Gordon Clark: First Things First (The Reformed Presbyterian Advocate)

1960. First Things First. The Reformed Presbyterian Advocate. June-July.

Because it was the dedication of a church building, ministers of several denominations were present. Thus it was that a friend of mine heard the sermon of a denominational secretary. Afterward my friend complimented the secretary on his forthright gospel message and remarked that he wished that Dr. So and So of the secretary's denomination preached the same gospel. To which the speaker of the evening replied, "Dr. So and So believes the same things that I do." "How do you know?" asked my friend. "Why, I have talked with him and he told me so," came the answer. "Well," my friend said, "I could never have guessed it; I have only heard him preach."

Now, Dr. So and So's sermons, which are heard over the radio by thousands, do not attack the gospel. His message does not contradict the Scripture. He simply avoids the vicarious atonement and similar doctrines and gives messages of psychological comfort. He does not put first things first.

There are other preachers who preach sociology, politics, and even communism. There are preachers who directly attack the trustworthiness of the Scripture and deny its main doctrines. It is plausible to think that these men are worse than Dr. So and So. They do and he does not belittle the Bible. Well, maybe they are really worse than he; but the message of salvation is just as little heard in the one place as in the others. And if faith cometh by hearing, the auditors in Dr. So and So's congregation will no more have faith than those in the other churches. Refraining from criticizing the Bible, refraining from attacking its doctrines, gives as little publicity to the message of salvation, in fact it gives less publicity to the message than an explicit attack.

There are other ways of putting first things last, even while appearing to honor the Word of God. One such way is to ride a hobby. That is, a minister may have one beloved topic of minor importance and spend virtually all his time on it. And he may do this, not because of any conscious desire to minimize the rest of the Bible, but just because he thinks the subject requires constant emphasis. The subject might be archaeology. Now, archaeological discoveries throw a great deal of light on portions of the Old Testament, and they have frequently corroborated the truth of the Bible. It is well and wise to preach on archeology occasionally. But not every week.

Then there are men who have somewhat peculiar interpretations of difficult passages and who think these doubtful details need vigorous inculcation. The other day I was reading an article of some devotional fervor. Its ostensible thrust was very good. The writer stressed prayer, worship, service to God, in short he called upon his readers to live a Godly life. But the Biblical support of these excellent conclusions was mainly the repeated insistence that there would be a secret Rapture when Christ would come in the clouds and snatch away the saints on earth for a period of seven years.

The very best that can be said for this theory is that it is highly imaginative. Great ingenuity is required to find any Scriptural mention of a period of seven years during which the saints are in the clouds with Christ. And far from the Rapture's being secret, the passage in I Thess. 4:16 tells us that the Lord will descend with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trump of God. It seems to be a noisy affair. Yet I have read stories and tracts which picture those who are left on earth after the saints are taken up as wondering where their acquaintances have gone. They seem to have just disappeared and no one knows how or where. But if this rapture of the saints includes the resurrection of the dead, as I Thess. explicitly says, it is hardly light that the unbelievers will be so bewildered.

Now, if this unlikely interpretation were correct, a brilliant deduction from other obscure hints, it would be proper to preach it occasionally, perhaps in obscure hints. But there is no justification for obscuring the main message of the Bible by such imaginative details.

Over a period of 150 years the theologians of the Reformation worked out the main message, the most important doctrines, the themes of the Bible requiring the greatest emphasis. These were set down in the Reformed creeds, the greatest of which is the Westminster Confession. Its first chapter outlines the doctrine of revelation - the special revelation of God's will written in the Bible. The second chapter deals with the Trinity. The third chapter concerns God's eternal decree, by which He had foreordained whatsoever comes to pass. And the other chapters follow in logical order. Predestination, Total Depravity, Irresistible Grace, the Vicarious Sacrifice of Christ, Justification by Faith - these are the important things; these are the first things that should be put first. To spend too much time on lesser matters, even when they properly demand some time, to to impugn the weightier matters of the law.

When Calvin in Geneva and John Knox in Edinburgh preached these doctrines, the Church reached the highest point it has ever attained in all its history. The reign of the Stuarts in the following century was a disaster. The Deism of the eighteenth century was deadly. The modernism of the nineteenth century was no less so. To be sure, the gospel has never been silenced, and the level of Biblical intelligence has all this while remained higher than it was during the Romish days of the Middle Ages. But Biblical knowledge and the life of the Church as a whole has rather steadily declined over the last 300 years.

There is no evidence that we today are on the verge of a new reformation. There is no evidence that we can reestablish the level of life in Knox's Edinburgh. Our influence and position seem to be more like that of Jeremiah, who was called of God to preach to a people that refused to listen. But though he have no reasonable hope of duplicating the work of the Reformers, there is one thing we can do and one thing we ought to do. The is, to keep the memory and the knowledge of those days alive. We can keep the doctrines of the Confession from being entirely forgotten. We can do it by insisting on first things first - the infallibility of Scripture, the Trinity, the eternal decree of the Sovereign God, Creation Providence, the Fall of Man, and the glorious salvation of Jesus Christ. Put first things first.