The False Imagining of the False Christ

By Larry DeBruyn

And he [God’s Son] is before all things, and by him [God’s Son] all things consist. Colossians 1:17

In 1971, John Lennon came out with the hit song Imagine. The lyrics project Utopian vision of the world in which, because there is no heaven or hell, no countries or religion, no possessions or greed, nothing to kill or die for, all the people will be one.1 Internationally, Lennon’s song about the new world remains most popular. Increasingly, political, religious, and media ideologues are suggesting that for Lennon’s dream to become a reality, a one-world community must become committed to one-world spirituality.

As these societal movers and shakers might imagine, the new Utopia will necessitate the dawning of a new spiritual consensus. Such messianism envisions christ to be mental, not personal, and that being the case, asks people to “shift” their consciousness to a one-world spirituality in order to build a one-world community. Utopia would, it is theorized, be based upon spiritual unity. Religion will no longer divide, but unite. There will be no heaven or hell, no countries or religion to die for. Terrorism will become obsolete. As John Lennon imagined, the world will be as one. But, under what guise might this spiritual shift be coming?

Its core belief appears to be this: In essence, the cosmos consists of a panentheist (God in all) or pantheist (God is all) christ spirit permeating everything.2 Thus, everything, animate and inanimate, becomes “sacred.” This sacred christ is the one reality which comprises both the center and circumference of the universe. That’s why it’s called the cosmic christ. Christ is whatever constitutes time, matter, and space. Christ is Source. Christ is Moment. Christ is Energy. Christ is Thing. Christ is Presence. Christ is Being. Christ is Consciousness. Christ is Oneness. Christ is you. Christ is me. Christ is . . . In all of this, and unlike His portrayal in Holy Scripture, there is no sense in which Christ is personally before, above, without, or outside the world. This christ is co-existent and co-extensive with the universe. Because the New Age christ permeates nature, it is nature. If the universe didn’t exist, this christ wouldn’t exist. According to the math of the twin deceptions of New Ageism and the New Spirituality, christ minus the universe equals nothing. Arbitrarily, they take whatever is, assign divinity to it, and call it “christ.”

After stating that a god-essence resides “in every creature, every flower, every stone,” New Age guru Eckhart Tolle theorizes, “All that is, is holy.” Then he adds, “This is why Jesus, speaking entirely from his essence or Christ identity, says in the Gospel of Thomas: ‘Split a piece of wood; I am there. Lift up a stone, and you will find me there.’”3 Similarly, Matthew Fox wrote that God and Christ are in all things. As the “pattern that connects,” Fox sees his cosmic-christ as offering hope “by insisting on the interconnectivity of all things and on the power of the human mind and spirit to experience personally this common glue among all things.”4 In his book Quantum Spirituality, emergent-evangelical Leonard Sweet advocates monism that nuances panentheism. Investing the cosmos with “christness,” he states, “The world of nature has an identity and purpose apart from human benefit. But we constitute together a cosmic body of Christ.”5 Even Rick Warren’s reference to the New Century Version of Ephesians 4, and verse 6 (“God . . . is in everything”), plugs into the growing popularity of monistic spirituality.6 So what might a Christian believer think about this redefinition of Christ?

Differing from the mystical spirituality of New Ageism, Holy Scripture presents a far different Christ than the one the New Spirituality imagines. The christ of New Ageism (pantheism/panentheism) and the Christ of the New Testament (theism) are worlds apart. While “the christ” of the New Age is the world, the Christ of the New Testament is the Word (See John 1:1-3, 14; Philippians 2:6-7.). In a one-time act of the divine incarnation, the Word became flesh, thereby delivering the Christian faith from the theological extremes of deism and transcendentalism on the one hand, and pantheism and immanentism on the other.

In a balanced way, again and again, the New Testament affirms the otherness of Christ from His creation and the togetherness of Christ with His creation. For reason of His incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection, Christ is present amidst His creation. But for reason of His incarnation, ascension and glorification, Christ remains transcendent above His creation. Paradoxically, but really, Christ is now physically present in heaven (Hebrews 1:3) while, at the same time, He is spiritually present on earth (Matthew 28:20). Though Christ is before and above time, matter, and space, He also is involved with time, matter, and space. But for reason of pantheistic or panentheistic monism which denies the otherness of Christ from the world, New Ageism neither needs nor wants Jesus’ personal, historical, and exceptional Incarnation, Substitutionary Death, Resurrection, or Second Coming–redemptive events based upon the original separation of the Word from the world.

Yet, amazingly, and disingenuously, New Ageism quotes and spins the words of the Bible to prove their anti-Christian point of view. One text they use is Colossians 1, verse 17, which reads, “And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.” New Ageism reads the second half of the verse to mean that nature is saturated by a christ spirit which forms the essence of the cosmos.7 But does this text even hint, let alone teach, the permeation of a christ-spirit in nature? For a number of reasons, it does not.

First, we observe that Paul makes two emphatic statements about God’s Son.8 One, the Son “is before all things.” And two, “by him [i.e., the Son] all things consist” (Colossians 1:17). The two clauses express two distinct relationships the Son possesses to “all things”: He is precedent before all things and also provident over all things.9 That God’s Son is “before all things” indicates that He is separate from all things. Scripture presents the eternal Christ as being before creation. There never was a time when the Son was not (John 1:1-2). He is the uncreated Creator of everything (John 1:3; Colossians 1:16; etc.). Christ does not derive from the cosmos. Rather, the cosmos derived from Christ. For reason of its commitment to pantheistic/panentheistic permeation, New Ageism denies this biblical understanding of Jesus Christ.

Second, in light of this, what does the second half of the apostle’s statement (“by him all things consist“) mean? Literally, the Greek text reads: “all things in Him stand together.”10 While all things are in Christ, Christ is not in all things. The Son is therefore, the agent by whom all things hold together.

If Christ did not continually preserve His creation, the universe would disintegrate.

To guard against this heresy of christ-consciousness, both in his day and in ours, the apostle Peter assured believers:

For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty. (2 Peter 1:16)

Though the Word entered the world, the Word is not the world. And against any supposition to the contrary, Paul writes that we are to cast down “imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God,” and to bring “every thought to the obedience of Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5).

Concerning our relationship to all the christ-imagining being advocated by the gurus and promoters of New Ageism and the New Spirituality, the apostle Paul warns:

Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. (Colossians 2:8).

