Book Review: The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism

Book Review: The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism

Jul 16, 2023 | Eschatology

One of the most unanticipated of my many red pill experiences of the last seven or eight years was the transformation of my eschatological position, as I’ve explained here previously. When I was born-again, as we called it back then, in the late ‘70s premillennial dispensationalism was ubiquitous, as it continued to be throughout the ‘80s and into the ‘90s. Fundamentalist and Evangelical Christians (they were two somewhat distinct groups back then) were obsessed with the rapture and Jesus’ immanent return. Rampant speculation about “end times” events was everywhere, and some were so bold as to predict the exact date when Jesus would return. I recently learned about this book, and while I can’t take the time to read it, the short book review by Joel Looper was interesting because the obsession of those early couple decades of my Christian life has disappeared. I’ve often wondered why, given most Christians are still dispensational. I’ve chalked it up to one too many predictions falling short, and people just getting tired of all the speculation, but there are also scholarly and theological reasons, which you can learn about in the piece.

The reason I’m writing about it, though, is because of what this change says about the nature of Christian and human hope in general. The most exciting thing about embracing postmillennialism is that it gives us ground for optimism and hope in this world, as fallen and dysfunctional as it is. But before I get to this, I want to quote the last two paragraphs of the book review:

The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism obliquely but powerfully gestures toward a hole often found in the gospel that post-dispensationalist evangelicals believe today. “In the wake of dispensationalism’s collapse,” he writes in the epilogue, “the eschatological sight of the American church has blurred.” That means that our hope is less fervent, thinner, colder.

Many Protestant pastors understandably are trepidatious about even alluding to eschatological matters for fear of getting sucked into controversies about numerology, new candidates for the Antichrist, and dating the second coming. Nevertheless, Hummel reminds us, “Christianity is inescapably eschatological.” That is so because faith cannot exist without hope.

Exactly, especially religious faith. All human beings live by faith, be they “religious” or not, and in one of my favorite phrases, there is no such thing as an unbeliever. The same thing, though, applies to hope. As all people live by faith, all people need hope, need something to look forward to, something to give their lives purpose and meaning. Without hope, life is death, as we witness in our hopeless secular age in which close to 50,000 people a year kill themselves.

One of the leftovers of dispensational premillennialism, shared to one degree or another by amillennialism, is a kind of skepticism about this world, that everything is inexorably going to hell in a handbasket, and Jesus will come back soon to save the day. Before embracing postmillennialism I didn’t realize how our theology of “end times” determines how we interpret everything about the times in which we live, whether negatively or positively. As I explain in the piece I linked to above, I was as negative and often depressed as the next Christian and conservative, but found Steve Bannon’s War Room, and he turned me into an optimist. The problem was that I didn’t have the theological, specifically eschatological, framework for optimism. In the book I’m currently finishing, I started it hoping to argue theologically for that optimism, but without postmillennialism it would have been a difficult argument to make. With it we realize Jesus came to earth and now sits at the right hand of God ruling to extend his reign, advance his kingdom, and build his church. I can’t make the case again here, but I will share two passages proving that Christ’s rule is now, in this world, not merely in eternity or only in our hearts. First, Psalm 110:

The Lord says to my lord:

“Sit at my right hand
until I make your enemies
a footstool for your feet.”

2 The Lord will extend your mighty scepter from Zion, saying,
“Rule in the midst of your enemies!”
3 Your troops will be willing
on your day of battle.

This Psalm is clearly Messianic and refers to Christ, and Paul knows that as he writes these words in I Cor. 15.

25 For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. 26 The last enemy to be destroyed is death.

The question on the table for all Christians is this. Does this “reign until” have real, substantive, positive affects in this fallen world, here and now? Or does Satan call the shots, and things will inevitably get worse until like a dues ex machina Jesus returns to save the day and change everything in an instant? I now believe the former is the biblical answer, not the latter, but that’s not why I’m writing this. I’m writing it because of hope, and why the former gives us incredible hope for this age, as well as the age to come, as Paul tells us of Jesus’ reign in Ephesian 1, and the latter falls short.

