I say that the condition of the church herself is due to her departure from the authority of the Bible. The Christian church in this country is in a deplorable condition. The statistics tell us that only some ten per cent of the people of this country claim to be even nominally Christian; ninety per cent of the population is entirely outside the church! It was not always thus.
What has been the cause of this; why the difference in the condition of our churches today as distinct from what they were a hundred years ago? I know there are many explanations put forward. People point to the world wars, and I do not dispute that they did contribute to it. They also point to the wireless, the television, the motor car, and all these other agencies that are militating against the work and the appeal of the church. I am prepared to grant to such causes a certain amount of influence, but when you come to examine this question seriously and soberly, there is only one adequate answer for the fact that the masses of the people are no longer attending places of worship. It is due to the loss of the authority of the Scriptures. And to what is that due? Without question, it was the devastating Higher Critical movement, so called, which began in Germany around the 1830s, and which subsequently came and infected this and most other countries.
This meant the substitution of the mind of men and of what is called 'philosophy', for divine revelation. It was claimed that this Book must be regarded as every other book, and examined in the same way as every other book is examined. Added to this, there was the Darwinian teaching which came in 1859 and immediately became so popular. Then psychology played its part. And in these ways men began to look at this Book, not as they had hitherto looked on it throughout the centuries as the Word of the living God, but as a human word. They began to talk more and more, not about the power of the Holy Spirit in the preacher, but of his scholarship, of his knowledge of philosophy and the sciences, and of psychology. Human reason was put upon the throne, and the very pulpits of the church herself were engaged in undermining the faith of the masses of the people in this Book as the Word of God. It is time we face these facts.
There is one other cause of present conditions which I add with regret, and that is statements made by Christian ministers from Christian pulpits, which are nothing but blank contradictions of the basic teaching of the Bible. We hear the ridicule that is poured on the doctrine of sin, the rejection of the miracles and of the precious blood of Christ, and, to cap it all, recently, a statement to the effect that we can 'expect to meet atheists in heaven'. If this is true, if we are to expect to meet atheists in heaven, if a man who does not believe in God can go to heaven, why should we ask him to believe in the Bible? Why should we have a Christian church at all? If an atheist who lives a good life is to go to heaven, there is no need for the Christian church and all the organizations, and there is absolutely no need for the Scriptures. The masses of the people are outside the Christian church because they have been given the impression that the Christian church herself no longer believes in the Book as authoritative.
What else can we do? Well, there are many who are engaged in a kind of defence of the Bible. That is sometimes called apologetics. I am not here to say a word against it. Archaeology comes into that department, and we thank God for it and for Professor Wiseman as one of the distinguished people who are practising in this realm. But that is not going to be enough either. I agree with what Spurgeon said about this: 'You don't defend a lion, you just let him loose', and the same is true of the Bible. Apologetics are all right as far as they go and they can be helpful in strengthening the faith, but we are living in a period when we need something much more.
Still less must we fall back upon any tendency to accommodate the teaching of the Bible to modern learning and to modern views. Sometimes, I fear, I see a tendency to do that, even among evangelical people. Why should we be afraid of the scientist? He has no facts which interfere with this Book. We must not accommodate them; we must not try to placate people and please them. That is not the way to handle this Book.
And now I must say a word — and I do so with considerable hesitation and trepidation — but it seems to me that, if we are to face the facts, this is unavoidable. I suppose that the most popular of all the proposals at the present time for bringing people back to Scripture is this: Let's have a new translation of the Bible. We have had one in this year, 1961. The argument is that the people are not reading the Bible any longer because they do not understand its language, its archaic terms. 'What does your modern man, what does your modern Teddy boy know about justification, sanctification, and all these biblical terms?' That is the question. No, they say, it is no good; they cannot understand the Bible. And so we are told that the one thing necessary is to have a translation which Tom, Dick, and Harry will understand.
