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Tue Apr 24 09:16:06 EAST 2007

The Current Downgrade in the Doctrine of the Atonement

C David H. Linden
Action International Ministries <http://www.actioncanada.net> 
Alberta Reformation Fellowship
davidlinden at shaw.ca

Prepared for Grace Ministerial Academy
Quezon City, Metro Manila, The Philippines

I have been invited to lecture on the crucial topic of the atonement. The
English word "crucial" comes from crux meaning cross. The word means of
"supreme importance." It is interesting that the language I speak takes a
word related to the cross of Christ to signify that something is very
important. Sadly, today the language is closer to how crucial the cross is
than so much of the evangelical church. 

The Bible's teaching on the cross is the core of the gospel. Many in North
America say that peripheries do not matter; only core truths are ones we
should contend for. This has been said so often, it is clear that what does
not matter is theology itself. I know this because now that truth about the
cross fades, there is very little outcry. Those who spoke so loyally of
allegiance to the core are not very alarmed while the gospel slowly slips
away. 

We must pay more careful attention, therefore to what we have heard, so that
we do not drift away. For if the message spoken by angels was binding, and
every violation and disobedience received its just punishment, how shall we
escape if we ignore such a great salvation? Hebrews 2:1-3a. 

The gospel is fading in our consciousness and understanding. It is ordinary
and commonplace. It is our assumed treasure (we would all sat that!) but it
is still the object of our neglect. When I say the gospel slipping, Hebrews
corrects me to state the issue more sharply, that it is we who are slipping
not the gospel. The gospel is the dock to which we must be tied. The dock is
not floating away from us; we are drifting away from it. There is only one
place to drift when we stray from the sacrifice of Christ, and that is into
hell itself. Such is the warning of Hebrews. We are presented with this
great salvation that must not be ignored, as in Hebrews 2, OR it is the
consuming fire when the Lord will judge His people, as in Hebrews 10. It is
a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God, Hebrews 10:31.
Yet the gospel is that Christ by the grace of God fell into the hands of God
for us. On the cross He faced the consuming fire our sins earned for Him. 

Evangelical publishers sometimes present such precious truth these days as
wrong, distorted and harmful to us as you shall see especially in the
related papers I bring with me. 

Before I show how this doctrine is fading away or being downgraded, I will
make my own confession of the doctrine I hold as the gospel. 

My Brief Statement on the Atonement

The atonement is the sacrificial offering the Lord Jesus Christ made on the
cross of Calvary. The only Mediator between God and man offered Himself to
His Father, Who had sent Him to stand in for His people. The only way of
salvation for sinful man is this provision God has made. Only Christ by His
atoning work brings reconciliation between God and man. In that sacrifice
Christ took our guilt on Himself, without committing sin, and underwent the
wrath of God due us, when He made full payment for our sin in human flesh.
By laying down His life, He bore for us the penalty our sin deserved, a
penalty we would endure by ourselves were it not for Christ's mediation. 

His death was substitutionary and vicarious. In no other way than in human
death could the justice of God be exercised against human sin. In no other
object could it be endured than by a human representative. No other Person
could bear such a load than God the Son. 

Christ's redeeming ransom secures for us remission of sins and all the
blessing of God. God was reconciled by Christ's perfect sacrifice, a
propitiation that fully satisfied divine justice. Thus sin is removed from
the believing sinner's record; sin no longer has mastery over us; and at His
appearing, sin will be removed from our experience entirely. His blood is
effective to secure the salvation of all God sent Him to save. His sacrifice
is over, finished, unrepeatable and successful, having accomplished His
mission without human assistance. No one else can or needs to atone for sin;
all attempts to do so are a rejection of Christ and His sacrifice. 

The atonement is central to worship and song; to preaching, baptism and the
Lord's Supper; to mission, ministry and ethics. It is fatal to reject it and
a great sin to neglect what is supreme to God and the only basis of our
approach to Him. In the cross, the Father and Son glorified each other, and
in it we glorify both. 

This saving mercy God owes to no man, yet offers to all in the gospel. He
freely forgives all who will believe in His promise of salvation and trust
in the Savior sent to secure it for them, Jesus Christ our Lord. 

Evidence of the Downgrade:

1.      There is a common failure to communicate gospel content in churches
and organizations whose stated purpose and reason for existence is to
communicate the very gospel they neglect. Rarely do I read of the substance
of the gospel in ANY promotional publication. Belief and expression are
simply not in harmony. Rarely do I hear the gospel in sermons when I visit
churches around North America. Every other related concern gets all the
attention. This is the problem of neglect. 

