesus Christ, or who seeks to undermine faith in that Book that I know to be the Word of God, I feel compelled to contend against and to speak about in the frankest terms, no matter who he is nor what position he may occupy. In speaking of him as "Shailer Mathews," without the use of the titles which belong to him, no disrespect is intended, but he so signs himself. He uses no titles on the title page of his pamphlet. We confess that we respect him all the more for this. A great man does not need titles. But Shailer Mathews, if any man, has a right to use titles. He has been given the honorary degree of D.D. by three colleges : Colby, Oberlin and Brown University. He has received the honorary degree LL.D. from Pennsylvania State College. From 1899 to 1908 he occupied the position of Dean of the Divinity School, and from 1908 to the present time of the University of Chicago. Shailer Mathews is in reality a far more able man and a far better scholar and a far more intelligent reasoner than appears from this pamphlet. In this pamphlet he has ven- tured to write upon a subject to which he has given no thorough and honest study. Indeed his ignorance of the views and teachings of those whom he attacks the pre- millenarians is sometimes startling. Furthermore, he has allowed himself in this instance to be governed by his very violent and bitter prejudices rather than by his reasoning faculties, and thus has been betrayed into the fallacies and falsehoods that characterize the pamphlet from beginning to- end. There is reason for thinking that his deepest preju- dices are not so much against the premillenarian view of the Second Coming of Christ as against the Divine authorty and inerrancy of our Lord Jesus Christ and the Inspired Apos- tles, and that this professed attack upon premillenarianism is really intended to be a camouflaged attack upon the authority and reliability of Jesus Christ and the New Testa- ment writers, which he did not dare to attack directly and openly. Let me say at the outset that the great fault of the pamphlet and the great danger that lies in it is not that it attacks the premillennial view of our Lord's return, but that it persistently and constantly seeks to discredit the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ and the holy men of God whom God, by His Holy Spirit, inspired to write the New Tesatment Scriptures. If Shailer Mathews is right in his statements, then Jesus Christ, as we shall show later, was either an egregious fool or a consummate fraud. We shall see further on that there is no escaping this conclusion. To me the question of whether our Lord Jesus is coming before the millennium or after the millennium, or even the question whether He is coming again to this earth visibly and bodily at any time, is an entirely secondary question. The question of whether the inspired Apostles were infal- lible teachers or not, and above all the question whether our Lord Jesus Christ was an infallible teacher or not, is of the very first importance. That Jesus Chrst claimed to be a teacher sent from God, who spoke the very words of God, admits of no honest question (see John 12:48, 49 ; x 14:24; John 7:16). If our Lord Jesus was not a teacher sent from God, who spoke the very words of God, a Divinely inspired and absolutely infallible teacher, then He was either a sadly deluded fanatic or a deliberate liar. If He were either one or the other I must refuse to believe on Him, and become an infidel. There is no middle ground for any logical thinker to take. There is not enough of the intellectual trickster about me, even if there is about Shailer Mathews and his school, to believe that Jesus was either a sadly deluded fanatic or a deliberate liar and still claim to believe in Him as my Saviour and Lord. But our Lord Jesus was neither a sadly deluded fanatic nor a deliberate liar, He was what He claimed to be, a teacher sent from God, who spoke the very words of God, a Divinely inspired and abso- lutely infallible teacher. Yes, He was more than that; He was so entirely, even during His earthly life, God manifest in the flesh, that He could say truly : "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father" (John 14:9), and could say again concerning Himself : "All men should honor the Son, even as they honor the Father" (John 5:23). God Almighty has set His seal to these stupendous claims of our Lord Jesus by raising Him from the dead ; and by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, which can be easily shown to be one of the best proven facts of history, Shailer Mathews, in seeking, even though it be in underhanded ways and with much subtlety, to discredit our Lord Jesus Christ, is proven to be a blasphemer. So much by way of intro- duction. Now we are ready for a direct examination of some of the childish follies and absurd fallacies and gross false- hoods and insidious blasphemies of Shailer Matthews' pamphlet. Dr. Mathews begins his pamphlet with these words : "Will Christ come again? Some say yes, and immediately. Others say, when did he ever go away? He is present spiritually. Has he not promised to be with us even to the end of the age? These two answers are the outcome of two ways of using the Bible. Which is correct?" In what immediately follows and in his whole booklet Shailer Matthews makes it plain that he believes that the latter "way of using the Bible" is correct. So the primary question that Shailer Mathews puts in his pamphlet, and which he implies cannot be answered, is, "When did He (i.e., our Lord Jesus) ever go away?" How any student of the Bible, even of ordinary intelligence and honesty, could ask such a question it is difficult to understand. Shailer Mathews' question is not difficult to answer. Our Lord Jesus Himself answered the question ; He answered it, for example, in John 14:28 where He says: "Ye heard how I said to you, I GO AWAY, and I come unto you. If ye loved me, ye would have rejoiced, because / go unto the Father: for the Father is greater than I." Now if our Lord Jesus Christ meant anything by these words, and He certainly meant something for He was not a fool, He meant to say that He was GOING AWAY to the Father in Heaven. So Jesus Christ Himself tells us when He went away. He went away when, after having been crucified and raised again, He ascended from Mount Olivet, leaving this world behind and going to another world, from which other world some day, as indicated here and more plainly stated elsewhere , He is coming back again. Shailer Mathews' question is also answered in the first chapter of the Acts of the Apostles in the ninth verse where we read : "And when He had said these things, as they zvere looking, He was taken up: and a cloud received Him out of their sight." In these words Luke, who, to say nothing of his 5 inspiration, was a very accurate historian, tells us distinctly WHEN THE LORD JESUS WENT AWAY. It was when the disciples were gathered on Mount Olivet and when He had given them His parting injunction (verses 4-9), and then while they were looking HE WENT AWAY and was received up "out of their sight." The Apostle Peter also answers the question in Acts 3:19-21: "Repent ye therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out, and that so there may come seasons of refreshing from the presence of the Lord; and that HE MAY SEND THE CHRIST who hath been appointed for you, even Jesus: WHOM THE HEAVEN MUST RECEIVE UNTIL THE TIMES OF RESTORATION OF ALL THINGS, whereof God spake by the mouth of His holy prophets that have been from of old." Peter here distinctly tells us just when the Lord Jesus went away and just where He went and how long He is to stay there. The Apostle Paul also answered Shailer Mathews' question in 1 Thess. 