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Larry DeBruyn’s archive website is: Guarding His Flock Ministries

Related Articles:

Haunted Souls: From Meditation Into Hallucinations by Larry DeBruyn

Be Still and Know That You are Not God!—God is Not “in” Everyone and Everything by Warren B. Smith

(images from istockphoto.com; used with permission; design by Lighthouse Trails)

Endnotes:

1. I am grateful to Warren Smith for his input into this article and drawing my attention to Lennon’s lyrics. The words of Imagine are available online at https://eduteach.es/songs/j-m/john-lennon.html. For a detailed commentary on the relevance of Lennon’s song to the spirituality of Eckhart Tolle, see Berit Kjos, “Oprah and Tolle Fuel New Age Revival,” https://www.crossroad.to/articles2/08/tolle.htm.
2. Readers will note that “christ” is spelled with a lower case “c.” I will not dignify the “christ” of New Age imagining to the level of the Christ of Holy Scripture. Though slight, the terms pantheism and panentheism differ. The pantheist ascribes divinity to everything. If I kick a tree, I’ve kicked God. The panentheist invests the tree with divinity for reason that it harbors the divine soul. Thus, if I kick a tree, though I’ve not directly kicked Him, I have kicked an object in which God resides. In their attempt to invest nature with sacredness, both views commit idolatry for reason of betraying the biblical God’s holiness or separateness from His creation (See Isaiah 40:18-*25; Romans 1:20-23.).
3. Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment (Novato, CA: New World Library, 1999), p. 134. Tolle places awareness of “the God-essence” in feeling. Of that “intense present-moment awareness,” he writes “you become conscious of the Unmanifested both directly and indirectly. Directly, you feel it as the radiance and the power of your conscious presence–no content, just presence. Indirectly, you are aware of the Unmanifested in and through the sensory realm. In other words, you feel the God-essence . . .” (Power of Now, p. 133). It is obvious that the basis of Tolle’s pantheism rests upon a fantasy of mystical “feeling,” an illusion which is delusion.
4. Matthew Fox, The Coming of the Cosmic Christ (New York: Harper Collins, 1988), p. 133.
5.  Some emergent-evangelicals may object to the association of Leonard Sweet with the Episcopalian priest Matthew Fox, a former Roman Catholic Dominican dismissed from that order in 1992, by then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI). But to support his statement regarding “a cosmic body of Christ,” Sweet approvingly cites Fox’s book The Coming of the Cosmic Christ. See his online version of Quantum Spirituality, pdf pages 89, 195, and footnote 66 (https://web.archive.org/web/20030720050215/http://leonardsweet.com/Quantum/quantum-ebook.pdf).
6. Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Life (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2002), p. 88.
7. Fox employs Colossians 1:15-17 to demonstrate that his christ is “the pattern that connects.” See Coming of the Cosmic Christ, p. 133.
8. Greek grammarians note that the pronoun “is used emphatically–He Himself, in contrast to the created things . . . Here it means ‘He and no other’ . . .” See Cleon L. Rogers Jr. and Cleon L. Rogers III, The New Linguistic and Exegetical Key to the Greek New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1998), p. 461. The NRSV carries the emphasis into its translation which reads, “He himself is before all things . . .” (Emphasis mine, Colossians 1:17a).
9. The preposition “before” (Greek, pro) can carry a temporal or a rank meaning. Wallace suggests both are appropriate. He writes, “Jesus Christ takes priority over and is before all things.” See Daniel B. Wallace, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1996), p. 379, Footnote 67.
10. Between the Logos of the Bible and the logos of Stoicism, and based upon Colossians 1:17, a scholar observed this contrast: “He [i.e., the biblical Christ] is not in all things but all things are in him. The Logos of the Stoics gave unity and order, and meaning to all things because it permeated all things as dia-existent principle; the Colossian hymn praises him in whom all things begin, continue, and conclude because they are in, through, and unto him as a pre-existent being.” See David E. Garland, Colossians and Philemon, The NIV Application Commentary, quoting Fred B. Craddock (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1998), p. 89, Footnote 29. From Craddock’s observation, the similarity between the philosophical christ of Stoicism and the spiritual christ of New Ageism is apparent. While not viewing Christ as “a pre-existent being,” the New Spirituality does embrace christ as “dia-existent principle.”

By Corrie Ten Boom

Can a piece of furniture be important? The oval table in our dining room was the gathering place for hopes and dreams, the listening place for prayers and petitions, and the loving place for joy and laughter.

But Sunday, it was something more—it was the special place for family and friends.

Sunday was an important day for us; it was a day when everything—from the clothes we wore to the spoons we used—was distinctive. My Sunday dress was the new one I received for Christmas, so I seldom had a choice about what I would wear to church. Tante Anna could work magic with that dress, adding a colored sash or a ribbon in a way that improved my rather careless appearance. It was another of her small gifts of service which said, “I care.”

When we were ready for church, Father would lead the way to St. Bavo’s while we trailed along, trying not to scuff our shoes or soil our Sunday outfits.

After church it was good to go home, especially when the weather was chilly, for St. Bavo’s was unheated, and there were days when my teeth would chatter through the entire service.

At home, I would help with the Sunday dinner, first by smoothing a beautiful white cloth over the oval table. I tried to do this carefully, because I knew that Betsie wanted it to hang evenly, and it was a great desire of mine to meet her standards. Everything about Betsie was neat and I was . . . oh, well—just Corrie.

“Good work, Corrie,” she would say, and that was all I needed to encourage me for the rest of the day.

The delicate china, which had been brought from Indonesia by father’s older sister, Tante Toos, and Tante Jans’ ornate silver service—a gift from wealthy members of her husband’s church—were placed on the table. Then Tante Anna would emerge from the kitchen, wiping her hands on the generous apron she used to cover her black silk dress, and ring a little bell.

“Come to dinner, everyone.”

When we were seated, Father would remove his fresh Sunday napkin from its holder, place it carefully on his lap, and bow his head.
“Lord, we thank You for this beautiful Lord’s Day and for this family. Bless this food, bless our Queen, and let soon come the day that Jesus, Your beloved Son, comes on the clouds of heaven. Amen.”

Our table talk on Sunday sometimes centered around the sermon we had heard, but usually Father was cautious not to say too much. He attended the cathedral near our home because he felt that God had called him to that place, but he didn’t hold any position in the church. His views were not accepted by the liberal thinkers who were in positions of leadership.

Conversations around the dinner table were lively because we all had stories or experiences we wanted to share. I believe that the great enjoyment of a family eating together is having this time when each person can be heard.

Father had a special talent in directing our talks so that no one would feel left out. We loved to tell personal stories, but were taught to laugh at ourselves and not to make fun of others.

I remember one time when Nollie was telling about a painting she had done in school.

“I thought the drawing was rather good,” Nollie said, “but when Mr. van Arkel walked over to my desk, he held up my picture and looked at it one way and then another, scowling all the time.”

“Maybe he just wanted to get a better view,” Betsie offered.

“I’m afraid that wasn’t his reason,” Nollie answered.

(Studies were important in our family, so each one of us received special attention when we talked about school.)

“What did Mr. van Arkel say, Nollie?” Mother asked.

“He said, “Do you know of which Proverb your drawing reminds me, Nollie ten Boom?”

“I told him, ‘Honi soit qui mal y pense.’ [Disgraced is he who thinks wrong of it]. It’s from a motto on a badge of knighthood. Boy, did Mr. van Arkel laugh!”

