The Jack Miller Project

To; All the members of New Life Church-Glenside 

From: The Elders

Date: December 19, 1989

Dear Brothers and Sisters:

Greetings in the name of Jesus Christ! As we look back over the past several years we truly want to “Praise God from whom all blessings flow!” Lives have been touched by our Lord’s power and grace in so many ways that it would be impossible to list them all! Yet these have also been years of humbling ourselves, repentance, and faith. We have been stretched and challenged, often times beyond what we thought we could endure, and yet God has always proven faithful to us. As elders we are humbled and continually thankful for every member of this church who has publicly stood and identified themselves with our Lord Jesus Christ, and with us, a particular expression of his body in his kingdom.

Over the past several years there has been an issue which has frequently surfaced in our deliberations as elders. It has not dominated our discussion, and yet it continually surfaced as a matter of significance to us. This issue is our denominational affiliation. After quite a few years of discussion and exchanging and reading many letters, articles, memos and papers, and after much prayer, repentance and searching of our hearts, the elders at our session meeting on December 12, 1989, approved the following resolution, “That the Session recommend to the Congregation that New Life Presbyterian Church withdraw from the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC) and affiliate with the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA).”

While there was much sentiment for realignment to the PCA among many in our congregation and on our session several years back, as elders we felt it was wiser to wait. We were (and still are) the largest church in the denomination and we did not want to take action that would be “precipitous”, causing many other churches to leave the denomination following our lead at a time when there was much tension in the denomination.

Since that time quite a few churches have, in fact, realigned from the OPC into the PCA. Our daughter/sister church in Northeast Philadelphia was one of them. Our daughter/sister church in Fort Washington has organized in the PCA. New Life Presbyterian Church in Escondido, pastored by Dick Kauffman (one of our former elders) has also made the move. Now we believe it is time for us to do the same. We believe this step would glorify the Lord, and would strengthen the ministry of New Life here in Glenside as well. We think you will agree with us that this would prove to be a positive, exciting, forward looking movement for our church to make in the times in which we live. We seek, therefore, your prayerful endorsement of the Session’s decision, that we might move ahead together with unity of mind and heart.

I. A brief history of this matter:

In 1936 the OPC was formed when a small group of churches and ministers separated themselves from the large northern denomination of Presbyterians due to that denomination’s defection from biblical truth. In 1974 the PCA was formed by a similar separation of conservative churches from the large southern denomination of presbyterians and for similar reasons.

In 1979 the PCA proposed to the OPC and to the RPCES (another body of presbyterians) a plan inviting them to join her ranks. That plan was referred to as “J & R”, meaning joining and receiving. J & R was a method of union devised in order to shorten the normal process of negotiated merger, which ordinarily takes many years. It was an attempt to demonstrate to the world the unity of the body of Christ which Jesus prays for in his high priestly prayer in John 17.

These seekings after biblical unity are complicated and sometimes rocky. In 1980 the PCA withdrew the invitation to the OPC. The RCES joined the PCA in 1982 via the J & R process. In 1984 the PCA reissued a J & R invitation to the OPC. In June of 1986 the General Assembly of the OPC rejected that invitation. A two thirds vote was needed for approval but the vote was only 54% yes and 46% no. In the several years that have followed, the OPC has made it quite clear that it does not favor a J & R plan as a method of union whereas the PCA has also made it clear that it does not favor a lengthy process of negotiated merger. Some in our denomination may disagree, but for all practical purposes the union between the OPC and P C seems extremely unlikely. Those of us who believe that the union of these two virtually identical churches is a biblical imperative made clear in our Lord’s will for Christian unity (John 17, Ephesians 4) have been very disappointed. 

We now have a decision forced upon us in the absence of such union. Where do we belong? Where can we best move forward with the kingdom vision God has given our congregation? Both of these denominations are biblical in their doctrine and structure. Where does our church fi t most strategically in the light of our philosophy of ministry, and the times in which we live? We have concluded that affiliation with the PCA is clearly the better choice for us, since the prospect of union between the OPC and the PCA is dim.

II. Key Reasons for affiliating with the PCA:

A recommendation to move into the PCA is based primarily on positive assessment of the PCA, not on negative reactions to the OPC. We love both churches and believe we could function in either body. We should hasten to say that both denominations are imperfect, and we will add to the flaws and failures of either one. We recognize that the OPC has certain strengths that are not found in the PCA, but in general we believe that we can function best in the PCA. We believe that we are more in step with its general direction and priorities. We are enthusiastic about i s aggressive commitment to reach our nation and the world for Jesus Christ. In the PCA we see the following things:

1. The PCA is a church with vision. We are very enthusiastic about the ministry vision that characterizes the PCA as a whole. The PCA is committed to an aggressive vision that includes reviving America and reaching the world for Christ. In fact, World Harvest Mission (WHM), which had its birth through our church, has received enormous support in the PCA, even leading to a mutually helpful cooperative agreement with their denominational foreign missions program. (Something we have been unable to establish with the OPC.) We believe that we can commit ourselves enthusiastically to the priorities that have marked that church in recent years. They are the same priorities that we have as a congregation. We believe that in the PCA we will be in step with the general movement, able to learn and be stimulated by our brothers, and able to contribute to the movement.

2. The PCA is increasingly a national presbyterian body. Though it is a young denomination, it has grown quickly in many parts of the United states and Canada. It has a potential to make a difference for Christ in North America. It has over two hundred thousand members in almost a thousand churches. Thus, we see the PCA can have a significant role in our society by proclaiming the gospel, standing up for God’s truth, and living out of a visible lifestyle of love and unity. It is a denomination that is still at the formative stage. We can be a significant part of this new movement of the Lord. We believe that the PCA represents the kind of national presbyterian body that we have wanted to be a part of for many years.

3. As mentioned above, our daughter churches and other sister churches have already realigned, and there are many other similar churches in the PCA who share our vision and philosophy of ministry. These are few in the OPC. It is a wonderful privilege and joy to work with like minded pastors and churches.

4. Both denominations care seriously about the city. Yet, at this point in time, it appears that the PCA is self-consciously seeking to be more than a primarily white suburban denomination. The majority of its church planting works in the USA are in major metropolitan areas. Ministries are growing that reach Koreans, Blacks, Hispanics, Chinese, Japanese and French-Canadians. They have made a tremendous effort to work with Tim Keller to establish a church in New York City and there is also this same commitment at a regional level for our city, Philadelphia. We believe there is a great need for unity and a concerted effort in ministry if we are to make a serious dent in the problems of this great city. And if we don’t reach the cities of our land for Christ, we won’t reach the nation. So we are convinced that our urban ministry at New Life will be strengthened through the urban focus and fellowship in the PCA.

III. The process of re-affiliating:

The process is rather simple. The OPC Form of Government gives clear direction on how to leave the denomination. Furthermore, the scriptures do not seem to speak directly to denominations. Thus, the ethics of this sort of realignment do not seem to be a problem. But the session did spend a great deal of time discussing the ethical considerations of such a move, and only after we had concluded that it was biblically permissible did we come t o a recommendation.

We believe that the Scriptures teach that to leave one denomination is not necessarily to leave the body of Christ. It is, rather, to leave one part of the church to join another. Our action is not motivated by disregard for the government of the OPC. As mentioned above our action is provided for in the OPC Form of Government and we are following that provision carefully.

In the very act of withdrawal we are seeking to be subject to our OPC brethren. We have no desire for autonomy. On the contrary, we intend to join another presbyterian denomination which, just like the OPC, requires obedience to its standards and to its form of government.

The OPC Form of Government (Chapter 16, section 7) which we follow says:

“A congregation may withdraw from the Orthodox Presbyterian Church only by an affirmative vote of the congregation at two successive meetings of the congregation, duly called by the session, notice of the proposed action having been included in the calls for the meetings. The meetings shall be held not less than three weeks, nor more than one year, apart. If the vote of the first meeting is in favor of withdrawal the session shall inform the presbytery promptly, and the presbytery shall have the opportunity, at the second meeting, to dissuade the congregation from withdrawing. If the congregation, at the second meeting, reaffirms its previous action it shall be the duty of the presbytery to prepare a roll of members who desire to continue as members of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and to provide for the oversight of these continuing members.

Thus we recommend the following schedule:

A. The unanimous session recommendation December 12, 1989, that New Life withdraw from the OPC and affiliate with the PCA.

B. Session decision announced to the congregation Sunday, December 17, 1989.

C. We are scheduling Saturday morning, January 6, 1990, a t 9:00 A.M. as a time for congregational discussion for anyone who feels they need extended clarification or discussion of this matter.

D. We are scheduling Sunday evening, January 7, 1990, at 6:00 P.M. as a called congregational meeting to have further discussion of this issue, prayer and the first vote.

E. If the first vote is affirmative, we would notify the presbytery at its February 3, 1990, meeting.

F. We would schedule the second congregational meeting for Sunday afternoon, February 1 at 4:00 P.M. in order to hear a delegation from the Presbytery and then to take the second vote. If the second vote is affirmative, we would then apply to the PCA for membership. A certified list of our members would be received without examination. Our elders and deacons would meet as a group with a committee from the receiving presbytery for a group exam and time to get acquainted. All ordained ministers would have to transfer their membership individually and would be examined by the receiving presbytery as it saw fit.

G. A special service of reception would be held by the PCA presbytery to welcome us into its fellowship.

IV. A final word:

In taking this action we want to make clear that we have a deep appreciation and respect for the ministry of the OPC. We have enjoyed its fellowship and are grateful for the birth of our church in its bounds. We have many brothers and sisters we love in the OPC and that will never change.

Yet our loyalty to Christ and his kingdom leads us to want to promote Him and His cause by placing ourselves within His church as strategically as possible. We believe that, for New Life Glenside, our work will be less hindered, and more encouraged, within the PCA. We believe that this is a time of great opportunity given to us by God as a church. Our hope is that God will grant us grace so that we will use the opportunity, not in a spirit of pride, but in a spirit of humility and repentance. We believe God is calling our whole church to a period of repentance and self-examination. We as elders want to encourage you to join us in humbling ourselves before God and seeking His mercy in the form of reviving grace. Certainly there are sins in all of us that the Lord wants to sweep clean.

Pray for a spirit of unity and harmony among us and of great love for our Lord and His church as we make this important decision together.

In Christ’s love,

Jack Miller, John Yenchko 

for the elders

We … who are reformers are often part of the problem. We are in the position of trying to clean up others with hands that are dirty. [T]o recover ourselves and model renewal for others in the local church, we must begin by humbling ourselves. We do this by identifying ourselves first of all as a living member of Christ’s body, the people of God. We are one with the people of God. As such we have Christ’s promise as the ascended Lord to enable us and others to do “greater works” than He did during His public ministry on earth. As we pray and claim His promises, the Spirit enables us to live out our mission in the local church which is to function in the world as Christ’s missionary instrument.

Now comes the hard part. [T]he supreme concern of the ascended Lord is the Great Commission. His master purpose for the local church is for its members to go with the gospel to the lost … We shall be looking at Christ’s imperial vision for conquering the nations through His ambassadors taking the message to them. The intention is to relate this to the life of the pacesetter and the life of the congregation to which he or she belongs. Here we are going to talk about authority for the conflict.

Why is authority so important? Simply because of the intensity of the conflict. In the world outside the church proclamation of the gospel meets with active resistance. In the local church itself the gospel command meets passive resistance, the indifference of the comfortable and self-sufficient.

Active resistance to the gospel in the world can take the form of a raised eyebrow, outright mockery and ridicule, slander, or worse. A pastor friend of mine was actually thrown out the front door of a home by a man who eventually became a Christian. According to Jesus, the mission of the church in the world is always conducted by His “sheep in the midst of wolves.” He says bluntly to His disciples: “You will be hated by all for my name’s sake.”

Sometimes hatred of the gospel can be equally bitter within the church, but ordinarily opposition from within to grace takes much more subtle forms and can be harder to handle emotionally. Either way the idealist reformer is likely to be crushed by opposition from within and without.

He is also exposed to the temptation to fight evil with evil. He meets opposition from human wills and he struggles against this opposition by asserting his will. One of the most obvious ways this happens is through gossip. You are attacked and misrepresented. Evil motivation is attributed to you. You defend yourself in the same spirit and manner. You spread your own opinions about the opposition in the heat of the moment and in the agony of your suffering. It all seems so justified. And it is not hard to end up being roasted in the very bon-fire you yourself touched off or at least the one you added some fuel to.

For this reason we need to think through the nature of Jesus’s authority and how it relates to us and the conflict which always lies before us. What we want to concentrate on here is the exercising of authority in the local church by the person who wants to see it obedient to the Lord’s command to go with the gospel to the world.

An example will help to give the problem a sharp edge and outline. A young man who had a leadership position in a Sunday school came to me and said something like this: “In our church there is a problem that is very upsetting. This couple won’t speak to me. I don’t know what to do about it and I don’t think our pastor does either.” Pain was written all over the face of this young man. He loved the Lord and it really hurt him to see this particular middle-aged couple oppose any attempt to change the program and now to be alienated from him personally.

In name they were evangelical Christians, but they seemed to have a bias against doing anything toward reaching the lost. So his emotions were really mixed. On the one hand, he wanted to have an attitude of love toward them but on the other hand he found himself resenting them for their antipathy to outreach. What was worse, much of the real authority in the church was in their hands. They contributed handsomely to the church budget each month. The wife had great influence in the Sunday school by virtue of her having been active in its program for many years, and the husband had equally great influence on the board of elders because of his age and his prominence in the community as a successful businessman.

As I listened I could have drawn my own portrait of this couple, or at least a variation of it bearing a remarkable resemblance. Let’s call them Mr. and Mrs. Cyrus Jones. They are in their middle fifties. Typically Mrs. Jones dominates the Sunday school or some other favorite program of hers. She is the prevailing negative voice on the Christian education committee. When a new idea surfaces at a committee meeting, her face turns cold. As she listens her whole body forms into a stiff angular position. Her voice acquires an edge to it as she states her case against the new proposal. Her defense doesn’t need preparation. It’s always the same. “It’s about time we remember,” she says with chill emphasis, “what happened when we permitted the junior high class to have breakfasts in the church. You can remember, don’t you?” The question is purely rhetorical. Everyone remembers. She has never let them forget. Crumbs were left in the kitchen, ants followed. It’s not so much the familiar facts that intimidate the other committee members. It’s her vision of Indians about to attack, her genuine fear that there are barbarian types “out there” who are ready to desecrate all that is holy.