Ever since the Second Great Awakening in the 19th century, and the corresponding rise of secularism and dispensational premillennialism, Christian hope has moved its focus almost completely on the world to come, our eternal hope in Christ. I believe as important and powerful as this is, the hope of being saved from our sins and going to heaven one day, as the author of the book review says, makes our hope “less fervent, thinner, colder.” In this take, the only reign of Christ is in the Christian’s heart, and has effect primarily in our sanctification. It’s merely personal. But Jesus didn’t come to solely transform his people’s lives, but that their transformed lives would impact the world for righteousness and his kingdom, as he himself taught us to pray, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.” Jesus didn’t teach us to pray this expecting our prayer would be futile, did he?

Imagine if we really believed God in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit is working now, this very moment, to advance his kingdom through us so his rule of righteousness and peace would in some way manifest itself in the societies in which we live. The problem is we live by sight and not by faith, as if what appears as debacle and defeat is the end of the story. If you read the history of redemption in our Bibles you’ll see things are rarely as they appear on the surface to the finite human beings who haven’t a clue what God is really doing. And we must realize as I say all the time, God is never in a hurry. If in God’s providence we’re to live in a time of defeat, so be it, but we battle (Eph. 6:12) not just for our generation but for generations to come. As the Apostle Paul also says in I Corinthians, our labor in the Lord is not in vain, and thus he exhorts us to give ourselves fully to it!

Micah 4-Swords Into Plowshare, The Last Days are Our Days

Micah 4-Swords Into Plowshare, The Last Days are Our Days

Jul 13, 2023 | Eschatology

The thing I love about reading the prophets is that amid all the gloom and doom rays of light and expectations of hope jump out like the sun peeking through the clouds on a very gray day. You know it may only peak through briefly, but that gives you hope of sunny days to come. This analogy is especially powerful for me since I’ve embraced postmillennial eschatology, except now the sun shines more brightly. It applies to the entire Bible, of course, given it’s all about Jesus (Luke 24), but the contrast in the prophets is startling. Micah 4 is an especially good example. I’ll quote the first part of the chapter to illustrate the point, but when I was a “pan” millennialist (it will all pan out in the end) and an amillennialist I instantly read passages like this assuming it must apply to after Jesus returns and has established the restored heavens and earth he came to save. How could it not! You read it and tell me what you think:

In the last days

the mountain of the Lord’s temple will be established
    as the highest of the mountains;
it will be exalted above the hills,
    and peoples will stream to it.

2 Many nations will come and say,

“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
    to the temple of the God of Jacob.
He will teach us his ways,
    so that we may walk in his paths.”
The law will go out from Zion,
    the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
3 He will judge between many peoples
    and will settle disputes for strong nations far and wide.
They will beat their swords into plowshares
    and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will not take up sword against nation,
    nor will they train for war anymore.
4 Everyone will sit under his own vine
    and under his   own fig tree,
and no one will make them afraid,
    for the Lord Almighty has spoken.
5 All the nations may walk
    in the name of their gods,
but we will walk in the name of the Lord
    our God for ever and ever.

Previously, my knee-jerk reaction to this passage was it had to be in the new heavens and earth; I didn’t even question it. Swords into plowshares? Not in this fallen world! But I was actually wrong. If we look more carefully at this passage we’ll see what’s being talked about is life in this fallen world. If there is still a need for judging and settling disputes “for strong nations,” then sin still exists. If nations are still walking “in the name of their gods,” then sin still exists. No, this passage is very much about the here and now, and it’s obvious. As Micah says, this is “in the last days.”

We are currently living “in the last days.” There are several New Testament verses telling us these days started with the coming of Messiah. In the very first Christian sermon in Acts 2, Peter tells us quoting the Prophet Joel:

17 “‘In the last days, God says,
    I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
    your young men will see visions,
    your old men will dream dreams.

