Problem of Power
12/07/47
(Jeremiah 36:20-32; II Timothy 2:1-10)
When Pearl Harbor Day falls on Universal Bible Sunday — that’s something. It’s sort of like having Christmas come on the Fourth of July. December the 7th is a day that will always live in infamy. It celebrates a stab in the back. It reminds our nation of the eternal vigilance which is the price we must pay to keep our freedom; while Universal Bible Sunday is the traditional time for Christians to remember the importance of Bible reading, and the value of distributing scriptures printed in every tongue and language all round the world. It is somewhat incongruous to have Universal Bible Sunday fall on Pearl Harbor Day, and yet, this day of double-barreled significance for the Christians of America is dramatically symbolic of all the other days of our years that lie ahead.
Recently a Soviet journalist, writing about us Americans in a Moscow newspaper, said: “Americans carry an atom bomb in one pocket and an Easter egg in the other.” This Russian seems to think that we Americans are a powerful people (even a bit of the bully about us), but rather childlike for all that, trusting equally in the power of the atom bomb, which we carry in one pocket, and the power of the Easter egg, which we carry in the other. But this sarcastic journalistic jibe contains far more truth than our Communist friend ever guessed.
Dr. William T. Ellis, the popular American journalist who writes the weekly newspaper commentary on Sunday School lessons, says that there are three forms of power confronting our decisive day: atomic power, the power of public opinion, and spiritual power, or the power of divine intervention.
The wise handling and controlling of these three powers, the understanding of their interplay, the keen realization of the relation of the one to the other, is our most demanding, insistent, and urgent business in this decisive day.
First, there is this terrifying atomic power we hear so much about — this secret cosmic force of the universe which, having lain dormant like a sleeping giant for millenniums, has at last been awakened in our day by the inquisitive scientists, and set free to pillage and wreck our world. Now what are we to do with him? Here, indeed, is a power to be reckoned with.
On Tuesday afternoon I heard the broadcast of a significant ceremony from the University of Chicago. A group of educators and scientists were unveiling a plaque at one of the University’s scientific buildings on the occasion of the 5th anniversary of the discovery of the release of nuclear chain reaction. They were celebrating the fifth birthday of the atomic age, on the very spot where that momentous discovery was made, which Dr. Robert Maynard Hutchens said was the most revolutionary event in the whole span of human history — far more revolutionary than the discovery of either gun powder, printing, or the steam engine. ‘Twas there that the power unprecedented had been released in human history.
To date men have found no protection to safeguard themselves against atomic power let loose. The devastating destructive potential of the smashed atom has been dramatically impressed upon us all. We’ve been shown photographs and movies of the before and after of atomic bomb blasts — to reveal how concrete and steel buildings are pulverized and melted — how men and women and children within a radius of many miles are maimed and marked and crippled. We’ve been told by men of science of how invisible death, in the form of radioactive particles is wafted on the breezes and spread in streams of water to destroy great cities en masse. There is atomic power to be reckoned with. How shall it be controlled?
But there is a power that can control atomic power. It is the power of public opinion or popular purpose. “What atomic energy may or may not do will eventually be determined by the power of public opinion. The world is not going to face unpredictable disaster without an assertion of its will.” (W. T. Ellis)
The will of the people is powerful when stirred to concerted action. Do you remember that fateful hour in British history when, after the debacle of Dunkirk, old England was mortally wounded, confused, and in despair? Do you not remember how Hitler’s victorious hordes, poised on the Channel banks, were ready to leap across? It seemed that nothing could save the tight little isle. Britain’s army was gone — her fleet badly crippled. Then it was that the will of the British people to resist was stirred to the depths and raised to the heights by Winston Churchill’s grim words of dogged determination: “We shall defend our island whatever the cost may be: we shall fight on the beaches, landing fields, in streets, and on the hills. We shall never surrender.” The British people made this their purpose and in the power of this one purpose turned back the invader.
Public opinion, when aroused, popular purpose when set, is a power to be reckoned with. It can checkmate atomic power. We all know that the atoms will remain peacefully whole — the little electrons and neutrons going tranquilly about their own business — unless man, by an act of will, puts a batch of plutonium atoms in the atom smasher and starts the explosions which would be heard round the world. “What atomic power may or may not do will eventually be determined by the power of public opinion.” But how to control public opinion?
Well, there is a third and supreme power which lies behind and beyond the power of the smashed atom and behind the power of human purpose — it is the power of God, spiritual power. As atomic power is subject entirely to the power of human purpose, controlled completely by this power, so also is the power of human purpose subject to and controlled by the spiritual power of God. The key to our problem of power control in this decisive day is to be found here — in the control and releasing of this third supreme power.
