Editorial

”Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years. People grow old only by deserting their ideals. Years wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.” This quotation is taken from a plaque said to have been posted over the desk of General Douglass MacArthur. Someone else has said that to lose enthusiasm is to bankrupt the soul.

It is interesting to discover that the etymology of the word enthusiasm comes from theos, the Greek word for God. It literally means en theos or to have God within us so it is quite true to say that a person who does not have enthusiasm (does not have God in them) has bankrupted his soul.

Consider what we have to be enthusiastic about!! We have the Truth, God has called us to His high and holy calling. We have become members of His royal family, Jesus Christ is now our elder brother, we are related to Abraham and an heir to the same promise God made to him. No one in all the world is as well off as we. And we’re not enthusiastic? Absurd. None have such reason to be glad. If a man just inherited a million dollars we can be sure he would be excited. We have more cause for being enthusiastic, for he can’t take it with him and within a few years he’ll be leaving it to someone else. Worldly riches also have a way of becoming tarnished even while in our hands but not so with God’s promises. Even now, God has promised us “houses, and brethren, and sisters and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal life.

David was an enthusiastic man. Imagine him dancing before the Ark with all his might! No wonder he was called a man after God’s own heart. God surely would have us to be enthusiastic. He says “Be ye glad and rejoice for ever in that which I create: for behold, I create Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people a joy.”

We all enjoy being around someone who is enthusiastic. God in describing creation to Job tells that “the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.” When His own son was born His angels enthusiastically proclaimed to the shepherds who were abiding in the field, “Behold I bring you good tidings of great joy.”

How are we reacting to the good tidings of great joy that God has revealed to us through the pages of His Holy Book? Does the Gospel message fill us with enthusiasm? Are we excited about our high and holy calling? “Seemeth it to you a light thing to be a king’s son in law?” asked David. How can we fail to be excited about being a king’s brothers and sisters?

It has been said that if you can keep your head when everyone else is losing theirs, then you just don’t understand what’s happening. If we can stay calm and unemotional about the high calling to which we’ve been called, perhaps we just do not understand.

“Be glad in the Lord, rejoice, ye righteous: and shout for joy, all ye that are upright in heart.” To be enthusiastic is to stay young and those who have en theos will be young for ever for they shall shine as the brightness of the firmament and as the stars for ever and ever.”

It has been said that the thought is the father of the deed. This is so. No one ever robbed a bank without first thinking, “I’m going to rob a bank.” Every act, every crime, every good deed is first a thought and then a fact.

It may sound over simplified but all we have to do in order to do right is learn to think right. Good thinking brings good deeds and evil thinking evil ones. If we would improve our actions we must improve our thinking. It is no wonder that Paul admonished us saying, “Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.”

The world is not thinking right nowadays, which is obvious because there is so much crime, violence, sex perversion etc. Wrong thinking leads to wrong doing just as surely as day follows night. All one has to do is pass by a magazine counter to see the kind of filth and junk that people are buying and reading. Today’s movies vividly portray corruption, filling minds with this kind of garbage will only lead to wrong thinking which results in wrong doing.

One alarmed writer expressed his concern over the fact that the leaders of the world today are feeding their stomachs with the best steaks money can buy and their minds with garbage. The body would die of malnutrition if it was fed with the same kind of trash that men and women today feed their minds. No wonder the world is in such a mess. They aren’t thinking right; they can’t possibly then do right.

We are surrounded by evil influences on every side. We must put on blinders like they put on a race horse so that he will not be distracted by those around him and concentrate upon the goal of running a straight course to the finish line. We are in a life and death race, and if we look from side to side at the things going on in the world we are going to be slowed down in our effort to gain the kingdom.

Stating the answer to the problem is simple. Doing it is another thing. If only we will fill our minds with God, think and meditate upon Him and His promises we will automatically do the right thing. We will love mercy and do justly and walk humbly. We just will—if our mind is fixed on him. This is why Isaiah said “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee.”

Yes, our life will be peaceful and serene. None of the problems of the world will get through to perturb us if we are filled with the spirit word of God. It will be wonderful, but will we do it? Will we turn off the TV and do the readings? Will we visit the sick and fatherless and try to cheer them up instead of taking in a movie? Will we write a letter to someone in isolation rather than thumb idly through the pages of a current magazine? Will we listen to a tape of an exhortation or class from Bible School instead of the nothing that is on the radio? How in the world are we ever going to learn to think right if all we ever hear is the world talking to us?

Yes, the thought is the father of the deed and our thoughts will determine what we do and what Christ will say to us upon His return. Let’s hope we are among that happy group who “spake often one to another: and the Lord hearkened and heard it and a book of remembrance was written before him for them that feared the Lord and that thought upon his name.”

Today we saw a copy of the Los Angeles Times of Sunday, December 17, 1905. That paper is almost 64 years old. In it were ads for ladies’ dresses for $2.00 each and men’s suits for $16.00. In the society section there was news of coming events while the obituary column listed those who had just died. Not too different in many ways from a paper of today.