That pouring out started, as we know, with Pentecost. Peter was telling Jews in Jerusalem it was Jesus of Nazareth, risen Lord, who ushered in these last days. The writer to the Hebrews tells us:

In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, 2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe.

In the Old Testament these days are referred to in various ways that Jews all interpreted to be Messianic. So we must conclude that Micah is referring to today, to our time, to here and now, to how life is lived as the Holy Spirit enables followers of the Savior who is now seated at the right hand of the Almighty “far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come.” (Eph. 1: 21) For Paul Jesus’ current rule is taken for granted, and we have to be reminded his rule is also for the age to come. Think about that!

So, what does this look like? How does this differ from the typical doom and gloom Chicken Little Christianity of those just waiting for Jesus to come back any moment to save the day? Micah 4! And according to Micah it will look something like peace and prosperity, where justice is done and people live in safety. I know, it almost sounds prosaic, boring. That’s it? Shouldn’t it be, I don’t know, more spiritual? More miraculous like? Well, what is more miraculous than turning chaos and violence and want into justice, shalom, and plenty? Or people loving one another? Or the fruit of the Spirit! To me one way this is graphically portrayed, to see what it looks like in this world, is in the history of the war of Christianity against paganism in the first millennium of the West. The spiritual war of Ephesians 6:12 is worked out in this history of redemption from Abram being called out of Ur of the Chaldeans four thousand years ago to this very day. It looks very different now, but the battle is the same. This is graphically played out in the ninth century in King Alfred the Great’s battle saving Christian England against the heathen Viking horde from the north.

Alfred was the king of Wessex from 871-899, and he wanted to establish a Christian united England under one king. He’s the only King in English history with the appellation Great attached to his name because he started the process of uniting England under the law of God. Several years ago, my daughter told me about a Netflix series called The Last Kingdom (i.e., Wessex). I was quickly hooked, not only because it was well done, but also because, sadly, I knew absolutely nothing about the history I saw portrayed on the screen. I was amazed to learn Christian Western civilization as we know it hung by a thread during Alfred’s reign, and a thread might be overestimating the odds, from a human perspective. You’ll have to either watch the series or learn the history to know what I mean, but when Christ rose from the dead and sent the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the heathens didn’t have a chance.

One of my favorite scenes is in season 1 when Alfred and the Danish leaders Guthrum and Ubba are negotiating. They ask Alfred what the transcribers are writing, and he says, “They are writing what we speak.” He adds, “They are writing history, we are here creating history. People will read of this very meeting.” The heathens didn’t write or create history. They also ask why he seeks peace, and he says, “It is the Christian in me, the will of my God.” Ubba wants to talk of the gods, and Alfred replies firmly, “God, there is only one.” This encounter is a microcosm of two mutually exclusive forces, the two worldviews, and only one could be victorious. Christianity would bring learning and peace, the rule of law, and the advance of God’s kingdom in the world, or the pagans would bring a bloody world of arbitrary power none of us would want to live in. Tom Holland in his important book, Dominion, contends, “So profound has been the impact of Christianity on the development of Western civilization that it has come to be hidden from view.”

This impact is what we read of in Micah, swords being turned into plowshares. When Alfred defeated Guthrum, he and his leaders were required to be baptized and become Christians as the terms of peace. Guthrum was allowed to rule peacefully in East Anglia for the rest of his life, and everyone was able to sit under his own vine and under his own fig tree, and no one was able to make them afraid, for the Lord Almighty has spoken.

 

 

Uninvented: Jonah Had to be Real, Big Fish and All

Uninvented: Jonah Had to be Real, Big Fish and All

Jul 9, 2023 | Apologetics

If there is one book in the Bible that really gives the doubting Thomas’s among us fits it’s Jonah, the reluctant prophet. It wouldn’t be so hard to swallow, pun intended, if it wasn’t for putting that silly big fish in the story, but more of that below. As for the rest of the story, you have to love Jonah, he’s so much like all of us, sinners by nature who just don’t want to do what God commands. That is in fact the job description of a sinner! We’re rebellious little Cretans, as the Apostle Paul says, God’s enemies, literally by nature at war with him. So before we get all high-minded and “judge” Jonah, he is us! And it is just this kind of negativity that that brings out a realness in the story that speaks to its authenticity. Jonah is the criterion of embarrassment on steroids, meaning human nature being what it is, people just don’t write things that make themselves look so horrible. In fact, we naturally go out of our way to make ourselves look good, to excuse ourselves and mitigate our guilt. We don’t tell a story like Jonah unless it’s true.