1 :9, 10 where we read : "For they themselves report concern- ing us what manner of entering in we had unto you ; and how ye turned unto God from idols, to serve a living and true God, and TO WAIT FOR HIS SON FROM HEAVEN, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, who delivereth us from the wrath to come." Here Paul dis- tinctly tells us that Jesus, having been raised from the dead, left this earth and went away into Heaven, and that a truly converted and properly instructed man is waiting for Him to come back again. Of course, we all know that there is a sense in which Jesus is here today, that "He is here spiritually," that He has promised to be with us by His Holy Spirit to the end of the age, if \ve go forth accord- ing to His commandment, and make disciples of all the nations (Matt. 28:18-20; cf. John 14:15-23). Premillen- arians insist upon this as much as postmillenarians, or rather more than postmillenarians ; but the Bible makes it just as plain, that He is not here in the way that He was here during His bodily presence on earth before His bodily ascension from Olivet, and in the way that He is to be here again when He comes the second time. The Bible makes it as plain as day that Jesus went away from this world from Mount Olivet, that He went into Heaven, and that He is to stay in Heaven until the appointed time comes for Him to come back again. Such words as those with which Shailer Mathews opens his book are simply an attempt, and a weak and foolish attempt, to throw dust into the eyes of unthinking men and women. Of course, if one is determined not to discover and accept the plain meaning of God's Word, he can spiritualize away the plain gram- matical, "historical" intended sense of these numerous pas- sages which I have quoted; but he can only do it by a method of interpretation by which one can also make the Bible mean anything he likes, and can make lying to be as acceptable unto God as truth, and greed, covetousness and stealing as acceptable to God as self-sacrifice, and adultery as acceptable to God as holy married love. Listen to Shailer Mathews' own system of interpretation as described by himself in this same booklet. He says on page 8: "The other way to use the Bible, (i.e., the way that Shailer Mathews is himself advocating in this pamphlet), some- times called the historical, might be called the common sense way. Those evangelicals who hold to it are not beyond making mistakes for this method is not without difficulties of detail, but they believe in the inspiration of prophets and apostles by the spirit of God. (Let me call attention to the fact in passing that Shailer Mathews spells "Spirit of God" with a small s. We thought when the first edition of this pamphlet appeared that this might have been a typo- graphical error, but it is repeated in the later editions, and from this and other facts this is evidently intentional). They know that this inspiration was progressive, accumu- lative, dependent upon and fitted to successive periods of human intelligence. Evidence compels them to believe that many of the BELIEFS OF THE EARLY CHRISTIANS (by "beliefs of the early Christians" Shailer Mathews means the teachings of the inspired apostles, and even of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, though he is not courageous nor honest enough to come right out and say so, but his whole pamphlet unmistakably shows that this is his meaning) can be understood only as they are studied in the light of the habits of thought prevalent in their times. Historically- 7 minded students of the Bible distinguish between funda- mental Christian truths and the method and language used by the early Christians in expressing these truths. (The italics here are Shailer Mathews'). They believe that in order to realize these truths THE CONCEPTIONS OF THESE ANCIENT MEN OF GOD HAVE TO BE TRANSLATED INTO MODERN CONCEPTIONS exactly as the Hebrew or Greek language has to be trans- lated into English." Shailer Mathews calls the method of Bible interpretation he here advocates, the "historical method." It is absolutely nothing of the sort. The "his- torical" method of Biblical interpretation has a clearly defined sense. The real "historical" method of interpreta- tion is this, that the words in the Bible should be inter- preted according to their grammatical construction and in the light of the historical usage of the day, and to that method of interpretation no intelligent student of the Bible has any objection. Shailer Mathews, however, has sub- stituted for this really "historical" method an entirely dif- ferent method of interpretation, and calls it the "historical" method, which it is not at all. He also calls it ff the common sense way," but if any one will look at it a moment he will see that so far from being "the common sense way" it is absolute nonsense. It is a method of interpretation that no translator outside of a lunatic asylum would dream of applying to Plato, Homer, Virgil, Horace, or to any book but the Bible. Shailer Mathews says further : "The con- ceptions of these ancient men of God have to be translated into modern conceptions exactly as the Hebrew or Greek language has to be translated into English." A few moments consideration will show that these words also of Shailer Mathews' are absolute nonsense. Translating Hebrew and Greek words, and grammatical constructions and idioms into their exactly corresponding English words, construc- tions and idioms is one thing, a reasonable and common sense thing, but translating THE THOUGHTS of "ancient men of God," or any one else, INTO OTHER THOUGHTS utterly alien to their own and oftentimes flatly contradicting their own, is not translation at all, and this whole sentence is simply a ridiculous attempt to defend 8 the substitution by Shailer Mathews and others of their evolutionary (and revolutionary) vagaries, for what Jesus Christ, and the inspired Apostles actually taught. Any one who will stop and think must see that this is not translation at all, it is distortion, perversion, substitution and prosti- tution. Shailer Mathews goes on to say : "Thus the issue is plain. It is not between those who believe the Bible and those who disbelieve it. It is between ways of using the Bible." This statement is an absolute falsehood. The issue is exactly between those who believe the Bible, those who translate Hebrew and Greek words into equivalent English words, and believe what is said by the various Bible writers, and those who throw overboard what the Bible says, sub- stituting something else for it, simply because they disbelieve what the Bible says. If a man should reason in a court of law as Shailer Mathews reasons in this passage, he would be laughed out of court. It is only "theologians" who resort to such preposterous logic. The "way .of using the Bible" that Shailer Mathews here advocates is that of setting the Bible and what it says altogether aside and substituting for its teachings what he thinks is demanded by the modern evolutionary method of thought. Shailer Mathews confesses that if we are to take the Bible at its face value, i.e., as we take any other book of the past or present, "the premillenarian propagandist" is "true to the Bible," but he tries to explain it away by saying of the premillenarian that "he is really true to an improper way of using the Bible. His loyalty to the Bible amounts to making OUTGROWN OR TEMPORARY WORDS AND CONCEPTIONS equally true with what they attempt to express." (p. 9). To this would say that there is no other form of loyalty to the Bible or any other book than that of taking the "words and conceptions" to mean what they say, and to call them, as Shailer Mathews plainly does in this sentence, "OUTGROWN OR TEM- PORARY WpRDS AND CONCEPTIONS," is to be dis- loyal to the Bible and to pour contempt on the Bible, and goes to show that in spite of all his twisting and turning that Shailer Mathews disbelieves the Bible and desires to substitute for what the Bible teaches, something entirely different that he imagines evolutionary philosophy teaches. Shailer Mathews ought to be man enough to come right out and say so, but he is not. How anybody can be so silly and irrational as to be blinded by such pettifogging words as these of Shailer Mathews is more than I can understand, but hundreds, and probably thousands of preachers in America, and many missionaries abroad have been blinded by them. What Shailer Mathews here calls "the historical method of interpretation/' in plain English is the infidel method, not a manly and courageous infidel method, but a sneaking and cowardly infidel method. By any such method of interpretation you can make the Koran, or all the morally rotten literature of India, reeking with the most unmentionable and indescribable vileness, as valu- able as the Bible. If Shailer Mathews wishes to get rid of the plain and crystal clear teaching of the Bible, as he undoubtedly does, why is he not honest enough to come right out and say so? Why does he not come right out and say that the Bible is a jumble of errors and falsehoods? The fundamental lack with Shailer Mathews and his whole school of thought is a lack of common intellectual honesty, and of a decent amount of courage. When he refers, as he unmistakably does from what he says in the connection, to the teachings of the inspired Apostles and of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, he never speaks of them as the teachings of the Apostles and of the Lord Jesus, but speaks of them over and over again as "the beliefs of the early Christians." He knew perfectly well that any man or woman who had even a measurably decent amount of faith in Jesus Christ and the Bible, would resent it if he spoke so contemptuously of what were clearly set forth as the teachings of Jesus Christ Himself and of the inspired Apostles, so he does not call these teachings the teachings of the Apostles and of Jesus Christ, but "the beliefs of the early Christians." This he does over and over again, and then goes on immediately, time and time again, to refer to things that either the Apostles or Jesus Christ Himself taught, and oftentimes he refers to what they both taught, in ridicule and contempt. His whole method of argument would be unworthy of a pettifogging police court lawyer. 