We must examine this for a moment. Let us, first of all, be clear about the basic proposition laid down by the Protestant reformers that we must have a Bible which is, as they put it, 'understanded of the people'. That is common sense; that is obvious. We all agree too that we must never be obscurantist; we must never approach the Bible in a mere antiquarian spirit. Nobody wants to be like that, nor to defend such attitudes. But there is a very grave danger incipient in much of the argument that is being presented today for these new translations. There is a danger of our surrendering something that is vital and essential.
Look at it like this. Take the argument about the terms that the modern man does not understand, the words 'justification', 'sanctification', and so on. I want to ask a question: When did the ordinary man ever understand those terms? I am told the modern Teddy boy does not understand them. But consider the colliers to whom John Wesley and George Whitefield used to preach in the eighteenth century. Did they understand them? They had not even been to a day school, an elementary school. They could not read, they could not write. Yet these were the terms which they heard, and the Authorized Version was the version used. This is a very specious argument, but it does not hold water. The common people have never understood these terms.
In view of all this, my argument is that the answer does not lie in producing new translations; they are coming out almost every week, but are they truly aiding the situation? No, and for this reason: men no longer read the Bible not because they cannot understand its language, but because they do not believe in it. They do not believe in its God; they do not want it. Their problem is not that of language and of terminology; it is the state of the heart.
Therefore what do we do about it? It seems to me there is only one thing to do, the thing that has always been done in the past: we must preach it and our preaching must be wholly based upon its authority. We must not come to the Bible to find out whether it is true or not; we must come to find the meaning of the truth that is there. That has been the fatal error of this so-called Higher Criticism, that has come to the Bible to find which part is true and which part is not. The moment you do that you are already wrong, irretrievably wrong! We do not come to the Bible to discover whether it is true; we come to discover its meaning and its teaching.
And therefore I say the only hope is that we preach its message to the people. We must preach it to them as the Word of God. Yes, this Book is the very thing that it claims to be. Look at its original writers! Did any one of them say it was his own idea? No, they are all unanimous in saying that it was given to them. Some of them did not even want to write it. Isaiah, given his commission, says, 'I am a man of unclean lips'; I am not fit to do this. It is not a question of a great man, a great philosopher, a great thinker, who has got to tell the people what to do. No, Isaiah is given a mission and a commission. He says, I am not fit. Jeremiah says, '1 cannot speak: for I am a child.' Ezekiel, when he was given his commission and message, sat stunned and amazed for seven days, and it needed the Holy Spirit to put him on his feet again. Amos said, l am a herdsman, a man tending sycamore trees. I am no prophet, nor the son of a prophet. That is what they all say. They say it is not their message.
Well, what is it? Oh, they say, it is 'the burden of the Lord', the message of the Lord; the burden of the Lord came unto me. Jeremiah did not want to speak, but he could not refrain; it was like a fire burning in his bones. God had given him a message and was sending him out with it. You and I must come back to this: 'No prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost' (a. Peter 1:20— is ). That is the authority.
Look what our Lord says about it. He refers to the Scriptures using phrases such as 'It is written'. He believed the Old Testament; He believed it all. He says, 'the scripture cannot be broken' (John 10:3 5): who are we to dispute it? And the apostles — look at their attitude to Scripture; they constantly refer to it and quote it. For them it is the final argument; it settles all disputes. We must present the Bible as the Word of God, not the words of men, but the Word of the living God: God speaking about Himself; God speaking about men; God speaking about life; God telling us what He is going to do about a fallen world. That is what we need to preach with certainty, with assurance.
Let us tell the people about its marvel, that though it contains sixty-six books, written at different times and in different centuries, there is only one message in it. Let us tell them about fulfilled prophecy. Let us point out to them how things prophesied and predicted hundreds of years before the events were actually verified in the fullest and minutest detail. Let us tell them: they do not know it. It is for us to proclaim the Word of God, and especially at this critical time in our history.