Cyrus may seem kinder than his wife. Yet he is a super conservative when it comes to the development of the work of God’s Kingdom. He is nice to the pastor, gives him a $200 check each year for Christmas and is courteous to others. She looks more like the “bad” cop who can lose her temper on command; he is more like the “good” cop who tries to smooth things over and tone down any conflicts. One of his favorite remarks when tensions build between him and other leaders is that: “We don’t really mean to leave the church unless things get out of hand.” By “things getting out of hand” he means the introduction of any program which would bring strangers into the fellowship in significant numbers. Since he may contribute something like $400 monthly to the church budget, this remark has authority all its own.

What the young man needs is to see that people like the Jones’s couple have an authority based upon their own vision of what is the church and its purpose. One perceptive observer of the Christian church has called their church “religiousness within a secular framework.” It means that people participate actively in their church ritual and subscribe to its creed, but take their working point of view from the world and not from Scripture. They have a worldly theology.

In Mrs. Jones’s theological outlook, she views the church as the building located at the corner of 22nd Street and Pine. The people who file in for worship around eleven o’clock each Sunday morning are primarily guests. Since the building and not the people are the “church,” she treats the church building with great respect and the people with bare courtesy. She has no concept whatsoever that they are “the people of God” and “the body of Christ.”

Cyrus has essentially the same point of view. But his focus falls more on the organization of congregational life. His supreme concern is to keep the church institution from being overrun by “strangers.” It was his efforts which last year blocked the hiring of a pastoral assistant to do evangelism. He said, “We just couldn’t afford it.” Yet what he meant was: “We want to protect our own little church life and keep our social club pure from upsetting contacts with people who are different.”

What the young man has before him is a conflict between authorities based upon two different visions about the church and its role in the world. Folks like the Jones’s have a secular faith concealed under a garb of religiousness. Their secularism has many features. First, what it leaves out. It is a point of view completely out of touch with Christ’s lordship over history and the mandate of Christ to conquer all nations by the power of the gospel in reliance upon the Holy Spirit. Its adherents have little practical sense of the purpose that Christ has given the church to evangelize the lost. Into this vacuum such religious secularists put the forms, structures, and habits of Christianity without any awareness of the power of a living Christ over worship and life.

A central figure in this worldly theology is the pastor. [H]is role is that of nice men. But he is also expected to be more than that. He is also a primary source of comfort for those who want a little of Christ but not too much. As a preacher, he is expected to be intellectually stimulating, perhaps even biblical, but never to go so far into the prophetic role as to give offense. He must not create conflicts of a foundational sort in preaching or counseling just because his supreme responsibility is to console. As chief consoler he is to baptize, teach, comfort, marry, and bury. In a word, his priestly task is largely to meet the emotional needs of those who have lost virtually all practical touch with God and His purpose for the church.

Since I have applied the word “religious” to this point of view, it is appropriate to ask exactly how this approach warrants such a name. Isn’t it simply secularism disguised as Christianity? Since secularism is simply the widespread suppression by people of the consciousness of God, we must agree that this is secularism. But it is secularism with a twist; a devilish one. It is really religious sentimentalism, a kind of idolatry of the emotions in which the person puts his faith in the forms and practices of the church institution rather that in the Kingship of Christ. In this sense it is intensely religious. The knowledge of God is being suppressed by the use of religious forms and practices. The forms themselves become a substitute for the knowledge of the Most High.

The inner nature of this “religiousness within a secular framework” is made apparent by conflicts that I have observed in churches both conservative and liberal. For example, I know of a highly conservative congregation where the pastor made what seemed to him to be a small change in the liturgy. He changed the title in the bulletin of the main prayer in the morning worship service. He substituted the title “Congregational Prayer” for the wording “Pastoral Prayer.”

To his amazement and chagrin, he discovered one of the leading members of the congregation bearing down on him with all the inevitability of a circular saw cutting through soft wood. Because of this change he was accused of grave error in thought and practice. Immediate repentance was expected of the reeling pastoral victim.

I have chosen this example because the circumstances are so trivial. I could have cited any one of the countless battles over more important changes in worship forms in conservative churches that I know about. But this one illustrates the point that I want to make. It is that any change no matter how small is a threat to many conservative religious people, because their faith is practically summed up by emotional attachment to visible forms of worship and traditional practices in administering the life of the church. My fear is that the defender of the faith in this case had so lost touch with the Kingship of Christ that all loyalty of heart was being given to the visible expressions of worship. The real Lord of that life seems to have become the fixed order of the worship, not the ascended Lord of the Great Commission who overturns all our little human empires.

Seen from the angle of authority, this shift from the worship of the triumphant Lord to the worship of ritual means that Christ is being denied the right to make any changes as the King of the church—not just in worship forms but in the lives caught up in an idolatrous devotion to things that may be good in themselves.

I have encountered the same mind-set in liberal churches. Sometimes they are intrigued by hearing reports of the work of God under my preaching and witnessing and invite me to conduct a series of meetings, sometimes even agreeing that the purpose should be expressly evangelistic. In one instance in a nearby liberal church I was invited to give a series of three lectures on successive Sunday evenings on the subject of the gospel and our modern culture. Through the presentation I developed the theme that modern man was, at bottom, given over to hopelessness. By contrast, I said that the gospel could change the most hopeless appearing person if that one believed it. I underscored that it didn’t matter who that person was or what that person had done. My presupposition was the active Kingship of Christ as risen Lord who used His gospel message to change any believer’s fundamental relationships.

What happened at the end of the third lecture was a bit of an uproar generated by the pastor of the church coming to his feet and saying he did not believe Christ could change everyone. I believe his words were: “Christ cannot change just anyone. Some people have medical problems and are so mentally disturbed that only the medical experts can help them.”

What impressed me was his candor and the candor of the people in the congregation. In the hub-bub that followed people started arguing with one another. Some said Christ simply couldn’t change just anyone who believed. Others said—especially the younger ones—that they weren’t so certain that He couldn’t.

The question here seems to be different from that in the conservative church where tradition became a kind of religious lockstep for everyone. But beneath the surface, I think there are some striking parallels.

What these folks in the liberal church wanted to avoid was a supernatural Christ who has the kind of ongoing power to touch a life here and now and begin to make that life over in a radical manner. In a sense, you might say that in the typical liberal church the people have gone on strike and locked out the Owner of the church.

I know something of the same happens in conservative churches, though it is more covert. It seems to me that in many conservative and liberal churches the question of whether Christ is really there as risen Lord has been passed over. What has been substituted is a love of church music, of lovely church buildings, and habitual associations that are more sentimental than genuinely spiritual.

The proof is found in the lack of confidence in the transforming power of the message of atonement given in the gospel. This unbelief is shared by many people in conservative congregations. Practical atheists abound in conservative churches as well as liberal ones. These folks attend church and honor the Bible not because they are there to submit everything to the authority of the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ but because of the emotional need that is met by traditional religious order and moral structure. One man put it to me like this: “Even if I didn’t believe God existed, I’d fight for Him all the way. I’d never miss church and would always insist that my family come too. We need religion in our lives. Otherwise the bottom will fall out of everything.”

So our problem is to get the conflict clear and to disentangle our feet from involvement with the secularist and sentimental view of Christ and the church. The difficulty facing the young leader in the Sunday school and his pastor was that they were in some measure accepting the secularist and sentimentalist view of the church which dominated the thinking of the middle-aged couple who resisted any and all outreach.

The pastor, for instance, if he is typical of Protestant clergy, may refer to the church building as “the house of the Lord” and act as though the “sanctuary” had some vague connections with the Old Testament temple. Thus holiness is not something inherent in the people, but in “holy” material things associated with worship. He is also pretty blind to the fact that emotionally he is for many people the head of the church and has taken Christ’s role as the priest of the church. He has not taught from the pulpit and elsewhere that the supreme concern of Christ for His church is obedience to the Great Commission. He is not even sure that “going with the gospel” is Jesus’s overarching priority for the church in the world. He sees gospel proclamation as one spoke in a wheel with many other spokes and has not understood the message of forgiveness is the rim which binds all the separate parts into one. He has therefore not attempted to arouse the “laity” from their passive stance toward worldwide evangelism and the accompanying good deeds which authenticate the gospel.

The result is that his conflict with people like the Jones couple is piecemeal and inconsistent and is all too likely to degenerate into a personality conflict centered around a clash of human wills. In summary his teaching lacks comprehensiveness and confidence because his own vision of Christ’s purpose in the world is clouded.

You cannot expect to have a part in seeing the church renewed unless you see that the heart of the biblical program for the church and the world is Christ’s authority and that by virtue of that authority He has constituted His church as His own special missionary agency in the world. I don’t see how you can challenge people like the Jones couple and others like them to give up their ingrowness unless someone much bigger than you disapproves of it and has another purpose for us.

The issue is that simple. Christ constituted His church in the world by His own supreme kingly authority as the instrument of His missionary enterprise. That’s why we are here. That’s our reason for being, not for our comfort, but for us to risk everything including life in order as soldiers of the gospel to fulfill His marching orders.

For that reason I invite you to look more closely at the biblical authority for a courageous faith which is strong enough to take on a passively resistant church and an actively resistant world. Otherwise your faith will be quickly damped down by the unbelief that you meet both inside the congregation and outside in the world.

[I]n the summer of 1970 my family and I spent the summer in Barcelona, where I spent a good deal of time meditating on the Scriptural promises. I don’t want to romanticize that time. The study was hard work. Hour after hour I labored over the Scriptures and then tried to reduce my thoughts to written form. I also took long walks for the purpose of pondering over the nature and character of these promises. I talked little with anyone, including my wife. I needed to be silent before God so that He could teach me. My central problem was too much awareness of people. I was far too easily intimidated by people like the Jones couple and often had my zeal quenched by them. Furthermore, I was often ashamed of the gospel in the face of strong opposition which I met sometimes in the church and sometimes outside. I needed in the words of Isaiah to learn to “cease from man whose breath is in his nostrils” and learn to obey God without question as a ready servant.

Gradually through systemic meditation, a new mind-set began to form in me. From Isaiah my faith fed on the theme of the nations spontaneously flowing to Jerusalem at the appearing of the Messiah. In the same book I encountered a vision of a Servant whose “law” went forth to distant “coastlands” and “isles.” His innocent life was offered as a guilt offering “for the sins of many.” From Isaiah, Joel, and Zechariah I learned about the “outpouring” of the Spirit of grace like a flood transforming water in the new age. In Ezekiel I discovered that this river of grace comes from a new temple. In the Gospel of John, I saw that many of these Messianic themes converge in Christ’s incarnation, completed work of suffering, and resurrection.

Prodded by Johannes Blauw’s insights in his The Missionary Nature of the Church, I came more and more to see the Great Commission of Matthew 28:18–20 as the keystone which brings together the whole structure of new covenant fulfillment under the supreme authority of the risen Lord. As Blauw says, Jesus’s claim to supreme authority is intended to alert us to His standing as the Son of Man in fulfillment of the great Messianic prediction of Daniel 7:13–14.

A look at Daniel 7:13–14 confronts us with a vision of absolute power being given over to one who is “like the son of man” by “the Ancient of Days” (God in His eternal being and sovereign authority). The text adds that this supreme master—“ a son of man”—will rule over every nation of the earth. Verse 14 says specifically that the proclamation of His authority is to include “all peoples, nations, and languages.” They shall serve Him. No part of the earth is excluded from His empire. The latter part of verse 14 further explains that this rule is permanent: “His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall never pass away.”

The heart of this new supremacy is kindness. This absolute Lord joins authority over the whole earth with a kindly humanity. Beasts arise from the sea to terrorize the earth. These worldly rulers govern with a fierceness like that of the lion, the leopard, the bear, and an unnamed monster beast which devours with “great iron teeth.” They are inhumane cruel dominators of mankind. By contrast, this “son of man” is not “like” them in their cruel imperialism. He is “like” a human being, a kindred spirit ruling over men for their good. His authority is supreme and never ending, yet it is not maintained by any armed might or oppression.

Spelled out in the light of new covenant fulfillment, this absolute but human authority is seen to consist in the conquest of sinners by the gospel message of forgiveness preached under Christ’s kingly authority. In the Great Commission the Lord Jesus announces that just such a loving authority has been placed in His hands. There is no maybe to it. No perhaps. He has it, and He must be obeyed. To disobey Him is to go against the supreme power in the universe and to reject His master purpose for the local church. He says, “All authority in heaven and earth is given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations …”

The Ancient of Days has acted. All authority is given to the Son in His mediatorial office as the Messiah or Christ. The “therefore” of the following verse ties this authority to going with the gospel. The idea is: Christ has been enthroned over the universe by the victory of victories. Therefore take the gospel to all mankind. Go and conquer them for Christ.

When soldiers receive orders before going into battle, their responsibility is to listen to those orders, to understand them, and to obey them to the fullest detail. Their task is not to argue. They are silenced by the authority and wisdom of those over them. So it is with Christ. We are His soldiers. We are silenced by His commands. Anyone who resists His authority must give account to the King.

In a word, the ingrown church has no right to exist. Sentimental and secularized religion with all its self-centeredness has no right to exist. Our reason for being is summed up in the words “go and make disciples.” The church has been constituted as a missionary church by Jesus’s ascension to royal rule. He as a “life giving Spirit” has sent the Spirit into the church to accomplish this task through going with us “until the end of the age.” Our marching orders are as permanent as His authority and the promise of His presence.

In entering into conflict we often precipitate a wrong kind of battle by our fears. The young leader from the Sunday school confessed that he and the pastor agreed that the middle-aged couple were wrong and unchristian in their attitudes. “The truth is,” I added, “You are also afraid of them.”

I know all about it. Many times I’ve had the same fears. These inward tremors then immobilize you and people like them sense it. You are acting like you had no authority for teaching Christ’s vision of the harvest and no right as a believer to discipline people who oppose the outreach of the gospel. I think you and your pastor may be like me. I don’t like to suffer, so I let situations like this one drift. But you shouldn’t permit them to choose the ground for the conflict. I know they have opposed a particular program of outreach that you and other leaders favor. But you need to get down to your philosophy of ministry and their philosophy of the church as well. Have you and the pastor really taught them Christ’s vision for the harvest and His authority standing behind it? Have you challenged their view of the purpose and the nature of the church and presented Christ’s vision of its reason for being?”