“There is a power greater than all other powers working with and for us. We have got to the end of our human resources. We have victoriously fought two world wars that have left us with a heritage of grief and destruction and hunger and horror. Clearly, the great ends we seek are to be obtained, ‘not by arms, nor by force.’ Our daily concern is for a world ruled by democracy, brotherhood, and good will. Are we forgetting that before we can have brotherhood we must have fatherhood? Before we can have democracy we must have theocracy; before men can obey the inhibitions and inspirations of democracy, they must yield themselves to the power of the King of Kings.” (W. T. Ellis)
Have we forgotten? John Chamberlain says to America today, “As we stand at a summit of power it is time for us to write and sing our own version of Kipling’s Recessional — ‘Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, lest we forget, lest we forget.’ It takes humility, not pride, to work the elements of power into a pattern of greatness.”
How well Dr. John Mackay puts this whole problem of power control in the modern world: “Our chief need,” he says, “is the powerful manifestation of the sons of God, new men in Christ, men of insight into God and His purpose, men whose trust in God opens up to them such measureless resources of deity that they become centers of dynamic power, men filled with the spirit. People consumed by the inner fire of the spirit are the counterpart in human life of the smashed atom which releases cosmic force. It is necessary that the word of God become incarnate in my flesh in a spiritual sense, that Christ be formed in me, revealed in me, not simply to me.”
But how is this supreme power channeled into human lives to control the power of popular purpose? The word of God, the Bible, possesses this personality processing power. St. Paul said that “the gospel is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believes”, and our soldiers and sailors returning from the Pacific Isles have borne witness to the marvelous power of the word to transform primitive savagery into brotherly Christian communities.
“The word of God is not bound,” wrote the aging Apostle to young Timothy, as he strove to express the remarkable power of God’s word over human life and human history. “The word of God is not bound.” It can’t be chained. It can’t be imprisoned. It can’t be contained in a concentration camp. God’s word is not bound by political power. All during Hitler’s high riding years of power in Germany the Bible outsold Mein Kampf every year. For decades the Christian church and the Christian Bible were driven underground in Russia, but now shipments of the scriptures are being sent by the American Bible Society into Russia. The word of God is not bound by distance or ignorance or the confusion of unknown languages. The Bible has been translated into well over one thousand different languages and dialects and put into the hands of people all round the world. The word of God is not bound by persecution, fire or sword. When King Jehoiakim cut up and burned that portion of God’s word revealed through the prophet Jeremiah which was distasteful to him — the prophet wrote it all again, including this time a prediction of Jehoiakim’s own tragic end. Thus has the divine truth always triumphed over the tyrant’s power that sought to bind it.
No, the word of God is not bound, but it can be stifled, stopped and stymied, temporarily, by our neglect. The power of mighty Niagara cannot be bound or imprisoned, but the circuit with Niagara’s dynamos can be broken, and out will go the lights and off will go the power in a dozen cities.
And the transforming, redeeming, saving power of God’s spirit can be and will be shut out from the lives of men through the neglect of Bible reading. And the lights will go out in our homes and cities, and off will go the supreme power which alone can control the power of popular purpose which in turn controls atomic power.
It is, therefore, imperative that Christian families maintain their family altars. It is imperative that the individual Christian read his Bible, joining with others who are opening their lives to the supreme spiritual power through some such concerted plan of daily Bible readings as outlined on the book marker — “One World — One Book”. It is imperative that businessmen see that it is good business to put money in large amounts into Bibles and literally pour their money into the printing and distributing of Bibles around the world. Bibles are cheaper than bombs. They build where bombs blast.
When Jerome began his famous translation of the scriptures into the Latin Vulgate for the world of the 12th century, he went to Bethlehem and lived in a cave alongside the Nativity Crypt. The great saint and scholar wanted to get as near to Christ as possible. He dwelt beside the manger in order that the incarnate word might be revealed in the written word. We, today, must seek to get as close to Christ as possible through the reading of His word, that His mind and will may be translated into our daily action. So will His Kingdom come — His Kingdom of peace on earth, good will to men.
PASTORAL PRAYER
O Thou Great Deliverer, on this day when we remember again the mighty deliverance Thou didst vouch safe to our nation from dark danger, when we recall gratefully the devotion of courageous men and women who went forth to battle in our defense, many of whom came not home again, we would also call to remembrance in Thy presence with thanksgiving all those merciful deliverances Thou hast wrought in our personal dangers and distresses. We have been brought through the fiery furnace of sickness and sorrow, of temptation and failure, by the saving power of Thy love and care. Thou hast delivered us supremely from the reigning and enslaving power of sin through the Savior whom Thou didst send to be born long ago in little Bethlehem.
Grant, O Lord, that on this day dedicated in our national life to the perennial necessity of being prepared to defend our country from all those dangers and evils that would destroy what we cherish most, we may also be stirred to an unflagging vigilance to guard our souls and minds from the armies of evil that are always on the march. Put on us the whole armor of God — the shield of faith, the breastplate of righteousness, the girdle of truth, the helmet of salvation, the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, and having our feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace, may we be enabled to stand in the evil day, and having done all to stand, through Jesus Christ our Lord.