Let us tell people something about its message. It is the only book that explains life. It is the only book that explains the world as it is tonight. We have been told now for nearly a century that the world is advancing, that man is becoming more and more perfect, that with more and more education and scientific knowledge there will be no more war. The problem was, they said, that people did not know one another. They did not meet. If only they met they would all love one another and embrace one another; but now that we are meeting so constantly, we cannot live together for even a few seconds! You see, there is no explanation except the explanation that is given in this Book. ‘There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked' (Isa. S7:11).
You can he clever, you can be mighty and great and strong, you can be a great philosopher, and be very wealthy, you can own the whole world — but you will never know peace, either as an individual or among men and nations, while you are wicked. The Bible alone has the explanation. It is man's sin, man's rebellion against God. You see, you must come back to theology; you must seek the Book and discover its message, its theology, its doctrines.
If you evangelical people are against doctrine you will never get people back to the Bible. It is not enough just to read a few verses. You must dig down and get the doctrine, the doctrine of a wholly absolute God, who is the creator of the ends of the earth, and who is the judge of the whole earth.
Man is not something that came out of some primeval slime, but a creature made in the image of God, given something of the stamp of the eternal Lord of creation, meant to live in communion and correspondence with his creator! But man has fallen into sin, has asserted his own will-power, has said that he is autonomous, that he can arrange his life, that he does not need God, he does not need God's direction and God's Word: that is why the world is in trouble.
This is what we must tell people; we must try not just to defend the Bible but to preach its truth. Tell men that they are in their present state because the world has turned its back upon God. That is why this twentieth century is so appalling. It is the century of all centuries that has asserted itself and its own will and its own understanding over and against God and His truth and His eternal will.
We must tell them this, we must tell them very plainly and without any apology that the wrath of God has been revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men' (Rom. 1:18). We must tell them that the very history of this century, with its two awful wars and all its present horrors, is due to the same thing. These things are a part of the judgment of God.
The apostle Paul puts it thus in Romans 1, that one way in which God punishes men is, that He abandons people to themselves. He ‘gave them over to a reprobate mind' (verse 2,8). I believe this is what is happening tonight; it is to me the only explanation of this present century. God is saying to us, very well, you said you could live without me; you said you could make a perfect world without my laws, without my Word, without my truth —get on with it, see what you make of it! And this is what we have made of it. Man is a creature of lust self-centred and selfish, fighting all others. War is inevitable while man is in that condition.
The Bible alone explains this. And when you turn to the future it is exactly the same thing: there is no light for the future anywhere except in this Book. There are people who, in the name of Christianity, are still saying that if we only preach this message we can put an end to wars. Never! The Bible asserts that there shall be wars and rumours of wars right to the end. While man is evil and sinful and the creature of lust, there will be wars.
Christianity has not come into the world to put an end to war; it has not come to reform the world. What has it come for? It has come to save us from the destruction that is coming to the world.
This Book asserts a judgment, an end of history. God in Christ will judge the whole world in righteousness, sending those who have turned their backs upon Him, refused His offer of salvation in Christ, to everlasting perdition, and ushering the saints into the glory of 'new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness' (2. Pet. 3:13).
Christian people, we must proclaim to the world that we are not afraid of the morrow. We are not afraid of what the nations may do. We know that an evil world is under condemnation, and that the only course of safety and of wisdom is to come in penitence and contrition to the Son of God, our blessed Lord and Saviour, who came out of eternity, who died for our sins, and who will come again to receive His own unto Himself. That, it seems to me, is the thing to which we are called.
We must preach the Bible's message without fear or favour and with the holy boldness of the apostles of old, not merely to say it, but to have the Holy Ghost upon us as we do so. Pray for power to proclaim it so that it shall become like 'a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces' (Jer. 23:29). Or in the words of the apostle Paul, the message must be seen to be 'mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds; casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ' (2 Cor. 10:4, 5). That is our calling.
Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones - An extract from an address given at the National Bible Rally, organized by the Evangelical Alliance, at the Royal Albert Hall on 24 October, 1961.