On The Wall is The Bible Message Calendar 2001. It shows today’s date, Sunday, July 29. It also states, “Christadelphians believe.. .Jesus will raise and judge the responsible dead.”
We consider the fourteen Bible-based doctrines printed on the calendar to be an accurate and succinct expression of saving truth. By our Lord’s own words, any sincere person who confesses these “Christadelphian beliefs,” rejecting all notions that nullify them, and is baptized, will be saved. All through nineteen centuries of scorn and persecution by heretics and unbelievers, this confession of faith is the rock on which the church of God endures unshakable.
Degrees of responsibility
The doctrine of responsibility is taught consistently, and insistently, from Genesis to Revelation. The Scriptures teach that there are degrees of responsibility to God and men, depending upon our age, our awareness of the divine will, and our talents or abilities. Jeremiah 18, read aloud today at hundreds of ecclesias around the world, is stark and clear.
I may speak of tearing up a nation, breaking it down and destroying it; but if that nation turns from its evil, I will change my mind about
the evil that I thought of inflicting upon it. Again, I may speak of building up a nation, of planting it; but if that nation does evil in my sight by refusing to listen to my voice, then I will change my mind about the benefits which I meant to bestow upon it.
Who among us dares to say that God is only interested in the welfare of His covenant people? Who dares to question that even whole nations are accountable to Almighty God? In many cases, God rewards responsibility and punishes irresponsibility in this age and during our present mortal lives. In many other cases, as our calendar reminds us, the Lord Jesus, with his unerring knowledge of us all, will raise to judgment the responsible (and irresponsible) dead. Nearly two thousand years after his death, we can visit a museum in Israel and peek at the bones of Caiaphas in their ancient sarcophagus, and reflect on one of many “responsible dead.” “I tell you,” said Jesus to his accusers, “in future you will all see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of the Power, and coming on the clouds of heaven.”
An explosive mix
The doctrine of responsibility, perhaps in a shadowy but very real way, is acknowledged even by unbelievers. Immediately following today’s gripping news on BBC World television, showing Jews and Arabs battling on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, there were two deeply moving hour-long programs seeking to answer the question, Who is responsible for the present deadly hate? One program depicted the Crusades. The other graphically portrayed modern anti-semitism. The answer from both programs was the same: centuries of European “Christian” barbarism and fanaticism has bred Muslim hate and Jewish intransigence. The message of one was that, through systematic genocide of Muslims, Richard Lion-heart, the French king of England, was responsible for the rise to power of the Mamluk jihad warrior Baybars, fundamentalist folk hero of today’s Hizbollah, Hamas and Fatah. And irresponsible Christians who turned a blind eye to Nazism and the Holocaust paved the way for Ariel Sharon and the layers of the temple stone.
An elderly “Christian” German doctor appeared on the second program, and spoke quite casually. I didn’t turn on the gas taps. That was someone else. I only counted the dead in the gas chambers. The commentator ended with this observation: Theology and hate make a horrendously explosive mix.
Do we burn our brethren?
Don’t let us be self-righteous. In a newly published book, Sis. Ruth Mc Haffie, a Scottish Christadelphian, has this to say: “Calvin’s self-assured bigotry [is] identical to that adopted today by many in our community against those ‘outsiders’ who disagree with us, or against ‘insiders’ who wish to discuss any matter which does not match Christadelphian tradition. We do not, as Calvin did, burn a fellow believer at the stake because of our differences. The law of our country forbids it. We burn his or her reputation instead.”
However extreme this might seem, Ruth is at least partially right. Regretfully, we have done it ourselves. We rightly condemn the papal Inquisition. But on our editorial desk at this moment is a recent lile of ecclesial correspondence regarding the excommunication of a gentle, caring brother for an alleged minor doctrinal deviation. The tone of the official letters would be familiar to any inquisitor of the Dominican order: full of threats and refusals to correct misinterpretations or even to discuss the matters at issue. Sadly, this is not unusual. But when such actions bear their evil fruit in the loss of a saint, be assured that God will hold us responsible. Of that, Ezekiel 34 tells us plainly, there is no doubt.
The great sin of our time
Irresponsibility is emerging as the great sin of the twenty-first century. And we are all affected by it. All the slain amongst us in recent years are those who simply refused to pass by on the other side. Jesus made clear to us all that although the Samaritan was from a race that was hated by the Jews and that returned the hate in full measure, he was nevertheless responsible for the foreigner lying bleeding by the wayside. And it is an obvious inference from Jesus’ parable that, despite their unspoken objections that they had religious duties to perform and therefore were exempt from any obligation to help an unknown victim of terrorism, the priest and Levite would be held responsible by the judge of all the earth if the victim should die uncared for.
“Am I my brother’s keeper”
Cain protested that he was not responsible for his brother. “Am I my brother’s keeper,” he whined to a distraught and angry God. Yes, he most certainly was! And Jesus himself underlined this when he predicted a host of Christian Cains arriving at his future judgment seat. “I was hungry but you never fed me. I was thirsty but you never gave me drink. I was ill and in prison but you never looked after me.” How are they to know if he is hungry or thirsty? It is not obvious. They simply do not care. Preaching the gospel is our job, we have been told. Saving innocent people from dying of malnutrition is not. That is not the responsibility of a true Bible Christian, it is said.
Amos lets us know something of God’s view of responsibility. Idolatrous Tyre is held accountable to Him for making money from human misery, selling “a whole population with no thought for their bond of brotherhood.” Edom is condemned for “stifling all pity.” Moab is rebuked for burning to lime a heathen king’s bones; Israel is condemned for trampling down the poor like dust.
Nathan made clear to David that, although the Ammonites killed Uriah, David was fully responsible. He was the man without pity. Like the German doctor, he didn’t shoot the arrow. He just wanted a rival for his affections got out of his way. Says the Lord, you may not be a gunman; but if you are hating, and silently pulling a trigger in your heart, I will judge the thought for the deed. And please understand, even if you are only saying “Fool” to or about your brother deep inside, I will consign you to hell fire. Harsh, maybe, but it is the word of the Lord.
Passing on the other side
Thankfully, the worst sins in God’s eyes are not sins of commission. God has few problems forgiving those. He grieves most when we shut our eyes and ears to things that are inconvenient and simply pass by on the other side. When we hear the cry of poor but do not listen. When, like the Capernaum synagogue zealots, we blindly shun and even expel a little one whom Jesus loves, because he does not support some religious hobby-horse we are riding. Let us be warned: if our irresponsibility should somehow lead others astray, it were better that a millstone were put around our necks and we were dumped into the Caribbean.
Accepting or evading responsibility
Who was responsible for the death of Christ? Theologians have argued about it for two thousand years, with more heat than light. But there was a little sideshow on the way to Calvary that is worth thinking about. Some women on the road “mourned and wailed for him.” Jesus — in a most uncharacteristic response — told them, “Don’t weep for me. Weep for yourselves and for your children.” Like the German doctor at the gas chambers, they did not realize that even as mere bystanders neither they nor their children could evade responsibility.
The “responsible dead” are not just those whose heads are stuffed with Bible knowledge. In the main, they are those who, having taken up responsibilities before God in the family, at the workplace, in the ecclesia, and in the world, fulfil them or neglect them.
There is a wonderful story in the July, 2001, Bible Missionary magazine. A couple who did missionary training in Jamaica are now helping to establish clinics in Kenya to help victims of AIDS and other diseases. And the Bible Mission is supporting this “important outreach work into the local communities.” Read it and praise God. Help financially if you can. At the very least, you will thank Him that many of us in the Brotherhood are learning at last what it means to be “responsible.”
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