2.      The role of a Mediator is often missing. People now pray as if we
have the right in ourselves to God's presence. We just speak to God as if He
were one of us. We forget our sin and that we could not stand for one moment
in the presence of the Lord without being consumed. The only way to approach
God is through our Mediator. We have one right of access, and it was
acquired for us by the blood of Christ. Cross neglect has led to a
familiarity in prayer where it is not expressed why we have the right to
draw near. Yet no believer on earth could even survive a scene where the
Holy God and a sinful man come face to face. God has interposed a Mediator,
not as a nicety but as a necessity. He, Christ our Mediator has already
borne the sin that separates, and brought God's reconciliation for us. It is
His sacrifice that opens the curtain into the Most Holy Place, Hebrews 10:
19-22. Access is a blood-purchased right. What I have said in this paragraph
is something that never crosses the minds of many. If we had worship
services with as much awe of God's holiness as there is for the rest of His
splendor, we would pray better and see the cross in focus too. Worship these
days is characterized more by the upbeat tone than the cross. It ends in
mediocrity. 

3.      Close to the previous point, I observe that the gospel itself is
distorted. It is presented in sermons less and less as what God has done so
sinners under His wrath and curse may be right with Him Who is holy. By a
horrible neglect of the problem, the gospel is presented more in terms of
how God is yearning to have a relationship with us so He can be our friend.
God is not lonely, nor in any kind of need. When the problem of sin gets
passing attention, fellowship replaces forgiveness. Propitiation and
justification are foremost to bringing a restored communion with God. Today
people skip over the foundation and try to have the benefits apart from the
foundation. We cannot know God as He is if we avoid or neglect the real
wonder, that God the Son was forsaken by God for us on the cross. We cannot
be filled with wonder if we are missing the wonder of the cross. 

This problem of distortion is not merely theological. It fits our cultural
appetites too much. My American friends see this trend and call this new
approach and emphasis the "warm fuzzies." All we have to do is "go with the
flow", and we will have a Buddy god rather than the Holy God Who thundered
on Sinai and paid for our law breaking on Calvary. Many well-meaning pastors
merely mimic the ways of the "big successful churches." They speak what is
smooth and more acceptable to their audience, but they have to neglect their
Bibles to do this. 

4.      At one time Christians were noted among even unbelievers for having
the Lord's Supper as a highlight in their worship services. (I do think it
was so central as to be a regular weekly occurrence.) The Lord's Table is
hardly a major draw today; we do not see the need for it, though it was
designed by God as one of only two major means to bring us repeatedly to the
cross as the place where God meets man. We seem to think we can meet Him on
our own terms in services of our own design. The Word should bring the
atonement to our ears. For our eyes, the visible use of bread and wine in
the Lord's Supper will also bring us to the cross. The church in North
America depreciates preaching in favor of counseling, and the sacraments in
favor of drama and everything else that is new. 

5.      So far, I have spoken to the atmosphere in which the cross recedes
in our hearts. There is more. There is also the frontal attack. The gospel
is consciously argued against. Such reasoning is found in Systematic
Theology texts[1]
<http://www.grebeweb.com/linden/current_downgrade.html#fnote1> , and
numerous supposedly evangelical publications. Propitiation is denied.
Justification as the forensic doctrine it is, is explicitly denied. (And
there is no other kind of justification.) Protestants are returning to Rome
if not to the Pope. They merely return to a theology that is of the Romish
kind when justification turns into a dynamic of salvation experience, rather
than a changed status based entirely on the perfect obedience of Christ, to
which we contribute nothing but the sin for which He died. With this
doctrinal slippage is the concerted effort to get rid of penal
substitution[2]
<http://www.grebeweb.com/linden/current_downgrade.html#fnote2> . This effort
is energetic and spreading. This not a matter of neglect any more, as
serious as that is; it is deliberate. The end of this road is apostasy, a
way that many are now paving so others can get there more quickly. 

6.      A last evidence of the downgrade is the lack of outrage at the loss
of our crown jewels. There is a greater sense of loss when a popular
television program ends than there is over of the cross work of Christ
slipping away. Maybe when the decay advances, we will cry to God to save his
church. In its long history, it has always lived with apostasy a mere
generation away. Today the church sleeps, Romans 13:11. 

