Bring Out The Old
STRICTLY PERSONAL column for February, 1990
RING OUT THE OLD, ETC.
We now enter the last tenth of the last century of the world’s history before the Second Advent of Jesus Christ. If the calendar is right (and that qualifying clause always has to be included when guessing), the year 2000 is the limit for the Advent. Some subtract four years for a birth of 4 B.C., but as one of my students pointed out to me, a 4 B.C. birth in September would be only a three and three months birth B.C. by our January to January calendar. This would give an Advent date of 1997 instead of 1996 (which subtracted four), and it would put a maximum date for the rapture in 1990 instead of 1989. However, the calendar can be completely off; one fellow wrote me and proved that Christ was born in 2 B.C., in which case ….
At any rate, here it is 1990; ten years left in the sixth millennium. Anyone knows the seventh millennium has to be a “Sabbath” of rest. Here it is 1990; the European Common Market is set up, the German “MARK” is ready to set up “THE MARK”; the Man of Sin (the Pope) now has Eastern Europe under his thumb as well as Western Europe, the United States, and South and Central America; the computers are in place to monitor your personal habits in your bedroom, bathroom, living room, business office, and on your tennis court; and a good depression is just around the corner with the price of gold going up to $1000 an ounce and the American paper dollar going completely “Savings and Loan” by the “HUD” route. At present it is worth about eleven cents in metal. It was worth only twenty cents back in 1985, and only about 28 cents back in 1960. Progress: evolution, if you ever saw it.
I look back. When you get near the “threescore and ten” you can see a long way back. From here, hindsight is always better than foresight. I see about five thousand souls that God gave me, who are now “eternally secure.”
About two thousand of them were grown men and women, and at least two hundred of them were Roman Catholics. I see over two hundred young men (there were 137 back in 1970) called to preach and in the ministry, and I had the privilege of training at least a hundred of these myself. BBC, Arlington, Tennessee Temple, and Bob Jones got what was left.
I look back. I hope I never see two of those “hinder” years again: those years were 1960 and 1987. You can have THOSE years. Yet even in those years the Lord sustained me, kept me out of the hospital, paid all my bills, kept the doors to the ministry open, saved souls right and left, and kept all of my children in good health. Few men in life get a “lot” cast like that, and I am aware of it, being thoroughly familiar with the tragedies and disasters in the lives of thousands of people I have had contact with in the ministry.
Way “back yonder,” I see the Great Depression which struck American when I was eight years old. I was born when Harding was President and grew up under Mr. Silence (Calvin Coolidge) and Herbert Hoover. When the bottom dropped out in 1929 we ate mush, cheese, and peanut butter sandwiches (without butter) and potatoes until 1936. In 1939 when I had “come of age” (18), the bottom dropped out again: Hitler marched into Poland. Those were the desperate years, the sinful years, the degenerate years: jazz music, swing music, marijuana in the band, the French Quarter, street fights, breaking into houses, stealing cars, bootlegging liquor from a “wet state” (Missouri) into a “dry” state (Kansas). Then four years in the infantry: Ft. Leavenworth, Ft. Ord, Ft. Rucker (“Camp” in those days), Ft. Jackson, etc. Overseas: Hawaii, Johnson Island, Luzon, Okinawa, Iwo Jima, Japan, Hawaii again, Japan again, home to Frisco.
The first family I raised was a family of five: three boys and two girls. The next family was two girls, and the last family was three boys. Along the way eleven grandchildren showed up. Along the way, I got saved (March 14, 1949) and set up three independent Baptist churches “from scratch.” Somewhere along the way I picked up playing a harmonica, then the drums, then the guitar, then the tuba. Somewhere along the way I mastered water colors, oils, pastels, charcoal, pen and ink, and acrylics. Somewhere in that process I also managed to paint thirty-five baptistries, paint thirty portraits for the Christian Hall of Fame, and turn out sixty-one books.
I see nothing but GRACE looking backwards: the unmerited, undeserved kindness and favor of God. Reviewing the past I cannot for the life of me see why I was allowed to live long enough to find Chnst, and then even further why I was allowed forty-one years to serve Him when by all rights I should have been in my grave as far back as 1960. It is a miracle that I can still see well enough to play racquetball and hockey, after having typed, written, read, or proofread more than three million pieces of paper; this would not count going through the Bible 115 times (1200 pages each time). It is a miracle that I can still run a mile and jump rope, after standing “on my pins” on a cement floor three to four hours a night, four nights a week, for twenty-four years, and then taking Taekwondo and karate lessons on top of that after I was forty years old. It is a miracle that all of my children accepted Christ as their Saviour and none of them have ever questioned the Genesis account of Creation or the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, although seven of them were raised in the public schools.
From here (1990) the past is a miracle. In the present by the grace of God the house and furniture are paid for, the school and the church are paid for, the books, tracts, cassettes, and video tapes are going out to the ends of the earth, and Adrian Rogers, Billy Graham, Elvis Presley, and Governor George Wallace have had my studies on the Book of Revelation in their ears and before their eyes. I don’t even know of scores of others who may have gotten ahold of the material and would not have known about these if the “grapevine” had not sent the messages.
It is great to be saved. It is even better to know it, and it is even better to be able to enjoy it. Twenty-seven years the “other side” of Calvary (1921-1949) could never compete with the forty-one I’ve had “this side” of Calvary (1949-1990). I was thinking the other day, if I had stayed in the infantry back in the forties and done my “full thirty,” I could have retired back in 1974. Already I am sixteen years past retirement age, and no retirement yet. I baptized two converted Catholic women last week in the baptistry. Souls are still getting saved, and the BBB is now being circulated in all fifty states and seven foreign countries.
We will continue, by the grace of God, this year as last year. No gimmicks, no tricks, no “Alumni Association,” no slick school catalogues, no “performing artists” to sell the school, no bonds, no drives, no loans, no interest, no “stewardship drives,” no pushes for attendance, no buses, no “prayer bands,” no “gift offers” to anyone, and no advertising for the church in anyone’s newspaper. God willing and God giving us strength–and if He doesn’t, we will collapse on the spot–we will continue as we have in the past. It is straight forward, no compromise, no quarter given or taken, no “using a Book” because “we prefer it” and think it is “the best translation.” No correcting the Holy Bible with commercial copies of copies of a dead language (Koine Greek), no compromise with any scholar living or dead when dealing with Absolute Truth and Absolute Authority. No retreat. No backing up, no groveling and sniveling before the degrees of the Christian celebrities and Christian educators whose humanistic opportunism enabled them to cash in on the bankrupt public Federal school system. Straight on; right down the middle of the lane to the end of the course.
This year (if the Lord tarries) I will hit the sixty-nine mark–if He lets me live. Frankly, I will be looking straight up in MAY of 1990 and hoping that the 4 B.C. date is right and not the 2 B.C. or (horrors!) the 1 B.C. All of my family wish you the best of everything, if you are a child of God who believes and loves THE BOOK. I have no bone to pick with any of you if that is the case. God called this junk yard dog to pick on a different set of bones, and I’m getting plenty of “marrow” these days!
Vorwaerts! Folgen Sie mir! One more round, one more grenade. One more shot. Tighten your belt, adjust the pack strap, secure the ammo, make sure the canteen lid is on tight. Line up the sights, relax, squeeze slowly and let the kick startle you when it comes. “Ready on the right! Ready on the left! Ready on the firing line! The flag is up, the flag is waving, the flag is down…. COMMENCE FIRING!”