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A doctor in Australia told me of a conversation between a man and his barber. As the scissors worked, the barber said, “Hmm—I see you have a sore on your lip.”
“Yep,” said the man. “My cigarettes have done that.”
“Well,” said the barber, “it doesn’t seem to be healing.”
“Oh, it will—it will,” replied the man confidently.
A month later he came into the shop again. His lip was split and ugly.
“Don’t worry about it,” he told the barber, “I’ve switched to a cigarette holder. It’ll heal soon.”
The barber had been concerned about his customer so he obtained some medical photographs that showed what lip cancer looked like. He urged his friend to compare them in the mirror with his own lip.
“Well, they look a lot alike,” admitted the man, “but I’m not worried.”
On the third month the man failed to come for his regular haircut. When the barber called his friend’s home to inquire about him he was told, “Oh, didn’t you know? He died of cancer two days ago.”
Sin is like cancer. It destroys step by step. Slowly, without realizing its insidious onslaught, it progresses until finally the diagnosis is pronounced: sick to death.
A man was describing to us how he had been brought up in a godly European home, had come to this country as a young man to seek his fortune, had been converted to Christ, and then had gotten sidetracked. Temptation yielded to another temptation until finally he found himself in what he thought was a hopeless condition. I’ll never forget how he described the process. “It was like being in the ocean when there is a strong undertow,” he said. “You don’t realize how far you’re drifting from shore until all of a sudden you find yourself beyond your depth, trying desperately to swim, but unable to hold your own against the outgoing tide.”
But, unless we know some of the signs of danger, how can we seek help? We can find the help the Bible provides when we know the parts of a person that sin strikes and corrupts.
Mind Attack
A person may be brilliant in some areas, but inadequate about spiritual realities. The Bible teaches us that a veil lies over our minds and that before we can know Christ this veil must be lifted. Without this spiritual sight we cannot come to God.
You may have heard someone ask, “How can any intelligent person believe in the Bible and all those myths and contradictions?” (implying that the gospel of Jesus Christ is anti-intellectual). The implication is contrary to truth. Understanding demands the use of the mind, but when the mind is diseased by sin it is clouded and confused.
Joel Quinones was a living example of a person whose mind was under attack. I met him in San Diego and heard his amazing story.
Joel was first thrown into prison at the age of eight for trying to kill a sadistic man who had beaten him and burned him with cigarettes. When Joel was released, he came out a bundle of hatred and from then on did everything he could to show his scorn to society. As a result Joel found himself in San Quentin at the age of nineteen and spent the next eleven years there. He was turned over to the prison psychiatrists who examined him, gave him shock treatments, and finally diagnosed him as “criminally insane.”
Joel was placed with the incorrigibles. When they were fed, the food was placed on what appeared to be a large shovel with the handle long enough to push it under two separate security doors. “You don’t even feed a tiger that way,” Joel told us, “but that’s the way they fed us.”
After all those years in San Quentin, it was decided to get rid of the undesirable aliens, and Joel, along with a number of other Mexicans, was taken across the border and turned loose. He had a godly mother, a cook at a Bible school, who had been in the courtroom when Joel had been convicted for the first time. She had said to him then, “Joel, this isn’t the end. Jesus has work for you to do.”
When he was released in Mexico, his mother was there to greet him. Putting her arms around him, she said, “Joel, you need the Lord Jesus; you need to ask Him to forgive your sins, to give you a new heart and a new life.”
Joel struggled with this, but before the Lord was finished with him he was a transformed person. He went to Bible school, married one of the graduates, and is today a prison chaplain in Mexico. He has won so many prisoners to Christ that he is busy trying to build a halfway house, a “City of Refuge” to which these prisoners can come for rehabilitation before returning to normal life.
Sin had affected Joel’s mind, but the transforming power of Christ had given him new gifts.
As I write this, I’m looking at a bone-handled knife with a five-inch blade that once belonged to Joe Medina. Joe’s story is one of the most unbelievable, comic, awe-inspiring demonstrations of the power of God in what the ordinary person would have termed a hopeless life that I have ever heard. Mind attack? Joe simply couldn’t think straight.
Joe was brought up in a Bronx ghetto. His mother and both of his grandmothers were spirit mediums. The streets of New York had been his home since babyhood, and gang warfare, knife fighting, stealing, and lying were simply a way of life. He was one of those disenchanted, rebellious youths of the sixties—a drug user and accomplished thief.
