November 22 Daily Devotional

Accepting an ‘old gospel in a modern world’ (i)

Let us give our reasons for still believing in the message of the old gospel in the modern world. Our first reason ... is that man himself as man has not changed at all. All the changes about which men boast so much are external. They are not changes in man himself, but merely in his mode of activity, in his environment.... ‘But surely’, asks someone, ‘there is some mistake. Have you not seen the modern man travelling in his aeroplane at four hundred miles an hour? Are you suggesting that he is identical with the man who used to travel on foot at the rate of four miles an hour?’ But wait a moment. Let us look at the two men. There they go, one at four hundred miles an hour, the other at four miles an hour. The vital question to answer in each case is what is the object of the travelling?... precisely the same in both cases. The individuals are going to make love, or to make war, or to do business, or they are intent upon pleasure. There is but one real difference between the two men. It is the rate at which they travel to the same goal. What, in reality, is the precise difference between the pride which the modern man takes in his culture and sophistication and the pride of those men who, at the very dawn of history, tried to build the tower of Babel into heaven?

... It is no part of our purpose to detract or to derogate from the power and the ability of modern man.... He has succeeded even in splitting the atom. But... he has been quite incapable of thinking of a new sin. All the sins that are being committed in the modern world you will find mentioned in the Old Testament.... Man as man does not change at all. He still remains the same contradictory person he has been ever since the original fall. That is our first reason for continuing to present to him the ancient gospel of Jesus Christ.

Truth Unchanged, Unchanging, pp. 110–12

(continued on November 23)