10 On page 4 Shailer Mathew says : "Let us first look at the Scriptual material." This sounds encouraging, but in what follows not for one moment does he look at the Scriptural material in any specific and honest way, or with any intention of accepting the teaching of the Scriptures. There is not one explicit quotation from the Scriptures in the entire book. The whole attempt of the booklet is to turn the reader's attention away from the things that the Bible explicitly says. There are undoubted allusions to the Scriptures, but Dr. Mathews scrupulously avoids quoting the Scriptures, and some of his allusions are gross cari- catures. In one of his allusions given in direct connection with his words : "Let us first look at the Scripture mater- ial," in fact the words immediately following, he says, "The early Christians believed that Jesus would return during the lifetime of their generation. This hope is on almost every page in the Nezv Testament." Any one who is at all familiar with the New Testament knows that this state- ment is one of the wildest and most reckless assertions ever written by a supposedly serious minded man. How any man who hoped to retain the confidence of his readers could have allowed himself to be betrayed into such a wild and reckless statement it is difficult to understand. There are 285 pages in the copy of the New Testament which I now hold in my hand. Does any one believe for a moment that there are 285 places that indicate, or suggest, or hint that "the early Christians believed that Jesus would return during the lifetime of their generation?" Such a hope so far from being found 285 times in the New Testament is not found one hundred times, nor ten times, nor is there even one single instance in which it is asserted that the Lord Jesus zvould return during the lifetime of the gener- ation then living. It is true that there are a few passages in the New Testament which some commentators have held taught that Jesus Christ would return during the lifetime of that generation, the most notable instances, those most frequently appealed to, being Matt. 24:34 and 1 Thess. 4:16. In Matt. 24:34 we are told that our Lord said: "Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass away, till all these things be accomplished." This is taken 11 as showing that the Lord Jesus Christ taught that the gener- ation living when He spoke would not pass away until His coming again was accomplished. But if any one will study this passage in the context, the only way to study any passage in the Bible, he will discover that by "this genera- tion" our Lord did not mean the generation living upon the earth when He was here, but the generation living when the signs of which He had just spoken came to pass. The words are immediately after the parable of the fig tree, the whole thought of w^hich is the rapidity with which Summer draws nigh after the branch of the fig tree becomes tender and it "putteth forth its leaves," and He goes on to say that these signs, of which He has spoken in the immediately pre- ceding verses, are the signs of the coming Summer, like the fig tree's branch becoming tender and putting forth leaves, and that therefore when all these signs are seen, empha- sizing especially the great tribulation and the darkening of the sun that shall follow, then it would be known that the Summer of His coming to the earth is nigh, and that one can tell that before the generation then living passes, all these things shall be accomplished. The whole misapprehension of the meaning of these words of our Lord Jesus comes from one of the most vicious methods of interpretation, that of ripping a verse out of its context. It is the same thought to which our Lord Jesus gives voice in Luke 21 :31-33 : "Even so ye also, zvhen ye see these things coin- ing to pass, know ye that the kingdom of God is nigh. Verily I say unto you, this generation (evidently the gen- eration then living when they "see these things coming to pass") shall not pass away till all things be accomplished." And it is in this immediate connection that He had said: "When these things begin to come to pass, look up and lift up your heads ; because your redemption draweth nigh." The other passage most appealed to by those who would have us think that the early Christians taught that Jesus would come during their lifetime, is 1 Thess. 4 :15-17 : "For this we say unto you by the -word of the Lord, that \ve that are alive, that are left unto the coming of the Lord, shall in no wise precede them that are fallen asleep. For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven, with a shout, 12 with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God : and the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we that are alive, that are left, shall together with them be caught up in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air : and so shall we ever be with the Lord." It is held that here Paul taught that he would be alive when the Lord came, for he says : "we that are alive, that are left." To this would say, Paul does, of course, include himself with those who were then alive, for he certainly had not as yet died, and how could he by any possibility put himself with those who are already dead. But he does not for one moment assert that he would still be alive at the time that the Lord should descend from heaven. He certainly was alive when he wrote. It may be that at this period of his life Paul hoped to be alive when the Lord came, but we are not concerned with what Paul hoped, or even thought, but what Paul actually taught, and he certainly does not teach here nor anywhere else that Jesus would return during his lifetime. Neither does the Lord Jesus teach it in any place, nor does any other New Testament writer so teach. The whole purpose of this argument on Shailer Mathews' part is, of course, to discredit the testimony of the Lord Jesus and the Apostle Paul by attempting to show that they were mistaken on this point of the time of His return, and therefore might be mistaken on the whole question; but the attempt results in utter failure. The premillenarians do not base their view upon what "the early Christians believed," but upon what our Lord Jesus taught and what "the holy men of God" ivho were "moved by the Holy Spirit" taught. Following up this attempt to discredit the Scriptures and the teachings of our Lord, Shailer Mathews says on page 5 : "It need hardly be emphasized that the immediateness of these events, the expectation of which was a part of the re- ligious inheritance of the first Christians, was an essential element in their hope." This statement is absolutely false. The possibility that the Lord Jesus might come soon for His own to take them out of this world before the great tribu- lation was an element in their hope in order to keep them watching and looking, but so far from the "immediateness" of that coming being an essential part of their hope, there is 13 not a word in the Bible, when properly interpreted with regard to its context, to show it. It is true our Lord Jesus did, for His own wise purpose, which it is easy to under- stand, withhold from the knowledge of His disciples all information as to the time of His return. There was good reason for this, into which it is not necessary to go at the present time. And as they were not "to know times or seasons, which the Father hath set within His own author- ity," (Acts 1 :7) it was natural that they should expect that Pie might come in their own