Applied Christianity - Walter Martin

December 7, 1963

On a certain day two sermons had been preached, one by Martin Luther and the other by a friend and his co-laborer we will call Doctor B.

Luther said to his friend:

"You preached a good sermon, but I liked mine better than yours."

"Well, Doctor, I will acknowledge your superiority."

"No," replied Luther, "that is not it. The reason I liked mine better than yours is that every child and illiterate servant present could understand mine and knew what I was talking about, but much of yours was only understood by the learned and the scholars."

Some years ago there was a prominent politician in this State who had some oratorical ability along with a "flowery gift of gab." After one of his speeches two farmers met and one asked the other if he had heard the speech, and on learning that he had not he said, "Man, you don't know what you missed. I believe that was the finest speech I ever heard. He sure went to town!"

"What did he talk about," asked his friend. After hesitating a little:

"I don't know, he never did say what he was talking about!"

On a number of occasions letters have come asking the objective of this column, which probably is another way of asking "what are you talking about?" Our first article appeared on the first Saturday of March, 1962, and with the exception of the following week there has been one in every Saturday paper, and in the first one and in all the following ones, directly or indirectly, we have talked about the fact that generally speaking, the Church is corrupt and has junked discipline, and the results of "corrupting God's way in the earth" will mean in the end, and the end might be near, the visitation of the wrath and curse of God upon us as individuals, our nation, and the world, calling attention to the fact that this was the cause of the destruction of the world in the days of Noah, the cause of the visitation of the wrath and curse of God upon the Jewish people down through the centuries, the cause of the disappearance from the face of the earth of great cities and nations and kingdoms of antiquity, and the cause of all the disasters, troubles, etc. of mankind, including the calamities we read about in every day's newspaper!

The "heathen rage" to get rid of God's Moral Law, Ten Commandments, and The Almighty holds them in derision, laughs and vexes them with all adversity. We have also in these articles continually talked about the fact that God sent His Son to the earth to keep His Commandments perfectly, and that He will impute that perfect righteousness to every soul that sincerely accepts and believes on Jesus Christ, and will write His Commandments in their hearts, or in other words, fix them up where they will want to "obey God, and keep His Commandments, which is the whole duty of man."

"It is singular how long the rotten will hold together, provided you do not handle it roughly." Picture a rotten apple hanging on a tree or elsewhere. It holds together a long time unless it falls or is handled a little roughly, and then you have "rotten apple sauce." One meaning of "corruption" is "rottenness." The earth became corrupt, or rotten in the days of Noah. God handled it rather roughly. It went to pieces and there was none left except for the man who found grace in God's sight, the man who feared God, and obeyed Him!

Some have estimated there might have been 480 billions of people in the earth when the flood came! The Jewish nation as a whole became corrupt, rotten. God has handled them roughly through the centuries and behold their history, suffering, and how they have been scattered. There is much rottenness and corruption in the home and family life of our nation; there is much rottenness and corruption in the political life of our nation; the main cause of the corruption and rottenness in the family and governmental life of our nation can be traced to corruption and rottenness in our Protestant Christian Church life, and every one of us who have taken such vows are especially responsible!

Did not God handle us roughly when He permitted our President to be assassinated? No doubt in our mind but that this "permissive providence" of The Almighty is a rebuke to the entire nation! Generally speaking, The Church refuses to "get rough" with its own rottenness of unbelief, apostacy, rejection of God's Laws and Word, and so the corruption holds together and increases; the civil powers of government refuse to "get rough" with murder, robbery, vile immorality -- I have heard it said time and again that the City of Washington, the seat of the great power of this nation, is the worst "sink of sin and cesspool of iniquity" of such crimes in all this great land, and therefore, corruption and rottenness "hold together."

What can one man do? He can do the "one thing needful," read what it is in Luke 10:41, 42:

"And Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: But "one thing is needful;" and Mary hath chosen "that good part," which shall not be taken away from her. "The good part Mary chose was to "sit at the feet of Jesus and Hear His Word."

Go and do likewise, get rid of the corruption and rottenness, become "good fruit by the power of God!"