What I urged upon him, and through him upon his pastor, was the necessity of systematic teaching in the congregation both from the pulpit and in the Sunday school about the missionary nature of the church. This teaching must be done with the authority of heaven and earth. I also counseled him to exercise the authority which he had as a member of the body of Christ in going to this alienated couple in the manner indicated in Matthew 18:15–17. Here Christ’s pattern is for going first in private when you have been sinned against, and then if your appeal for repentance is rejected, going with two or three more.

In going you are to seek to explain to them your deepest motivation for wanting outreach—which is nothing less than obedience to the Son of Man. You also want them to understand that this motivation is tied with Christ’s master purpose of the church which is to harvest the lost. Often what is said in a sermon lives in a special category until someone hears it explained close up on how it influences a life and personal conduct.

I think people like the Jones couple also deserve something more. They need systematic teaching done with Holy Spirit anointed authority. They need personal interaction, including loving and tender confrontation with their rejection of Christ’s authority over the church. But they also need to see the pacesetter act on the message. They need to see us silenced and awed first by the authority of Christ over all things.

[The pacesetter] needs to demonstrate in his life and ministry that the gospel message is supremely powerful because of its content dealing with man’s deepest problem—the forgiveness of sins and reconciliation to God through Christ. Let him expect that the Spirit of Christ is a missionary Spirit and will apply it savingly to human hearts. Christ is alive and I must act on it. I must live it, love it, obey it, and take the risks of such an adventure—which always includes suffering. Soldiers must not expect that battles are fought without pain and dying. Courage in witness must flow from such a commitment.

It was in late May of 1971 when I finished my series of lectures in that nearby liberal church. That Sunday evening I went home and bowed my knees to Christ’s authority in a new way after some painful heart searching. I prayed something like this: “Heavenly Father, I am not sure that in my heart of hearts I really believed what I said tonight about your message being able to change anyone. But now I confess my unbelief and repent of it. I commit myself now to believe your gospel can change anyone. I will act on that commitment with confidence that you will glorify yourself by changing people who appear to be beyond hope.”

In a short time after that commitment our lives were filled up with people that you might think only medical experts could change. In most instances that we know the “medical experts” had tried and failed. So some of these people actually began to live with us in our rather large home in Jenkintown, Pa. One of them was a strapping young woman who came from Building Ten of Norristown State Hospital, where one of the members of the nearby liberal church committed suicide. It had been decided by the medical authorities that the only way to control this young woman was to perform the equivalent of a modified lobotomy. But we took her in and can report after much agony on the part of many Christians, the gospel has proved to be a remarkable power in her life and ours. Today, more than a decade later, Christ has been glorified as supreme Lord in her life. She has never had the surgery. She has her problems, but she knows Christ as Savior. She holds a job, lives in her own apartment, and is a member of Mechanicsville Chapel. The woman psychiatrist who had her for a patient at Norristown State Hospital subsequently told me: “We really missed it with M_______. There is a power in faith that goes beyond anything we can do.”

C. John Miller, “Authority for the Conflict” (p. 14–25), Part 2 of “Building a Missionary Consciousness in the Local Church” (no date).

[00:00:04] Turn in your Bible to Luke 11, beginning to read with verse one,. [00:00:08][3.6]

[00:00:10] One day, Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray just as John taught his disciples. He said to them, When you pray, say father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. Forgive us our sins for we also forgive everyone who sins against us. And lead us not into temptation. [00:00:35][25.2]

[00:00:37] Then he said to them, Suppose one of you has a friend and he goes to him at midnight and says, Friend, lend me three loaves of bread because a friend of mine on a journey has come to me and I have nothing to set before him. Then the one inside answers. Don’t bother me. The door is already locked and my children are with me in bed. I can’t get up and give you anything. [00:00:57][20.4]

[00:00:58] I tell you though, he will not get up and give him the bread because he is his friend. Yet because the man’s persistence he will get up and give him as much as he needs. So I say to you ask and it will be given to you seek and you will find. Knock on the door will be open to you. For everyone who asks, receives. He who seeks, finds and to him who knocks the door will be open. [00:01:21][22.4]

[00:01:22] Which of you fathers if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead, or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion. If you then though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him? [00:01:41][19.0]

[00:01:42] And then Matthew eighteen. We have these words most striking in verses 19 and 20, Matthew 18, verses 19 and 20. [00:01:57][15.1]

[00:01:58] Again, I tell you, if two of you on Earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three come together in my name there am I with them. [00:02:12][14.9]

[00:02:13] And then Acts chapter one in verses 13 and 14. This is after the resurrection and ascension of Christ. The disciples have gathered together in the upper room. [00:02:25][11.5]

[00:02:25] When they arrived, they went upstairs to the room where they were staying. Those present were Peter, John, James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James, son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas the son of James. They all joined together constantly in prayer, along with the women and Mary, the mother of Jesus and his brothers. [00:02:49][23.8]

[00:02:51] And then Acts two verse one, apparently still continuing in prayer, we read: when the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. [00:03:00][8.8]

[00:03:03] And then turning back with me to Luke, Chapter 11, we come to these words of the disciples addressed to Jesus: Lord, teach us to pray, Lord. Teach us to pray. [00:03:17][14.0]

[00:03:21] Usually we think of this in an individualistic way, Lord teach us … really we translate it, Lord, teach me to pray. But you’ll notice the text does say teach us to pray. And of course, that does mean me and you, but it also means us together. [00:03:36][14.8]

[00:03:37] So we’re going to be talking today about praying together effectively. [00:03:40][3.3]

[00:03:42] And I’d like to begin by just asking what is prayer? [00:03:45][3.2]

[00:03:46] And I think we can say that prayer is talking to God. [00:03:51][4.8]

[00:03:52] We’re going to be seeing what is effective prayer and then how to pray effectively, how to do it together. We need to start off by asking ourselves just what is prayer? [00:04:01][8.3]

[00:04:01] And I think it’s a pretty good definition to say prayer is talking to God and then you might add on the basis of Jesus name. [00:04:09][7.6]

[00:04:10] But that still hasn’t brought us to what effective prayer is. And I believe effective prayer is talking to God about some distinct thing. [00:04:22][11.9]

[00:04:26] Because many times when we try to pray and get through, the reason we don’t get through is we don’t really have anything in particular we’re praying about. [00:04:36][10.6]

[00:04:37] You know, you have a very guilty feeling that somebody here at New Life wants you to get up in the morning and have devotions and you feel you should. But there doesn’t seem to be any strong motivation for it. And it isn’t going to be effective if you do because you don’t have any distinct thing that you want to pray about. It’s all rather vague. [00:04:56][18.6]

[00:04:57] And so it means then that somewhere in effective prayer, it isn’t that you get up in the morning and you get your revolver out and blow out your brains and then you pray, and that effective prayer consists without any mind in action. [00:05:11][14.6]

[00:05:12] No effective prayer must involve the head. Some understanding that you want to get something from God. [00:05:19][6.4]

[00:05:21] All right. It’s talking to God then about some distinct thing, but then it wouldn’t be effective unless what happened? Unless you got an answer. Nobody’s going to keep on praying if he doesn’t get answers. [00:05:33][12.8]

[00:05:36] Well, I know some people who do, I should say, I mean its their whole religion. But most of us are too lazy. I’m not going to keep on praying if I don’t get answers. [00:05:45][9.0]

[00:05:45] So effective praying is talking to God about some particular thing and then getting an answer to that request. It might be deliverance from a temptation or a bad habit, and that can really fuel your desire to pray. You say, well, look, if I got rid of that one or if God got rid of it for me, maybe I’d better try a little more of this. It whets your appetite. [00:06:07][21.9]

[00:06:08] And so effective prayer begins to develop. Or maybe you’re in temptation and you thought, man, I’m going to go down and you couldn’t even think of any noble way to pray. You couldn’t even remember the Lord’s Prayer. And you just cry out, Lord, help me with this temptation. And He did. And you walked away surprised. Oh, dear. You know, this kind of works. I wonder what happened. [00:06:27][19.3]

[00:06:28] And then you may have a tremendous problem dropped in your lap of a health kind of a health kind. Daniel Adams, you see here is a very serious matter. And we all pray and we see an answer. Or we prayed earlier in the year, remember when we had that time, we all prayed for increased income and no one told me if their income diminished. But now that might have happened. I don’t know. But anyway, all kinds of people came forward and said they had more income afterwards. [00:07:02][34.0]

[00:07:04] And, well, that’s effective prayer. It’s something that happened. And we’re told it’s all right to pray that because in the Lord’s Prayer at Lord’s Prayer, it says, pray for your daily bread. And that’s something you need. And so you pray for that. [00:07:17][13.6]

[00:07:18] Well, having said that, it brings us to the question now: How do you pray effectively? What is the way you do it? [00:07:25][7.0]

[00:07:27] And our text has a lot of help for us. And in verse six, it says about prayer, it really begins with these words. “I have nothing.” I have nothing. [00:07:36][9.8]

[00:07:38] You see, if you have a strong sense of your own competence, there’s nothing coming down the road that you can’t deal with, there’s not much reason to pray. [00:07:47][9.1]

Jack Miller: [00:07:49] But when something comes down the road that is too big even for you to deal with, then you say, what do I do now? [00:07:56][7.7]

[00:07:58] I remember when I was about 14, I was a young atheist. I did not believe in God for many years. And my sister, the doctor, says she’s going to die. And what does the young atheist do when his sister is going to die? You know, what a young atheist does? He says, God, I don’t know whether you exist, you probably don’t, but if you do, I’m going to be better if you would make my sister live. Well you know, my sister lived, but I didn’t change. [00:08:32][33.7]

[00:08:33] But the need was there for the first time. And I realized I was not complete in myself. Human adequacy became very inadequate. What can you do? [00:08:43][9.1]

[00:08:45] And so this, I have nothing to set before him. I have nothing. That’s the need side of how to pray. Realizing your needs. [00:08:54][9.1]

[00:08:56] When I was in North Carolina recently with Rose Marie. And I we went down there for a conference and we were trying to enlist people both for missions and also material support for some of our missionaries. But even more than that, we’re trying to help them to learn to pray, that each church might be a missionary power. And while we were there, so much blessing came from them to us. It was really exciting. And one of the young men who’s there is a doctor and he’s a graduate of Jenkintown High School in nineteen seventy four. And so he’s very much interested in becoming a missionary. And so he was telling us how he became a Christian. He told us all about life in Jenkintown. It was interesting how many people we knew together and so on. And it was like Old Home Week. But he said when he got out of medical school, at first it went well. Then he got in the third year and he began to discover his own inadequacies. He had a struggle with some close relationship that went sour and he felt guilty over it and he felt he did the wrong thing to the other person. And he said, how do I get rid of that? I’m adequate. And he was really troubled by that. And then he said, I began as I went into my third year, I began to get more time in the hospital. I began to see more people. And he says, I have a kind of integrity in me and I don’t lie to patients. And when I think they’re dying, I can’t stand there and say, well, just take this pill and you’re going to be all right. And he said, I didn’t know what to tell them. And he said some of them were terribly frightened and I had nothing to say. And he said I had this one patient who was really frightened and she was afraid she was going to have a stroke and maybe die. And he says, I couldn’t tell her that she might not have a stroke and die because I thought she was going to have a stroke and die. So he just felt completely inadequate and his brother in law had been witnessing to him. So he got down on his knees, this proud young doctor, and he cried out, Jesus, show yourself to me, God, show me Jesus. I don’t know anything. [00:10:59][123.5]

[00:11:03] As he walked into that room the next day, and when he walks into the room, he goes over to the bed, he still doesn’t know anything. And the woman is so frightened, she’s a little lady down from the Appalachians. And she asked them the questions again. I’m going to have a stroke. I’m going to die. And he says, look, and he says are you a Christian? [00:11:24][20.7]

[00:11:26] And I looked up at him, you know. I hadn’t heard anything like from him before. And he says he didn’t know where it all came from. But he said, but if you’re a Christian, you must believe that God has a plan over your life. And it must be a good plan. And if it’s a good plan, you don’t need to be afraid. Are you Christian? [00:11:42][15.4]

[00:11:43] She looked at him and she became a Christian at that point, and he says the funny thing was she changed completely right in front of me. And instead of being a person who’s frightened, that her very fears are so great they might kill her, she became a woman of faith. And I’ve never seen fear in her since. And he said I was astonished at the effect of my words on that woman and the fact I saw nothing but faith. And the next time I said, you know, I guess I believe this too don’t I. And she walked out of the room and he says, I became a Christian in there, too. Out of his own words. [00:12:16][32.4]

[00:12:16] And God heard his prayer, the night before, born out of this sense of I don’t have any resources, I’ve got no bread, I don’t know how to do it. And he prayed. And, you know, if you had told him, boy, you really know how to pray effectively, he would have said, I don’t know a thing. Because you see, effectiveness comes when you don’t know a thing. [00:12:34][18.0]

[00:12:36] I remember that when I first became a Christian, it was so wonderful. You remember that time when you first became a Christian. And finally I decided, you know, I really am a chaotic person. I was a student and I would often stay up till three o’clock in the morning and I never hit the sack before 3:00 and my morning classes got visited occasionally by me, not too often. And I had that in my background and I decided, boy, I got to change this. [00:13:06][29.8]

[00:13:06] So I organized, reorganized my life over a period of about six months to a year and begin to show up even at eight o’clock classes. And it was difficult. But then finally I got myself reorganized and I began to get up at six o’clock every morning and pray for an hour. [00:13:20][13.2]

[00:13:20] And was I really adequate? My life was so adequate and I was so satisfied with my six to seven o’clock devotions. I went around exhorting other people to have six to seven devotions, you know. [00:13:30][9.9]

[00:13:30] And then I got married. And we got married and suddenly I discovered Rose Marie wasn’t really red hot about that hour from six to seven. In fact, she said, sometimes your smile at six is a little hard to bear. [00:13:45][14.8]

[00:13:48] So anyway, and then she got pregnant and she had morning sickness every morning from six to seven. So I spent the devotion period bringing tea and toast and trying to provide her a pan if she needed it, whatever. [00:14:05][17.5]