General Features of the Intellectual Downgrade and Rejection of Penal
Substitution. 

Here I will provide some of my observations as to the way truth is handled. 

In another day, it would not have been very convincing to seek to remove an
explanation of the cross without providing a replacement. One basis of the
current attack on penal substitution is that it represents itself as the one
and only right doctrine of the atonement. (Please see the next paragraph
too.) It is an error simply by claiming to be right for all times and
cultures, so there is no need for them to repeat this "error" by suggesting
one alternative. Some presentations suited to the metaphors and aspirations
of a culture are praised, but no one doctrine is proposed as a replacement
of penal substitution. Since theology is supposed to be flexible, in their
thinking, proponents of flexible doctrine will not propose one timeless
proposition. This makes the position of rejecters of penal substitution more
difficult to analyze; their positions are so fluid. I am sure a person could
search an entire book like Green and Baker's and end up uncertain as to what
they say the atonement is supposed to mean. If a view is not unified and
coherent, it is vague. This is part of the current scholarly atmosphere. In
North America, if you say you are right and that there is one explanation,
to many you are wrong before your view is even opened. I say that if an
alternative to penal substitution were put out, and its proponents would
stand firmly on it and defend it, they would have a very difficult time. It
would be easier to take that view to the Bible and see how it fits, if only
they would provide it. Fog has always been difficult to slice. 

A related matter is that holders of penal substitution do not suppress other
related aspects of the atonement as we are accused of doing. (No example is
given of this that I can remember.) It is a distortion of our position for
others to claim we have one model only when there are many metaphors in the
Bible. I am distributing a chapter of Robert L. Reymond's systematic
theology text on the cross work of Christ. In it propitiation and sacrifice
are joined with redemption, reconciliation, and the defeat of Satan. In fact
Reymond does not make the penal aspect the overarching theme of Christ's
work, but rather His obedience.[3]
<http://www.grebeweb.com/linden/current_downgrade.html#fnote3>  The Biblical
themes and terms are manifold. Adhering to penal substitution does not
equate to a suppression of all other aspects and metaphors of atonement
teaching, but neither does it disconnect the penal side of the cross from
them. 

If you say you are right, or have the truth, this provokes a charged
emotional response. Being right in current evangelical circles is just the
sin of pride. It is wrong to be right. It means that we think someone's view
is wrong, and expressing such a thought it is unkind and unChristian. The
atmosphere of acceptance to a wide range of opinions as all valid, impugns
any doctrinal assertion that dares to differ with other assertions. Often
assertions of doctrine are looked upon as personal attacks on those who
differ, even when they were not. We will be accused of a failure to live in
peace when this sin of strife is true only some of the time. (We must be
aware of our own sin in the heat of disagreement.) Specific doctrinal
articulation is also painted as a threat to unity. I reply that unity must
rest on a sound faith. Emotional unity lacking a foundation in truth, shuns
doctrinal unity. The path to scorn today is to commit an act of doctrinal
correction, even though it is a required aspect of Christian ministry, 2
Tim. 3:16, 17. Notice that correcting is actually a "good work" in Paul's
mind. 2 Tim. 4:2 has a string of five imperatives in a row! One is the
command to correct. See also 1Tim. 4:6, 15,16. 

A major feature of the current distress is the orthodoxy of supernatural
events linked to an unorthodox theological explanation. The death and
resurrection of Christ are accepted as historical fact. To deny this right
now as I write, is to be considered out of the evangelical circle. The
events for now are safe, but only the events are safe. The meaning of the
events is the focus of the downgrade. That Christ died and rose is in; that
sin was imputed to Him and so He died to pay for sins is in dispute. Jesus
died and rose, but the "why He did so" is dying in many minds. If the
supernatural were denied, people would see the evil quickly. But to deny the
explanation involves dealing with concepts, and that is where we are so weak
today. Furthermore, to assert one correct interpretation as eternal truth is
to move against the stream. Those who knock a view that claims to be correct
and then suggest other "relevant" ways to look at the atonement, have the
pragmatic cultural advantage in North America. They do not have the Bible in
their favor, but they can win on hermeneutical grounds, if they read the
Bible as they please, looking for a doctrine that they think has a better
effect on people. Exegetical considerations will not matter and the gospel
will be gone. 

