The Bible—but Only the Desirable Parts

● The clergy of Christendom have long been guilty of rejecting what parts of the Bible they do not want. Even the fundamentalists do this regarding its statements that the soul dies and that Jesus and his Father are not one in a trinity. (Ezek. 18:4, 20; Acts 3:23; John 14:28) Now the tables have been turned upon them, for the Communists are doing the same thing. The January 14 Christian Century reported a sermon by Ch’ieng Ch’u Ku published in the October 16 New Church that said the new heaven and the new earth have already been realized in the new China, thanks to land reform. “More than 4 million farmers now own their own land, build their own houses, eat the fruit of their harvest.” This included also the river projects, railways and church reform. “We are masters of our own church. We shall never again be confused by the imperialistic vision of the end of the world. . . . We must arise and work, demonstrating that the people are the masters of the new heaven and the new earth.” What egotism! Men the masters of both the church and heaven! No need to see what God expects, or to see what he has said he alone can do. This clergyman flings God into the class of imperialists anyway, since His Word tells of the end of the world; the end of democracies and Communistic governments alike, of the entire wicked system of things and the establishment of righteousness and peace to remain forever. But Ch’ieng Ch’u Ku does not care about that. He is concerned more with political propaganda in the same way that the clergy of the West push their brand; both taking only what they want of God’s Word and rejecting the rest.