[00:14:06] And so it was in this I became very inadequate. And I thought, I’m losing knowing how to pray. But then it dawned on me somewhere along the line eventually that it isn’t six to seven that teaches you to pray. It’s the morning sins that teaches you to pray. It’s a wife you can’t cope with that teaches you to pray, a husband you can’t cope with that teaches you to pray. [00:14:31][24.5]

[00:14:31] It’s much more basic. It becomes effective when you know you don’t have any clue how to put anything together. And yet you believe maybe out there somewhere, God knows how to put it together. [00:14:43][11.8]

[00:14:44] Are you catching what goes into prayer? And the thing the Lord convicted me. They asked me to speak down there at North Carolina on repentance and missions, repentance and outreach. And I ask myself, Lord, Lord, I don’t want to go down there unrepentant and tell everybody about repentance. That would make me sick at my stomach. And I’m sure God would be nauseated by it too. [00:15:07][23.5]

[00:15:08] And I said, God is there anything about me that you have problems with this morning. Turned out I have quite a few things I discovered, and one of them was looking squarely at how much I lean on human adequacy, my own or somebody else’s, how much I lean on human resources, how much I lean on that which is visible, and then I just asked, God forgive me, I want to lean on you. [00:15:33][24.7]

[00:15:34] And that’s where it is. You don’t lean on yourself or your strength. The whole idea of praying is you’ve got nothing. The man comes at midnight, the knock is there, and he has to say to his friend, I have nothing. And of course, he has nothing. And it’s the insistent realization of that in his heart that keeps him knocking until he gets an answer. [00:15:55][21.5]

[00:15:56] And then the other side of praying is this. And that’s found in verse thirteen. And it says there is a promise and the promise is if you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him? [00:16:14][17.7]

[00:16:16] Now, God sometimes exaggerates. Isn’t that true? Its true, the Bible overstates stuff, way, overstates stuff, right? Do you believe the Bible does that? Now, I want to know, do you believe the Bible exaggerates? A lot? And that you appropriately have to cut it down to reality? Right. [00:16:44][28.1]

[00:16:47] Because the picture here isn’t the way most of us pray. It doesn’t seem to be what most of us believe. It says that God has a heart for those who are needy, those who have no bread. He’s ready to give the bread of the Holy Spirit on an ongoing basis. [00:17:02][15.1]

[00:17:03] Notice the language of the text. He says here that, verse nine: Ask, seek and knock. And then he says, you’re going to receive, you’re going to have, the door will be open. And the verbs there are in the present tense, ongoing action. And therefore it means you keep up doing it. And every day, in effect, you ask for the Holy Spirit and the Father is committed to giving him to you. And the central substance of your life, the bread, you see, the combination. He moves down talking about bread, eggs, fish, the substance of life, necessary for life. And then he just moves in and drops that substance language and uses the true substance language of the Holy Spirit. [00:17:45][42.4]

[00:17:47] And he says, I promise to give you every day the Holy Spirit when you ask for him. When was the last time you asked for the Holy Spirit? [00:17:54][7.4]

[00:17:57] Obviously, you cut this one down. You either ignored it or you thought it was an overstatement. God couldn’t love me that much to give me his very life in his Son on a cross and then from that Son and the ascended Son to pour forth on me at my conversion, my rebirth—at the rebirth and conversion he gives me the Spirit—but then daily to give me more of his strength, more of his wisdom, more of his joy, more of the thanksgiving, more of his power, more of his peace, more of his calmness. [00:18:29][32.5]

[00:18:32] I have nothing, but then I have a full cupboard coming to me whenever I ask and believe and claim the promise, do you see? [00:18:43][10.4]

[00:18:43] And so that’s effective prayer. But now the question comes, how do we pray effectively together? [00:18:48][5.0]

[00:18:50] And here we find what we need to see is that prayer, we often think of it too subjectively, too defensively. What can I pray and have God help me with so I can get out of my next scrape? You know, I got myself in this beautiful, tangled mess. I blew it this morning with my husband, with my children. I was obnoxious on the telephone. It was a great beginning for the day. And I need Lord, get me out of this. Help me get it all straight. [00:19:27][37.0]

[00:19:28] Or something is wrong in your studies or your work. You’re in danger of getting fired. Or you might make a major mistake and then you pray through that and you say, boy, I really got the Holy Spirit’s blessing, and you didn’t really. You only got a crumb and you said I had a whole loaf. [00:19:48][20.0]

[00:19:50] Because the point of the passage is that the abundance of the Father’s gift John 7:37-39 says: if anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink, he that believes in me, according as the scripture has said from within him shall flow rivers of living water. Enough for yourself and enough to overflow to other people. Abundance. [00:20:17][27.8]

[00:20:19] When Jesus talks to the woman at the well that he says, you know, young lady, if you got to know the truth, you’d sure have a great trickle of water running in you. You’d be able to get out of all your scrapes. You will be able to straighten it out with those husbands. You know, you got a little problem there, five of them. The last fellow your not married to. A little problem. But we will give you a trickle. Jesus doesn’t say that. He says will give you a spring, an artesian well inside of you. [00:20:49][29.6]

[00:20:49] And, you know, when she believed that she even forgot about all her problems and ran back telling people about Jesus. There’s a man out there who told me everything I ever did. [00:20:58][8.8]

[00:21:00] And she came with a Christ consciousness, which is the primary work of the Holy Spirit. To make you aware of the glory of Christ, the wonder of the Father’s love. Those are the things that matter. And to love others in that miraculous way, with the intensity with which you love yourself. To live in the monotony of life, where things are the same, where the same dull things must go on and on, and to live there with a kindliness, a tenderness and a patience that says, that advertises, that the Spirit is working in your life, that you are a supernatural person in very ordinary circumstances. [00:21:43][43.0]

[00:21:45] And that’s what prayer is all about and how does that come? [00:21:49][3.8]

[00:21:50] Well, we have to have recognition that there is additional power conferred upon the church officially when we come to pray together. [00:22:00][10.5]

[00:22:01] We see all of these marvelous answers to prayer. And we’re told in Matthew 18, it’s this very simple. If we want to go beyond where we are, it can’t be simply individualistic. If you just pray by yourself at some point, it’s going to start to dry up. It will, because that’s not God’s normal. [00:22:22][20.8]

[00:22:23] Truly effective prayer finds its life in praying with other Christians. [00:22:29][5.7]

[00:22:30] Notice this promise in Matthew, 18, verse 19. Again, I tell you, if two of you on Earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be done for you by my father in heaven. For where two or three come together in my name there Am I with them. [00:22:44][13.9]

[00:22:45] Now have you ever gone to a prayer meeting where the attendance was really down and everybody was demoralized. And some dear saint prayed something like this? God, this isn’t much tonight. And we’re all kind of discouraged. But we remember that promise where you said that we’re two or three are gathered together in your name, there you would be in our midst. And it goes on and on. And the spirits in this group and everybody is down. I mean, you almost crawl out of the place when that prayers finished. And you feel like you’re whistling as you walk by the graveyard. That everything is dead and you’re scared and nothing is going to matter. And so you just kind of pray this as a kind of a pious gesture. That, you know, isn’t it too bad we’re all discouraged tonight and attendance is so bad. [00:23:29][44.2]

[00:23:31] And that prayer promise has been so ruined by the Christian church in our time. And I don’t want you to pray it that way. That’s wicked. That’s not the purpose of that. This is a disciplinary context about a wandering sheep and about going after that wandering sheep and the authority of the church and bringing that one back to God. And if that person refuses to repent, then the excommunication really is a thing before God. [00:23:57][25.9]

[00:23:58] And this prayer context here, then, is one of great authority. It’s of the authority of the highest sort. And so the promise when you come into the new covenant is that we will be praying because the Spirit is going to bring us together to pray. That is his ministry. He’s going to take our inadequacies individually and as a body. And he’s going to bring us together. And when we come together, he has promised that he will be there and he will be working. [00:24:24][26.4]

[00:24:25] And you see here the close identity of Jesus and the Spirit. I’m going to be there. The Spirit is going to be there. Same thing. Because Jesus, in his triumph, earned the Spirit for us. [00:24:35][10.3]

[00:24:36] And so the promise is that when we agree, when we have one mind on anything, the Father bends his ear, reaches forth his hand and moves. And the greatest hindrance to this is not claiming. [00:24:57][20.5]

[00:24:59] You see, now we begin to see that effective prayer moves into the dimension of authority. That God has made every one of us a priest and a king and a prophet in this world. We bear authority. And if we do not exercise it collectively, we insult the God of the promises. [00:25:17][18.0]

[00:25:20] And not to come together and pray with other Christians is to hinder, to stifle, and to risk the whole ministry of the Spirit in the church and in your own life. [00:25:34][14.2]

[00:25:36] And when you come to the norm in the New Testament in the Book of Acts, when you turn there to Chapter one versus 13 and 14, those apostles who could not pray before together, who fell asleep in the Garden of Gethsemane, we find here in verse 13 of Acts one, they go upstairs and the group is listed and then the women are there and we we discover the word is used in the Greek. [00:26:03][27.4]

[00:26:04] You know, people object around here sometimes to say in the Greek, but I don’t know any other way to say it. The Greek says they had one mind, one accord. [00:26:12][8.1]

[00:26:15] And it means that they were all of one mind. And because they were of one mind, they got what they asked for. And what did they get? A little small thing. What happened afterwards? They kept on praying constantly in prayer. What happened? A little thing called Pentecost. How would you Like that for an answer to prayer? [00:26:34][19.3]

[00:26:40] And when we read, was Pentecost enough, well, when they had finished Pentecost, they had these terrible struggles and great victories and we read in Acts 4, verse twenty three, the same word is used. And when they get before God and they say, they announced to God, they are there with one accord, they are there in agreement and they’re asking for a new filling of the Holy Spirit. [00:27:01][20.6]

[00:27:03] And in our tradition, some people have been so afraid of being branded Pentecostal that they felt the safest thing to do was to avoid any contact with the Holy Spirit. [00:27:11][7.6]

[00:27:13] Now, that’s terrible. Nobody has cornered the Holy Spirit, including ourselves or anyone else. [00:27:19][6.1]

[00:27:20] He’s sovereign and he has given us certain ways of working and certain ways of proceeding. And if we follow those, we’ll see revival. [00:27:27][7.3]

[00:27:29] I believe this is probably the single most important sermon I have ever preached. And it may be for your life, the single most important one, too, because the conclusion follows, will you be committed to corporate prayer? Will you join with other believers in praying together? [00:28:07][38.0]

[00:28:10] Believers began doing that, and eighteen fifty eight there was a prayer meeting in Ontario, another one in Massachusetts and a third in New York City. Six men gathered in New York City in agreement, Concord, that we will pray for revival in America. [00:28:31][21.0]

[00:28:34] Within one year. I cited this once before and I said, I hope I haven’t exaggerated. I said ten thousand people a week were being converted. I was wrong. I went back and checked. And my mind was blown. It was fifty thousand a week. [00:28:49][14.9]

[00:28:52] And all people were doing was praying and giving people the gospel. There’s no Billy Graham around, no Billy Sunday, no Dwight L. Moody. Just praying Christians. Praying for revival, praying for the Holy Spirit to convict people of sin, to awaken the conscience of the nation. [00:29:11][19.3]

[00:29:12] Look, our struggle with abortion. It is a terrible one. And we have this whole burden of one of our members was arrested for his part in a sit in demonstration during the week. [00:29:24][11.9]

[00:29:25] But you see, we’re not going to win that struggle unless we have a revival, because what’s the problem is not simply with abortion. It’s a lot of people getting in the wrong bed. If everybody stayed in the right bed there wouldn’t be a problem. If you didn’t have sexual intercourse until you got married, there wouldn’t be a problem. We need a rebirth of some basic concepts in America, namely virginity is a good thing until you’re married. [00:29:52][27.4]

[00:29:54] And where are we going to get that? Are we going to go out there with swords and kill all the people who don’t agree with us? [00:30:00][6.5]

[00:30:01] No, we need a persuasion from heaven. We need to be humbled ourselves and purified ourselves. And therefore, if that’s what we get, then we will have revival. [00:30:10][9.6]

[00:30:12] You see all these Korean churches springing up around here. I say to myself, good night these Koreans are taking over America. Everywhere I look, there’s a Korean sign. Where are they all coming from? Well, the answer is they’re coming out of a prayer meeting. [00:30:24][11.9]

[00:30:25] In Korea there was a revival. They started around 1906 and 1907. They got together and they repented of their sins and they had some early morning prayer meetings, five o’clock up in the mountains. And what do you know? The Korean church exploded. They’re sending out missionaries to Indonesia. They’re sending them out to Taiwan. [00:30:43][17.8]

[00:30:45] What’s going on here? They’re praying. Are you going to stay behind? Are you going to stay behind, are you going to really go along with the Lord? [00:30:56][11.5]

[00:30:57] Well, we have a week of prayer coming up. We’ve been asking God to bring us out a hundred a night. I don’t know how many God’s going to bring out. That’s his prayer meeting, not mine. [00:31:08][10.3]

[00:31:15] David Bryant is going to come here in the spring and talk about the release of the Holy Spirit through prayer. Where will you be in this? [00:31:24][9.2]

[00:31:25] I believe this year, this week of prayer is going to decide whether New Life Church will live or die. It will even decide whether it should live or die. We have no guarantee that we should continue unless we are living up to the light we have. [00:31:45][19.9]

[00:31:47] And if you have the light, and I can give you a lot more text from the Bible about corporate prayer and its power. I can’t do that. We don’t have time. [00:31:53][6.5]

[00:31:54] But we have a desperate need. We need everything. And we need to sue God for the Spirit to change our lives and to change our nation. [00:32:02][7.4]

[00:32:03] And I just tell you, the Lord’s convicted me. I, I feel utterly unworthy to talk about this subject of prayer. And I just think that we ought to just have some prayer. And if you’ve never prayed before, like Perry, our doctor friend, will you pray now and say, Jesus show me yourself, I need you. I’m calling on your name to save me. But let’s just have some time to pray. [00:32:37][33.6]

[00:32:55] Teach us to pray for us to pray, forgive us for a lack of desire to come together. [00:33:04][8.4]