Penal substitution is presented as a view that does not make sense to a lot
of people. Thus it cannot help them and they need better models. (I hope my
readers remember I am constantly presenting error in this section.). It
seems not to occur to the deniers that there is mystery in theology, things
sometimes called "the deep things of God", 1 Cor. 2:10. Or that the
ignorance may be due to the dullness of the hearer, Hebrews 5:11-14. The
problem of misunderstanding has been the case in every age. It is not a
reason to reject truth; it is an excuse. 

The reasoning is generally from arguments not exegesis. How very often the
arguments against the atonement are merely allusions to the Bible's
statements. Scripture texts and references are given but not opened and
presented as "Here is what it is saying." Often it is, "Yes that is what it
says, but for these outside reasons it has to mean this!" These writers are
frequently weaving background themes to settle interpretations rather than
presenting the actual words of the texts.[4]
<http://www.grebeweb.com/linden/current_downgrade.html#fnote4>  This results
in patchwork theology arbitrarily fitting selected pieces together at the
preference of the writer. The exceptions to this observation do not change
the fact that the argumentation is usually not exegetical. Any of us
choosing to say something important would be dismayed to have carefully
chosen words set aside for meanings not found in what we were saying at all.
God's words were carefully chosen knowing the needs of all times and
circumstances. A failure in exegesis is a vacuum; with what will the vacuum
be filled? But that is the next issue. 

Foreign meanings often are imported to dictate the clear intent to the text.
See my discussion of sacrifice in my review part 2 of The Scandal of the
Cross. The Mosaic law was only a shadow of the good things coming in the
priestly ministry of Christ, Hebrews 8:2,5; 10:1. Those OT sacrifices and
ceremonies were a means the Holy Spirit was using as "an illustration for
the present time," Heb. 9:8,9. The sacrifices of the law were divinely
instituted and official, explicitly "constructed" on a heavenly pattern. In
the book just mentioned, the authors dismiss the Mosaic law for help in
understanding Christ's sacrifice and turn to pagan and apocryphal sources
instead.[5] <http://www.grebeweb.com/linden/current_downgrade.html#fnote5>
They look in all the wrong places. Their method ensures error. Clearly, the
Reformation doctrine of sola scriptura is also in decline today. The
departure is not just at a point of doctrine but from the fount of doctrine.

Their arguments are already refuted! Some rejecters of penal substitution do
not recognize in their writings that strong refutations of their positions
may already be in circulation. There should be some response to this. Green
and Baker give Leon Morris slight and insignificant mention in one footnote.
Yet Morris's detailed exegetical work gives a powerful answer to their
position. Green and Baker still put out arguments already refuted. They owe
some reply. To make matters worse, many arguments come from persons who do
not profess an evangelical faith at all. Old arguments spawned by opponents
of the faith outside the church, now find a lodging within. The apostle said
this sort of thing would happen, Acts 20:29,30. 

Specific Theological Features of the Downgrade

The Godward aspect of the atonement is diminished as in Grenz or removed as
in Green and Baker. 

The priest faced God for the people he represented. The atonement cannot be
presented just as God doing something for us. It was God doing something for
God and God's glory, so that He may do something for man. In full
consistency with our self-centered culture, theologians now pursue a reduced
doctrine of the atonement focused on what it does for us. It has become
manward! 

Sin is truncated to sinfulness, and the reality of sins as specific
transgressions is deliberately underemphasized. 

If sin is treated simply as a condition that needs changing rather than an
offense that needs forgiveness, then it is far easier to treat the atonement
as a work of transforming man. But in order to take this approach it is
necessary to reduce man's guilt. Sin can then be a kind of illness not a
life of offenses. Dealing with a record of offenses might tend in our minds
to an offended God, and that could prompt us to believe in justice being
executed and that would lead back to a truly Biblical atonement, penal
substitution. 

The holiness of God does not require that justice be exercised in
retaliation for sin. God only forgives; He does no repay. He has no wrath
only love. 

The problem then becomes why there was a death of Christ at all. His death
is meaningless. To fashion a god of our liking and design is to create an
idol. We have come to this already. If the idols were made of wood or metal,
and we could see people bowing before them in church, we might be alarmed!
But by creating a god different from the One in Scripture, we are just as
guilty of idol worship. 

There never has been a consensus on the atonement. 

That means the Reformation is not the heritage of these evangelicals. The
doctrine of the trinity has early solid catholic support. But J. I. Packer
argues wisely that the church has always believed in substitution in some
sense. If so, and I do agree, then the assertion of no consensus is partly
wrong. Saying there is no consensus, allows for modern innovation and avoids
past confessional influence and standards. The ancient creed does say, "He
descended into hell," a statement penal to the core. 