Joe, however, went to a meeting at which Akbar Haqq, one of our associate evangelists, was speaking. Before the evening was over, Joe had given his heart to Jesus Christ. The day after his conversion, one of his best buddies was trying to induce Joe to go with him to get drugs and Joe didn’t want to be bothered. The friend pulled a knife and threatened to cut Joe up. That was a big mistake. Joe was small, but like lightning, with a knife, and before he knew what had happened, he had plunged the knife (yes, the one on my desk) into his buddy. The boy he attacked was in the hospital for two weeks.
Joe had no Christian background to fall back on and he had many ups and downs in his spiritual life. He enrolled in a small college near us but quit school before the year was up. I’m still not sure what his reason was, but I think he had some vague notion that he had to get back to share his faith with his buddies in the Bronx.
My wife talked to Joe before he left and urged him to come to Madison Square Garden, where we were having a meeting. I found out later that Joe had rounded up some of his tough buddies and gotten to the Garden at 7:30, only to find it closed because it was full, and the policeman wouldn’t let him in. There had been a threat on my life that night and the policemen were taking a dim view of any suspicious-looking characters. Joe and his friends qualified for that description.
They went into a huddle and decided to rush the police. They succeeded in getting to the top floor of the Garden but suddenly found themselves face-to-face with a wall of plainclothesmen advancing on them. Turning to run the other way, they confronted another formidable wall of police. They were thrown out of the Garden without further ceremony. When I heard about this later I thought, Oh, no! Just the ones we were trying to reach!
However, Joe was undaunted and brought his sister and brother the next night. They both came forward to receive Christ.
Joe had a lot of trouble for a while getting values straightened out. He called Ruth one time and said he had to see her. When he arrived, she could tell something was wrong. “What have you done now, Joe?” she asked.
“Ruth, I robbed a filling station.”
“Oh, Joe, why did you do that?”
“Well, it’s this way—I have this buddy, you know. Well, he needed some money and he’d never robbed a filling station before.
Golly, Ruth, I just felt it was my Christian duty to help him.”
Ruth asked him how much he had taken and then asked him if his buddy was a Christian. He was not, Joe said. Ruth explained to Joe that he would have to be responsible for returning the entire amount. Joe looked as if she had hit him in the stomach with her fist. She then asked him point-blank if he had anything else in his possession that he had stolen. He looked at her in amazement and exclaimed, as if that were the dumbest question ever asked, “Everything I own!”
Joe returned all the stolen goods. After more advances and retreats in his Christian growth than I care to relate, he was finally admitted to Columbia Bible College. In his senior year he became vice president of the student body and is today a graduate student there with an amazing knowledge and love of the Bible.
On a recent weekend he came to visit us, and the Presbyterian pastor of our community, Calvin Thielman, asked him to give his testimony and talk about his ministry. Joe told how he related to the drug users, the dropouts, the rebels. His story was full of such wit, humor, and compassion that the audience was left with the reassurance that “nobody’s hopeless.”
Only those who knew Joe from the beginning can fully appreciate the marvels of the new birth in this young man’s life. His mind had been so attacked by sin that it took a long time for the healing process. We are born again as babies, not mature Christians, and babies need a lot of love and patience!
The Bible teaches that sin affects the mind, whether that mind is of superior intelligence or average. A person may be intellectually brilliant, but spiritually ignorant. “A natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God; . . . and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised” (1 Cor. 2:14).
An intellectual mind can be turned into a first-class mind when Christ penetrates the heart. Gerhard Dirks, one of the most brilliant men in the world, is reported to have an IQ of 208. He has over 140 patents with IBM and has even attempted theoretically to reconstruct the human brain. He became completely bewildered and shaken, however, when confronted with the complexity and utter impossibility of such a reconstruction. He didn’t know what to do or where to run. His choice was twofold: either the human brain came about by a fantastic chance or by intelligent planning. When faced with the alternative he knew he had only one choice, and he became a believer in God as it was revealed to him through Jesus Christ, whose intellect he could not surpass.
Dr. Boris Botsenko, a brilliant Russian physicist-mathematician, was attending a conference of scientists in Edmonton, and in his hotel he picked up a Gideon Bible. He read it and through it accepted Jesus Christ and was born again. He is now in the research department of the University of Toronto.
Attack on the Will
Sin attacks another facet of our being—will. Jesus said, “Everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin” (John 8:34). Even in countries where there is political freedom, there are millions who live under the tyranny of pride, jealousy, or prejudice. Countless others are slaves to alcohol, barbiturates, or narcotics. They possess traits or are consumed by desires they hate but are powerless in their grip. They want to be free, and some search for freedom through avenues offered by other men. But Christ said, “You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (John 8:32). Christ is the truth.