[00:33:12] Thank you our Father that you have called upon your people to do things together. This is in your Word in varioius places. Now give us a heart that is united in seeking your blessing that we might have a share in it and that we would do your will with all our hearts. We pray in Jesus name, our Lord and Savior, Amen. [00:33:33][20.9]

[00:33:46] Lord, the reason we have not is because we ask not. Help us to ask. [00:33:50][3.3]

[00:33:58] Lord we ask that you would fill our hearts with a zeal for prayer. That we will be glad to pray before you knowing that it is prayer according to your promise. [00:34:07][8.9]

[00:34:07] Oh, Lord, here we are, no longer orphans, but your sons and daughters, with the gift of being able to talk with you and see you do things in our lives and the lives of others. And yet Lord we refuse most of the time to even come to you in prayer. Yet Lord we rejoice when we see prayers answered and we see its power. Give us as a congregation to know this power of prayer. to know that things can be changed immediately, to know Lord that we can effect the other side of the world, or even the hearts of a person right next to us to prayer. Lord just bless us with an ability not to listen to our flesh, or to Satan, but to know that the Spirit in our lives works in prayer. Give us a heart to pray more. [00:35:00][52.9]

[00:35:08] Father too I pray that you would give us a vision for praying together as a large group that even those of us that may not pray out loud would be encouraged in their faith with those that do pray. Lord we see a real sense of your Spirit encouraging us all, these people who are committed to pray together. [00:35:26][17.9]

[00:35:30] We thank you, Heavenly Father, that we can come and specifically pray for particular items as your children with you our Father. We particularly pray Father that those all over our nation who will be watching the debates tonight before the presidential elections. We pray, Father, that you would grant to those who watch wisdom that they would know who to vote for in the election. We pray, Father, that that individual candidates would demonstrate where they are and what they stand for, so that the people would be able to judge wisely. We ask this specifically, Father in Jesus name, Amen. [00:36:20][50.4]

[00:36:25] Father in heaven, we now bring before you our prayerlessness. We have not prayed, and then sometimes when we have prayed, we have been vague and wandering. And other times, Lord, we have prayed without faith. And we ask you to forgive us that. We also ask you to forgive us our laziness and sloth. Lord, I have been guilty of just a slothful mind, a slothful body, and I just ask you to change that in me and each one here. And we especially ask you to forgive us for not taking our needs to the Father. That we have often Father rather preferred to worry and fear. We let ourselves be consumed by anxiety and we didn’t claim the bread of the Spirit. And right now in Jesus name, we’re asking you, Father, to send your Spirit upon this gathering. We are agreed on this great point. We want the Holy Spirit to come upon lives. We ask you, Lord, that you would come with mighty convicting power to some who are sitting here who yet are complacent in their sins, and they have hidden agendas even from themselves, and secretly are sold out to their own pleasures, their own comforts, their own honor, their own glory. And we ask your Lord to come. And maybe that’s true of all of us. You know, our hearts. And so come and convict us and then free us and then show us Christ and give us a fresh knowledge of your love. [00:38:08][103.0]

[00:38:09] Lord, I’m praying together, representing this body in the name of Jesus for a knowledge of the wonder of Christ’s love to come upon us, to realize the great sacrifice he made and that that love is unchanging, that it’s unconditional, and that the Spirit is inside of us and living. And he will not be defeated. And though we do not know how to pray, he will teach us. And so we pray that you would give us such a confidence in prayer, such a confidence in the Spirit, such a confidence in Christ, that we would live different lives. Father, we ask it of you. We are so helpless. We are so frustrated left in ourselves. We have nothing. And Lord, we long to see thousands of people streaming to Christ. We long to see this place so jammed at eight thirty that you can’t even get in because God has been speaking. That we have to make more doors and have to have a larger place to meet. God, we can’t do that. And therefore we’re claiming it on the basis of your promise. And then we plead with you for a blessing on our homes. O we are asking you, Lord, to bless us with love in our families. Put in each of us a heart of tenderness and love. O God put sacred holy love in us. And then we pray for our nation. We agree together to ask that there would be a putting away of abortion, divorce, adultery, and there would be a recapturing of your teaching that a person should be a virgin until married. We ask it in Jesus name. Amen. [00:39:44][0.0]of [00:39:44][95.0]

“The Jack Miller Project,” created in 2015, is committed to sharing research on “The Life, Teaching, and Ministry of C. John ‘Jack’ Miller” with the church and the next generation of church leaders.

My doctoral dissertation at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary (completed in May 2019) and the biography Cheer Up! (published in December 2020) are the first-fruits of this ongoing work.

Over the next year, I plan to publish an “Interactive Timeline of The Life, Teaching, and Ministry of Jack Miller.” This project has been in process since 2016, a comprehensive timeline that will allow others to append their own stories about and interactions with Jack Miller and his impact on them personally.

In time I also hope to oversee the building of an interactive iOS and Android App based upon “A New Life” booklet, an application through which Jack Miller’s important teaching and ministry on the subjects of praying together and evangelism—the gospel for Christians and non-Christians—and elenctics (leading in repentance) can be shared as well.

Clair Davis, Professor of Church History at Westminster Seminary, referred to Jack Miller as a “Missionary Statesman.” Uniquely, Jack Miller was a theologian, scholar, pastor, missionary, and literary-cultural-critic.

Hope you enjoy!

Blessings, Dr. Michael A. (Mike) Graham,

Director of The Jack Miller Project and Teaching Elder at New Life Vicenza 

 

 

[00:00:04] When I speak on a topic like “How to keep your mental health in a Violent World,” I guess at the outset I’d like to say that, really I want to be a little more positive than that. Not how just to keep your sanity, but maybe make a positive contribution to solving the problem.

[00:00:28] I think Americans don’t realize the extent to which our society is viewed as violent. I suspect our president doesn’t realize how some of his comments come across in third world countries.

[00:00:44] If you know how many people look at us, I think I can give you an illustration of that. In 1982, we were living in Rubaga, in Kampala, Uganda. And that was a time that there was the first movement of the guerrillas to overthrow the Obote government.

[00:01:06] And it was really a wild time. And you could hear screams at night. Small arms fire, sometimes automatic weapons. And it was enough to make you keep your head down at night, to say the least. And so during this time, I was talking to some of the village chiefs and elders, and I was talking about the criminal elements in our area. And I said, “I really would like to meet some of these people.” And the chief kind of looked at me and said, “Well, he’d be willing to talk to them.”

[00:01:41] So he came back and the answer was pretty negative. So in trying to bring out of him, why were these criminals afraid to meet with me—I feel rather innocuous myself and I don’t think I looked very threatening. But it turned out as best we can discern was that we were Americans and they really were afraid to come into our house.

[00:02:05] And in talking to another Ugandan who knew the neighborhood well, I said “Another thing has interested me. Of all the violence here in the neighborhood, why is no one ever come in and tried to rob us?” And he says, “Oh, you’re Americans.” And I said, “Well, explain that to me.” And he said, “Well, we all know what you’re like. And no, no sane person would come in here after dark.” And I said, “Well, what do you think we might do?” “Well, everybody out there believes you carry guns, and that to come in here would be very dangerous. And even if you didn’t have guns, all it would take is one of you with a panga, and it would be very bad for anybody who came in.”

[00:02:45] So I kind of felt funny for my country. And it dawned on me that their impression of America was through movies. And they had seen all of these shoot-em-up cowboy movies. And they’d seen the detective stuff. And they felt that every American was just, no matter how innocuous he might look, that he carries a revolver somewhere about his person and is prepared to use it on the spot if you cross him.

[00:03:14] So I think sometimes our president speaks into these third world countries. He’s hardly aware. He gets up there and he praises … who’s this Rambo? And people get all kinds of visions about what President Reagan is like and we’re like, and it’s magnified in many, many ways that we’d hardly realize.

[00:03:34] Now, as we come to our topic tonight, I think we don’t want to have misperceptions. I don’t believe that America is as violent as some people think it is, but I do think it is pretty violent.

[00:03:45] So now let’s come to the three things I want to talk about.

[00:03:50] The first is just getting a perception of the facts of the case. You might say, putting it this way, I want to ask first, what’s new in 20th century violence, not only in America, but also throughout the world? Because I really haven’t seen anything in Ugandan violence that I haven’t seen in American violence.

[00:04:13] Now, here, isn’t it odd that we look at the newspapers and we say, Uganda is such a violent country, and you go to Uganda and they say America is such a violent country.

[00:04:24] So what what’s new in the whole world of violence? That’s the first thing I want to talk about.

[00:04:29] And then to go directly to the issues of mental health, personal sanity in a world where violence, we may conclude, is growing.

[00:04:38] And then the third thing, which I hope we get to: Solutions.

[00:04:44] It’s much easier to talk about the problems, its effects, and solutions may be more difficult. But I do believe they’re there, and perhaps not as esoteric and hard to nail down as you may think.

[00:04:59] All I can ask of you on your part, that you try to bring, as much as possible, an open mind to what I say. Naturally, I’m right on everything I say, but you may not perceive that right away. And so if it takes a while to see that, you know, do yourself a favor by listening carefully. And if you think I’m crazy. Well, just bear with me. All right? So you’ll have your chance to have a good shot at me. And my skin is thick. If you think I’m all wrong, you feel free to tell me and we can have good dialog about it.

[00:05:33] So first, what’s new in 20th century violence? What is it that may threaten the mental health and stability of us as individuals and even our families?

[00:05:46] Well, I think one of the things that I, as a person who is older than most of you, would notice is the increasing publicity given to violence in our time. Now, I didn’t grow up with the advantages of TV. We barely had a radio where I grew up. And it was in a place called Oregon. It’s north of California for those of you who don’t know about it.

[00:06:11] And anyway, in that world, we had a certain amount of violence, some real, real violence. But it was not something that was visualized for you all the time. It didn’t come at you from every angle. And so I think what you have then is a widespread reporting.

[00:06:29] Now, newspapers have always given stories of violence, American newspapers especially. But it’s cold print. And when you turn your TV set on and you watch the news at 5:00 o’clock or 6, what you see is it visualized. You see the bodies being carried out on the stretchers after the fire, after the murder and the mayhem, whatever it may be. And you’re kind of right there. And whether you know it or not, emotionally, you’re involved. Isn’t that true?

[00:07:04] Now, it isn’t so that newspaper reporting never involved us emotionally, but there’s something more vivid. And it’s also it’s more widespread in that the reporting of news on the television, there’s just a coverage there that is very, very wide. You have the terrorists on TV. You have the wars and the conflicts around the world being reported on TV. You don’t really watch TV at all if you don’t know a good deal about Beirut. And you don’t watch it very much if you don’t know something about violence in South Africa and so on. And you also know about what happened with the hijacking of the Achille Lauro. We saw saw that close up. We saw a hijacking before. And the terrorists were right there on television, not exactly looking at you eyeball to eyeball because they had hoods on or something, but nonetheless, their presence was felt. And so it’s both intense and widespread, the news reporting.

[00:08:10] Also there is a great deal of discussion of the violence. It’s analyzed for you on television. This is, of course, done in periodicals. It’s done for you in books, and it’s done for you in magazines. But here it has a certain vividness, a certain, almost ubiquitous nature. It’s there, everywhere, through the eye and the ear as you watch television.

[00:08:35] And of course, you can’t minimize the police shows and the detective shows. Now, I’m a great lover of Agatha Christie and all of those people, but somehow it never seemed violent to me. But when you see it on television, Miami Vice is not exactly a quiet world. I mean, in Agatha Christie, the body was always lying there, rather neatly arranged or something. Or if there was a knife, it was something got cleaned up pretty quickly. But Miami Vice or some Hill Street Blues, you see bodies blown all over the place. And the movies the same. You see a great amount of violence in films. Well, it hits you and it hits you.

[00:09:20] And then it’s also true, we get the, what I would call, the constructive films attempting to analyze violence of the 20th century. You have films on the Holocaust, the Nazi Holocaust. You have films on the Holocaust in Uganda. You have films on the Holocaust in Cambodia. And these are brought to us with great vividness. We’re very much aware of how terrible it was in Cambodia, as you see a film like The Killing Fields. And then also there are probably abuses of violence in our time that were there for a good while that have only now become exposed.

[00:10:07] I’m thinking of the family conflicts, the wife beating. And I think that has been growing. And I think child abuse is growing. I think incest has been growing. But I was aware of it at least myself back in 1970. But it’s only come to the fore in a really public way through better reporting of it, better knowledge of it. In the last, what, five or six years? And during that time, there become a heightened interest in it and a better knowledge of it. And it’s another way that the emotions are impressed by a world which looks very, very ugly indeed.

[00:10:51] And then we also have some new trends in the forms that violence is taking, both in the way it’s presented to us, dramatized to us, but also in just the sheer quantity of it.

[00:11:06] For example, it’s come so gradually, but we have a number of cities in America that are really kind of the world murder capitals. It used to be Atlanta. Someone told me it had switched to Detroit, and before that I think it was Newark. And I think New York City has very, very high homicide rates. And I believe Los Angeles does, too. And if you compare this to some countries in Western Europe, say there would be more people killed in a city like Detroit than there would be in a year’s time in Detroit, than there would be in this whole European country for a year’s time … many more. And so what has happened is our cities have become really violent places, and the handguns are not only a little bit available, they’re everywhere in the inner cities. And when people, they buy them to protect themselves against violence from outside, and often what happens, a family quarrel breaks out and somebody runs and gets the handgun from underneath the pillow and settles the argument with one or two shots. And this is certainly an American violence story.

[00:12:29] Now, we also have organized crime becoming more organized. Even a few years ago, a friend of mine who owned a department store in California, he had moved from Manhattan Beach, where he had one department store up to Modesto, California, where he had another. In the meantime, he was a man of some wealth, and he left his home there and he wanted to go back and get some of his furniture. And he sent an aunt in to look over his furniture and see how it was going back in Manhattan Beach. And she came and unlocked the door and went in one evening and she discovered all the furniture and all the household goods were very well organized and classified … by a local gang. They had all this kind of furniture here, silverware here, drapes here, and so on. It was all well worked out. And she called the police and said, “There’s an organized robbery going on at this home.” Now, you’d think they’d have some clout, his being a prominent member of the community? The reply of the police was, “We have so many emergencies going on, don’t fool around with us. We don’t have time for this sort of thing.” And so she quietly locked the door and went out and let the gang come back. And that same evening they removed it all.