Error by nature spreads from one doctrine to another. 

Denying propitiation, i.e. that Christ satisfied the wrath of God that fell
on Him on the cross, is now accompanied by denying that the wrath of God
falls on anyone! The very judgment of God is in jeopardy! The "Christian"
suggestion that sin has its own consequences, which God passively allows to
fall on those determined enough to endure them, is just a form of theistic
Buddhism, not Christianity. The Bible says, "Those who hate him, he [God]
will repay to their face by destruction; he will not be slow to repay to
their face those who hate him" Deut.7:10. Denying wrath at the cross is a
theological cancer that spreads to other areas of truth. "A little leaven
leavens the lump." To deny wrath and now to deny it everywhere, is to say of
the Lord who shall judge the living and the dead that on the Judgment Day,
that He will merely show up to see what will happen. 

The meaning of "ransom" is being changed. 

For example: "ransom" in and out of the Bible, in languages old and recent,
means to free by the payment of a price. It is a two-sided word, containing
a cause and effect. In the sentence, "He shot the wall," the idea of "shot"
has two aspects, the firing of the gun and the impact on the wall. But in
firing a gun, there is no effect if there is no cause. Shot the wall refers
both to gunfire and the impact. To deny that Jesus paid a ransom, and yet to
retain that by ransom He set free or liberated sinners, is to slice the word
ransom into two parts that are inseparable. Some want an atonement without
any payment, a manward atonement without Christ meeting an obligation to
God. Here again the Godward side is the battleground. A Ransom that does not
pay is simply not a ransom at all. 

Features Related to a View of Scripture

To the lack of exegesis above and the replacement of Biblical truth with
foreign meanings for Biblical terms, I add the following related to
Scripture. 

Theology according to Stanley Grenz has three sources: the Scriptures, the
church through the ages and the present culture. The Bible is the major
controlling source, but the culture sets the questions for theology. Grenz
may miss that he has a doctrine of God currently suffering the pain of human
sin, drawn from Japanese and German theologians reflecting on the last world
war. Grenz and Olson provide no Biblical evidence.[6]
<http://www.grebeweb.com/linden/current_downgrade.html#fnote6>  The source
for the new doctrine was the consensus of current thinkers. 

The doctrine is not only false -- the transcendent God cannot suffer
anything let alone the consequences of His sinful creatures.[7]
<http://www.grebeweb.com/linden/current_downgrade.html#fnote7>  Has God
cursed Himself? -- the doctrine removes attention from that past
unrepeatable moment when a divine Person did suffer the pain of sin, but
only in the time of His humiliation, which ended with the resurrection. In
no case in this error, do the proponents suggest that the Lord Jesus or the
Father suffer sin in the place of others, rather it is suffering with
sinners. I wonder if they shall add that God suffers with people in hell.
This could lead on to even more wild conclusions. The root of this problem
is a failure to have Scripture alone stand as the controlling and only
source of our knowledge of the character of God. When the culture is a
source for theology, we have a defective view of Scripture. 

Biblical imagery and metaphor is considered not relevant in every time and
circumstance. This again raises serious questions about the wisdom of God
and the adequacy or sufficiency of His revelation. The eternal word is
turned into a revelation that somehow fails actually to reveal in every age
on a crucial matter. Stanley Grenz and Roger E. Olson[8]
<http://www.grebeweb.com/linden/current_downgrade.html#fnote8>  warn that
though going to the Bible first is helpful, it nevertheless poses "one grave
danger": we might overlook our culture. We might become irrelevant and not
address people's real questions. They give as an example that "Few people
today are asking, 'Where can I find a perfect sacrifice for sins?'"
Therefore in their minds, John 1:29 is likely not to be relevant!! 

These men are leading us in a wrong direction. Guilt is a problem for every
sinner, unless he has seared his conscience beyond all feeling, Eph.
5:18,19. God's metaphor of "the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the
world," John 1:29, IS timeless. It is suited with a little explanation (from
Scripture itself) to every age, every need, and every man. The Spirit of God
had that preserved for us for our preaching. Our message cannot be relevant
without telling where the sinner can find the perfect sacrifice for sins.
They say (p. 111) that our Lord repeatedly tailored His message. He said He
gave just what His Father gave him to say. 