I have known many persons who found freedom from the bondage of will and desire. On May 9, 1972, in a little church outside of Nashville, Tennessee, a pastor gave a gospel invitation and a man named Johnny Cash got up and went down the aisle and knelt at the altar of the church. Johnny Cash says that he gave his life to Jesus Christ that day. Here is a man whose life had been hurt by drugs and imprisonment, and who has become a hero in the world of country music. He is now a force for good in the world and is being used in the cause of Christ.
I have in my possession a hashish pipe as a reminder of a young man who was a slave to drugs. He had made a terrible mess of his life and also the life of the girl he loved. As a result, he drove to a lonely, deserted parkway where he slit his wrists. Evidently he didn’t do a very good job, because the blood wasn’t coming out fast enough and he thought at that rate it was going to take him too long to die. So he crawled under the tailpipe of his car with the motor still going, covered himself with a blanket, and proceeded to inhale the fumes.
He said that while he became drowsy from the fumes he uttered a prayer asking God to forgive him for what he was doing. Suddenly a horrible black feeling came over him and he knew that what he was about to do did not please God. In his weakness, with bleeding wrists and a drugged mind, he drove to a pastor’s home. The pastor took him to the hospital. After the young man was treated, the pastor explained to him that Christ alone can make atonement for our sins and give us release from guilt and the joy of being forgiven.
This young man is now happily married and is a positive influence on the lives of others.
Unresolved hatred is a tyranny which can make anyone a slave to sin as it attacks the will. Just a few years ago Dr. William P. Wilson, then Professor of Psychiatry at Duke University Medical Center, systematically took Bibles away from his patients at the center. But his life and medical practice have been transformed by the power of Jesus Christ, and he now uses the insights he has gained from the gospel in treating his patients. He keeps copies of the Bible in his office and gives them out. Dr. Wilson says, “One of the greatest causes of mental illness is unresolved guilt. Feelings of shame, inadequacy, missing the mark, not measuring up, are some sources of guilt feelings. The answer to guilt is grace and the new birth. The new birth leads to the forgiveness of sin.”
Forgiveness is hard for many to believe. Dr. Warren Wiersbe of Chicago calls forgiveness “the greatest miracle in the Bible.”
I have a letter from a young man who said,
“In 1971 I was a drug-dealing dropout from Northwestern University. During your Chicago crusade I came forward at the invitation and prayed for the Lord to save me, even though I personally didn’t feel bad about my ungodly practices. I also asked that He forgive me my sins (I could intellectually conceive of them, but not personally feel them) and that He would make Himself known in a personal way.
“I was expecting a lightning bolt from heaven to knock me down, or for God to put me through a mental breakdown so He could straighten out my mind and use it for His glory. Needless to say, He didn’t do that. I began to feel quite disappointed and also somewhat scared and thought this God thing might easily turn out to be a hoax after all. At that instant a middle-aged, shorthaired, suit-wearing, Bible-carrying counselor came up to me and put a Jesus sticker on my shirt and shook my hand. ‘God bless you, young man,’ he said. Think of it! This establishment dude shaking my hand—me, a freaked-out hippie. The love of God coming through him showed me that Jesus loved me regardless of how I dressed or abused society. That simple act hit me and I suddenly realized the simplicity of God’s salvation. He didn’t want to put me through the pain of a mental breakdown—all He wanted me to do was to receive His Son as I had just done!”
When Conscience Fails
Sin not only affects the mind and the will, but also the conscience. A person becomes very slow to detect the approach of sin. It’s like telling an untruth: The first time you tell a story it really bothers you; but with repetition your conscience is no longer your guide, and soon the lie is woven so strong that you are convinced it’s the truth. You no longer have sensitivity to things you know are wrong.
One day Joe Medina, to whom I referred earlier in this chapter, called Ruth from a telephone booth and said, “Ruth, I’m not drunk, but I just wanted to tell you something.”
Ruth asked him what he was doing in a phone booth. He explained that he was riding around with a buddy who had a fifth of whiskey with him. Joe explained that his friend didn’t have a North Carolina driver’s license and shouldn’t drive the car, especially while drinking. So Joe said, with his typical logic, “Ruth, I felt it was my Christian duty to drink that fifth of whiskey for him.”
The patience of my wife never ceases to amaze me. She said, “Joe, you drank that fifth of whiskey because you wanted to drink that fifth of whiskey.”
There was a long pause. Then, “Ruth, you’re exactly right.”