Jonah’s tale begins with rank disobedience. The Lord tells him to go preach a warning to Nineveh, the great Assyrian city, and he runs in the exact opposite direction, and a very long way. God as He does with His people chases him down until he finally relents. Jonah decides to take a ship that he must think will surely allow him to escape this odious request (the Assyrians were a brutal people and Israel’s enemies), but you can tell he really doesn’t believe that. What makes the argument in Uninvented so persuasive to me is that the characters in the Bible behave psychologically like real people would, and Jonah reads as real as it gets. He knows like all of us really do that running from the Lord is futile, and as soon as the storm hits and things start getting bad, Jonah goes below deck and falls “into a deep sleep.” He’s basically depressed. The captain wonders how in the world he can sleep, and tells him to call on his god to save them.

In that time prior to “science” when people believed storms and weather were controlled by the gods, that’s what they did. Jonah knew better who actually controlled everything including storms. The sailors cast lots to see who’s to blame, and the lot falls to Jonah. When they ask who he is:

9 He answered, “I am a Hebrew and I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.”

I can almost see and hear a board and blasé Jonah saying this. No other ancient people believed in an eternal Creator God and you get the sense Jonah also wishes it wasn’t true at this point, but the sailors are terrified because Jonah’s already told them he’s running away. The sea is getting rougher and they ask him what they must do to calm it down, and he says throw him into the sea. What? Won’t that tick off of your Creator God, Jonah? They decided not to chance it, and try everything else, but it keeps getting worse, so they throw him over. Then we read the words that give the skeptics and doubters fits:

17 Now the Lord provided a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.

Impossible! They think. No way a human being can last inside of a fish, no matter how big. It’s really gross if you think about it for too long, not to mention dangerous. And impossible! Is it?

Let’s address the word impossible. I’ve heard people say that over the years regarding this story, but what exactly does it mean. How about this:

  • not possible; unable to be, exist, happen, etc.
  • unable to be done, performed, effected, etc.

Now a question for those who think it’s impossible for a man to be swallowed by a great fish and stay alive three days and nights. How exactly do you know this? That such a thing is impossible. Are you not begging the question? In other words, aren’t you only assuming such a thing can’t happen? And in fact you really have no idea if it could happen or not? But, you say, it is literally physiologically not possible, stomach acids, lack of oxygen, etc. Well, that really depends on what one assumes, doesn’t it.

Let’s assume something else, my own question begging, if you will. Nothing is impossible with God. If God exists, then preparing a great fish to swallow a man and keep him alive for three days and nights is a piece of cake, easy peasy, not a problem, can do it in His sleep, so to speak. Why? Well, because by definition as the notion of God has come down to us from the ancient Hebrews then through Christianity, God is all powerful. God is all mighty. God has all knowledge, all wisdom, all understanding. We can also add something that’s truly beyond comprehension to us, as if all this is not. He is everywhere, omnipresent. Try to wrap your mind around that! But don’t, you’ll hurt yourself.

Why burden yourself with the Enlightenment philosophical baggage (naturalism, miracles can’t happen, rationalism, etc.), and just read the text as if it could very well possibly be true. Then judge the text for what it is. Does it read real? Does it have the magic word, verisimilitude? For those new to the word, it means the quality of appearing to be true or real. Like a great work of fiction or movie, if it has verisimilitude you’re all in, if not you won’t engage with it for long. The Bible has verisimilitude written all over it, from beginning to end, if only it isn’t shackled to someone’s anti-supernatural assumptions, which are in fact rightly called a bias. And it’s a groundless bias if God in fact exists, which he obviously does! As I often say, there are relatively few philosophical, materialist (matter is all that is) atheists. Everyone else knows God exists because, well, everything couldn’t possibly come from nothing!

