Oct 8, 2016 — More on Dan Hall’s Recovery

Dan is making remarkable strides medically following a severe spinal cord injury. I visited with him and Hazel yesterday in Houston, and am amazed at his progress. The journey ahead is a very long one, but both Dan and Hazel are facing it all with a powerful sense of God’s presence, as well as a powerful sense of appreciation for both the medical staff and the financial help of so many.”

Thanks to all who have made contributions! And remember the apostolic counsel (which is the Christian life condensed into a single sentence), “Bear ye one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ.” (Galatians 6:2)

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Oct 1, 2016

Dan Hall, husband of our daughter Hazel, is recovering from a horrific spinal cord injury. Dan is paralyzed and will be in therapy for months, we are told. Many have asked about helping them. I am asking you to pray for both of them (and their children and grandchildren). That comes first.  I am asking God to heal Dan and triple the effect of his ministry — which has been characterized by abundant fruit for decades! — through this experience.  

If you wish to help financially, that would be welcomed, of course. Neither of them would ask for such help, but I am, echoing the request by Dr. Roger Patterson, senior pastor of the West University Baptist Church in Houston, and long-time friend of the Halls (and a church to which Dan has often ministered.) 

You may give any way you wish, but I suggest: make checks payable to West University Baptist Church and mail to Dan Hall Benevolence Fund, c/o West University Baptist Church, 6218 Auden Street, Houston, TX 77005.  The church has been wonderfully helpful to Dan and Hazel.  (Do not put Dan’s name on the check; that would render the gift non-deductible. That releases the control of your contribution to the benevolence committee which will attempt to meet the needs of the family and make your gift tax deductible.)  

Thank you, in advance of whatever help you may be to Dan and Hazel, and my God richly reward you as He so often promised. I am thinking here, initially, of Jesus’ stunning words in that regard recorded in:

 

He who receives you receives Me, and he who receives Me receives Him who sent Me. He who receives a prophet in name of a prophet shall receive a prophet’s reward. And he receives a righteous man in the name of a righteous man shall receive a righteous man’s reward. And whoever gives one of these little ones only a cup of cold water in the name of a disciple, assuredly, I say to you, he shall be no means lose his reward.

SEND THIS NOTE OUT TO YOUR FRIEND LIST IF YOU FEEL FREE TO.  

God bless you. 
Bill Anderson 

Easter is always interesting, both for believers and non-believers.  Every succeeding year causes growing Christians to appreciate more deeply the consequences of the event, and every succeeding year produces anti-resurrection chatter, much of it in the churches themselves.

One expects Jesus’ resurrection to offend outsiders, and especially the secular press which must annually attempt to re-debunk it.  For them real resurrection simply cannot be allowed to happen.  The very idea violates the faith-presuppositions of all so-called “naturalists” and their passionate religion of “immanence,” i.e., what you see is what you get and it’s all you get.  All the tired rhetoric (Jesus swooned and revived, His body was stolen, the apostles were plagiarizers, liars or psychos, etc.) re-appears annually, with now-and-then new “gospels” discovered, even one from Judas, to enlighten us with the real truth.  Who is to be believed, Simon Peter who had skin in the game, including the title of “First Pope” riding on the deal, or shamelessly abused Judas who was driven, not by guilt but because he knew too much, to suicide?

Spurgeon explained the phenomenon: “The sun,” he said, “cannot discover herself to a blind man.”  Nor to a man who holds both hands over his eyes.

Few can be surprised at such a come-to-pass, but it is troubling to many church-goers to learn that their own pastors—and writing theologians—take the same position as the critics.  Sometimes equivocating, sometimes not, pastors are offended at Jesus actually rising from the dead.  Flannery O’Connor pinpoints their problem:  “’Jesus was the only One that ever raised the dead,’ The Misfit continued, ‘and He shouldn’t have done it.  He thrown everything off balance.’”  Theological misfits, ancient and modern, don’t like Jesus acting up and showing up and “throwing” things off balance by walking out of an actual grave.

