“While seated in front of my television screen watching the funeral of General Eisenhower, I reflected on the wonder of the quite man of Galilee, whose life and teachings have ever-increasing relevance in our time–as great a relevance, I would like to say, as in the day that he walked the earth. In response to such a statement as this on another occasion, a straggly haired young intellectual asked, “What relevance? Just what relevance has Jesus for us? Why, he’s as out-of date as the Roman legions who occupied Jerusalem when he was there.”
“Relevance?” I replied. “Ask my friends who tearfully watched the body of a beloved child lowered into the grave. Ask my neighbor who lost her husband in an accident. Ask the fathers and mothers of the thousands of good young men who have died in the steaming jungles of Vietnam. He–the risen Lord Jesus Christ–is their only comfort. There is nothing more relevant to the cold, stark fact of death thanthe assurance of eternal life.” . . .This is the promise of the risen Lord. This is the relevance of Jesus to a world in which all must die. But there is further and ore immediate relevance. As he is the conqueror of death, so also is he the master of life. His way is the answer to the troubles of the world in which we live.”
(”The Wonder of Jesus,” Improvement Era, June 1969, p. 74.)
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