Joe had been trained in calling badness “good.” He knew how to lie, cheat, and rationalize out of any situation. But for the grace of God, he would still be that way today.
The results of the infection of no longer knowing the difference between good and evil are reflected in every part of the Scriptures. When David first looked at Bathsheba, a train of events began which led from adultery to deceit to murder. David was forgiven for his sins, but he had to pay the natural consequences. He reaped a bitter harvest and his reign was clouded with constant trouble.
In view of the way we allow our consciences to become dulled, it is amazing that God is so patient. The Bible says, “The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness, but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” (2 Pet. 3:9, KJV).
No matter how patient God is, He is also just. When man hardens his heart, God continues to speak. But man cannot hear. Genesis 6:3 says, “My Spirit shall not always strive with man” (KJV). Eventually, if God sees that man won’t repent, “There is a sin unto death” (1 John 5:16, KJV). This refers to blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, which is final rejection of God’s plan of salvation, and it is also described in Hebrews 6:4-6:
“For in the case of those who have once been enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance, since they again crucify to themselves the Son of God and put Him to open shame.”
When a man’s conscience is gone he uses all kinds of excuses to justify his action. He blames his family, his business associates, his bad breaks, anything. He can cheat on his income tax because the laws are unjust. He can cheat on his wife (or a wife can be unfaithful to her husband) because the other one is cold—or thoughtless. The good and bad are gone, and life is lived in gray tones.
In Athens the columns and statues of the Parthenon have been eroding in recent years at an accelerated rate. It hasn’t been storms or time which have caused the imminent destruction of these priceless ancient works of art, but the pollution of the wastes of modern society. In the same way, it’s not the heavy storms of life that erode us, but the insidious, gradual pollution of sin which leads to our destruction.
Sick to Death
Crime requires punishment, and sin has a penalty. Although this may be a subject we would like to ignore, it is an unavoidable fact. Not only does everyone suffer as a result of sin in this life, but everyone must face the judgment to come. “For the wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23).
First, there is physical death. The Bible says, “It is appointed for men to die once” (Heb. 9:27). Incidentally, this completely rules out the possibility of reincarnation.
Death is inevitable and unpredictable in many cases. For each of us there is a day, an hour, a minute, when physically we are no longer earth beings. If God had not given the judgment of physical death, the earth would soon become uninhabitable, because men would live forever in their sins.
Because life is brief, the Bible teaches that we must “prepare to meet [our] God” (Amos 4:12). In the course of my life I have known many people who are thoroughly prepared to meet God. There is a startling difference between them and people who have lived a life without God.
I will never forget the summer of 1973. That was the year that one of the greatest Christians I ever knew entered heaven. He was my father-in-law, Dr. L. Nelson Bell. Dr. Bell served Christ for years in China as a missionary surgeon. In 1972 he had been Moderator of the Presbyterian Church in the United States, the highest honor his denomination could bestow. The night before he died he spoke with the World Missions Conference in a larger auditorium in Montreat.
At the end of his talk he said, “Before I pray I have a few words today. After hearing that singing, no one can deny that our Presbyterian Church is waking up. Now in this place there are two groups of people. There are those who know they are saved and love the Lord Jesus Christ, and there are those here who as yet may not know Christ. My hope is that before you leave this place you will come to know Him as your personal Lord and Savior. The Lord said, ‘Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any man hears my voice, and opens the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him and he with me.’”
Those were the last words that Dr. Bell said in public. That night he went to sleep and when he woke he was in the presence of his Lord. His life had come full circle. His favorite hymn was “All the Way My Savior Leads Me,” and when I saw him that morning, it was a great comfort to see the face of one so peaceful.
He was prepared to meet our God.
I remember hearing of the last words said by Pearl Goode, a wonderful woman who through the years was one of our most faithful prayer supporters, often going into seclusion and praying night and day for the crusade team wherever they were. She walked in such close fellowship with God that when it was her time to go, she sat up in bed and said, “Well, there He is. There’s Jesus!” She was prepared to meet God.
In the summer of 1976 there was a flash flood in Colorado that took the lives of a great many people. Among the victims were some young Christian girls who had been at a retreat in the mountains. The men who had the job of searching out the bodies of those who were killed reported later that most of the people had expressions of horror on their faces, but they were astounded to see that every one of the girls appeared to be at peace. They were prepared to meet their God.
Life is so short. The Bible says that we must be prepared to meet God at all times. We never know when we step into our car, walk out the door of our home, or just open our eyes to a new day, what lies ahead. “Since his days are determined, the number of his months is with You, and his limits you have set so that he cannot pass” (Job 14:5).