Once, in a pre-Easter setting, I asked a question of two seminary-trained pastors (true misfits) of churches in my city in a Q&A with other pastors: “Did Jesus actually rise from the dead?” The first immediately said, “No, He didn’t.”  The second trumped him: “Well, He did,” then added, astonishingly, “but it didn’t matter.”  The odds are that the majority of senior pastors, both Catholic and Protestant (Baptists aren’t technically “Protestant” but count them in as well) in your town would not be bothered by either answer.

It turns out that many things about Jesus offends, indeed, scandalizes, these people: His birth, His sinless life, His teaching, His miracles, His substitutionary and atoning death, His resurrection and His second coming to earth.  A British theologian answered the “second coming” question this way during my seminary days: “I am willing to admit that there is a certain ‘not-yetness’ about the Kingdom!”  How is that for courage!   And a local pastor of a large “mainline” denomination church says openly that he doesn’t believe in an actual hell, and he doesn’t know a single pastor in his denomination who does.

Here is the question: honestly, in what sense can such men call themselves, in any meaningful sense of the words, “Christian ministers?”  That is not to berate them.  They may choose, if they wish, to believe in, and advocate for, the Church of Penguinism. (Yes, there is one).  That is their right.  But, denying the pivotal act of Christ’s resurrection (forgetting all the other doctrinal denials), how are they “ministering” in a “Christianly” way.  How is the use of the words itself not a demonstrable fraud?  Why doesn’t their shame of historic Christianity force them simply to be honest?  Why not, openly and honestly, abandon the farce?  “I am sorry; I cannot possibly believe this clap-trap any longer, and I here and now resign to pursue an honorable living elsewhere.”

What, one asks, about Jesus’ own offense in all this!  That would make a catchy front-page for “Time” or “Newsweek” next Easter!  One could cite fifty relevant sentences from Him (all the while assuming He actually lived and we have a trustworthy witness to Him in the New Testament!), but one will more than suffice: “Whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him the Son of Man also will be ashamed when he comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels.” (Mark 8:38)  Let every man ponder quietly but soberly the possibility of experiencing unquantifiable shame.  With no chance of it ever ending.

How long has it been since you heard anything about hell?  I was praying one morning about the subject, and, specifically, whether or not I should preach about it at a certain church which had invited me to speak.

I had been thinking about the subject for some time, had just finished a book on it (“Four Views of Hell”) and had re-read my manuscript on the subject. (In that manuscript—“Is Hell Really Going to Happen?”—I had exegeted every verse in the entire New Testament on the subject.)

When I asked the Lord that morning whether or not I should preach about hell at the aforementioned church, I clearly heard Him say…

“You may if you wish.  My people need to hear sermons on the subject.  Pastors rarely preach about it.  They don’t because it is an embarrassment to them.  They think they are more humane than I am.  That they are more loving and kind than I am.  That they could run the universe better than I can.  My people have little or no awareness of the reality of hell, no sense of its horror.  I am grieved that my people don’t believe me about the subject.  They argue about the type of language I used to reveal it.  If they knew what I know about hell, what sort of language would they have used?  Had I spoken its true reality they have no language of sufficient power to convey that reality and they would have been slain under the impact of the knowledge; they couldn’t have stood it.  Is what my Son said about it not enough in itself?  They argue about how long it will last and desire for those in hell simply to cease to exist at some point.  I could ask them fifty questions they couldn’t answer (about the subject), but I ask only one:  how shallow is it of them to hope that the best thing that can ever happen to a human is that he or she simply ceases to exist?  Is that man’s highest hope for somebody?  How shallow is it that they rather choose to want that and not that a human being should sit about my throne for eternity and enjoy all that heaven is?   Which, by the way, is another subject they cannot possibly fathom, either, but they immediately believe whatever I said about it without question.  All of it grieves me.”

See my ebook, “Is Hell Really Going to Happen?”

I am asked, from time to time, about the matter of women being allowed to teach, or to teach men, in a church setting.  As a senior pastor of over 55 years, I suggest the following as a working foundation.