One of the reasons the Bible reads so real to me, and why I wrote Uninvented, is because most of the characters who encounter the miraculous are just as incredulous as we are. The ancients in this were no different than we post-Enlightenment Westerners. Such things do not normally happen, so can they ever happen? I’ll end this with one powerful story that reflects this dynamic so wonderfully, the story of Abraham and Sarah. Who does God choose to bring kings and nations through, like sand on the seashore and stars in the sky? A barren old couple, of course! And we’re talking really old. The Lord called Abram and Sarai at 75 and 65, beyond child rearing already, promised him that sand and those stars, then made them wait another twenty-five years! God would leave no doubt whatsoever who was responsible for those nations. In Genesis 18 the Lord visits them and says Sarah will have a son in a year. Then we read these very real words:

13 Then the Lord said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Will I really have a child, now that I am old?’ 14 Is anything too hard for the Lord? I will return to you at the appointed time next year, and Sarah will have a son.”

15 Sarah was afraid, so she lied and said, “I did not laugh.”

But he said, “Yes, you did laugh.”

Is that verisimilitude or what! And talk about the criterion of embarrassment. Notice the rhetorical question the Lord puts to them. Of course not! Nothing is too hard for Him, including Jonah in a big fish kept alive for three days and then vomited onto dry land.

 

 

 

 

By Golly, Lennon Was Right, All We Really Do Need is Love!

By Golly, Lennon Was Right, All We Really Do Need is Love!

Jul 5, 2023 | Eschatology

The three uses of the law is not something most Christians give much thought to, as in not at all. As Protestant Evangelical Christians, if that’s what we are, our relationship to God’s law can be ambivalent and ambiguous. I had been a Christian over five years before another Christian would give me a formal introduction to the law. He told me most Christians ignore the law because of a distorted view of the gospel, as if it set aside God’s law as no longer binding on the Christian. If we think about it for even a moment that is, of course, absurd. God’s law is a reflection of his being, a transcription of his character, and it can no more be set aside than his holiness. Here according the late great R.C. Sproul are the three uses of the law:

The first purpose of the law is to be a mirror. On the one hand, the law of God reflects and mirrors the perfect righteousness of God. The law tells us much about who God is. Perhaps more important, the law illumines human sinfulness. Augustine wrote, “The law orders, that we, after attempting to do what is ordered, and so feeling our weakness under the law, may learn to implore the help of grace.” The law highlights our weakness so that we might seek the strength found in Christ. Here the law acts as a severe schoolmaster who drives us to Christ.

A second purpose for the law is the restraint of evil. The law, in and of itself, cannot change human hearts. It can, however, serve to protect the righteous from the unjust. Calvin says this purpose is “by means of its fearful denunciations and the consequent dread of punishment, to curb those who, unless forced, have no regard for rectitude and justice.” The law allows for a limited measure of justice on this earth, until the last judgment is realized.

The third purpose of the law is to reveal what is pleasing to God. As born-again children of God, the law enlightens us as to what is pleasing to our Father, whom we seek to serve. The Christian delights in the law as God Himself delights in it. Jesus said, “If you love Me, keep My commandments” (John 14:15). This is the highest function of the law, to serve as an instrument for the people of God to give Him honor and glory.

We get the first purpose because we know we are transgressors of God’s law, and that’s what drives us to the gospel. We also in some way get the second but don’t see it as relevant to how entire societies are governed. Since we don’t live in a “theocracy,” the Ten Commandments and the rest of God’s law is not applicable in, for example, America. How’s that working out for us? Secularism is a jealous god which exalts man’s law above God’s law. As in our personal lives so in society, it is either autonomy, self law, or theonomy, God’s law. There is no in between, but that is a topic for another post, many other posts.