The second dimension of death is spiritual death. Millions of people on earth are walking around physically alive, but spiritually dead. When your eyes and ears become attuned to the cries of others, you hear those who say they are empty and lost. They are separated from the source of life and like a lamp which is unattached, they are dark and lifeless. The lamp may be very expensive, may have a beautiful shade which draws attention, but has no light without being plugged into the source of energy. Jesus said, “I am the life.”
Newspapers and magazines throughout the world carried the story of the suicide of Freddie Prinze. At the age of twenty-two he had attained one of the highest status roles in show business. He was the darling of television and had just performed for an incoming president at the Inaugural gala in Washington. Yet something was terribly wrong in the life of this talented comedian. A close friend, comedian David Brenner, explained to Time magazine, “There was no transition in Freddie’s life. It was an explosion. It’s tough to walk off a subway at age 19 and then step out of a Rolls-Royce the next day.” Producer Komack, also a close confidant, said, “Freddie saw nothing around that would satisfy him. He would ask me, ‘Is this what it is? Is this what it’s all about?’” Mr. Komack said, “His real despondency, whether he could articulate it or not, concerned the questions: ‘Where do I fit in? Where is my happiness?’ I would tell him, ‘God, Freddie, your happiness is right here. You’re a star.’ He’d say, ‘No. That’s not happiness for me any more.’” As Time magazine commented at the end of the story, “For one of the most singular escape stories in ghetto history, escape was not enough.”
We may be physically alive, but spiritually dead, like the woman who is described as “dead even while she lives” (1 Tim. 5:6).
The third dimension of death is eternal death. This may be a subject which most try to avoid. We hear a lot about “hell on earth,” but there is another hell which is more real and certain, and that’s the hell of eternal death. Jesus Himself spoke frequently about hell. He warned of a hell to come. The Scripture teaches us that we’ll be in hell alone and bearing pain alone. There is no fellowship in hell except for fellowship with darkness. I have heard some people say, “If I thought my father [or some other loved one] were in hell, that’s where I want to be, too!” What an illusion! Hell is the loneliest place imaginable.
Jesus warned men, “And these will go away into eternal punishment” (Matt. 25:46). He also said, “The Son of Man will send forth His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all stumbling blocks, and those who commit lawlessness, and will throw them into the furnace of fire; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matt. 13:41-42).
There is never such an urgency to talk about eternity as there is when physical death confronts us. A friend of mine told me that the day after her son was killed in an airplane accident, while their house was full of people offering love and consolation, something went wrong with the furnace. A repairman was called. After looking at the heater, he said, “Lady, if you had waited a little while longer to call me that furnace might have blown up.” In the midst of her own grief she paused and looked the repairman squarely in the eyes. “There is only one thing that’s important right now,” she said. “If that furnace had exploded while you were working on it, do you know for sure where you would spend eternity?”
Before he left the house he learned how to have assurance of his eternal destiny.
Two Faces of Man
Man has two faces. One shows his ingenuity, his capacity to create, to be kind, to honor truth. The other face reveals him using his ingenuity maliciously. We see him doing kind acts in a shrewd manner in order to forward a private desire. We see one side of him enjoying a sunset, but at the same time working in a job that fills the atmosphere with waste products that nearly obscure the sunset. His search for truth often degenerates into a rat race to discover a scientific fact so the credit will be his.
Man is both dignified and degraded.
The need for spiritual rebirth is evident to the most casual observer of human nature. Man is fallen and lost, alienated from God. From the very beginning, all attempts to recover man from his lostness have revealed one or the other of two ways.
Plan A and Plan B
Remember Cain and Abel? The sons of Adam and Eve represent Plan A and Plan B of salvation. One of them, Cain, came his own way: he initiated Plan A; the other, Abel, was obedient and came God’s way, Plan B.
Cain was the self-sufficient materialist and religious humanist.
He brought to the altar an expression of his own labors; he became the prototype of all who dare approach God without the shedding of blood.
Cain’s way didn’t work for him. It has never worked for anyone, and it will not work today. Only God can properly diagnose our disease and provide the cure. God chose blood as the means of our redemption. The apostle John wrote that Jesus Christ “washed us from our sins in his own blood” (Rev. 1:5, KJV).
When Jesus Christ, the perfect God-man, shed His blood on the cross, He was surrendering His pure and spotless life to death as an eternal sacrifice for man’s sin. Once and for all, God made complete provision for the cure of man’s sins. Without the blood of Christ, it is a fatal disease.
Each of us makes his choice between the two ways—man’s way or God’s way. Which?