(1)  Women played a significant role in the Bible as teachers.  There were several prophetesses: Huldah – II Kings 22:14-20, Deborah – Judges 4:4, the four daughters of Philip who prophesied -Acts 21:9, etc.  There is also the promise, in Peter’s pentecostal sermon — speaking of the new dispensation of the Holy Spirit — our dispensation — that “…your daughters shall prophesy.” (Acts 2:17)  Corinthian women were both praying and prophesying in public (I Cor. 5:11) and were not admonished to cease, but to do so decorously.  It is, obviously, very difficult to prophesy in private.

(2)  Paul says in II Tim 2:11-12, “Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection.  But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.”  (a) Paul knew a woman could properly prophesy (he had himself allowed it in Corinth), so he surely wasn’t saying she couldn’t minister publicly.  (b) “Silence” (vss 11-12) is the Greek word esukia, which, first, means “quietness,” or “with a quiet or tranquil spirit,” and, secondly, “silent.” (See Thayer, Bagster, et al.)  (c) Paul’s concern here is to state clearly that a woman must not usurp authority to do a thing which, under authority, she may properly do.  (The word “usurp” refers to “an autocrat, a self-doer, one who domineers.”)  (d) Paul would have, consistent with all the NT materials, held that a woman should not serve as a pastor, and “teach” here may refer to the pastoral/teaching office. ( It is well known that, in both Jewish and Roman culture, a woman could speak in public, but could not contend, dispute, argue, or interrupt — all of which a man could do. She was expected to ask her husband, in private any questions she might have.  That might be what Paul has in mind in this passage. In any case, Paul does not allow a woman to “usurp authority.”)

(3) I Cor. 14:34 says a woman should keep silence (sigaoo) in the churches.  The Greek word does mean, principally, to be silent, as Paul goes on to say in v35 (women should ask of their husbands at home what was spoken in the church), but it is to be remembered that this passage is, very obviously, in the context of speaking in tongues in Corinth, and the apostle might be saying, only, that a woman should not speak in tongues publicly at all.

My personal position is that a woman may teach in a church setting if she does so with the blessing of both pastor and church, and if she remains under such authority.  She should not serve as a pastor, since the NT knows nothing about such an event.  (That obviously has nothing to do with ability, experience, giftedness, or effective service elsewhere; it emanates from the apparent divine order for church life.)  I also think, even in the very best of such long-term situations where she is teaching men, it is not the ideal.  God’s NT design for the church is, manifestly — gladly confessing all the rich blessings of ministry by women and the need for the church to benefit from the special spiritual sensitivity God has given many of them — that men should lead it.

The question has arisen recently in Southern Baptist settings, as to whether it is proper for a woman to teach men in a seminary setting.  SBC seminary presidents have taken varying positions on the subject.

The mission fields have their own special concerns and considerations about the issue, since a disproportionate number of missionaries are female.

As a footnote:  I have never met a godly woman who was not happy to serve her Lord faithfully regardless of whatever titles might or might not have been given to her.

THE QUESTIONS (ANSWER THESE FIRST BEFORE CONSIDERING LEAVING)

1.  Am I living in sin? (I will have a total lack of objectivity about all important things if so. Get that fixed and then consider leaving.)

2.  Have I alienated my people with unwise preaching, counseling, activity? (That may cause me to go, but I must be sure I cannot correct it by staying, which is usually the Savior’s method.)

3.  Am I simply tired? (Again, fatigue may be so deep and persistent that I must leave, but that must never be the primary consideration.  Lincoln, toward the end, told Mary about a “tired place” inside him that “nothing will touch.” But we’re glad he stayed!)

4.  Honestly, will the flock be better off with me present or absent?

5.  The biggee: Has God either told me (a) I MAY go, or (b) I MUST go?  or ( c) I MUST NOT GO! (He doesn’t always demand that we go, but if not, may allow us to do so.)

B.  SIGNS THAT IT’S TIME TO GO (BUT, THESE ARE NOT INFALLIBLE)

1.  I have lost my congregational and/or staff leadership.

2.  I have lost sight of my vision and attendant goals for my ministry here.

3.  I have lost my moral capital and there is no likelihood that I can regain it.  (Once lost, it is very, very rare to regain it.)