life, or during the lifetime of that generation of believers. But the HOLY SPIRIT NEVER PERMITTED ONE SINGLE NEW TESTAMENT WRITER TO TEACH THAT HE WOULD so RETURN. So this attempt of Shailer Mathews to discredit the New Testament falls utterly flat. That "the immediateness of these events" \vas not "an essential element in their hope" is further evident from the fact that our Lord Jesus Himself spoke a parable for the express purpose of correcting the mistaken idea that His disciples held at that time (which was before Pentecost, when they were qualified to be the infallible writers of books of the Bible), that "the kingdom of God" should "imme- diately appear." We read : "And as they heard these things, He added and spake a parable, because He was nigh to Jerusalem, and because they supposed that the kingdom of God was immediately to appear. He said therefore, a certain nobleman went into a far country, to receive for himself a kingdom, and to return." (Luke 19:11, 12). Here our Lord Jesus, instead of urging the immediacy of His coming, emphasized the fact that there must be a considerable period intervening before He returned. In a similar way in Luke 20 :9 He says : "A man planted a vineyard, and let it out to husbandmen, and went into another country for a long time." In other par- ables of the kingdom and of His return our Lord taught that His coming, instead of being immediate, was to be at "the end of the world (the word translated "world" should be rendered "age")" (Matt. 13:39). And in a similar way in the 49th verse of the same chapter He teaches that the events connected with His coming should be, "in the end of the age" thus clearly indicating that an 14 age would intervene before His second coming. In Matt. 24:4-8 our Lord Jesus tells of a long series of events, that would take a long time for their development, and says that even when this long series of events takes place, "the end is not yet!' In Matt. 28 :19, 20 and Acts 1 :6-8 our Lord distinctly tells His disciples that they were to go and make disciples "of all the nations/' and that they were to be witnesses "unto the uttermost part of the earth" which would certainly take a long time, and which shows con- clusively that Shailer Mathews' assertion that "immediate- ness" "was an essential element in their hope" of the return of the Lord, is utterly without foundation and exactly contrary to the facts in the case. To show still further the utter falsity of Shailer Mathews' assertion that "immediateness" "was an essential element in their hope (i.e., in the hope and teaching of Christ and the Apostles)" it is to be carefully noted that John tells us plainly that Jesus said to Peter, the leader of the apostolic company, that he (i.e., the Lord Jesus) would not come in the lifetime of Peter, and describes to Peter just how he should die, and furthermore tells him that his death should not come until he was old, and that conse- quently the Lord's coming necessarily could not occur until Peter had grown old and died (John 20:18, 19), and further still when John knew that some inferred from the words of the Lord Jesus to him that John at least, would live until the second coming of Christ, John flatly told them that this was a total misconception of the meaning of Jesus' words, and that Jesus had never said nor implied that His coming would be even in the lifetime of the Apostle John, though he outlived all the rest of the Apostles. This clearly shows how utterly unfounded, wild and reck- less Shailer Mathews' statement that "the early Christians believed that Jesus would return during the lifetime -of their generation," and that "this hope is on almost every page of the New Testament." In any event, if we are to discredit the teachings of Jesus and the Apostles, as Shailer Mathews so laboriously attempts to do in this passage and elsewhere, the question is not what "the early Christians" may have "believed" 15 or "hoped" but what did Christ and the other authors of the New Testament teaching actually teach. If it could be proven that the New Testament writers and speakers hoped and believed that Christ would come again during their lifetime, it would not in the least militate against the dependability and reliability of the teaching of Jesus Christ and the inspired Apostles, unless it could be shown that they taught that Jesus Christ would come again during their lifetime. And not only can it not be shown that they taught that "on almost every page in the New Testament/' but it can be shown that they never taught it in one single instance. Rash, wild and reckless statements cannot go further to bolster up a hopeless cause than Shailer Mathews has gone in the statement quoted. On page 4, under the same head of looking "at the Scriptural material," Shailer Mathews caricatures in the following way some of the teachings of our Lord Jesus Himself and the Apostles. He says : "After the end of that thousand years this group believed that there would be a mighty struggle between the Christ and Satan's forces, a general resurrection and a judgment, when spirits would be brought up from Sheol, a great cavern under the earth, and taken up into the sky, when they would meet living persons who had been 'changed/ The righteous would be given new bodies, and thereafter would live in eternal bliss while the wicked would be sent back to the abyss of fire prepared for the devil, his angels, and the giants, there to burn forever and ever/' There is no need for extended comment on these words. We simply quote them to show the spirit and temper of Shailer Mathews in this whole discussion. It would seem as if he had been taking lessons from Colonel Ingersol. On page 5 Shailer Mathews says: "The entire mes- sianic expectation in so far as it dealt with the future did not originate with the Christians (Thus far the italics are Shailer Mathews'). As Jews they inherited it from Judaism. To use only one example : The idea of the thousand years comes from the Jewish literature, such as the Book of Enoch, written after the close of the Old Testament canon. . . . A study of the entire literature of the Jews from 16 175 B.C. will show where the other elements of premil- lenarianism originated." Of course, this is an attempt to discredit the premillenarian, and in fact all "the messianic/' teaching of the New Testament by attributing to it an extra biblical Jewish origin. Shailer Mathews returns to this same attempt on page 17 where he says: "Pious Jews wrote a considerable number of apocalypses which appeared about 175 B.C. and continued to be written until approx- imately 100 A.D. These apocalypses constitute a symboli- cal and allegorical literature. Their figures of speech are precisely those which the early Christians of the New Testa- ment used. As time went on the tendency to literalize these figures of speech became very pronounced as they were used by men unaccustomed to the methods of such men as those who wrote the Book of Enoch, the Book of Jubilees, the Ascension of Isaiah, and other works of this class. At last men came to take much of this symbolism literally. This was true of some of the early Christians." Now this whole implication that our Lord Jesus Christ and the inspired Apostles (whom Shailer Mathews does not specifically name, but speaks of only as "some of the early Christians," but in his entire booklet his references to the teachings which he is seeking to discredit as being of extra-biblical Jewish origin, are suggested by the very explicit teachings of Christ and the Apostles) derived their teaching from Jewish apocryphal, apocalyptic literature is absolutey false. Whether it results from colossal ignorance or from an intentional desire to misrepresent we will not say, though we are loath to suspect Shailer Mathews of the latter. In any event the implication is absolutely false and totally contrary to the facts in the case, and if Shailer Mathews had a thorough knowledge of this apocalyptic literature to which he refers, and also of the Old Testament prophets, and the relation of the New Testament teaching to the Old Testament prophets, and if at the same time he were a thoroughly honest man, he would never have indulged in any such insinuations. This representation of the origin of premillennial teaching in the New Testament is easily proven to be untrue. Some things in the Book of Enoch, and possibly some things in some of the other apocalyptic writings (of which by the 17 way there was no such number as Shailer Mathews implies) may have