Nollie’s eyes twinkled when she told the story. Father really enjoyed a good joke, as long as the girls didn’t giggle. Laughter he loved, but giggling was verboden.

On Sunday afternoons, we frequently had visitors who would stop for a cup of tea and conversation. Sometimes we would go for a walk, but we didn’t study, sew, or work on the Lord’s Day. The only work allowed was winding the watches, which were in the shop for repair.

Father said, “Even on Sunday, I must milk my cows.”

Father’s Friends
Fellowship around the oval table was more than just a family affair. Throughout the years, there were many people, young and old, rich and poor, who contributed so much to the richness of my childhood. I loved to have some of Father’s friends visit our home, because they laughed a lot and always told wonderful stories.

When Father was a young man in Amsterdam, he worked in a mission called Heil des Volks, which was in a very poor part of the city. There were three other men who gave their time and energy to this particular outreach, and they all became fast friends.

The four men would meet often, sharing their burdens and triumphs, studying the Bible together, and discussing many topics of interest. As a child, I was always happy when they came to our house; it was a time when I loved to listen to the conversations of these great friends and learn from their experiences. The children were welcome to stay during their discussions and encouraged to participate if we had something we wanted to ask. I can still recall the fragrant mixture of cologne and good Dutch cigars which lingered in the room.

Frits Vermeer was a rather round Dutchman who loved to joke. He was “Uncle Frits” to us, just as the other good friends were called Uncle Dirk and Uncle Hendrik.

One of the first things Father would do when his friends arrived was to bring out the box of cigars from its place in the desk where the bulky ledger of the shop was kept. From his pocket, he would take the special cigar clipper, which had keys for winding the clocks on the other side. It was a very important tool, and many children over a span of half a century sat on his lap and played with it.

Uncle Hendrik was considered the theologian of the group, and was constantly being challenged for a Bible verse to meet some situation or problem. He was seldom at a loss when asked to quote something appropriate for the occasion.
Uncle Dirk, the fourth member of the group, was the only one who wasn’t married. However, he loved children very much and was able to express that love in a special way.

On one occasion, when Father’s friends were discussing their concerns, Uncle Dirk was anxious to tell about an orphanage where he was on the board of directors. I sat up and listened carefully, because children without parents bothered me so much. I thought how terrible it would be not to have the love of a mother and father.

“I decided to become the father of the orphanage,” Uncle Dirk announced. “I have been on the board of directors, arguing for better conditions for those poor children, but I have not seen any positive results. I must get in there and work myself.”

Father was delighted. “Dirk, this is certainly the leading of the Lord for you. He has not given you a wife, but He is going to bless you with many, many children. We will pray about it.”

Father would begin to pray with his friends in an attitude which was so easy and natural that the conversation never seemed to stop; it would flow easily from friend to friend to the Lord.

Many times through the years I remember the wonderful moments I had listened to the stories and experiences of Father’s friends. There is a Proverb which says, “Thine own friend, and thy father’s friend, forsake not” (Proverbs 27:10). I have often thought how wise that is.

Bible Study Was a Game
With the dishes cleared off and kitchen duties accomplished, the oval table could be turned into a place for games. We didn’t play cards (for that was considered a form of gambling), but we had a lasting enjoyment in the type of games which taught us something.

Different languages were introduced as a game, not as a forced study. When I was in the fourth grade, we began to learn French. As I remember, I loved the melodious sounds of this beautiful language, but it was and remained a difficult language for me. The next year I started English, which was easier, but I wondered as I struggled with all the different English meanings for words if I would ever go to England or America and have an opportunity to use the language.

Father wanted me to learn English well, and he gave me a little Sunday-school booklet in English, which was called “There’s No Place Like Home.” I read it over and over again.

The greatest fun in language-learning came during our Bible study. The entire family would take part, each one of us having a Bible in a different language. Willem usually had the original in Hebrew and Greek; I would have the English; Mother the Dutch; Nollie the French; and Betsie or Father, German. It was a special and joyous time for us.

Father would begin by asking what John 3:16 was in English. I would answer from my English Bible, Mother from her Dutch Bible, and Betsie would reply in German.

When I was so young, it didn’t seem possible that Betsie would ever have a chance to use a Bible verse in German. We didn’t know any Germans then! However, God uses such seemingly insignificant ways to prepare us for the plan He has for our lives. Over forty years later, in a concentration camp in Germany, Betsie was able to use that verse—and many more—to speak to the prisoners and the guards about God’s love.

When Father Prayed . . .

Every room in our house heard our prayers, but the oval table probably experienced more conversations with the Lord than other places. Praying was never an embarrassment for us, whether it was with the family together or when a stranger came in. Father prayed because he had a good Friend to talk over the problems of the day; he prayed because he had a direct connection with his Maker when he had a concern; he prayed because there was so much for which he wanted to thank God.

When Father talked with the Lord, it was serious, but unpretentious. He talked to Someone he knew. Once we had a minister in our house, and when his visit was over, Father prayed, “Thank You Lord, for a good day. We hope everyone goes together in the same way.”

The minister left with a puzzled expression on his face. Could this be the Casper ten Boom so many of his parishioners told him had such a deep understanding of God’s Word?

Father always prayed before and after each meal. He included two things in his prayer: the Queen and the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. The knowledge and anticipation of the return of Jesus Christ was given to me by Father during one of the quiet, thoughtful times before I went to sleep as a small child.

(From Corrie’s book, In My Father’s House)
(Corrie ten Boom and her family hid Jews in Holland during the Nazi occupation. Eventually, they were captured and put into concentration camps where her father and sister died. You can read about the ten Boom’s courage in her book The Hiding Place. In My Father’s House is about the ten Boom years prior to The Hiding Place time period. Lighthouse Trails sought the publishing rights to In My Father’s House in 2011 when learning that the book was no longer in print in North America and seeing how precious this book is.)

LTRJ Note: In the 1960s and 1970s, Baptist pastor Georgi Vins was a prisoner of faith in the U.S.S.R., along with many thousands of other believers. But prior to that (in the 1930s), when Georgi was just a boy, his father, Peter Vins, was also imprisoned in the U.S.S.R. for his faith. Eventually, Peter was executed in one of those prisons, leaving Georgi without a father. The following is an excerpt from Georgi’s writings about his father’s persecution (which can be found in Vins’ book Three Generations of Suffering.)

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The Imprisonment of My Father, Peter J. Vins

First Arrest

By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter; Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; Esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt: for he had respect unto the recompence of the reward. (Hebrews 11: 24-26)

Every time I read Hebrews chapter 11, verses 14 to 26, I involuntarily recall that these were my father’s favorite verses. Like many Russian Christians of his time, he had a profound understanding of the biblical truth that it is better to suffer with God’s people and better to bear the vilification of Christ than to have transient sinful enjoyment and earthly treasures.

There are no greater riches than Christ, and you feel this especially keenly when they want to take Him away from you, when they forbid you to share these riches with people. But people need Him so much!
Jesus—is there any name more dear to a redeemed soul?