4.  I am persistently tired—in body, mind, spirit, soul; no joy in ministry or life.

5.  I am risking losing my family by staying.

6.  I have lost my love for my flock and consistently—long term—believe I have nothing else to say to them.  I don’t “hear the trumpets” on Sunday morning  any more. The well is deep and I have nothing to draw with! (Operative words are “consistently,” and “long-term.” If you’re not tired at times, you’re probably backslidden.)

7.  My most spiritually-mature people believe it’s time for me to go.

8.  God has either given me permission or a mandate to go.

1. “No historian thinks well of human nature.” (Lord Acton, from his famous “Lectures on the History of Liberty,” quoted by John Danford, Anglican Theological Review, Winter, 2002)
2. “The only thing worse than a devil is an educated devil.” (Hambone)
3. “Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved.” (G.K. Chesterton, “Orthodoxy,” p. 15) (The London Times once ran an article asking readers to answer this question, “What is wrong with London?” Chesterton wrote the newspaper with this answer, “I am!’)
4. “Somewhere in my diary—-1890-? I wrote, ‘I have staked all on the essential goodness of human nature…’ (Now thirty-five years later I realize) how permanent are the evil impulses and instincts in man—how little you can count on changing some of these—for instance the appeal of wealth and   power—by any change in the (social) machinery…No amount of knowledge or science will be of any avail unless we can curb the bad impulse.”   (Margaret I. Cole, ed. “Beatrice Webb’s Diaries,” Longmans, Green, and Co., 1956, London, p. 65; quoted in Timothy Keller’s “Counterfeit Gods”, p. xv)
5. H. G. Wells held a rosy view of the perfectability of humans until, at the end of WWII in 1945, he wrote in “A Mind at the End of Its Tether: “Homo sapiens, as he has been pleased to call himself, is played out.” (Tim Keller, “Counterfeit Gods,” Dutton, The Penguin Group, U.S.A., 2009, p.1 xx-xxi”)
6. “…(M)an is insecure, and…he seeks to overcome his insecurity by a will-to-power….He pretends he is not limited.” (Reinhold Niebuhr, “The Nature and Destiny of Man,” Volume I, Human Nature; Scribner, NY, 1964, ibid., p. 110)
7. “Most men, I suppose, have a paleolithic savage somewhere in them…I have anyway.” (Written by a “gentle English scholar” about his experience in the trenches in WWI; p. 992, “The Columbia History of the world.”)
8. Sigmund Freud: “A “bit of unconquerable nature…lurks concealed in every man—it is the shape of our own mental constitution.” (“Readings in Western Civilization,” Knoles/Snyder, Lippincott, 1951, p. 846) “Civilized society is perpetually menaced with disintegration through this primary hostility of men towards one another.” Ibid. p. 853.) Freud spoke of “the ineffaceable feature of human nature,” that of aggression. “Men clearly do not find it easy to do without satisfaction of this tendency to aggression that is in them…” (p. 854)  “…(N)othing is so completely at variance with original human nature as the attempts throughout history to erect barriers against” such aggression….This impulse to aggressive behaviour “has reigned almost supreme” since primitive times: i.e.,  it is not learned but is innate. (p. 853) Freud’s dismal conclusion? “The fateful question of the human species seems to me to be whether and to what extent the cultural process developed in it will succeed in mastering the derangements of communal life caused by the human instinct of aggression and self-destruction.” (858)
9. “Aggression is remarkably preserved in (human) evolution.” (Biophysicist on the Charlie Rose TV program, Saturday, January 29, 2011, 7:18 PM)
10. Herbert W. Butterfield (“Christianity and History”): “Nobody may pretend that there has been an elimination of the selfishness in human nature, and the self-centeredness of man.” (p. 52) “What history does is…to uncover man’s universal sin.” (p. 63)  “What we are always faced with is the defect of human nature in general.” ( p. 76) “It is essential not to have faith in human nature. Such faith is a recent heresy and a very disastrous one.” (p. 66)
11. Wheaton College professor of English, Alan Jacobs, writes, in his “Original Sin: A Cultural History:”  “Again and again the literature and culture of the West have returned to this doctrine, worrying over it, loathing it, rejecting it—only to call it back in times of great crisis or great misery.”