 

The third use is what I want to focus on, and why the title of this post and shout out to the also late great John Lennon, and to Doug Wilson in this video for giving me the idea. If you read the reference above to John’s gospel (pure coincidence it’s also a John?), you might see where I’m going with “All you need is love.” Most of us would not equate love with law. In fact, I dare say, we might even say law and love are antithetical, which shows just how programmed we are by our secular Triumph of the Therapeutic age (in the title of Philip Rieff’s 1966 book). Modern people see love in every way but what it really is, the hard selfless often sacrificial work of seeking the benefit of others, the kind of love the Apostle Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 13, that kind of love. Most Christians are familiar with the Greek word for this kind of love, agape-ἀγάπη, or “love which centers in moral preference.” In other words, it isn’t driven by emotion, as in another Greek word for love eros, which we know as romantic love, but by choice. That’s why love is a verb.

This also brings to mind the question the Pharisees asked Jesus when he was proving a conundrum to the Sadducees, “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” I imagine like so much of what Jesus did, what he said next was also completely unexpected to the Pharisees:

37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Jesus is of course quoting from one of his favorite Old Testament books, Deuteronomy. He is also connecting loving God with loving neighbor from Leviticus, one of the last books in the Old Testament we might think of as loving. But God’s law is love, and the only basis for true human flourishing, made possible for Christians because of the gospel. Even non-Christians can love because they’re made in God’s image and know to some degree that love is better than self-absorption.

It is instructive to see in the Leviticus passage, right after God commands us to love our neighbor as ourselves He declares, “I am the LORD.” I am not sure why he did this, but maybe loving our neighbor has something to do with who God is. Not exactly the meanie Old Testament God the second century heretic Maricon claimed he was.

This Old Testament biblical theme of love is also perfectly consistent with the New Covenant revealed in Christ in the gospel. Love and law are connected as Paul shows us in Romans 13:

8 Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. 9 The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not covet,” and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” 10 Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.

How many of us connect love with law, let alone think love is its fulfillment? We see law as constricting and scary, as in “the long arm of the law.” But life without law is anarchy which is destruction and the antithesis of love. This means God’s justice must be meted out when his law is transgressed and thus also a reflection of his love. The ultimate display of this being God himself in Christ paying the penalty for the sins of His people and the world. Paul also connects the law with the gospel regarding it’s second use in I Timothy 1:

8 We know that the law is good if one uses it properly. 9 We also know that the law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, 10 for the sexually immoral, for those practicing homosexuality, for slave traders and liars and perjurers—and for whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine 11 that conforms to the gospel concerning the glory of the blessed God, which he entrusted to me.

It is highly unlikely John Lennon has God’s law and the gospel in mind when he sang, “All you need is love,” and he was certainly being sarcastic, but he was more right than he could have imagined (pun intended?).

Calvin Coolidge on the 4th of July

Calvin Coolidge on the 4th of July

Jul 4, 2023 | America, Uncategorized

In 1926 in the early days of the rise of progressivism in America, President Calvin Coolidge gave a 4th of July address on the 150th anniversary of that blessed day. It’s worth reading the entire address, but I’ve pulled out two sections that indicate he understood in some sense a “fundamental transformation of America” was under way, in President Obama’s infamous words. We are now on the other side of that transformation and we see just how ugly it can be. Let us take his words to heart, and pray and fight like the patriots who bequeathed this great country to us, that God grants us again that liberty under God which so many fought and died and lived for.

About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning cannot be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction cannot lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.

He concluded:

We live in an age of science and of abounding accumulation of material things. These did not create our Declaration. Our Declaration created them. The things of the spirit come first. Unless we cling to that, all our material prosperity, overwhelming though it may appear, will turn to a barren scepter in our grasp. If we are to maintain the great heritage which has been bequeathed to us, we must be like-minded as the fathers who created it. We must not sink into a pagan materialism. We must cultivate the reverence which they had for the things that are holy. We must follow the spiritual and moral leadership which they showed. We must keep replenished, that they may glow with a more compelling flame, the altar fires before which they worshiped.