some similarity to some of the things said by our Lord Jesus Christ and the Apostles in the New Testament writings, but it is very shallow reasoning that jumps at the conclusion that therefore Christ and the Apostles derived them from the "apocalypses which appeared from about 175 B.C. and continued to be within until approx- imately 100 A.D." The very evident explanation of any similarities that may be discovered is that the zvriters of these apocalypses were themselves saturated with Old Testament conceptions and phraseology (The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, the most reliable book of the character that there is, on page 164, speaking of these apocalyptic writings to which Shailer Mathews refers, says : "All these take the Book of Daniel as their model"}, and Christ and the Apostles were also saturated with Old Testa- ment conceptions and phraseology, and, therefore, neces- sarily there w r ere some similarities of conception and phraseology between the teachings of Christ and the Apos- tles and those of these apocalyptic writings. Let any one take the words of our Lord Jesus and the Book of Revela- tion and other New Testament prophecies, and consult a good book of Old Testament references (for example, The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge), and they will soon discover that a very large part of what Jesus said, and what the Apostles wrote, and especially of what is con- tained in, the Revelation, is either verbal quotation from or clear allusion to Old Testament prophetic statements (tor example, cf. Ezekiel, chapter 1 with Revelation, chapters 4 and 5; Ezekiel 3:3 with Revelation 10:10; Ezekiel 8:3 with Revelation 13:14, 15; Ezekiel, chapter 9 with Revela- tion, chapter 7; Ezekiel, chapter 10 with Revelation 8:1-5). Jesus Christ and the Apostles were undeniably saturated with the conceptions and phraseology of the Old Testament prophets, and their teachings were in a large measure derived from, or at least built upon, their teachings. But not in one single instance were their teachings built upon the teaching of the extra-biblical apocalyptic writers to whom Shailer Mathews attributes them. Shailer Mathews' assertion is not only absolutely false, but betrays 1*8 a gross ignorance of Old Testament teaching. We cordially admit that much of the "messianic expectation in so far as it dealt with the future did not originate with the Chris- tians," but on the other hand it certainly did not originate, as Shailer Mathews slanderously affirms it did, with the Jewish apocalyptic literature that appeared from 175 B. C. to 10,0 A.D. It originated with those men who "spake from God, being moved by the Holy Ghost" (2 Pet. 1 :21), the Old Testament prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and others. That is to say, it originated with God, the Holy Ghost. In this sense the teaching of Jesus Christ and the Apostles in regard to the second coming of Christ, is of Jewish origni, i.e., it came from the Jewish Old Testa- ment Scriptures, which were given by inspiration of God. But is that anything against it? As we have just seen these "Jewish ideas" were given by inspiration of God (see 2 Pet. 1:21; 2 Tim. 3:16, 17). JESUS CHRIST HIMSELF WAS "OF JEWISH ORIGIN/' Shall we therefore give Him up and accept Shailer Mathews, who is of good old New England stock, and has studied in one American College (Colby), and one American Theological Institute (New- ton), and one German University (Berlin), in His place? Yes, in this sense the premillennial doctrine is of Jewish origin, and by the word of our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, "SALVATION is OF THE JEWS" (Greek, "out of the Jews"), i.e., of Jewish origin (John 4:22). Shailer Mathews, in his determined attempt to dis- credit the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ and the Inspired Apostles, says on page 6: "The premillenarian says that these beliefs (i.e., as appears from the next sent- ence, "the belief of the early Christians") are to be used as infallible teaching. Whatever the New Testament records as having been the belief of early Christians he regards as the teaching of the Bible." This statement also is abso- lutely false. We challenge Shailer Mathews to show any place in which a reputable premillenarian says or suggests that "Whatever the New Testament records as having been the belief of early Christians" be regarded as infallible teaching, or the teaching of the Bible. WHAT THE PRE- MILLENARIANS SAY is, not that, "whatever the New Testa- 19 ment records as having been the belief of early Christians'' but WHAT" JESUS CHRIST HIMSELF TEACHES, AND WHAT THE APOSTLES INSPIRED OF GOD, AS PAUL, JOHN, PETER, ETC., TEACH, IS TO BE REGARDED "AS INFALLIBLE TEACH- ING/' AND "AS THE TEACHING OF THE BlBLE." // what the Lord Jesus Christ teaches and what the writers of the New Testament were inspired to teach (not what they recorded "as having been the belief of early Christians") is not the teaching of the Bible, what is the teaching of the Bible? Shailer Mathews continues : "This logically ought to include belief in a flat earth, the perpetua- tion of slavery, the submission to rulers like Nero. Pre- millenarians are inconsistent when they do not, as Christians not long ago did, insist on these elements of New Testa- ment beliefs." May we ask where in the New Testament are we taught to "believe in a flat earth ?" Where does the Lord Jesus Christ, or Peter, or Paul, or John, or any New Testament writer teach that the earth is flat? We might ask, where do they even record that early Christians taught that the earth was flat? Where does Jesus Christ, or Peter, Paul, or John, or any New Testament writer teach "the perpetuation of slavery?" The Apostle Paul did teach that the Christian should "be in subjection to the higher powers/' and premillenarians teach that too, and why shouldn't they ? Would Shailer Mathews have Christians teach Bolshe- vism? Why should premillenarians, in order to be con- sistent, "insist" on these (as Shailer Mathews characterizes them) "elements of New Testament beliefs" when they are not "elements of New Testament beliefs?" He goes on to say: "They (i.e., premillenarians) have to resort to all sorts of ingenious and unwarranted interpretations of the texts to justify this misuse of scripture." This also is beyond a question a falsehood. If there is any one who "resorts to ingenious and unwarranted interpretations of the texts to justify their misuse of Scripture" it is not the premillenarians, but the postmillenariians. Of this fact Shailer Mathews himself is a striking illustration in this very pamphlet in which, as we have already seen, he is so convinced that his views cannot be maintained by taking the Scriptures at their face value and in their evident mean- 20 ing, that he says in so many words that 'The conception? of these ancient men of God have to be translated into modern conceptions." That is to say, that for what the Lord Jesus Christ and the Apostles say, something else must be substituted which is just the opposite of what they say. Can "ingenious and unwarranted interpretation of texts" go beyond that? Shailer Mathews concludes this para- graph by saying: 'Their (i.e., the premillenarians') method is more irresponsible than that which tries to prove that Bacon wrote the plays of Shakespeare." This statement also is a falsehood, so palpably false that about all one needs to do is to quote it. It is not the premillennial school of literary critics and interpreters who are trying to prove by methods "more irresponsible than that which tries to prove that Bacon wrote the plays of Shakespeare" that the books of the Bible were not written by the men whose names they have borne for so many centuries, but the very school of which Shailer Mathews is a leading advocate. We do not recall ever having read a book, even by the bitterest infidel, that was more evidently, egregiously, delib- erately, intentionally unfair than this booklet of Shailer Mathews. Of this fact we have sufficient evidence in the sentences just quoted. Let us add before passing on that the New Testament does not merely record "the concep- tions of early Christians," it is an entirely reliable record of what the Lord Jesus Christ taught and what "was con- firmed unto us by them that heard (i.e., the Apostles) ; God also bearing witness with them, both by signs and wonders, and by manifold powers, arid by gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to His own