12. Twenty-four hundred years ago Plato repeated a story about a man named Gyges who found a magic ring which, when adjusted, allowed the wearer to not only become invisible, but to see through objects and know all secrets, and thus exert immense power (including murdering the king). The story deals with the essential question of whether or not any man exists who, so empowered, would not take evil advantage of his power. The answer of most who have studied the story is, “No, probably not.” One version of the story has Gyges looking into a mirror, seeing the perversity of his own heart, and dropping dead of apoplexy.
13. War is “the state of nature.” (Thomas Hobbes, Bartlett’s Quotations, p. 258, 11^th edition)
14. “The horrid tale of perjury and strife, murder and spoil, which men call history.” (Wm Cullen Bryant,  Bartlett’s Quotations, p. 373, 11^th edition)
15. Robert Bork, “Slouching Towards Gomorrah,”Every new generation constitutes a wave of savages who must be civilized by their families, schools, and churches.” (p. 21) “The real ideals, perceptions, and interests of humans differ and conflict, and always will. Attempts to suppress aggression entirely and to substitute love, being unnatural, will finally erupt in greater aggression. When utopians are frustrated in the realization of their vision by the real nature of humans, who are then seen as perversely evil, they can turn nasty and violent.” (Ibid. p. 28) ” “They (political liberals) would have done better had they remembered original sin.” (Ibid, p. 64) “Certainly, mankind without Christianity conjures up a dismal prospect,  The record of mankind with Christianity is daunting enough….The dynamism it has unleashed has brought massacre and torture, intolerance and destructive pride on a huge scale, for there is a cruel and pitiless nature in man which is sometimes impervious to Christian restraints and encouragements. But without those restraints, bereft of those encouragements, how much more horrific the history of these last 2,000 years must have been!” (Ibid., 295, emphasis added.)
16. “The ultimate cause of war is to be found no doubt in the nature of man.” (Carl Becker, eminent historian, “Readings in Western Civilization,” Knoles/Snyder, p. 886)
17. “The errors and illusions of our culture…are all expressions of too great an optimism about the goodness of human nature.” (Ibid., p. 874)
18. “Is man’s civilization only a wrappage, through which the savage nature of him can still burst, infernal as ever?” (Thomas Carlyle, Bartlett’s Quotations, 11th edition, p. 381)
19. “Perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart.” (Edgar Allan Poe, “The Black  Cat,” quoted in Bartlett’s Quotations, 11^th edition, 461)
20. David Hume, Scottish enlightenment philosopher, against Locke’s optimism re human nature: “In contriving any system of government, and fixing the several checks and controls of the constitution, every man ought to be supposed a knave, and to have no other end, in all his actions, than private interest. By this interest we must govern him, and by means of it, make him, notwithstanding his insatiable avarice and ambition, cooperate to public good.” (Quoted in  “Blessed are the Cynical,” Mark Ellingson, Brazos Press, ’03, p. 55)
21. “…whereby we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good and wholly inclined to do all evil…this corruption of nature, during this life, doth remain in those that are regenerated.” (From the Westminster Confession, Article VI,  Ibid, . 44)
22. “…(I)t is the fault and corruption of the Nature of every man, that naturally is engendered for the offspring of Adam; whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness, and is of his own nature inclined to evil, so that the flesh lusteth always contrary to the Spirit.” (Ibid.)
23. “…(T)he assertion of how we are marred by sin, from birth, is nonnegotiable for the classical Christian doctrine of sin.” (Ibid., p. 41)
24. “These early thinkers of the church clearly laid the groundwork for understanding sin as something that is bigger than us and our misdeeds, as a reality or condition that infects our entire nature, even from birth. Of course, there were biblical precedents for these affirmations.” (Ibid., p. 35)
25. “A 2000 New York Times poll confirmed this (the illusion about  the “goodness” of human nature): 73 percent of the respondents claimed that people are born good, and 85 percent thought that they could be pretty much anything they wanted to be,”
