COMMUNISM AND THE
A clash and crash of conviction is at hand, nay is already
here, that involves a very Niagara for the
To most eyes it has now become plain that the modern
Church’s dream of converting the world, and so of setting up the Kingdom of
God, is a pure mirage.* “We used to think,” as Dr. Parkes Cadman says, “that God was
going to save the world by Methodism or Congregationalism or Presbyterianism:
the world will not be saved so in a million years.” A comparatively recent book – Christiaity, Communism, Adventism ‑ is
a belated expression, surely now
almost unique among instructed Christians, of a millennium now being created by
the Churches. Mr. Alexander Stewart's words are these: “The
Spirit of Jesus is permeating mankind. His
Kingdom is extending. Subconsciously men
are seeking the universal Kingdom of righteousness and peace. Their underlying desire is for the unfailing
Lordship of the Son of Man. Atheism,
materialism, anti‑Christian ethics, and godless principles are being
undermined.” It is hardly
credible that unawareness of contemporary facts can reach such a pitch. The rapid fall in missionary funds the growth
of the world's heathen population enormously beyond all Christian growth**;
powerful nations of Europe now making Christianity difficult or even
impossible; the anti‑God campaign spreading throughout the world; the
large proportion of Christian profession which is now a creedless shell: such facts, and many more, make the dream
that the world is undergoing conversion a colossal error.
[* A spiritual Kingdom is already here, the Church (Col. 1: 13); and a useful rule differentiates ‑
in all parabolic passages (e.g. Matt. 13.)
it is the Kingdom in mystery, and in nearly all literal passages it is the
Kingdom in manifestation.
** During the nineteenth century,
the greatest missionary epoch of history, while 3 to 4,000,000 souls, roughly
computed, were brought to Christ, the world's population grew by 200,000,000 ‑ a seventyfold increase of the
darkness over the light.]
But a far graver and more subtle danger is embodied in
such a work as Dr. Stanley Jones’ Christ and Communism. “I am persuaded,” says Dr. Jones, “that Christianity is headed
toward a supreme crisis ‑ perhaps a decisive crisis. Events are leading up to a world decision. This generation, or at the most the next, will
have to decide between materialistic, atheistic Communism and the
[*We have put into italics these astounding words. It is exactly the dilemma we have stated. The Second Advent is supposed to be a myth:
therefore, if organized Christian effort fails to establish the Kingdom, Communism
alone remains as the ultimate creed for us all. That will be apostasy.]
The setting up of the Kingdom is thus foreshadowed by Dr. Jones. “I
am persuaded that if Christianity were really applied again, it would result in
some form of collective sharing closely akin to communism. Christianity will not be looked on only as a
means of personal conversion, but a possible and workable programme for world
reconstruction. We can form groups for
the practice and study of the new Kingdom life. These groups will be the Kingdom in miniature,
Kingdom ‘cells’. We will welcome as
portions of the Kingdom those outside organized Christianity who, however
limited they may seem to us to be, nevertheless are striving for the New Day,
at least in some of its phases. This ‘informal
Christianity’ may be able in this crisis to see more clearly, and to act more
decisively, than organized Christianity. We will look on these brothers of the margin
as just as truly brothers as those whom we think of as brothers of the centre. It may turn out that they are nearer the
centre than we. We could not believe in
the inevitability of the Kingdom if we saw the Christian Church as the sole
medium of its coming. Whether we shall
be able to use any of the existing political parties or create a new one must
be decided by the enlightened judgment of the united Christian forces.”
This semi‑Christian, semi‑Communistic plan for
setting up the
[* It is solemn to remember that, by our Lord's
revelation, no man without being born again can ever even see the Kingdom (John 3: 3): for if
unregenerate in the neighbourhood of the Advent, he will be cut off before the
Kingdom arrives; if dead, he will not rise till after the Kingdom is over; and
throughout eternity the Eternal Kingdom is invisible from the Lake of Fire.
** British
Israelism is trapped in an identical error; but the British Israel Kingdom
which our Lord is to find on earth is the Anglo‑Saxon stock enforcing the Law of Moses as the foundation
and embodiment of the Kingdom of God.]
For the whole world‑crisis
which alone produces the Kingdom Scripture lodges solely in the Advent. So our Lord: when “they
supposed that the
So now the enormous challenge to the Christian Faith
confronts us. If the Church itself assures the world that God’s purpose in
instituting it was, by its means, to absorb the kingdoms of the world into a
gigantic Kingdom of God, who can wonder if the world, seeing such a goal
infinitely remote after nineteen centuries, abandons all belief in a creed
which thus fails to square with the facts?* For the Church itself, as a
whole, denies, and even scorns, the Second Coming. “Our Lord,”
says Dr. W. R. Inge, “in becoming man may have been willing to share, to some
extent, the current popular illusions. But
this must certainly not be stretched so
far as to admit that He fancied Himself filling the role of Daniel’s Son of Man
in the near future. Such a notion would
not be compatible with sanity.” No Anglican journal is more responsible, nor
more thoroughly representative of Anglicanism, than the Guardian; and “the ‘pure
eschatologist’," it says (March 13, 1910), “is only to be found in a lunatic asylum, and no one would
have taken Jesus seriously [on the advent] in
Judea any more than in London.” If, therefore, the literal return of Christ
is dismissed as sheer lunacy, while yet it is asserted by the Scriptures again
and again, and if the effort to Christianize the world, either with or without
an alliance with Communism, goes bankrupt, only one logical conclusion is
possible:‑ Christianity is an organized deception which only hinders
progress, and the inquirer finds himself precipitated into the anti‑God
campaign.
[* Bernard Shaw's
words may be taken as a sample of the world's view of the Advent:‑ “In a curious record of the Visions of a drug‑addict (which
was absurdly admitted to the Canon under the title of ‘Revelation’) a thousand years were specified as the period that was to
elapse before Jesus was to return as he had promised. In A.D. 1000 the last possibility of the
promised advent expired; but by that time people were so used to the delay that
they readily substituted for the Second Advent a Second Postponement.”]
-------