How fortunate those children are those who have a loving father and mother beside them! It is a great blessing if the parents who have given their children life have given them not only a good upbringing, education, and a vocation but also their own Christian life, if, in short, they have pointed to Christ—a man’s best friend! What good fortune it is to have parents who are one’s own, not only in the flesh but, in spirit and in faith!

And if the parents were found worthy to suffer for Christ and even, fettered, to drink to the dregs the cup of death, then for their son or daughter their feat of faith becomes a sacred example of lofty self-sacrificing Christian love and calls them to be faithful to the Lord.

The first time my father was arrested was in Moscow in 1930 [when he was 32], and I was two years old. At that time, he was participating in the work of the Assembly of the Union of Evangelical Christians-Baptists as the representative of the brotherhood of Evangelical Christians-Baptists of the Far East. On his arrival in Moscow, my father was summoned to the NKVD* where it was suggested to him that at the Assembly he should support the candidatures of the ministers B. and K., who had been selected by the government bodies as members of the administrative board of the Baptist Union. My father was very surprised by the authorities’ suggestion, which was manifest interference in the internal life of the church and refused to support these candidatures. Within a few days, he was arrested. As for B. and K., they were elected just the same to the administrative board of the Baptist Union. B. revealed himself as a traitor not long afterwards when the President of the Baptist Union, Nikolai Vasilievich Odintsov, was arrested.

Beginning in the 1930s, pressure on prominent workers in religious societies was intensified, and apostates were advanced to positions of leadership with the aim of corrupting the church from the inside. My father spent three months under investigation in Butyrki prison and was then sentenced to three years in labor camp. At that time in Blagoveshchensk-on-Amur, his son, who had just begun to talk, would kneel down with his mother and repeat just four words: “Jesus! Bring Daddy back!”

During those years, Father passed under guard through many prisoners’ convoys, prisons, and labor camps in the Far East and the Northern Urals. In the Far East, he was taken in convoy to a labor camp situated on the shore of Svetlaya Bay.

One day in a town in the Far East, a column of prisoners was being marched from a transit prison to a goods station for embarkation. After the column ran, weeping women, seeing off their fathers, husbands, sons . . . A young Orthodox priest was marching in the column beside my father. His wife was hurrying alongside after the column. As she took leave of him, she cried, “Vasya! Don’t lose heart! The darker the night, the brighter are the stars!” The priest’s heartening reply rang out above the column of prisoners, “The deeper the sorrow, the nearer is God!”

For some time, Father was in camps in the Northern Urals. He was taken in a train load of convicts to Usolye (now Solikamsk) and then marched in convoy another 300 kilometers to the north, to one of the timber-felling camps of the taiga.

In 1967, I also visited these places, also under guard. Like my father, I was taken in convoy to Solikamsk and then not on foot but in open lorries under the guard of soldiers and watchdogs 200 kilometers further north.

As we drove along the old convoy roads, I remembered my father. Perhaps in the ’30s, he had walked along these very same roads.

At Liberty

In the summer of 1933, father was released. Mother and I traveled to Novosibirsk to meet him. Here he was faced with the journey to Biisk, which at that time was a small town lost among the forests of the Altai.

Father did not receive a passport when he was released but was directed to a place of residence in Biisk with the status of an exile. We traveled in a passenger train. I can still remember the overcrowded carriage, the shouting, and the swearing. Somehow, I was settled in the upper berth where I could go to sleep, and my parents slept sitting up. At the station in Biisk, we were robbed, reducing our belongings, which were meager enough anyway.

We settled down somewhere on the outskirts of the town, taking a room in a private house. It was a very beautiful spot. Around us was a pine forest and silence. In the winter, Father and I would take a sledge and wander through the forest. I dearly loved these walks.

There were believers in Biisk, but the prayer house was closed, and they used to gather in houses.

My parents were extremely poor. A conviction for religious beliefs and the absence of a passport were a great obstacle to arranging employment. Many places refused to enroll Father for work. Finally, my father and mother found work, but a long way from home—across the river on the opposite side of town. In the autumn slush and the winter frosts and snowstorms, it took them two or three hours very often on foot to reach their place of work.

My parents were often ill . . . I remember that first my father would lie in bed with a high temperature, and my mother would bustle round him and tend him, and then she herself would be ill and Father would be the doctor.

One day, Father received a letter from Blagoveshchensk, from his home community, where he had served as pastor from 1926 to 1930 until the day of his arrest. This kind message with its words of brotherly love encouraged and comforted Father in this most difficult period of his wandering. The Lord preserved this letter amidst numerous searches in the following decades. Through His faithful children, the Lord also sent daily bread in this critical period of our lives.

In January 1934, Father received a passport and permission to leave his place of exile. We moved to Novosibirsk. The meeting place there had not yet been closed. I remember how Father used to take me with him to the prayer house, which was situated on the outskirts of the town. It was very exciting for me to walk along the streets with my father. It seemed as though everyone was looking at me: see, I have a father too! I loved to sit beside him at the meeting and sing together about Jesus, who had heard my prayers and brought my daddy back!

The same year my grandmother, Mariya Abramovna Zharikova, a true and virtuous Christian, came to Novosibirsk. She stayed there for a while and then went off to Blagoveshchensk taking me with her for a while.

I met my parents again in 1935 in Omsk where they had moved. At that time, the prayer house in the town had already been taken away. The believers had built it on the bank of the River Om. Now mounted militia had been quartered there. The believers began to meet in a small private house on the outskirts of the town behind the station. In those years, there were still no trams in Omsk, and it was a very long and difficult journey to reach the meeting.

My father used to visit meetings of believers and continued to witness about Christ. Furthermore, he visited believers at home; he encouraged, comforted, and strengthened those who had weakened spiritually. With him went his friend Anton Pavlovich Martynenko, an evangelist of the Far East Union of Christians-Baptists, the father of a large family, who had already suffered exile in the Far East for the Word of God and had found a temporary haven in Omsk. Anton Pavlovich was tall, with an open, courageous face; he was a most wonderful Christian, always joyful, never downhearted, a true servant of the Lord.

During the day, they worked, my father in the administrative office of the town pharmacy and Anton Pavlovich as a carpenter on one of the construction sites, and they devoted every evening to the encouragement and comfort of the believers in that difficult time for the church. In 1935, a prominent worker in the Far East Baptist Union, V.P., arrived in Omsk with his family. He did not join in the believers’ meetings but stayed at home and tried to spread his mood of depression among others. My father and Anton Pavlovich had to talk a great deal with him, trying to encourage V.P. and lessen the influence on others of his spirit of fear and timeserving. But V.P. never fulfilled his role as a minister.

Second Arrest

In Omsk, we lived on the outskirts of the town. My parents took a room in a large wooden house belonging to an unbeliever.

One evening, there was an unfamiliar knock on the door. The owner asked, “Who is it?”

The answer came, “Police, open up!” It was NKVD agents. They asked for Father and produced a warrant for his arrest.