will" (Heb. 2:3, 4). In the New Testament God has given us as a foundation for our faith and practice, the teaching of His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, and of the Apostles, to whom the Lord Jesus Christ Himself said : "These things have I spoken unto you, while yet abiding with you. .But the Comforter, even the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, He shall bring to your remembrance all that I said unto you" (John 14:25, 26). And again: "I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when He, the Spirit of Truth is come, He shall guide you 21 into all the truth : for He shall not speak from Himself ; but what things soever ye shall hear, these shall He speak : and He shall declare unto you the things that are to come" Now which shall we accept, those things which that person whom God accredited to be a teacher sent from God, who spake the very words of God, by raising Him from the dead, taught, and which the Apostles, who the same Lord Jesus said would be guided into all the truth by the Spirit of truth, Who should declare unto them things to come, taught, or what Shailer Mathews is very confident is the assured result of modern scientific investigation and philo- sophical speculation? These recorded utterances of the Lord Jesus Christ found in the New Testament are given to us by thoroughly competent witnesses, who had a right to claim, as one of them does claim in so many words, that they had "traced the course of all things accurately from the first," and wrote the things that they had traced in order that those who read the record "might know the certainty concerning the things wherein they were instructed" (Luke 1 :3, 4), and the accuracy of whose recol- lection Jesus Christ Himself guaranteed by saying: "The Comforter, even the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, He shall teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I said unto you." On Page 7 Shailer Mathews throws out this challenge, which is another startling illustration of his ignorance of premillenarian literature : he says : "We challenge any pre- millenarian to name the day (i.e., the day of our Lord's return), and then shall wait until that day, confident that he is mistaken." Of course, no intelligent premillenarian will attempt "to name the day ;" for premillenarians stoutly, as stoutly as any postmillennarian, affirm that the Lord Jesus Christ has in the strictest and sternest terms forbidden us to even try to discover the exact date of His return, that the Lord Jesus Christ has said : "It is not for you to know times or seasons, which the Father hath set within His own authority" No one contends more earnestly against this whole folly of date setting than the leading premillenarians. The writer of the present tract has said, repeatedly in public address and on printed page that any 22 attempt to set a date for the return of our Lord, or any event connected therewith is most daring presumption and an act of gross disobedience to the revealed will of God. In his book, "What the Bible Teaches," published in 1898 he says : "The exact time of the Coming Again of Jesus Christ is not revealed to us." "Calculations from the data given in Daniel by which some try to fix the exact date of Christ's return are utterly unreliable. They attempt the impossible. The statements were not intended to give us a clue to the exact date of Christ's return. It is part of God's purpose and method in dealing with men to keep them in uncertainty on this point." "Any teacher, who attempts to fix the date of Christ's return is at once dis- credited, and it is entirely unnecessary to wade through his calculations. God does not desire us to know just when His Son shall return." (What the Bible Teaches, pages 216,217). This attempt on Shailer Mathews' part to iden- tify premillenarianism with date setting is another illustra- tion of the gross, egregious, deliberate and outrageous unfairness of Shailer Mathews in his discussion of the whole subject. On page 10 Shailer Mathews says: "Premillenarians miss the spirit in emphasizing the letter. In making a mistaken Judaistic belief central they distort Christianity. This distortion is characterized by four chief elements. First, the premillenarian interpretation of the gospel denies that God is capable of bringing about His victory by spir- itual means." This is one of the main points, if not the main point in Shailer Mathews' whole attack upon premil- lenarianism. At the first glance, to the superficial thinker, there may seem to be something in this argument of Shailer Mathews, but if any one of average intelligence and ability and historical knowledge will stop to reflect upon it he will see that it is arrant nonsense. We know from history and experience as well as from the Bible, that God has always used material means, "force" if you please, "to bring about His victory," the victory of righteousness. How is God teaching the Kaiser and the Germans (and through them all who would cultivate a spirit of damnable and murderous self-aggrandizement), a sorely needed lesson? Is it "by 23 (purely) spiritual means ?" Is it not by "force," the mili- tary forces of America and our allies ? And by so doing it is God "reverting to physical brutality ?" Shailer Mathews or any one else who asserts it, or implies it, is a blasphemer. That is plain and severe speech, but it is an inescapable fact. To be consistent Shailer Mathews should be an extreme pacifist and demand that America should recall her soldiers, destroy her guns and ammunition and bring the Germans to repentance and to a just and humane treatment of weaker nations and outraged women and children "by spiritual means/' Why has Shailer Mathews, if he believes what he here implies, accepted for 1917-1918 the position of "State Secretary for War Savings for Illinois?" Why has he left the purely "spiritual means" of teaching for collecting money to arm, eqtiip and sustain our "brutal" forces in the field to bringfthe Kaiser and Germany to their senses. Fortunately Shailer Mathews does not himself believe a word of the nonsense which he writes, and makes the very central argument of his pamphlet in order to bolster up a bad cause. As a matter of historical fact is not God carrying out the purposes of His love, and has He not carried them out through all the history of mankind, by the intelligent and loving use of "force?" If Shailer Mathews' words were carried out to their logical conclusion they would mean that we must dis- pense with all use of force to punish offenders against right- eousness. He calls God's resorting to force to bring about His loving purposes, "physical brutality," his exact words are: "In order to succeed he has to revert to physical brutality." And he goes on to say that by reverting to force God "abandons morality and uses miraculous mili- tarism. He turns to fire and destructive forces of imper- sonal nature." These are not only irrational words, they are blasphemous words in the light of history as well as in the light of the teaching of God's Word. Shailer Mathews' argument furthermore, if there were anything in it, would make it a confession of defeat on God's part to even punish sin by physical force, by any use of the "destructive forces of impersonal nature" to bring man to his senses. Shailer Mathews' argument carried to its logical issue would under- 24 mine not merely the Bible doctrine of premillenarianism but the entire Bible doctrine of future retribution, or any doctrine of retribution. To use Shailer Mathews' own words, to use the "destructive forces of impersonal nature" to punish sin would be to "abandon morality and use miraculous militarism." To so reason at the present time would be very effective pro-German propaganda and it would be at any time sheerest tomfoolery. Without even reverting at all to the doctrine that the Lord Jesus Himself clearly teaches about how God will punish sin in the here- after, we all know God does use every day "destructive forces of impersonal nature/' physical disease and pain, "to punish sin/' and any one who accuses God of "abandon- ing morality" in doing this may be a theological professor, but he is also a rank blasphemer. In this very connection Shailer Mathews deliberately caricatures, not merely pre- millennialism, but explicit Bible teaching to hold it up to contempt. He says: "He (i.e., God) turns to fire and destructive forces of impersonal nature. Certain persons will be rescued and taken up into the sky, but the