26. Edward Gibbon wrote the famed “The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.” “Gibbon’s point of view is best expressed in his observation that history is a record of ‘little more than the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.’” (“The Reader’s Ency.”, Second Edition, ed., Wm Rose Benet, p. 257)
27. Jonathan Edwards, American philosopher and theologian said that “sin was the property of the (human) species.” (Quoted in “The Reader’s Ency.,” Second Edition, ed. Wm Rose Benet, p. 302)
28. Woodrow Wilson wrote an essay entitled “The New Freedom” by which he meant freedom for the American worker from vast and all-powerful business corporations which, he said, had produced a lethal economic situation in America (this was in 1933). Always the kindly man, he said it was “no use in denouncing anybody (which he had specifically done!) or anything except human nature.”  He went on to say that Americans should be ashamed of our country, and our government, which had allowed such a situation to exist. (“Readings in Western Civ.,” Third Edition, Knoles-Snyder,  1960, p. 791)
29. Certain problematic situations will be fiercely debated and “will continue to do so until mankind shall have entered a stage of intellectual advancement which at present (1859!) seems at an incalculable distance.” (John Stuart Mill, “British Poetry and Prose,” Third Edition, Vol II, 1938, p. 422, emphasis added)
30. “It is astonishing that the mystery which is furthest removed from our knowledge—I mean the transmission of original sin—should be that without which we have no true knowledge of ourselves. It is in this abyss that the clue to our condition takes its turnings and windings, insomuch that man is more incomprehensible without the mystery than this mystery is incomprehensible to man.” (Blaise Pascal, quoted in “Systematic Theology,”  A. H. Strong, p. 635)
31. The founding fathers of the American republic well understood humankind’s tendencies toward pride, avarice and power, which was one of the foundational rationales for developing a division of powers in the new government. Alexander Hamilton said, “Take mankind in general, they are vicious—(and) their passions may be operated upon.” (“The Columbia History of the World,” eds., Garraty and Gay, p. 792) Madison, speaking of the same necessity of a division of powers said, “Ambition must be made to counteract  ambition.” ( Ibid., p. 790)
32. Herbert Spencer (1829-1903) was an ardent Darwinian evolutionist, in fact, a personal friend and defender of Darwin. He believed, clearly, in the perfectability of man. “Evil perpetually tends to disappear.” His problem  was that he saw depravity everywhere and, although he dreamed of man’s perfection, saw it nowhere, and expressed hopelessness at times that it would ever occur. “We have unmistakable proof that throughout all past time, there has been a ceaseless devouring of the weak by the strong.” The republican form of government, he said, was the best, but “requires the highest type of human nature—a type nowhere at present existing.” (All quotes from p. 580-581, Bartlett’s Quotations, 11^th Edition.)
33. A “School of the Law” arose in early Confucianism (which dealt more with pursuing the current moral codes than personal ethics) which “believed that man is basically bad and that he must be curbed through stringent laws.” (“The Columbia History of the World,” p. 116)
34. “Malcolm Muggeridge once said that human depravity is at once the most intellectuals. Reinhold Niebuhr declared, ‘No cumulation of contradictory evidence seems to disturb modern man’s good opinion of himself.’” (Has Christianity Failed You?, Ravi Zacharias, Zondervan, p. 64)
35. “The default position of the heart and inclination of the will is against God…The very condition of humanity worldwide reveals a bent toward that which is destructive….The point of the narrative (of the human story) is the propensity of humanity from the beginning to deny the warning and justify our own autonomy to become the ultimate judge of all reality. This choice to reject God’s authority and replace it with our own is now an inherited characteristic with which we all must struggle.” (Ibid., p. 84-5)
36.  “…selfishness is the human condition.” (Mark Ellingson,” Blessed are the Cynical,” Brazon Press, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2003, p. 20) “It is true that there are precedents for the neglect of original sin and of an appreciation of the degree to which all human beings are plagued by an insidious egocentricity.” (Ibid., p. 31)