[00:13:51] And that’s a bit frightening. It’s maybe not as bad as Clockwork Orange, but it’s certainly heading there where the police themselves have given up in parts of society.

[00:14:02] Now, if you want to say that, “I’m certainly glad that’s in California.” I don’t know whether you saw the CBS special on Ninth and Butler. It’s Ninth and Butler, isn’t it? Ninth and 10th in there, where they reported that on one corner alone in Philadelphia, $11 million worth of cocaine are sold on that corner alone per year.

[00:14:27] I call up a friend who lives in the neighborhood down there, and I said, “Was CBS exaggerating?” And my friend said, “No, I’m sure they underestimated it considerably.”. And the report was that the police arrest people and within 20 minutes some of them were back on the same corner.

[00:14:47] Now, that’s awesome. And that’s Philadelphia. I mean, it’s obviously, it’s organized, it’s pervasive and it’s strong. That’s a new feature in American life. Now, I don’t mean there’s never been gangs. You had the mafias of the twenties and even during the First World War. There was an Irish mafia. There was a Jewish mafia, Italian mafias and so on. And they were pretty bad. But I think we find that they are pervasive today and they are much more able to penetrate legitimate society.

[00:15:17] But then we have another thing in our time and something that’s grown up so gradually, and its taken over almost imperceptibly until it’s become a monster, and we haven’t really recognized its existence. It’s what you might call ideological violence.

[00:15:36] Do you know what I mean by that? Well, you have it … There was a book written called The Mind of the Assassin. I forget the name of the author, but it’s about the assassin who killed Trotsky in Mexico City, what was it 36 or 37.

[00:15:53] Anyway, he killed him for philosophical reasons, because he was a different kind of Marxist. And we have a great deal of that in our century. It’s multiplied and multiplied. Both Nietzsche and Dostoevsky, speaking from the platform of the 19th century, as they looked into our century, they said, “Even though now is a time of really remarkable world peace, we predict that the 20th century is going to be filled with wars.”.

[00:16:20] And they were right. And no one believed them. They all thought they were madmen, but they weren’t. Ideological violence.

[00:16:29] And if you have seen the problems with MOVE? It may not be a very clear ideology, but I certainly have a great deal of sympathy for the mayor of Philadelphia, not because I think they handled things well, I don’t think they handled things particularly well at all. But I don’t think the typical American city administration is really prepared for people who, for ideological reasons, are really ready to sacrifice their own lives. I think it’s hard for us to believe even that people like that exist, and perhaps we don’t even take them very seriously. We just say, “Well, you know, there’s some kooks around” and get on with our business. But we have terrorist groups of all kinds in this world. We have right wingers, we have left wing ones. And we recently saw what happened in Rome and Venice and then, of course, on the Achille Lauro. And it’s really tragic.

[00:17:23] And this ideological violence is so much around us. I just came back from Ireland. Well, when I. I just came from Kenya and I landed in the Amsterdam airport, and a friend at the embassy wanted to show me the embassy. And when I got to the embassy, I lost all taste for looking at the embassy. Here it was, all these barricades out there, and then there was a Dutch police van there to prevent somebody driving a big truck with explosives into it. And I suddenly felt looking, I think, I don’t want to look like an American. And I very carefully straightened my English looking hat and said to my friend, “As soon as we can leave here, the better. I’m not the kind of hero that wants to get shot down just because he’s an American.”. There was, of course, a rumor that the embassy was going to be attacked, and that dawned on me that “Here we are right here.” And I just didn’t feel that it was any great patriotic act for me to stay there.

[00:18:24] And then when I went to Dublin and came back a week later, I walked into the airport in Amsterdam, and when I walked in, the whole place was covered with smoke. And, you know, you try to act cool and all that. And when you walk up to the people in charge, you don’t want to act like your a little American scared to death. But I said, “Where did all the smoke cover from?” And they said, “Oh, just some action group letting off a stink bomb.” And so I thought, “Oh, the modern world.”

[00:18:56] And so they are ideological reasons, people with a cause, and they bring violence almost, you might call it, righteous violence of a very murderous sort.

[00:19:08] And you have it also with attacks on abortion clinics. The feeling is that abortion clinics are wrong and therefore they should be destroyed. Or I would even carry it a step further and say, perhaps we ought to consider whether abortion itself isn’t a form of violence which is unique to our century.

[00:19:29] But however you think of that, the issue is really that it’s increasing and there’s more and more of it, the taking of life.

[00:19:37] Then there’s another kind of violence which has always been around but has greatly multiplied in our time. And it’s what I would call thrill violence.

[00:19:48] I’m a reader of detective stories, and I read the first detective story ever outside maybe of Graham Greene recently, in which the author actually depicted murder as done as a thrill. And I think that’s very modern. Very modern. And when you look at rock video—now, I don’t, but I’ve just seen quick flashes of it on TV for teenagers—and you’ll find there’s is kind of mocked and joked about but it’s very violent.

[00:20:19] And then with it you have teenage suicide. That there has been a kind of a wave of popularity of teenage suicide and where you have actually teenagers saying it’s neat. Now that’s something new. And when you have waves of them doing it, it’s just something that has become epidemic. It’s a new world.

[00:20:43] Then you also have people who like Charles Manson, who obviously murder for a kind of a kick out of it. You have the serial killers of women and children that have appeared in our time. It’s enough to get you to be scared to death by all of  these changes. And you have also in our own congregation, one of our young men, his father, Paul Kent, was killed a few years ago by a man who I think did it just for a thrill. He had taken his credit cards. He had his car. He had very little money on him. And he simply shot him. And why did he do it? Well, you might have various justifications that he maybe wanted to eliminate the witness and all the rest. But the truth of the matter is, I think the man did it out of that very terrible motive of just living for the kicks of it.

[00:21:39] And then also there is in our time a what you might call revenge violence, uh, violent heroes who are kind of comic book figures, not in the sense they’re funny, but that they, they have comic book backgrounds. And I’m thinking of Charles Bronson and Clint Eastwood. Death Wish, Charles Bronson. Clint Eastwood, of course, Dirty Harry and all the rest. Now, I’ve not seen all of these things, by the way. I’m a great reader of books. Well, I’ve seen enough of them. And the the picture you get is simply a very violent people getting even. And of course, you have Rambo and Commando and now Miami Vice. And if you go around the high school today, what do you suppose you see? Now, I have not seen Rambo yet. I couldn’t quite get myself to do that. But what do you see? I saw some of the advertising. How’s he dressed? He’s got this cut off shirt or jacket and his massive arms are hanging out. Right? And he’s all ready for action. You’re in a high school today, you’ll see guys walking around dressed like that. Your going to see more of them, I think. And it’s getting younger and it’s getting younger. It’s a bit scary.

[00:22:55] And now, I think there’s another thing that’s unique in our time, and this kind of brings us to the heart of this, this analysis.

[00:23:05] And it’s the sense of powerlessness that people have when it comes to facing up to violence—that most people, at first, they get indignant, they say, “Somebody ought to do something about that. How much can we take?” And then they sink back and are left with this feeling of impotence.

[00:23:25] Now, I want to show you that this is part of the violence picture, because I do believe that violence can only thrive where it’s tolerated.

[00:23:38] That’s one of the main points I want to make tonight. Violence can only thrive where it’s tolerated, where it’s gradually accepted, if not as normal, at least as average and typical.

[00:23:51] That once you accept that Ninth and Buttler can have, Ninth and Butler can have $11 million worth of coke sold there for a year, then you’ve done yourself in. I really believe that. And I think there’s the crux of the problem.

[00:24:12] If you look at what happened with the MOVE problem, what was wrong with the administration’s handling of it? Well, it didn’t take a commission to point out the obvious thing, that if you let a group like that fortify themselves in a house and turn it into a heavily armored bunker, you’re in for problems. They were simply,  the city government was simply intimidated by those people. Isn’t that true? They felt powerless in the face of the ideological motivation of these really pretty threatening people.

[00:24:44] And it seems to me that when we begin to face this … We have the death of a local doctor when I was in Kenya, I received these newspaper reports or mailed to me and a hideous crime. And people are momentarily indignant and they say this shouldn’t be and then nothing is done. It just is allowed to lie (back) people feel there’s not much you can do about it and they just lie back. And then the next one occurs. There’s a momentary indignation, somebody ought to do something about it. Nothing is done, and then it’s repeated.

[00:25:21] Now what it means is simply this. Let me give you an illustration which will show you how we have changed in America and how we’re continuing to change, moving into A Clockwork Orange World and out of the world of our past, our heritage.

[00:25:35] For instance, when Alexis de Tocqueville was here in our country in 1829, he did all his research for his two volume work, Democracy in America. And he has a comment in there that is quite illuminating. He says, “Crime cannot flourish in America because every American is a self-appointed officer of the law. And if somebody commits a crime, the whole community takes out after him and very shortly he’s apprehended.”.

[00:26:09] Would Alexis de Tocqueville write that today? No. But what we do today when a crime is committed, is buy another lock for the door. And we withdraw. And the reason this is now bound to get worse, and what complicates it, is the continuing spread of the use of drugs.

[00:26:37] I believe, if my memory doesn’t fail me, that the drug business in the United States, I mean, the illegal drug business now moves $200 billion a year. Is that right? Is that figure right? I think it’s very close. And there now are 5 million heavy cocaine users in the United States. 1 million of them are in the New York area.

[00:27:02] Now, if that continues, violence must mount, heroin users, etc.. Wherever there’s hard drug usage, there’s bound to be the increase of violence. And what’s happening? These drugs are going down to younger and younger ages. And the longer people use these drugs, the more likely they are to become strongly hooked and become violent. And so I hate to tell you, unless we do something, we’re headed to a state in which violence is going to be found on every hand, and people will be buying double locks on their doors and putting up these metal bars to support the door, even in cities like Jenkintown and Glenside, if it just keeps on going. And my hope is that that will not happen. But I’m afraid if we go on to the present rate, that that could happen.

[00:27:53] Now, the issues of mental health.

[00:27:56] Well, the first one I want to talk about under the issues of mental health is in spite of how bad things are, that what’s happening is the creation in our time of a climate of fear. And that’s the worst way to handle violence.

[00:28:13] Whenever I’ve been with my wife in an area, in a ghetto, or in Uganda, or some other place, one of the things I’ve always tried to teach her is never show fear. I said, “No matter how chicken you are on the inside,” and I said, “Believe me, inside my knees may be just beating together” … “Never show it. Always act like you own the world.”.

[00:28:34] And I’ve had people come towards me. I knew they were intending to rob me and I went over and gave them a good, strong exhortation.

[00:28:45] And so, always act like you own the world and maybe you will end up owning it. But if we let them intimidate us, and what’s happening, you see television and newspapers and all the rest are reporting so much of it. As bad as it is, and I’m not trying to underestimate it. I think it’s very dangerous. It’s very bad. But as bad as it is, it’s not as pervasive as they make it look.

[00:29:13] And the danger to your mental health and mine is that we’ll be so preoccupied with things that are threatening, we will not see the opportunity to do something about it.

[00:29:25] Are you with me on that? Do you see what I’m saying? The line of reasoning. You don’t have to agree with it. Just, you know, that it registered.

[00:29:33] Alright, now that’s the first point on the issue of mental health—that we have to be careful that we don’t develop media-paranoia in which we think violence is so strong and so all powerful, there’s nothing you can do to resist it, or there’s nobody else that wants to resist it. Isn’t that quite important that you’re not falling into that?

[00:29:55] Now, I know of an example of a woman who seems to me revealed this media paranoia. She’d seen all these things on television, movies and so on, and somebody robbed her house. It wasn’t a very bad robbery, but it was a robbery. When it’s your house, it’s a bad robbery, I guess. And what did she do? Well, she bought a lot of extra locks and put in a burglar alarm system, and then she decided, well, that wasn’t enough. So she had a high chain fence built around her house, and then she bought a big dog, and then she put a lock on the chain fence and wondered why her friends never visited anymore.

[00:30:31] And that illustrates the kind of thing I’m talking about. There are problems out there. There are dangers out there, and they’re quite threatening in some ways, but they’re not threatening in that particular way … To get locked in and making our own life a kind of a mental prison. It is simply no constructive way to handle it.

[00:30:52] And then also, I think the one of the problems, especially for children, I think the sheer amount of violence they’re seeing on television, reading about in comic books and in other ways, is giving them a false picture of the world. That these things are leading them to think of the world as more violent than it really is. Or you might even say their perceptions are being distorted severely enough by what they’re seeing, by what they’re hearing, that they begin to view the world in a kinky way as though the world is violent and it can only have violent solutions to its problems.

[00:31:32] And I think that is very serious for the mental welfare of children in our country. And they tend to oversimplify the conflict between good and evil. If you’ve got if you’ve got some evil person out there, then what you need is great strength, or you get a gun, and you simply shoot down all the violent people and you solve the violent people by killing them all off, or the problem of violent people. You you deal with it the way the Queen of Hearts did in Alice in Wonderland. Isn’t it, “Off of their heads?” Well, that is a kind of approach as communicated to our children.

[00:32:10] Then with it is that, I don’t believe you’re a mentally healthy person unless you have some moral absolutes.

[00:32:22] Now, you may really want to challenge that one, but I think you’ve got them, whether you admit it or not. And I think they can be a very powerful thing in society if you’re willing to say that, “I have thought through the issues and I believe some things are right and some things are wrong, and I’m going to stand up for what I believe is right. And I’m going to stand, I believe some things are evil.”.

[00:32:46] And if you hold that, then I think you’re moving in the direction of mental health. But I think what is happening in our culture, the Ten Commandments have been taken out of the public school system, and sometimes I suspect they’ve even been taken out of our churches. And so there’s no sense of here’s the line and cross it and you’re a transgressor. And so what we get is a kind of a fog.

[00:33:13] And if you talk with people about mental, with mental problems, who feel loss of identity or perhaps loss of perception of reality, one of the things that’s lacking is there’s nothing they really can nail down. Everything is vague and confused. It’s as though they were kind of like a ship in a fog that had no compass and no way of guiding itself.

[00:33:37] And if you don’t have any moral absolutes, like thou shalt not kill or thou shall not commit adultery, and if you don’t stand for them, then you just sort of go back and forth. And what it does is it overloads your conscience. I believe man was made in God’s image and as an image of God, He has a consciousness of right and wrong, and it is constantly blunted by things you you refuse to evaluate or to take stands on. Then you’re going to become less of a mature person.