The officer in charge of the arrest and the search looked around the modest furnishings of the room: an old wooden bed, a table, a large wooden chest which served as a wardrobe, and a divan, which at night was my bed. Surprise and disillusionment came over the officer’s face. Turning, to my father, he said, “Peter Yakovlevich, I expected to see the luxurious flat of an American missionary, but here”—the inspector’s hand described a semicircle in the air, and the surprise on his face changed to a sneer—“is poverty!”

The search was carried out. They took a Bible, a Gospel, personal letters, and photographs. Father had a bag of dried crusts ready and waiting. He put on warm clothing, said our last prayer together in the presence of the inspector, and Father was taken away . . .

We could hear the car, which had stood slightly to one side of the house, hooting as it moved off. I ran out into the yard behind the shed and wept. Terrible grief pierced my heart. I heard my mother calling me loudly, searching. “Mother, I don’t want to live any longer!” My mother, weeping, led me away and soothed me.

After Father’s arrest, the owner of the house refused to let us stay in the room. We faced the problem of lodging—long searches. Many believers refused us living quarters—they were afraid. At last, a believer, Alexandra Semirech, took us in. She was a simple, sincere sister. She had two teenage sons and a husband who was an unbeliever, an inveterate drunkard, and a terrible brawler. They lived not far from the Cossack bazaar along Pushkin Street. They owned one third of the house. Of their two rooms, Alexandra Ivanovna and her family took the larger, and the smaller they gave up to us. The owner of the house was almost always drunk. Sometimes during the night, a brawl would start up. Then mother and I would get out through the window and flee to neighbors.

Several more brothers were arrested together with my father. Among them was Father’s friend Anton Pavlovich Martynenko, Butevich, the pastor of an Evangelical Christian community, and others. V.P., the former executive of the Far East Union of Christians-Baptists, was also arrested.

On Sundays, we took a parcel to prison for Father. In those days, Omsk prison was a long way out of town. However, in the ’30s, the town grew considerably and surrounded the great four-storied bulk of the prison on all sides.

There was a long queue to the window where parcels were handed in. Everyone was bringing something to a loved one. Anxiously, they asked if he was alive, when he would be released, when the trial would be, and many other things. The answers were general and formal. But if they took the parcel, it meant he was alive and still there.

Not many people cried. Their tears had already been wept out and grief had hidden itself in the depths of sunken eyes. Some did cry—the “novices.”

Last Days of Freedom

After his release, Father began trying to find work. But everywhere he was turned down. Other brothers were in the same position. Then they formed a carpenters’ team of fifteen men (all believers), and the whole team was contracted to a building office for work. Our family’s material position improved slightly.
By that time, meetings in Omsk had been forbidden. The small prayer house behind the station was closed. But there were about a thousand believers in Omsk. Some of them began to leave. Some, frightened, stayed at home and grew spiritually cold.

Part of the brotherhood, my father among them, continued to visit believers and conducted small meetings. The doors of our house were scarcely ever closed. Every day believers kept coming for advice and for spiritual support. The owner of the house (an unbeliever) greatly respected Father and did not obstruct the visits.

Some people tried to frighten Father and his friend Anton Pavlovich with stories about the new wave of arrests of believers throughout the whole country—to this Anton Pavlovich replied with a smile, “Here we are guests! Soon we will go home again—to prison!” They used every day of freedom for preaching the Gospel and encouraging believers.

At this time, nearly all the churches and prayer houses throughout the country were closed. Thousands of Christians of different denominations were thrown into prisons and labor camps for their faith. I was constantly hearing that this brother had been arrested and that those had been searched. Husbands and sons, fathers and mothers, Bibles and Gospels were taken away.

And so I came into communion with the persecuted church of Christ in Russia!

I was full of joy to see Father at home, but I sensed it was only for a short while. Soon a new parting was in view. Once again, warm clothing was prepared, again rusks were dried.

One evening, I observed my parents cutting up a small Gospel into several parts and sewing it in sections into a coat collar, into the lining and into warm quilted trousers. Now eight years old, I understood it all: the parting was near.

Often Father would take me on his knees and the three of us would sing his favorite hymn, “I love Thy house, O Lord!” A Siberian snowstorm raged outside the windows, the wind howled drearily, but in our little room, it was warm and cozy. We were happy: Father was with us. I sang together with my father:

I love Thy house, O Lord,
The palace of Thy love.
I love the Church of people
Redeemed by Christ!

Third Arrest

One evening, after coming home from work, Father had his supper and went out visiting. Immediately after he had left, a car with NKVD agents drew up outside the house. They came inside and showed my mother a warrant for Father’s arrest and for a search. Once more our last spiritual literature and letters were confiscated. The search was short. Meanwhile mother was preparing food for Father’s journey.

Father came home late in the evening. He was very calm. We too were calm. We prayed, Father embraced me and mother for the last time, and we parted forever, or rather until our meeting in eternity before the Lord!

That same evening Martynenko and other believers were arrested. It was 1937 . . .

He died on December 27th, 1943 at the age of forty-five in one of the Far East labor camps. Anton Pavlovich Martynenko and many others did not return either. God alone knows where their ashes lie.
Twenty years after father’s death, on December 24th, 1963, by my mother’s petition, father’s case was reconsidered by the Omsk regional court. In view of the absence of corpus delicti, my father was posthumously rehabilitated!

Again and again, I re-read Father’s short letters:
Tell our dear ones to pray that the Lord will strengthen the brethren and myself to be His faithful witnesses.

It is doubtful that we shall be released, although our only crime is faithfulness to the Lord.

It is better to be with Him in prison than at liberty without Him!

In the short days of freedom, he loved to sing a hymn of the suffering brotherhood which was very widespread in the years before the war:

For my suffering brothers—for mankind,
Help me, God, to yield up everything,
And from the abyss of sinful passions
Raise me up to the eternal truth of heaven.

For mankind, for mankind,
Help me, God to yield up everything,
So that more swiftly and more bravely
I may save brothers who perish!

Over the last forty years, many thousands of believers have passed through the prisons and camps of our country. Their only “crime” is faithfulness to the Lord!

---

*People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs. The name of the Soviet secret police from 1934 to 1946

Related Articles:

 Don’t conform to the ways of the world by Berit Kjos

If Persecution Comes, Are Western Christians Ready? by Georgi Vins

And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity. —1 Corinthians 13:13

It was a chilly Christmas Eve as I made my way up Market Street towards the Greyhound. Last minute shoppers boarded a Market Street trolley as local panhandlers made their final appeal for seasonal spare change. At the corner of Golden Gate and Market, a Salvation Army band did a nostalgic ooom-pah-pah version of “Silent Night” in front of the Hibernia Bank. I stopped a moment and joined the crowd that had gathered. Hearing the familiar carol evoked a flood of memories from childhood Christmases past; the holiday pageants at school, the Christmas Eve service at our New England Congregational Church, and my mother reading the Christmas story before we opened our presents. When the band went on to play “God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman,” many of us sang along:

God rest ye merry gentleman, let nothing you dismay

Remember Christ our Saviour was born on Christmas day,

To save us all from Satan’s power, when we were gone astray.

O Tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy,

O Tidings of comfort and joy.

As I continued on to the bus station, I hoped Travelers Aid (where I was currently working) would extend some of that same “comfort and joy” to those needing help this night before Christmas. Entering the Greyhound and looking around the lobby, I couldn’t imagine a more appropriate place to be on Christmas Eve. Travelers arriving in time for their Christmas visits to local friends and family hurried through the lobby with their suitcases and presents. Outside, the cabs were doing a brisk business getting everyone to where they needed to go; inside, some of the Greyhound regulars had already arrived. They preferred to spend Christmas Eve in the busy bus station rather than their lonely hotel rooms.

Shortly after I opened the Travelers Aid booth, a young woman approached me sobbing hysterically. She’d arrived on a bus from Chicago, only to learn that her boyfriend had left town the day before with all of their money. She was totally distraught because she had sent him her entire savings to put down on the apartment they were planning on renting together in San Francisco. Devastated, she was now stranded at the Greyhound with no boyfriend, no money, and no place to live.

(Photo taken from Watering the Greyhound Bus Station by Warren B. Smith; used with permission)

With her permission, I called Raphael House and made arrangements for her to stay at their women’s shelter throughout the holidays. I also gave her a referral to talk with one of our daytime social workers. Travelers Aid would try to assist her any way we could. If she wanted to return to Illinois, we would try to help her get back home. If she wanted to stay in San Francisco, we could help with that too. After talking with her and providing some emotional support, I put her in a cab to Raphael House. One of their workers said the young woman would arrive just in time for their Christmas party. And while she might not feel particularly festive, at least she wouldn’t be stranded at the Greyhound on Christmas Eve.

For the rest of the evening, there was a steady stream of clients asking for various types of assistance. Some needed food and lodging; others simply wanted to talk. In one involved case, I worked with the Canadian Embassy to help two stranded Canadians return to Vancouver, British Columbia for a late Christmas with their families.

Before closing, a reporter from the San Francisco Examiner interviewed me for a story they were doing about people who were working on Christmas Eve. Without disclosing their identities, I described some of the people I had seen at our Travelers Aid booth. The next day—Christmas day—the Examiner ran the Christmas Eve article as a featured front-page story. Under the banner headline “Sniper eludes MPs in Presidio shootout” was the reporter’s article about some of us who worked Christmas Eve. He described how the Christmas holiday might give the city some “much-needed time for warmth and relaxation” after “one of the most violent periods in San Francisco’s history.” Prior to the pre-dawn shootout at the Presidio military base, the reporter wrote how the streets had been quiet and for people who had to work, business was also for the most part “quiet.”

He then described my busy evening at the Greyhound. He followed that with his account of others who had worked Christmas Eve, including a waitress at Henry Africa’s restaurant, the night auditor at the Fairmont Hotel, and a doorman at a North Beach strip club.

Scattered throughout this Christmas edition of the Examiner were other holiday stories. One was about a thoroughbred horse named Santa Claus who won the third race at the New Orleans Fairgrounds the day before Christmas. Another article highlighted the pop music scene over the past year and featured a photo of Bob Dylan singing at the Winterland Ballroom. He had been a special guest at The Band’s heavily publicized farewell concert, made famous in Martin Scorsese’s film “The Last Waltz.” Dylan’s short set included his song “Forever Young.” And as I thought about it, the opening lines of that song perfectly expressed how I felt working at the Greyhound on Christmas Eve:

 May God bless and keep you always

May your wishes all come true

May you always do for others

And let others do for you.

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Warren B. Smith (B.A. University of Pennsylvania; M.S.W. Tulane University)—A veteran who worked at the White House Communications Agency and later became a community social worker, serving as a program coordinator for people with special needs, directing several homeless programs, and working as a Hospice social worker in New Orleans and on the California coast. After leaving the New Age movement and becoming a Christian, he began writing extensively on the subject of spiritual deception. He has written six books and numerous booklets and has spoken on radio, television, and at seminars and conferences for the last twenty-five years. For more information, visit www.newagetoamazinggrace.com.

Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the Gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; by which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain. For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the scriptures. (1 Corinthians 15:1-4)

It might seem almost a work of supererogation to answer a question like this. We hear the word, “Gospel” used so many times. People talk of this and of that as being “as true as the Gospel,” and I often wonder what they really mean by it.

Our English word, “gospel” just means the “good spell,” and the word “spell,” is the old Anglo-Saxon word for, “tidings,” the good tidings, the good news. The original word translated. “Gospel,” which we have taken over into the English with little alteration is the word, “evangel,” and it has the same meaning, the good news. The Gospel is God’s good news for sinners. The Bible contains the Gospel, but there is a great deal in the Bible which is not Gospel.

First I should like to indicate what it is not.

THE GOSPEL IS…

Not The Commandments

The Gospel is not just any message from God telling man how he should behave. “What is the Gospel?” I asked a man this question some time ago, and he answered, “Why I should say it is the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount, and I think if a man lives up to them he is all right.”

Well, I fancy he would be; but did you ever know anybody who lived up to them? The Sermon on the Mount demands a righteousness which no unregenerate man has been able to produce. The law is not the Gospel; it is the very antitheses of the Gospel. In fact, the law was given by God to show men their need for the Gospel.

“The law,” says the apostle Paul, speaking as a Jewish convert, “was our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ. But after that Christ is come we are no longer under the schoolmaster.”

Not Repentance

The Gospel is not a call to repentance, or to amendment of our ways, to make restitution for past sins, or to promise to do better in the future. These things are proper in their place, but they do not constitute the Gospel; for the Gospel is not good advice to be obeyed, it is good news to be believed. Do not make the mistake then of thinking that the Gospel is a call to duty or a call to reformation, a call to better your condition, to behave yourself in a more perfect way than you have been doing in the past.

Not Giving Up The World

Nor is the Gospel a demand that you give up the world, that you give up your sins, that you break off bad habits, and try to cultivate good ones. You may do all these things, and yet never believe the Gospel and consequently never be saved at all.

There are seven designations of the Gospel in the New Testament, but over and above all these, let me draw your attention to the fact that when this blessed message is mentioned, it is invariably accompanied by the definite article. Over and over and over again in the New Testament we read of the Gospel. It is the Gospel, not a Gospel. People tell us there are a great many different Gospels; but there is only ONE.

When certain teachers came to the Galatians and tried to turn them away from the simplicity that was in Christ Jesus by teaching “another Gospel, “the apostle said that it was a different gospel, but not another; for there is none other than the Gospel. It is downright exclusive; it is God’s revelation to sinful man.

Not Comparative Religion

The scholars of this world talk of the Science of Comparative Religions, and it is very popular now-a-days to say, “We cannot any longer go to heathen nations and preach to them as in the days gone by, because we are learning that their religions are just as good as ours, and the thing to do now is to share with them, to study the different religions, take the good out of them all, and in this way lead the world into a sense of brotherhood and unity.”