Touch it and leave it. It is not enough to touch on a verse and then not
deal with it. Green and Baker when they finally seem to settle on Romans
3:25, 26, fail to quote any part of it at all. After touching the reference
to the passage, they simply leave it telling us what it means. The Scripture
was used in this case as a diving board to their arguments; they never
return to the verse they refer to. 

At times non-Christian and non-canonical material have as much influence, or
more! on the question of the atonement as the Word of God has. See my
reviews of Recovering the Scandal of the Cross. 

  _____  

And here I must cease this barely adequate treatment of how the gospel
itself is slipping away from us, with causes ranging from criminal neglect
to criminal intent in the rejection of the meaning of the death of our Lord.
But God will protect His eternal truth. It is safe. What is being lost is
not the gospel, but the person who ceases to believe it. God has made a
testimony of His Son. He made His soul an offering for sin. Whoever does not
agree with that just does not believe God. 

<hr size=3 width="100%" align=center> 

Endnotes

1. Stanley Grenz In Theology for the Community of God, (Nashville: Broadman
& Holman, 1994) asserts the gospel; our Lord's sacrifice covers our sin, p.
462. He will even say that He bore our iniquities and became our substitute,
p. 460. Yet Grenz does not hold to a propitiation that placates God's wrath.
He says, "Christ's work is directed toward human sin, not God's wrath." Then
on the same page: "Christ's work, therefore, is primarily directed toward
human sin and not God's wrath," p. 452. Grenz denies that Adam's sin was
imputed to the rest of the human race, pp. 264-266. "We conclude, then, that
Romans 5:12-21, like Ephesians 2:3, does not clearly and unequivocally
declare that all persons inherit guilt directly because of Adam's sin. The
Biblical case for original guilt is not strong, " p. 266. But in Created for
Community, (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996) Grenz says, "Christ's death turns
aside God's righteous disposition against us," p. 145. I hope this means he
has changed his position from his earlier book.
<http://www.grebeweb.com/linden/current_downgrade.html#body1> Return 

2. Grenz, op cit. ties the penal conception to the demise of the feudal
system, p. 450.
<http://www.grebeweb.com/linden/current_downgrade.html#body2> Return 

3. Robert L. Reymond, A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith
(Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1998) pp. 629-631
<http://www.grebeweb.com/linden/current_downgrade.html#body3> Return 

4. See my two reviews of Recovering the Scandal of the Cross, IVPress for
examples  <http://www.grebeweb.com/linden/current_downgrade.html#body4>
Return 

5. In the review part one, I point out that these two authors also turn to
the apostasy of Judaism after the destruction of the Temple for insight into
whether sacrifice is needed!!
<http://www.grebeweb.com/linden/current_downgrade.html#body5> Return 

6. Stanley J. Grenz and Roger E. Olson Who Needs Theology? An Invitation to
the Study of God (Downers Grove: IVPress, 1996). They assert the suffering
of God as the result of reflection in light of contemporary experiences. I
did not know we could learn from our experience whether the Transcendent God
suffers. Yet "this new idea of God came from the pen of .Kazoh Kitamori . to
suggest that the best Christian way to conceive of God in the light of both
the New Testament and modern experiences is as a suffering God. The idea
caught on rapidly. Other picked up on the idea, and it soon became an
accepted part of Christian thinking about God across a broad spectrum of
churches and types of theologies. thus we have one example of progress in
theology. In a matter of a few decades a small handful of theologians
convinced most Christians that God's suffering is gospel truth." Pp. 65,66
<http://www.grebeweb.com/linden/current_downgrade.html#body6> Return 

7. Bob Pierce said, "Let my heart be broken with the things that break the
heart of God" p. 147 in an Oct 2000 ad of World Vision in the Canadian
edition of The Readers' Digest. Mr. Pierce was not speaking of the
sufferings of Christ in His human flesh but the current sufferings of God in
heaven. Note that this sells well in a secular magazine.
<http://www.grebeweb.com/linden/current_downgrade.html#body7> Return 

8. Ibid. p.110.
<http://www.grebeweb.com/linden/current_downgrade.html#body8> Return 

Charis,

Mike Abendroth

"Make us choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong, and never to
be contented with half truth when whole truth can be won.  Endow us with
courage that is born of loyalty to all that is noble and worthy, that scorns
to compromise with vice and injustice and knows no fear when right and truth
are in jeopardy."

 - West Point Military Academy Cadet Prayer

 <http://www.bbcchurch.org> www.bbcchurch.org

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