[00:34:10] And now the other thing, which really flows out of that, is that there’s also a loss of indignation.

[00:34:18] Now, I’ve practically said that in talking about the way violence was taking over. But people really don’t know how to get indignant anymore. And I remember when pornography first began to come into the drugstores, and I went into the first drug store where I saw it all up there on display. And I went over to the druggist and said, “Whoa, over here. What’s this?” You know. But today. Would I do that? I’d spend all my time going into the 7-Eleven. Or Pointing people out. Now, maybe I should. But you lose, you see, your sense of things, certain things are wrong, certain things are right. The edges are worn down.

[00:35:05] Now, I remember we started a church over in Logan, and it’s sort of in the Fern Rock, near the Logan area. And while we were there, there were a great number of murders that occurred. They were happening weekly. And so we did some things. We just fronted it in the community. We went around and we made up some pamphlets. And basically, “God denounces murder.” Very plain. We saw that every body and every home in the whole area got one. We talked to people. We did many things with them. Would you believe it stopped, because we were indignant? Nobody tried it before. But it worked.

[00:35:51] And you see, you only have mental health as you see yourself really hating violence. Now, that doesn’t mean that you hate people. There’s a difference, you know?

[00:36:03] Now, the other thing, of course, that comes out of this, seems to me, the way that a person loses touch with reality as he kind of lets the world drift by; he doesn’t take stands; he doesn’t believe anything can be done, or only it’s not safe, I’m threatened by it. If he doesn’t take a stand, he becomes hopeless. And as he looks at the violent person, if he would even try to deal with that violent person, he would be speaking from his fear to that other person’s fear.

[00:36:36] Because I have worked with a lot of violent people. Some of them are murderers. And the thing that struck me is not only are these people loaded down with guilt, but they’re also very fearful. Many times, murderers are not only self-righteous and loaded down with guilt, but they’re fearful people. And you can’t speak from your fear and your hopelessness into that person’s hopelessness. And what I see under the surface of so much American optimism is a sense of despair. There’s really nothing can be done. Even if I lift up a little banner here, it really wouldn’t matter that much. And I think that kind of deep frustration is something that should be wrestled with, faced up to and asked, is this really the way to go?

[00:37:21] Well, now we come to solutions.

[00:37:25] And I’d like to give you some thoughts about children and violence. First of all, there have been some psychological studies done about children and violence. And those studies reveal clearly that if children watch a lot of violence on TV, it will affect them. It’ll affect them in any number of ways, which I don’t have time to go into, but it certainly will affect them.

[00:37:47] But it’s also been found there. There’s some very simple ways to help children that have a fairly good family relationship with their parents out of that problem. And one thing psychologists have done is a very simple thing. They have the child has been watching a lot of TV and the child has become disoriented or violent. They simply have the child sit down and write an essay, maybe about a page on the TV programs they have seen. And then they are asked to say whether they think these programs deal with reality. They just force that question on the child. Are you seeing a real world in all this violence you’re viewing on television?

[00:38:34] And they have found that through those discussions and the child is working on it, thinking it through, that it’s surprising that in about an hour or two a child can be pulled out of most of it. That’s very encouraging to me. But it’s been done again and again. It isn’t just a casual experiment. It was done systematically.

[00:38:53] Well, now, if that’s so, then I think we ought to agree that it would also be wise for more and more parents to help children discuss the programs they see with a view to getting them to say, Is this real? Is this the way the life is or is this the way it should be? Is there something wrong here? And then, of course, it wouldn’t hurt in many cases for you and the child to agree to turn it off. Right. And an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. That you ought to find some positive programs for children.

[00:39:29] And I think people could work in their neighborhoods, talk it over with neighbors. What are your children watching on TV? What do you think about the violence in the world today? And you could become a little crusader for getting people to think through issues of maybe controlling the television set so it does not condition our children in the direction of violence.

[00:39:51] Okay. Now, I’d also say this. If you’re a normal person living in this world of violence, you’re going to have some fears. If you are not afraid of anything, you really ought to be institutionalized. You’re certainly not safe. And if you’re not afraid of some of the violent people in our time, you’re really nuts. Because there are some people out there that really warrant your fear. And so fear in itself is not unhealthy if it’s facing reality.

[00:40:25] Now, the thing to do, if you’re afraid of people and some of the violent ones out there, don’t suppress those fears. That is not dealing with what the Bible calls walking in the light. If you’re afraid you’ve got a lot of fears, bring them out and talk them over with a good friend and see which ones are real and which ones are unreal. To what extent are you developing a kind of a paranoia about violence and life?

[00:40:52] Now, this is going to sound very un-American, but bear with it and its probably wrong anyway. But did you notice that life is 100% mortal anyway? Did you ever notice that, that life is 100% mortal? Quoting a friend of mine, you know it’s 100% fatal. We all die sometime. Did you ever think about the possibility that you are going to die?

[00:41:25] Now, for me, I didn’t think this up myself, my daughter did. She’s married to a Baptist pastor in North Philadelphia, not far from Ninth and Butler. And she has her three children there, has foster children, too. And we’ve talked about it. And she said to me, well, you ought to consider the fact, or we have, that when we go into this area, some of us might die or some of us might be hurt or injured in some terrible way. But we accept it. We say it could happen and we look at it and we face it and we forget about it.

[00:42:02] And it’s the same thing with you and your death. Someday you’re going to die. And therefore, if you never look at it, if you never face up to it, then it can become a kind of a paralyzing thing. But if you say, “Yes, I’m going to die sometime,” but like Shakespeare, “I’m not going to be a coward. Cowards die. What? Thousand times? How many? What is it? Right. “The valiant never taste of death but once.” Right. Thank you, Irma. That was a good correction. I almost butchered Shakespeare here. Somebody would have taken back my Ph.D. if I had finished that quote the way I was going through it. Well, so much for imperfection.

[00:42:44] But the thing I want you to see is, if you’re going to die anyway, you might as well live with some courage in the meantime. Right. Does that make any sense to anybody? I know it’s not American. We’re opposed to death. And I think we outlawed it in the Constitution somewhere. Isn’t that right? It is forbidden for Americans to die. We never die. Europeans tell me you don’t die. You just disappear here.

[00:43:14] Well, anyway, whether that is, I’m teasing a bit here. But look, if you only have one life to lead, why don’t you make it count? And why don’t you say, “Yes, I’m going to die anyway, so I’m not going to be afraid of people who are violent or evil. I’m going to stand up to them.” Now. It means you take reasonable precautions. But once you’ve accepted the possibility of your own death, then you really are, kind of like, you have a kind of an immortality. Its going to happen to you anyway.

[00:43:45] I remember one time my wife … it was really funny. We were in Kampala and a guerrilla sympathizer had fled into our yard. My son in law, Bob Heppi, was supposed to put up the gate, but you know how it is. He’s more scholarly than he is carpentry oriented. And he hadn’t put it up. This guy goes into the yard and the soldiers come in pursuing him. They’ve got these heavy weapons. Right in front of our door. They’re booming right there, you know. And we all huddle inside of the house and a little hallway. And while we’re doing that, it even scared Bob, who used to be a violent fellow in his own way. I’ve never seen him scared. He was afraid for Gillian, their daughter, and he and Karen, and we were covering their bodies.

[00:44:32] And so somebody had to go to the door and explain to these soldiers that we were peaceful people. And so when I got to the door, I had all these visions of they’re shooting through that glass door. I tried to think of alternative ways of doing this, but there didn’t seem to be any. And I realized at that moment I’m a coward. I’m brave, except in the face of danger.

[00:44:56] And so I got to the door, and pulled the curtain back, and there was great big a [Ugandan] soldier looking at me eyeball to eyeball. And I laughed and he laughed too. And he says, “Oh, Father, I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were in there. We’re looking for bandits.”.

[00:45:12] And so I closed the door and I turned around and here, Karen and Rose Marie Karen’s my daughter. Rose Marie is my wife. They had been crying a minute before, and I guess I thought I was going to get some kind of congratulation. And I had saved us and that sort of stuff. And, Rose Marie looked at me in the eye, those blue eyes, German blue eyes blazing, and there was no tears left. And she said, “Jack, you said in your sermon yesterday in the church we were to invite the soldiers into tea and tell them about Christ, and you didn’t do it.” And Karen looks at me, tears are still pretty well in her eyes, and she says, “Yes, Dad, you didn’t do it.” Our hero melted. And I said, “Well, you didn’t hear the whole sermon. Didn’t you hear that proviso. Providing it is appropriate.” And I didn’t think it was appropriate. And they just stood there and shook their heads. And so I crawled back into the hallway and I said, “Alright, the next group that comes through.”.

[00:46:23] The next group that came through, we plunged out the door and met them. And if you ever come to New Life, you know, I’m a long preacher. You know, I like to preach a good sermon. I believe that sermonettes make Christiantettes. And so I like to see real Christians made. But even be that as it may, I preached the shortest sermon on record. There was gunfire all around the place, and I explained to them the purpose of Christ coming into the world. Call them to repentance. And they were so startled, all these soldiers and police, they thought this guy dropped out of out of this spaceship somewhere. Anyway, without their getting time to think. I gathered them into a circle and we all held hands. Rose Marie and Karen and Bob and I and the soldiers and police. And we had a prayer meeting. And we just got so fed up with the violence that we all, we just plunged out there, and we gave them some good, strong exhortation: “Don’t shoot any innocent people” and all the rest. And they were so shocked that they promised from the bottom of their hearts that we won’t shoot any more innocent people. And they went away so dumbfounded that we came out there. And of course, I gave Rose Marie and Karen the credit for driving me out there.

[00:47:58] But that’s the way we ought to be, really, isn’t it? Like those two lionesses, my wife and my daughter. And I really think women in America could make a great difference in this whole matter. I really think they’re part of the solution. If women would stand up and make us men have a little more backbone … Hah?

[00:48:18] But is there anything else that we can do by way of solution? And I do believe this has happened again and again in America. If you study the history of our country, you’ll find that we’ve had periods of violence. Here in Philadelphia in the 1790s, there was a great deterioration of our country, and there was not only the breaking out of disease, malaria, yellow fever, but there was a great deal of violence, drunkenness. Actually, churches were attacked by mobs. Pulpit bibles were ripped out. It was really bad.

[00:48:49] And, you know, people started doing? They started to pray. Small groups began to form, to pray for our country. And as they prayed for our country, the country began to change.

[00:49:04] But something mysterious happened. And it leads us to a deeper question: Is there something, an evil that’s more than just human? Is it possible that there are kingdoms that are invisible, clashing in all the things that are happening, that organized crime has behind it a higher organization of satanic powers? That our own fears may have behind them, darker inspirations?

[00:49:40] And so when we pray and we pray, we are calling upon the One who has made the universe to change not only the others, but also to change us. Because one of the things we have to face is that not only is there evil out there, but maybe some of it is in me. Did you ever think of that?

[00:50:06] And the reason I’m so afraid of it and the reason I’m intimidated by it, maybe something in me vibrates in it too much. I may not have killed anyone, but I’m reminded the story of the man who had been married 60 years. And a reporter asked him, “Did you ever want to divorce your wife?” And he says, “No, I never thought of divorce, but I certainly thought of murder several times.”.

[00:50:30] Well, you know, every one of us commits his little murders. Isn’t that true? And there’s some deeper things that need to be dealt with. And they can only be dealt with by facing our God.

[00:50:42] And then it seems to me that there needs to be something more done. And I think that’s a very practical thing. And it’s overcoming evil with good.

[00:50:56] How can you do that? Well, in 1971, I go around making flaming speeches like this, and then I go home and I say to myself, “Do I really believe that?” And so in 1971, I was speaking down at a Presbyterian church nearby here. And I got home. I said, “Am I a hypocrite or not? If I really believe what I said?

[00:51:16] I had said that, “Tthe message of Christ can change anyone, no matter how bad.” And the pastor was sitting right there and it really woke him up. And he stood up and he says, “Jack, you can’t mean that?”.

[00:51:30] Really got everybody’s attention. What a discussion we had. People divided up back and forth. I said, “Yes, I believe Christ can change anyone.”.

[00:51:37] And then I went home and I said to myself, “Do you really believe that?” And my wife and I decided that night to commit ourselves to it. And we opened our home then to all kinds of people, including violent ones. And we started taking them into our lives. And we took violent people from state mental institutions. We took, we worked with people who had committed crimes of various kinds. Wasn’t long before we had a murderer visiting with us and so on?

[00:52:09] And it became a very exciting life. And I won’t tell you all about it, but it’s amazing the changes that came into many of these lives. And even those that were not changed in a spiritual way, they were changed in many of their attitudes towards society. But what they found for the first time was that somebody loved them.

[00:52:32] One girl we took in: she had been a chick with the warlock motorcycle gang. By the way, it was a little sticky. We put her on the third floor and we had another girl up there who had been a chick for the pagan motorcycle gang. And all these sparks were coming down. We didn’t know what was going on. We found out soon.

[00:52:54] But anyway, after that girl was there for a while, to show you the demonic side of some of these things, she heard me making a talk like this one night and she came up afterwards and said, “I need to say something to you.” I said, “I’m listening.” She said, “I have been planning to murder you and Mrs. Miller.”.

[00:53:14] Really gets your attention. She had all my attention. A little palpitation, too. And I looked her in the eyes, I prayed, and I said, and “I want you to know this: no matter what happens, I forgive you.”.

[00:53:33] And she was stunned. If I’d taken a two-by-four and hit her across the head, it wouldn’t have hurt her more. And so I said, “Let’s go over here to this bench and sit down.” And she was staggering. And I said, “I want to tell you about a Christ who died for people like you and me. There’s murder in my heart, too. But if you trust your life to Him, and you turn away from this sin, he’ll change you. He’ll make you into a new person.”And having said that to her, we prayed together and Christ changed her. Amazing.

[00:54:11] And so it isn’t just a human battle. It’s really that we ought to take our courage in our hands and recognize there’s a message about this Jesus who died on the cross for good people like us. Maybe I’m not so good, but good people like you, and bad people, in middle people, and he takes away their sins. And through faith in him, they have a new life. And in this way, you don’t need to be afraid of anyone. Because even if they killed you, they just give you a quick door in the heaven.