37. “Stephen Hawking, author of the best-seller ‘Brief History of Time,’ warns that evolution will not improve the human race quickly enough to temper our aggression and avoid extinction. Our only hope, then, is to link up with beings elsewhere in the universe—a civilization of extraterrestrials who have themselves successfully evolved to a more advanced stage and can help us.” (Quoted in “How Then Shall We Live,” Tyndale House Publishers, Wheaton, Illinois, 1999, Charles Colson, p.  249)
38.  “Nature had left this tincture in the blood, That all men would be tyrants if they could.” (Daniel Defoe, “The Kentish Petition”
39. Martin Buber, the Jewish philosopher, exclaimed in disillusionment at the end of his life: “Who can change that intractable thing, human nature? There is a tragedy at the heart of things.”
40.  “The essence of modern history is man’s insurrection against God.”  (Eli Wiesel, quoted in Tournier’s “Escape from Loneliness,” p. 149)
41. “There must be a vein of original sin in human nature everywhere to which Hitlerism makes a strong appeal. The moral is that civilization is nowhere and never secure. It is a thin cake of custom overlying a molten mass of wickedness that is always boiling up for an opprtunity to burst out.”  (Quoted in Vance Havner’s “In Times Like These,” p. 92)
42. “There are two good men; one is dead and the other is not yet born.” A Chinese proverb
43. “We are all wicked. What we blame in another we will find in our own bosom. We live among the wicked, ourselves being wicked.” (Roman philosopher, Seneca)
44. “To understand any crime, we have only to look into our own heart.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
45. “…this assumption—of the essential goodness of man—may now be regarded as scientifically wrong for ‘a certain amount of ornery cussedness is built into each specimen of homo sapiens.’” (Dr. Donald Campbell, American Psychological Ass’n president)
46. “There is a radical evil in human nature.” (Immanuel Kant)
47.  “Man is born on an inclined plane, and is subject to a constant downward gravitational pull.” (Aristotle)
48.  “All of us have violated all the ten commandments.” (Billy Graham)
49. “There is more lostness, more profound and shocking lostness in the world today than ever efore. Men are finding new ways of being lost, and new levels of lostness.” (Ernest Hocking)
50. Against evolution, Herbert Spencer said, “It is quite possible, and I believe highly probable, that retrogression has been as frequent as progression.” (Strong’s Theology, p. 528)
51. “The human race is implicted in some terrible aboriginal calamity.” (Graham Green)
52. “Man is by inerasable nature as aggressive as an animal.” (Quoted in “Re-Entry,” J. Wesley White, p. 67)
53. “You scarcely need to open your Bible to prove that the human race is a race of fallen beings so corrupted by the taint of evil that they know no means of righting what is wrong.” (“Recovering the Christian Mind,” Harry Blamires, p. 19
54. Modern life is characterized by “a many-sided insurrection of the unregenerate natural man…against the regimen of Christendom.” (George Santayana, quoted in “Trousered Apes,” p. 33)
55. “Modern man is a trousered ape..” C. S. Lewis, “The Abolition of Man,”, p. 9 (Lewis does not, in this passage, label all men as “trousered apes,” but does hold to the doctrinal of universal original sin.)
56. “…man can only will that which is evil; and…the fall of Adam has infected and corrupted all men with a fatal taint. All are guilty before God.” (Quoted by Stuart Barton Babbage, “Man in Nature and Grace,” p. 50)
57. “Humanity is like an irresponsible child who has been presented with a set of machine tools, a box of matches, and a generous supply of dynamite,” (Quoted in “Ride the Wild Horses,” Hamilton)
58. “All the old primitive sins are not dead but are crouching in the dark corners of our modern hearts…still there, and still ghastly as ever.” (Carl Jung, Quoted in “World Aflame,” Billy Graham)
59. “Man is born and lives in sin. He cannot do anything for himself but can only do harm to himself. (Soren Kierkegaard in “Sickness Unto Death,” quoted in “World Aflame, Billy Graham, p. 138)
60. “From such crooked wood as that which man is made of, nothing straight can be fashioned.” (Immanuel Kant, “Aphorisms,” Auden/Kronenberger, p. 3)
61. “The perversity of human nature is the greatest of the mysteries of human life. “ (Arnold Toynbee)