earth is to be set on fire, the people left on it are to be killed, and after this the saints are to reign. Thus force is the final method by which God reigns." It is hardly necessary for the help of any one who has any considerable knowledge of the Bible, to say that these sneers are evidently aimed at very explicit teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ and the Apostle Paul and others which are here caricatured in a way they would be worthy of Colonel Ingersol, or any of the grosser type of infidel scoffers. On page 11 Shailer Mathews says: "Many premil- lenarians therefore thank God that the world is growing worse." This statement is an evident falsehood ana a gross slander. It is true that intelligent premillenarians, when they see the triumph of iniquity that has been so apparent in the past four years, are not thrown into the abyss of utter despair and pessimism that many postmil- lenarians were thrown into. It is true that in these things they saw the things predicted as preceding the return of our Lord Jesus Christ, and therefore, instead of being dis- heartened when they saw, "upon the earth distress of 25 nations, in perplexity for the roaring of the sea and the billows ; men fainting for fear, and for expectation of the things that are coming on the world/' they do just what the Lord Jesus Christ bade us do under such circumstances, viz., "Lift up our heads; because our redemption draweth nigh.'' They do not rejoice in these things; they see and feel the horror of them ; they do what they can to alleviate them, but they are not discouraged by them, because the Lord Jesus Christ Himself predicted these things, and their coming to pass is simply an additional guarantee of the absolute truthfulness of the Word of God. Furthermore, in the increasing darkness of the night they see the indica- tion that the glorious day is at hand. Shailer Mathews asks in the sentence following the one just quoted: ''What is this but joy in the spiritual defeat of God?" The premil- lenarian's joy is not u joy in the spiritual defeat of God," but it is joy in the absolute certainty of God's Word and in the confirmation of Jesus Christ's own claim made in con- nection with His predictions regarding His own second coming, that though "heaven and earth shall pass away, my word shall not pass away" (Matt. 24:35), and joy in the indication of the soon coming of the complete triumph of God in that glorious day when our Lord Jesus Christ Him- self shall return according to His own proniise, and set straight the things which men in their pride and sin have made crooked. Shailer Mathews goes on to say : "This sort of pessimism is unworthy of a Christian man." This is simply bringing forward again the oft repeated charge of pessimism against premillenarians, but premillenarians, so far from being pessimists are optimists of the optimists. Even when the days grow darkest, as Shailer Mathews him- self has just suggested, their hearts remain light, for they know from the promises of God's Word regarding the sec- ond coming of Christ, that the darker the night gets the nearer at hand the day is. The premillenarian is an opti- mist not by deliberately shutting his eyes to the undeniable facts of the present day confusion in politics, commercial life, social life, and national life and international relations, he is an optimist because he is open-eyed to the glorious* promises of God's Word, that all these things are simply 26 precursors of by far the brightest day in all this world's history. Shailer Mathews' second argument against premillen- arianism is : 2. "Such a use of the Scripture (the premillenarians' use of Scripture) leads to the denial of the application of the gospel to social forces!' This statement is another false accusation. We would like to know whether Shailer Mathews or any other postmillenarian has done more in modern times to apply the gospel to social forces than for example, D. L. Moody, who was an avowed and con- sistent premillenarian, or Billy Sunday, who in all his meet- ings in recent years has preached at least one sermon of the most ultra-premillennial type. It would be easy to men- tion many other prominent premillenarians who have accomplished great things in the "application of the gospel to social forces." It is true that premillenarians do not indulge in the vain hope of gospelizing social organizations without regenerating the individual. It is true that the premillenarian as a rule seeks to reach social forces through reaching individuals with the saving truth of the gospel which our Lord Jesus Christ taught, but to assert that the premillenarian denies the application of the gospel to social forces is to shut ones eyes to what premillenarians in this and all other lands are doing for true and permanent social uplift. But premillenarians are not guilty of the folly of attempting to "regenerate the institutions of humanity and the forces that are making history" in any other way than by the regeneration of the individuals who "embody these social forces." On page 12 Shailer Mathews says: "The hope of the coming of the Christ is not for a moral renewal but for the triumph of physical force." Is this an illustration of Shailer Mathews' gross ignorance of premillennial teaching, or is it an illustration of his deliberate misrepresentation ? We confess we do not know, but anybody who is familiar with premillennial literature knows that in their teaching "the hope of the coming of the Christ" is to the end of the most wonderful and thorough going "moral renewal" that the world has ever seen. In proof of this may the writer be 27 pardoned for referring any reader to his own book on "The Return of the Lord Jesus," especially that part of the book that has to do with the Results of the Return of the Lord Jesus. Another charge Shailer Mathews brings against pre- millenarians is : "Fourth, premillenarians deny that Christianity is con- sistent with the findings of modern science particularly as regards evolution! 3 Shailer Mathews here reveals one of the great reasons why he is so extremely bitter against premillenarians, and so anxious, by any kind of misrepre- sentation, to discredit them, viz., because he is obsessed by the idea that that form of evolutionary hypothesis which he holds is the sum of all wisdom, and at the same time is inconsistent with premillennial teaching. It needs only to be said that the form of evolutionary hypothesis that Shailer Mathews apparently holds is not "a finding of modern science." The evolutionary hypothesis that evi- dently from this pamphlet is held by Shailer Mathews is not a finding of modern science, it is speculative philosophy and not in any proper use of the word "science." Shailer Mathews, in the following sentence, goes on to say : "Many of these denials show that the writers know nothing about evolution or the world of science." One wonders as he reads what Shailer Mathews says, whether he really has any knowledge of the doctrine of evolution that is held today by many of the leading scientists as distinguished from the discredited and disproven and therefore rejected doctrine of evolution that was quite widely held by scientists twenty years ago. Shailer Mathews continues: "Such an attack upon modern science is demanded by the central principle of premillenarianism." It is enough to answer that some premillenarians undoubtedly do attack what many of Shailer Mathews' school are pleased to call "modern science," but what is not in any right use of the word "science" at all, but various hypotheses that have not one single scientifically observed fact upon which to build as upon a solid foundation, and certainly no attack upon what is really "science" is demanded by the central principle, or 28 any other principle, of premillenarianism. This is simply unfounded assertion on Shailer Mathews' part. If it could be shown that it is impossible to hold any view that is clearly taught in the New Testament and at the same time hold any theory of evolution, it would not take the writer of the present tract long to decide whether to abide by the teachings of a book regarding which he has unanswerable proof that it is the Word of God (see writers book, "The Bible and Its Christ"), or to accept a scientific hypothesis which no careful and accurate and really scien- tific thinker claims is proven. All really scientific writers, even though they are ardent evolutionists, admit, just as Thomas Huxley, one of the most enthusiastic evolutionists that