All of the big names of that day are now long dead and buried. All their activities died with them. As we look back at their world it is easy for us to see how trivial were all their hopes and dreams. How many suits and dresses the local merchant sold was very important to him but it is not important to anyone now. Who was invited to this party or that seemed critical then but not now. Who was elected mayor and what Congress decided about the tax reform laws was of great concern to the business men of that day. The stock market fluctuations were studied carefully by the investors of the day and which stock went up and which went down really mattered then but not now.

What really matters now? Are we concerned over the same kinds of things that occupied the time of those active in 1905? Life is not really very different. We have more things to distract us such as radio and television but it is still the trivial things of life that try to crowd God right out of it. Most people then worked six days a week instead of five and now some are striking for a four-day work week. Men do not use their free time to glorify God but rather to pursue the pleasures of sin for a season.

Jesus told us not to be concerned with what we shall eat or what we shall drink or what we shall wear for after all these things do the Gentiles seek. He was right That is what they thought about 2000 years ago, when Christ walked the dusty paths of Galilee. Those living in Galilee today are still thinking about these same mundane things. The men of Los Angeles of 64 years ago concerned themselves with the same kind of thoughts as do the people of Los Angeles today. Like Jesus said, all these things do the Gentiles seek.”

The question is, what do we seek? Where is our treasure? What is it that engages our time and our attention? Is it anything of lasting value or are we also engrossed in trifles as light as air?

It was quite an accomplishment to have one’s name in the paper in 1905. It still is today. Those names in the 1905 Times are meaningless to us today and so will the names in today’s Times be in years to come. Some of those whose names were in the Sunday Times were thrilled beyond words to see their name in print. It was a dream come true and yet we are not at all impressed to see the name of one who has been dead so long in that paper. What difference does it make now? While our names are probably not in today’s paper, they are recorded in God’s record book and each day the things done for Christ are listed after them. What did we do today? Life and time have a way of flying by and before we know it another day, another week, another month, yes even years have flown by. What have we accomplished in the service of the Lord?

Very soon our life will be over, either because we have come to the end of our days or because Christ will have returned to reward every man according to his works. Let us then heed the wise advice of Paul who told us that “Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men; Knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance: for ye serve the Lord Christ.”

“Is not this great Babylon, that I have built for the house of the kingdom by the might of my power and the honour of my majesty?” This arrogant remark brought Nebuchadnezzar to his knees and his great Babylon has since become a heap of ruins.

Today we live in a bustling world bent on the pursuit of their own pleasures and their activities will have as much lasting value as Nebuchadnezzar’s hanging gardens. For a time his hanging gardens made his homesick wife happy, but she too has moldered into dust and her love for her mountains died with her.

The hopes, the dreams, the goals and ambitions of mankind are as trivial as Nebuchadnezzar’s gardens, yet these things tend to completely dominate the lives of almost every human being. Only a few learn the lesson God taught Nebuchadnezzar. Belshazzar did not learn from Nebuchadnezzar’s mistakes although he knew what had happened. Nebuchadnezzar acknowledged after his reason returned to him that God lives forever and all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing and none can stay His hand, or say unto Him, “What doest thou?” Nebuchadnezzar then praised and extolled and honored the King of heaven but Belshazzar praised the gods of silver, and gold, of brass, iron, wood, and stone, which see not, nor hear, nor know. “The God in whose hand thy breath is, and whose are all thy ways, hast thou not glorified:” God told Belshazzar.

We may not have seen a hand, but the hand writing on the wall is plain for each of us to see. We too are being weighed in the balances. The question we must all answer for ourselves is, “Whose are we and whom do we serve?” It is no use to say, “All that the Lord hath said will we do” if we continue then to spend all our time and energy chasing the gods of silver and gold, of fun and pleasure, of houses and gardens, of business and industry.

The ruins of ancient civilizations testify to long hours of hard work, to dedication, to the skill of craftsmen who risked their lives to make images to heathen gods, and it was all for nought. It is not enough for us just to work hard, to become skillful in our art, or profession, or sport, it is not enough to obtain a degree or to understand the laws of physics or know how to land a man on the moon for all the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God and we must above and before all else learn to glorify and praise His Holy Name.

It is important that all that we do is done with the ultimate goal in view, to do all to His honor and glory. When God sends His son to fill the earth with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord then we too shall be with him and be like him and we shall be kings and priests and reign with him while our previous contemporaries who spent their whole time only to tell or learn some new thing will be like Babylon which became heaps, a dwelling place for dragons, an astonishment, and an hissing, without an inhabitant.

For the moment our worldly acquaintances roar like lions. Let us be sure we are not like them. This is their time to roar as did Babylon but the day is coming when “God will make drunk the world’s princes, and her wise men, her captains and her rulers, and her mighty men: and they shall sleep a perpetual sleep, and not wake, saith the King whose name is the LORD of hosts.”