62. “A ‘meaningless’ universe is not the logical deduction of natural science, but the bold invention of natural man; that is, of man in insurrection against God.” (Sherwood Wirt, “The Social Conscience of the Evangelical,” p. 148)
63. “Bestialism is a phenomenon of the human world, but a world already civilized.” “The Fate of Moder Man in the Modern World,” pp. 26-29)
64. “Once I was asked, ‘What’s the most important thing that you ever learned?’ That was easy for me: Adamic sin, the human tendency for evil. That concept helps explain the daily newspaper, the need for supervision in a plant or parental guidance for children. Without it I’d be mystified. It’s the true watershed of human thinking.” (Fred Smith, “Leadership,” Summer Quarter, p. 54, 1992)
65. A quote from a statement made by the Minnesota Crime Commission: “Every baby starts life as a little savage. He wants what he wants when he wants it—his bottle, his mother’s attention, his playmate’s toy, his uncle’s watch. Deny these and he seethes with rage and aggressiveness, which would be murderous were he not so helpless. He is, in fact, dirty. He has no morals, no knowledge, no skills. This means that all children, not just certain children, are born delinquent. If permitted to continue in the self-centered world of his infancy, given free reign to his impulsive actions, to satisfy his wants, every child would grow up a criminal, a thief, a killer, a rapist.”
66. “But the optimism began to seep away like water in sand, and Western man came up short against an ancient truth which he had dodged for a while: there is radical, and ineradicable, evil in the world…in men…in me!” (Lester DeCoster, “All Ye That Labor,” p. 10. Man is “essentially depraved…” (Ibid. p. 99) “One element which must always figure in our social judgments is the ‘human predicament.’ Man sins.” (Ibid.,107)
67. “Evil is not just in our imaginations. We can’t eradicate it with the right amount of social engineering or positive thinking. We sin. Though we can know God exists, we forget. Though we can know the truth, we fail to uphold it. We do the very things we don’t want to do. We are tempted by wealth, power, prestige, lust, gluttony, and greed, and often give in to those temptations. (“Indivisible,” Robison and Richards, Faith Words Publishers, 2012, p. 316)
68. “The doctrine of fallen man is the only Christian belief for which there is overwhelming empirical evidence.”  (C.S. Lewis, quoted in “Psychological Seduction,” W. K. Kilpatrick, p. 40) “There is not the slightest hint in the New Testament that we should have faith in ourselves.” (Ibid., p. 43)
69. “Whatever I am,’ wrote G. K. Chesterton, ‘I know I am not what I ought to be.’ When you read about the religions of primitive people or talk to those have studied them, you find that he was voicing a fairly universal sentiment. Eliade says that primitive man, “wants to be other than he finds himself.” (Ibid. 94) All the initiation ceremonies—which are universal among primitives— have as one of their points, to indicate that they want “to die to the fallen profane self and to be born to a new life, a life where a man might once again have contact with the sacred, and thus fulfill his true nature. One may call this superstition: that is a legitimate reaction. But it is not legitimate to pretend it is not there.”  (Ibid. 94)
70. “The trouble with man is not in his intellect, it is in his nature—the passions and the lusts. That is the dominating factor. And though you try to educate and control man it will avail nothing as long as his nature is sinful and fallen and he is a creature of passion and dishonor…The problem of man is the problem of a fallen, sinful, polluted nature.”  (Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, D. Martyn Lloyd Jones, Volume One, p. 168)
71. “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.” (Shakespeare,”Julius Caesar,” Act I, Scene 2, Line 134)

THE BIBLE

• “Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.” (Ecc. 8:11)
• “Truly the hearts of the sons of men are full of evil; madness is in their hearts while they live, and after that they go to the dead.” (Ecc. 9:3)
• “ For have we not previously charged both Jews and Greeks that they are all under sin? As it is written, There is none righteous, no not one….There is none that does good, no, not one.” (Romans 3: 9, 10, 12)
• “For we all stumble in many things….” (James 3:2)
• “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.” (I John 1:8,10)
• “…(D)eath spread to all men, because all sinned…” (Romans 5:12)