So in our great universities and colleges, men study this Science of Comparative Religions, and they compare all these different religious systems one with another. There is a Science of Comparative Religions, but the Gospel is not one of them. All the different religions in the world may well be studied comparatively, for at rock bottom they are all alike; they all set man at trying to earn his own salvation.

They may be called by different names, and the things that men are called to do may be different in each case, but they all set men trying to save their own souls and earn their way into the favor of God. In this they stand in vivid contrast with the Gospel, for the Gospel is that glorious message that tells us what God has done for us in order that guilty sinners maybe saved.

The seven designations of the Gospel are called—

1. The Gospel of the Kingdom

When I use that term, I am not thinking particularly of any dispensational application but of this blessed truth that it is only through believing the Gospel that men are born into the Kingdom of God; We sing: “A ruler once came to Jesus by night, To ask Him the way of salvation and light; The Master made answer in words true and plain, ‘ye must be born again.’ “But neither Nicodemus, nor you, nor I, could ever bring this about ourselves.”

We had nothing to with our first birth and can have nothing to do with our second birth. It must be the work of God, and it is wrought through the Gospel. That is why the Gospel is called the Gospel of the Kingdom, for, “Except a man be born again he cannot see the Kingdom of God” (John 3:3, 7).

Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the Word of God, which liveth and abideth forever. . . And this is the word which by the Gospel is preached unto you. (1 Peter 1:23-25)

Everywhere that Paul and his companion apostles went, they preached the Gospel of the Kingdom of God, and they showed that the only way to get into that Kingdom was by a second birth, and that the only way whereby the second birth could be brought about was through believing the Gospel. It is the Gospel of the Kingdom.

2. The Gospel of God

It is also called the Gospel of God because God is the source of it, and it is altogether of Himself. No man ever thought of a Gospel like this. The very fact that all the religions of the world set man to try to work for his own salvation indicates the fact that no man would ever have dreamed of such a Gospel as that which is revealed in this Book. It came from the heart of God; it was God who “so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).

In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He first loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. (1 John 4:9,10)

And because it is the Gospel of God, God is very jealous of it. He wants it kept pure. He does not want it mixed with any of man’s theories or laws; He does not want it mixed up with religious ordinances or anything of that kind. The Gospel is God’s own pure message to sinful man. God grant that you and I may receive it as in very truth the Gospel of God. And then it is called

3. The Gospel of His Son

Not merely because the Son went everywhere preaching the Gospel, but because He is the theme of it. “When it pleased God,” says the apostle, “who called me by His grace, to reveal His Son in me that I might preach Him among the nations; immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood” (Galatians 1:15,16). “We preach Christ crucified . . . the power of God, and the wisdom of God” (1 Corinthians 1:23, 24). No man preaches the Gospel who is not exalting the Lord Jesus.

It is God’s wonderful message about His Son. How often I have gone to meetings where they told me I would hear the Gospel, and instead of that I have heard some bewildered preacher talk to a bewildered audience about everything and anything, but the Lord Jesus Christ. The Gospel has to do with nothing else but Christ. It is the Gospel of God’s Son. And so, linked with this it is called:

4. The Gospel of Christ

The apostle Peter preaching on the day of Pentecost of the risen Savior, says, “God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:36). And He speaks of Him as the anointed One, exalted at God’s right hand. The Gospel is the Gospel of the Risen Christ. There would be no Gospel for sinners if Christ had not been raised.

So the apostle says, “If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins” (1 Corinthians 15:17). A great New York preacher, great in his impertinence, at least, said some years ago, preaching a so-called Easter sermon, “The body of Jesus still sleeps in a Syrian tomb, but His soul goes marching on.” That is not the Gospel of Christ. We are not preaching the Gospel of a dead Christ, but of a living Christ who sits exalted at the Father’s right hand, and is living to save all who put their trust in Him.

That is why those of us who really know the Gospel never have any crucifixes around our churches or in our homes. The crucifix represents a dead Christ hanging languid on a cross of shame. But we are not pointing men to a dead Christ; we are preaching a living Christ. He lives exalted at God’s right hand, and He saves all who come to God by Him.

5. The Gospel of the Grace of God

The Gospel is also called the Gospel of the Grace of God because it leaves no room whatsoever for human merit. It just brushes away all man’s pretension to any goodness, to any desert excepting judgment. It is the Gospel of grace, and grace is God’s free unmerited favor to those who have merited the very opposite. It is as opposite to works as oil is to water.” If by grace,” says the Spirit of God, “then it is no more works . . . but if it be of works, then is it no more grace” (Romans 11:6). People say, “But you must have both.”

I have heard it put like this: there was a boatman and two theologians in a boat, and one was arguing that salvation was by faith and the other by works. The boatman listened, and then said, “Let me tell you how it looks to me. Suppose I call this oar Faith and this one Works. If I pull on this one, the boat goes around; if I pull on this other one, it goes around the other way, but if I pull on both oars, I get you across the river.”

I have heard many preachers use that illustration to prove that we are saved by faith and works. That might do if we were going to Heaven in a rowboat, but we are not. We are carried on the shoulders of the Shepherd, who came seeking lost sheep. When He finds them, He carries them home on His shoulders.

But there are some other names used. It is called:

6. The Gospel of the Glory of God

I love that name. It is the Gospel of the Glory of God because it comes from the place where our Lord Jesus has entered. The veil has been rent, and now the glory shines out; and whenever this Gospel is proclaimed, it tells of a way into the glory for sinful man, a way to come before the Mercy Seat purged from every stain. It is the Gospel of the Glory of God, because, until Christ had entered into the Glory, it could not be preached in its fullness, but, after the glory received Him, then the message went out to a lost world.

7. The Everlasting Gospel

It is also called the Everlasting Gospel because it will never be superseded by another. No other ever went before it, and no other shall ever come after it. One of the professors of the University of Chicago wrote a book in which he tried to point out that some of these days Jesus would be superseded by a greater teacher; then He and the Gospel that He taught would have to give way to a message which would be more suited to the intelligence of the cultivated men of the later centuries.

No, no, were it possible for this world to go on a million years, it would never need any other Gospel than this preached by the apostle Paul and confirmed with signs following; the Gospel, which throughout the centuries has been saving guilty sinners.

THE GOSPEL DECLARED

What then is the content of this Gospel? We are told right here:

I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; by which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain. (1 Corinthians 15:1-2)

There is such a thing as merely believing with the intelligence and crediting some doctrine with the mind when the heart has not been reached. But wherever men believe this Gospel in real faith, they are saved through the message.