[00:54:45] And so I want to say, “Join the battle. It’s a lot of fun.” Why sit there like a sitting duck and get shot by the world. Let’s go get em. I believe in fighting. Good old American way.

[00:55:03] But you’ve got to have the tools to fight and you have to have a spiritual foundation. And I have just explained that to you. Thanks much. You’re good listeners.

Audience Question [00:55:28] Women are also affected by what’s to me, they’re constantly being called now more than ever before, “Watch out for strangers. Remember your phone number. Don’t talk to anyone.” They eat their cereal and on the back of the box of the milk carton is the faces of two or three kids who are now missing. What is this doing?

Jack Miller [00:55:56] The question is, what about all the warnings being given to children to watch out for strangers? And you have the warnings in the back of the cereal box and you get these pictures of runaways on television. Descriptions of them. And you’re convinced that these people have all been done in. And as a matter of fact, most of those runaways and televisions or people who disappeared, the children, have been have been kidnaped by a parent. And it’s quite misleading.

[00:56:24] Well, I think children need to be given some proper warnings. I think there’s a place for that. But I think that if you make too much of it, you begin to freeze them up and build a world of fear. And I would have them err a little bit on the side of daring rather than on the side of fear.

[00:56:44] And so, now this may not sound very Christian, and don’t quote me. He’s got it on tape. I would teach children at an early age a little self defense.

[00:57:01] When Karen went to Jenkintown High, a Jenkintown School, this boy followed her home and we received this very obnoxious note from him and we couldn’t figure out why he had sent it. And it turned out she had beaten him up. So militant Christianity. I don’t think we ought to train people into passivity. I don’t want them beating up people. We had to explain to her that we only, we pick people up, at least after we beat them up. So I’m teasing, but you get the picture. We need courage.

[00:57:35] Anyone else? Bill, you’ve got another question.

Audience Question [00:57:43] Dr. Miller, you read Francis Schaffer’s “A Christian manifesto.”

Jack Miller [00:57:47] Sped read it, so I couldn’t really say I read it. Go ahead.

Audience Question  [00:57:51] He seems to align himself with a position that is common with Reformers like Zwingli, where, if the government is no longer a godly government, lets say it encourages things like abortion, or at least, the way we have now, is it protects those people who want to kill their babies. Where does a Christian go? Can a Christian take up arms in a situation like that? Or is he always to turn the other cheek?

Jack Miller [00:58:22] What do you do when the state turns outlaw? It’s really what you’re saying.

[00:58:27] Well, the first thing you want to be sure, the state is really turned outlaw and you’re not just turning outlaw.

[00:58:31] And there’s where are you going to draw the line. And I think because of our tendency to be hasty, you know, we get the Charles Bronson, and the Goetz response, Bernard Goetz, and he takes his revolver along and he’s really making himself into the state.

[00:58:48] But I do believe there are situations where the state does turn outlaw, as in Nazi Germany. And I think their position, as a Christian, has a duty to have some kind of resistance to that. And I think he has to take his conscience before God to see what kind. I don’t see the American government yet to that place. There are other avenues.

[00:59:08] John?

Audience Question [00:59:10] Dr. Miller, often when I’ve heard you speak, you comment on how Americans are so afraid of pain that we’ve become so pained with such an aversion to pain. Would you see that as another side to the crippling fear of violence that we have? And would you comment on that?

Jack Miller [00:59:28] Well, I interviewed a psychiatrist one time. I spent a couple of days with him, and afterwards I decided he was quite sane. It was a job I had. And he was a psychiatrist who had interviewed a great share of the Korean prisoners of war, of American Korean prisoners of war that had been held either by the North Koreans or the Chinese communist. And his view was that many of these men, those who didn’t come back, many of them died out of fear. He said it was not unusual to have a young American man who, when he hit the the prison camp, go into a catatonic state and within 24 hours be dead. And he says it was simply out of fear of pain.

[01:00:16] And he said many of them thought they were being tortured by them. You know, they sent back all these horror stories about their being tortured. He said, “Well, yes and no. By American standards, they were being tortured. But some of that, he said, was simply they were poorly disciplined soldiers. And Oriental military discipline is so tough that they were just getting standard discipline in Oriental army.” Some of them wouldn’t build latrines and so on, and the Communists were hard on them. Now, he was not a pro-Communist himself. And but he said he thought what had happened, that American young men had been so trained—If you get a headache, you take an aspirin, if you’re going to get a tooth drill, you get novocaine. And that we had so trained ourselves that we take so many prescriptions to avoid pain that when we ran into it of a severe sort, we didn’t know what to do with that.

[01:01:08] And his his point was, which I thought he was such a sane person. I don’t know why I keep saying that about a psychiatrist, but it may reflect some of my views and some of them I’ve met. But anyway, he said, there’s no greater pain than trying to avoid pain. And I think this is one of the things that Americans are so afraid of. We’re afraid of violence because these people are not afraid of pain. And I think we can’t cure the problem if we’re all going to run away. And so you do get hurt. All right. Other people have been hurt. Suppose you get killed. Well, if you do it in the name of God in Christ. So what? You did your part? Does that sound harsh? Doesn’t sound American. But I think it’s right.

[01:01:59] All right. Another question. Yes.

Audience Question [01:02:02] I was thinking about when you spoke about there is sort of the legal violence that’s becoming very acceptable as far as liability and litigation and what people are responsible for, just the tendency of people that are using any kind of professional help or any help or just walking or anything in their life and have done harm, damage. And then they want to get back at that person to get everything they have and to ruin them professionally.

Jack Miller [01:02:32] You really put your finger on something. The question the question is what about the legal obligations? If you reach out to help somebody, for instance, someone has said if the Good Samaritan were alive today, he would be prosecuted for a practicing license without a medicine, medicine without a license.

[01:02:52] And and if you did what even we did fifteen, ten years ago, and taking people into your home, wouldn’t you be in danger today of getting a lawsuit? Well, I feel this way. If you get a great big lawsuit thrown at you, you only have so much money anyway. And if they take that away, in the meantime, you can wrestle with the problem and raise a big protest, what an opportunity. You might even get a little newspaper publicity for standing up for the right. And so I say today, let the Good Samaritan not only take the risk of the robbers and help the wounded man by the side of the road, but also rejoice in the lawsuits, because that might even get you on the Phil Donahue Show. And he really needs help. So. Okay.

[01:03:45] Yes.

Audience Question [01:03:45] Going back to whether or not Christian people should take up arms against the state, the state is going outlaw, the Christian church was formed from the Roman Empire. It wasn’t too much preaching back then and about taking up arms against the Roman Empire. They just. Church groups and forums were in the midst of all the violence, despite, without taking part in it.

Jack Miller [01:04:14] Right. And towards the end, they actually walked right into the arena, the Coliseum, where they were killing the gladiators back and forth, and protested in such a vigorous way that eventually they just killed it. And it was it was really passive.

[01:04:31] And I think the strongest kind of opposition we can give is our moral courage.

[01:04:39] Anyone else. Yes.

Audience Question [01:04:45] We have some friends who are very involved in the National Rifle Association, things like that, the gun lobby. And then there is the constitutional right to bear arms. And yet, the problem with Christians if you analyze our culture, you tend to think that maybe we’ve lost our “Christian basis,” which was the basis for some of those rights. How do you interact as a leader, a public figure to those who say “I have a right to protect my family?” And yet realizing that, you know, we do have the violence and the murders. What’s your response to that?

Jack Miller [01:05:25] I came from a family in Oregon of hunters and trappers. We had a little cattle ranch and we had an arms all over the place. We looked like a military camp, but we were very nonviolent people. The thought of shooting somebody would … But I think that’s an older world, and I think people today there needs to be some pretty strong control, especially of handguns. I think they ought to be licensed. And I think you shouldn’t get a license unless you have been trained in how to use it. And I think very few people ought to get them. And I am strongly opposed to the view that there ought to be indiscriminate availability, especially of handguns. I’m not saying anything about hunters and things like that. But I see no justification whatsoever for saying the constitutional right to bear arms guarantees anybody the right to have a house full of pistols. I just feel very strongly against that, and would be happy to debate anybody who holds that view. I think that it’s terrible the way so many people in our country have pistols. I guess I have some sympathies for the Ugandans who feared that we were very violent.

[01:06:52] Yes.

Audience Question [01:06:53] Dr. Miller, James Dobson, the educator, said about children in particular, has talked a lot about the need for self-worth as being a determining factor in a lot of the violence and also other problems, psychological problems that children have. I know as, in a high school, for example, when I was teaching, kids are very, almost trained to be self-centered in that regard, you are here to get as much as you can. This is your time to just get, get, get. And there’s not much of an emphasis on how to give. I, as a teacher, a kid would throw something on the floor, and sometimes I’d say “Pick it up.” And they’d saw “Well, that’s the janitors job.” You know, things like that. And I wonder how, as parents, how can we give our children a real self-worth and help them avoid some of these problems that often lead to this.

Jack Miller [01:07:51] An excellent question. Could you all hear it? Basically, it was it was a question that goes to the heart of the matter of in a practical way. How do you give children today self-worth?

[01:08:02] And what many people have been telling them, and this is very popular psychology today, that you get self-worth by asserting yourself. Isn’t that true? That you claim what is yours, you get your rights? And I believe this is a lot of the lies behind the ideological violence, and it also lies behind a lot of the thrill violence. That you’re trained to fulfill yourself.

[01:08:31] And what you get when you go down that road is you build a kind of a, you get a kind of a raging kingdom of self, a raging kingdom of self in which people are all out to grab.

[01:08:47] Now, I wouldn’t deny that there’s a place for defending your own dignity, and there are times for insisting on your own rights. But you see, historically that has not been in our tradition. Its been there, but it’s been modified by the believing that God has a more absolute right, that God’s right is greater than man’s right. And so underneath God’s right, we find our rights. But if you make yourself into a kind of a little God, you end up becoming a Rambo, or something else in which you are a destroyer.

[01:09:26] And I think this has a lot to do with the violence and has a lot to do with the drug culture. It means a world of people without brakes. It’s like getting a very high powered car and then removing the brake system. And I think that’s what we have for many people. And it’s one reason I’m deeply disturbed that our schools do not have enough emphasis on the Ten Commandments today. I really believe we need to have the Ten Commandments in every public high school and every private school.

Moderator [01:10:02] We have time for maybe for just one or two. If they are not real lengthy ones. Do we have any takers from people who haven’t had a chance.

Audience Question [01:10:09] I was wondering about Christians bearing arms. Is it wrong like just to call the name Jesus?  You know what I mean, instead of having a gun or something, is that being stupid, like not thinking logically. Do you know what I mean?

Jack Miller [01:10:26] Well, the question is, is there an answer to the Christians bearing arms? Suppose you live in a dangerous neighborhood. I think you can do some very practical things if you live in a dangerous neighborhood or one you think is dangerous. Most neighborhoods have patterns to them. If you know what the rules are, you just don’t go out there in North Philadelphia when you see a strange body of teenagers on a corner. You make your route around some other way. But then if you sometimes come to the place where you are confronted by someone who intend you to do harm. Now I know I am a man and it might make a difference, but the thing that I have done is just start talking to them about Jesus. And I think I scared more people than have scared me.

[01:11:20] I used to pick up a lot of hitchhikers. I’ve lost my nerve as I get older, but I used to pick up a lot of hitchhikers and some of them looked very rough. And I always carried a big Bible in my car and I’d always put it over in the seat right where the hitchhiker was going to sit down. So when he got in, he had to pick up the pick up the Bible and move it. And I remember one fellow I picked up that way, and he looked kind of funny. And I said, Well, I introduced myself, he introduced himself, and we started talking. And it was clear that he was so badly frightened that I had really overdone it. And I finally I said to him, “Why wouldn’t you like to come to a Bible study tonight? I’m really quite a nice guy. I don’t bite anyone.” And he says, “Where is it?” And he says, “What is your name again?” He says, “Oh, I’m coming to your Bible study. Somebody’s bringing me.”.

[01:12:13] But anyway, anyway, yeah, I think that sometimes if I think it’s a dangerous situation, I just start praying out loud. Kefa Sempangi, who was an active elder in our congregation across the street. He was an African a Ugandan. He said when Amin’s soldiers came to kill him, they were going to take him away and shoot him. And so he said, “Well, I’m ready to go.” But then he said, “I wonder if you men are ready.” And he says, “I really think I should pray for you before we go.” And he said, “Did I pray!” He says, “I poured my heart out to God for these poor guys.” And he said, “They were so convicted that they both became Christians on the spot and from then on protected him.” And it was through their their work that he got out of the country safely.

[01:13:09] We really need to believe in the power of God to break in. And I do believe that. I’ve even myself gone up to people. This is a little bit off the subject of violence so they can be violent. I knew a military attache a bit in Uganda, a Soviet one. You know, they run arms into Africa a lot like they’re going out of style. And so I met him and I said to him, “How’s your work? Is it exciting?” And he says, “No very routine.” He didn’t like the question too well. And so I said, “Well, my work is really exciting. Come over. We’re getting all these murderers, all these thieves, they’re all turning to God and they’re being changed and they’re finding jobs. And we have real community. Wouldn’t you like to get aboard this?” And he had kind of funny look? And he says, “I’m a communist. I can’t do that.” And so I said, “Oh, well, Jesus saves all kinds of sinners, and he would save you to.” He about died on the spot. Made great conversation, and I’m sure left him with something to think about for the rest of his life. And just to see my love for him, even though I view these people, KGB people, they make my flesh crawl. You know, these are violent people, terrible people. And and yet we got to love them, too, don’t we?

Audience Question [01:14:30] I think that’s a great note to end on.

Jack Miller [01:14:35] So let’s pray for our country, shall we? God our maker. We thank you, though, we’re here tonight from different backgrounds, probably different religions, that we can come before the God who’s made us all. And we can ask him to bless this nation. We can ask him to overcome the evil in it and to change people. We also ask you that you would change us, that you would take fears out of our heart, that we might not be afraid of evil, that indeed, Lord, that you would take evil out of us, that we may ourselves be people of peace and quietness, and that we may win others to the Lord of Peace. We would ask you tonight for our whole nation, that you would revive us, that you turn many who are violent and evil to yourself. We pray, especially, that you would bless families. We think of the coming generations of teenagers and small children. We ask you to be with them, and we pray this in the name of our Redeemer. Amen.