the scientific world has ever produced, admitted, that the evolutionary hypothesis is and "always must remain" at best "only hypothesis." But the Bible has been proven to be the Word of God, so we would stand by the Bible, even if we had to give up "evolution" in any and every form in order to do it. The trouble is that Shailer Mathews, like many other theologians, who as a rule actually know very little about modern science, is obsessed by the evolu- tionary hypothesis and makes that the test of every doctrine, scientific, philosophcial, theological, or literary. Of course, this is an utter desertion of the modern scientific method, and a reversion to the old a priori method of reasoning of the dark ages before Bacon. Along the same line Shailer Mathews says that premillenarianism "makes a cleavage between what the premillenarian regards as the Christian religion and real culture. Men must choose between that Christianity and science." But premillenarianism makes no cleavage between the "Christian religion and real cul- ture." What Shailer Mathews calls "real culture" is not real culture at all, it is a very false and ignorant and only so-called "culture," very like the Kultur that Shailer Mathews imbibed when he was a student at the University of Berlin. Men do not have to choose between the form of Christianity represented by those who maintain that the Bible, like any other book, should be taken at its face value, "and science." The choice is between an honest, frank, open Christianity and what pretends to be "science/ 1 29 but in reality is utterly out of harmony with modern scien- tific methods. It is amusing to see the way in which the postmillenarians, like the destructive critics, quietly assume . that all the scholarship is with themselves. Of course, the claim is utterly false and results either from gross ignorance or deliberate lying, sometimes from one, sometimes from the other. On page 18 Shailer Mathews says : "A comparison of the gospels shows that they even read back some of these forms of expression (i.e., the forms of expression drawn from the Jewish apocalyptic literature from 175 B.C. on) into the sayings of Jesus Himself." This statement is an absolute falsehood. "A comparison of the gospels" shows nothing of the kind. Any one who will take the four gospels and study them and compare them with an unbiased mind, without prejudice for or against their truthfulness, will be forced to acknowledge that the life here recorded was a life actually lived here upon earth, and not a mere romance, and will also be forced to admit that the utter- ances here attributed to Jesus could not have been devised by others and put into His mouth. The attempt which has been carried on so persistently from the time that David Strauss published his Leben Jesu in 1833 to the present time, to reconstruct the life of Jesus and leave out the miraculous element and to eliminate that part of His teach- ings which the writers did not wish to accept and keep that part which they did wish to accept, has resulted in total collapse and failure. And any theory such as Shailer Mathews gives voice to here, that the many sayings of our Lord Jesus which clearly teach a personal, visible return of the Lord and His premillennial return, were a reading back of ideas and forms of expression learned from other sources into the sayings of Jesus Himself, if accepted would discredit every saying of His that is recorded in the New Testament. If these things that the New Testament says that Jesus Christ taught were not taught by Him, but simply attributed to Him, then the other sayings attributed to Him may not have been uttered by Him, but merely attributed to Him, and we are left without the slightest idea of what Jesus Christ really said. We have no Lord Jesus left. 30 There is no Christ but the Christ of the Scriptures ; any other Christ is a mere figment of the individual imagina- tion. If we accept this theory of Shailer Mathews then he and his school of thought have taken away our Lord, and we know not where they have laid Him. If Shailer Mathews is right in this statement, he has cut out the very foundations from under his own theological seminary, or any other theological seminary, and he ought in all honesty and self-respect to resign his position and salary and find some honest way of making a living. One hardly needs to say that he is not right in this position, his position is absolutely absurd and untenable. In the immediately fol- lowing sentences to that just quoted Shailer Mathews says: "They thought as Jews, just as they talked as Jews." This statement is another falsehood. They thought as men inspired of God, as men to whom the Lord Jesus Christ Himself had said : "But the Comforter, even the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, He will teach you all things, and bring your remembrance all that I said unto you!' A thorough study of their words, and a comparison with the words of all others ever uttered, and a thorough study of the words which they attributed to Jesus will prove to any man who really wants to know and obey the truth, that they spoke the truth and spoke as men inspired of God and not merely "as Jews." In the next sentence Shailer Mathews says: "The important matter is not what they said but what they meant by what they said." This utterance may seem wise, but in reality it is consummate foolishness. The only possible way of telling what a man meant by what he said is by what he said. Thought is conveyed by words, and especially is it true of men who had a right to claim that what they spoke they spoke (f not in words which man's wisdom teacheth, but zvhich the Spirit teacheth" (1 Cor. 2:13). "They meant by what they said" just "what they said." The former promulgators of the position that Shailer Mathews holds contended that the "concept was inspired," but the "words were not inspired," but Shailer Mathews goes beyond this and tells us that their conceptions were wrong as well as their words, and that "the conceptions (not merely the 31 words) of these ancient men of God have to be translated into modern conceptions exactly as the Hebrew or Greek language has to be translated into English." (P. 9). Here we find a comparatively mild form of literary lunacy grown into stark literary madness. There is no need to pursue this criticism of Shailer Mathews' widely circulated pamphlet any further. We see it is a continuous mass of illogical arguments, gross mis- representations, demonstrable falsehoods, and rank blas- phemies. The pamphlet itself is a fulfillment of the very Scriptures which it seeks to discredit. The Apostle Peter, inspired of God, foresaw the work of Shailer Mathews and his class, and has plainly described him when he says : "This is now, beloved, the second epistle that I write unto you; and in both of them I stir up your sincere minds by putting you in remembrance ; that ye should remember the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and the commandment of the Lord and Saviour through your Apostles: knowing this first, that in the last days mockers shall come with mockery, walking after their own lust, and saying, Where is the promise of His coming ? for from the day that the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation." (2 Pet. 3:1-4). Price 15 cents per copy; $12.50 per hundred THE BIOLA BOOK ROOM Bible Institute of Los Angeles 536-558 South Hope Street Los Angeles, Cal. DR. TORREY'S BOOKS Personal Work The most comprehensive book that there is on individual dealing with men. It forms the first part of a book How To Work for Christ ,..,..,.,..,..,,..,,,.,_.,..._,.,,.,,_ $1,00 Difficulties and Alleged Contradictions in the Bible This is one of Dr. Torrey's most popular books, and takes tip one by one all of the most important objections which the modern infidel urges against the Bible, 24 chapters. ..,......,.........,.,_,..,,....,. .........Paper, 15cj cloth, S&c* The Voice of God in the Present Hour By R A. Torrey, DJD. A collection of Dr. Torrey's recent sermons mostly bearing on conditions of the present day. Dr. Torrey has written nothing finer than this latest book, - - - ...............Price $1,23 Fundamental Doctrines of the Christian Faith Dr, Torrey, as pastor of one of the largest congrega- tions in America, found that while his membership was con- stantly growing there was an earnest call and plea for instruc- tion and help to understand the real basis of Christian Belief. 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