What is it that brings this wonderful result? It is a simple story, and yet how rich, how full. “I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received” (1 Corinthians 15:3). I think Paul’s heart must have been stirred as he wrote those words, for he went back in memory to nearly thirty years before and thought of that day when hurrying down the Damascus turnpike, with his heart filled with hatred toward the Lord Jesus Christ and His people, he was thrown to the ground, and a light shone, and he heard a voice saying, “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” And he cried, “Who art thou Lord?” And the voice said, “I am Jesus whom thou persecutest.” (Acts 9:4-5)

And that day Saul learned the Gospel; he learned that He who died on the Cross had been raised from the dead, and that He was living in the Glory. At that moment, his soul was saved, and Saul of Tarsus was changed to Paul, the apostle. And now he says, “I am going to tell you what I have received; it is a real thing with me, and I know it will work the same wonderful change in you. If you will believe it. “First of all, “That Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures.” Then, “that He was buried.” Then, “that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures.”

The Gospel was no new thing in God’s mind. It had been predicted throughout the Old Testament times. Every time the coming Savior was mentioned, there was proclamation of the Gospel. It began in Eden when the Lord said, “The seed of the woman shall bruise thy head.” It was typified in every sacrifice that was offered. It was portrayed in the wonderful Tabernacle and later in the Temple.

We have it in the proclamation of Isaiah:

He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of our peace was upon Him: and with His stripes we are healed. (Isaiah 53:5)

It was preached by Jeremiah when he said, “This is His Name whereby He shall be called, the Lord our Righteousness” (Jeremiah 23:6). It was declared by Zechariah when he exclaimed, “Awake, O sword, against My Shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered: and I will turn mine hand upon the little ones” (Zechariah 13:7).

All through the Old Testament, the Gospel was predicted, and when Jesus came, the Gospel came with Him. When He died, when He was buried, and when He rose again, the Gospel could be fully told out to a poor lost world. Observe, it says, “that Christ died for our sins.” No man preaches the Gospel, no matter what nice things he may say about Jesus, if he leaves out His vicarious death on Calvary’s Cross.

CHRIST’S DEATH—NOT HIS LIFE

I was preaching in a church in Virginia, and a minister prayed, “Lord, grant Thy blessing as the Word is preached tonight. May it be the means of causing people to fall in love with the Christ-life, that they may begin to live the Christ-life.” I felt like saying, “Brother, sit down; don’t insult God like that;” but then I felt I had to be courteous, and I knew that my turn would come, when I could get up and give them the truth. The Gospel is not asking men to live the Christ-life.

If your salvation depends upon your doing that, you are just as good as checked for Hell, for you never can live it in yourself. It is utterly impossible. But the very first message of the Gospel is the story of the vicarious atonement of Christ. He did not come to tell men how to live in order that they might save themselves; He did not come to save men by living His beautiful life. That, apart from His death, would never have saved one poor sinner. He came to die; He “was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death” (Hebrews 2:9).

Christ Jesus gave Himself a ransom for all. When He instituted the Lord’s Supper He said, “Take, eat: this is My body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of Me. . . This cup is the new covenant in My Blood” (1 Corinthians 11:24, 25). There is no Gospel if the vicarious death of Jesus is left out, and there is no other way whereby you can be saved than through the death of the blessed spotless Lamb of God.

Someone says, “But I do not understand it.” That is a terrible confession to make, for “If our Gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost: (2 Corinthians 4:3). If you do not see that there is no other way of salvation for you, save through the death of the Lord Jesus, then that just tells the sad story that you are among the lost. You are not merely in danger of being lost in the Day of Judgment; but you are lost now. But, thank God, “the Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10), and seeking the lost He went to the Cross.

None of the ransomed ever know

How deep were the waters crossed;

Nor how dark was the night that the Lord passed through,

Ere He found the sheep that was lost.1

THE NECESSITY OF DEATH

He had to die, to go down into the dark waters of death, that you might be saved. Can you think of any ingratitude more base than that of a man or woman who passes by the life offered by the Savior who died on the Cross for them? Jesus died for you, and can it be that you have never even trusted Him, never even come to Him and told Him you were a poor, lost, ruined, guilty sinner; but since He died for you, you would take Him as your Savior? HIS DEATH WAS REAL.

He was buried three days in the tomb. He died, He was buried, and that was God’s witness that it was not a merely pretended death, but He, the Lord of Life, had to go down into death. He was held by the bars of death for those three days and nights until God’s appointed time had come.

Then, “Death could not keep its prey, He tore the bars away.”2 And so the third point of the Gospel is this: He was raised again the third day according to the Scriptures. That is the Gospel, and nothing can be added to that. Some people say, “Well, but must I repent?” Yes, you may well repent, but that is not the Gospel. “Must I not be baptized?” If you are a Christian, you ought to be baptized, but baptism is not the Gospel. Paul said, “Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the Gospel” (1 Corinthians 1:17).

He did baptize people, but he did not consider that was the Gospel, and the Gospel was the great message that he was sent to carry to the world. This is all there is to it.

Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures . . . he was buried, and . . . he rose again the third day according to the scriptures. (1 Corinthians 15:3-4)

THE GOSPEL ACCEPTED

Look at the result of believing the Gospel. Go back to verse two of 1 Corinthians 15: “By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain.” That is, if you believe the Gospel, you are saved; if you believe that Christ died for your sins, that He was buried, and that He rose again, God says you are saved. Do you believe it? No man ever believed that except by the Holy Ghost. It is the Spirit of God that overcomes the natural unbelief of the human heart and enables a man to put his trust in that message.

And this is not mere intellectual credence, but it is that one comes to the place where he is ready to stake his whole eternity on the fact that Christ died, and was buried, and rose again. When Jesus said, “IT IS FINISHED,” the work of salvation was completed. A dear saint was dying, and looking up, he said, “It is finished; on that I can cast my eternity.”

Upon a life I did not live,

Upon a death I did not die;

Another’s life, another’s death,

Is take my whole eternity.3

Can you say that, and say it in faith?

THE GOSPEL REJECTED

What about the man who does not believe the Gospel? The Lord Jesus said to His disciples:

Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned. (Mark 16:15-16)

He that believeth not shall be devoted to judgment, condemned, lost. So you see, God has shut us up to the Gospel. Have you believed it? Have you put your trust in it; is it the confidence of your soul?

Or have you been trusting in something else? If you have been resting in anything short of the Christ who died, who was buried, who rose again, I plead with you, turn from every other fancied refuge, and flee to Christ today. “Repent ye, and believe the Gospel” (Mark 1:15).

O, do not let the word depart,

And close thine eyes against the light;

Poor sinner, harden not thy heart,

Be saved, O tonight.4

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Endnotes:

1. Eliz­a­beth C. Cle­phane, 1830-1869; The Ninety and Nine

2. Robert Lowry, 1826-1899; Up From the Grave He Arose

3. Horatius Bonar, 1808-1889; Upon a Life I Did Not Life

4. Eliz­a­beth Holmes Reed, 1794-1867; Oh Why Not Tonight?

Harry A. Ironside (1876-1951)

Dr. Ironside was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. His writings are in the public domain. To order copies of What is the Gospel? in booklet format, click here.