Paul M. Kanamori

“ But do you think, my American friends, that God has blessed you so abundantly for your own sake, for your own comfort and luxury, for your own enjoyment and satisfaction alone? Do you think that God has so wonderfully blessed you because you are his only favorite among all the nations of the world? No, no; God has blessed America wonderfully, not for America’s sake alone, but for the sake of the whole world. He has blessed America to make her a blessing to the world through the power of Christ. ”

“ But if he is not such a Saviour, but a mere teacher who gave us wise precepts and doctrines, who led a beautiful life long years ago, and who died at last upon the cross at the hand of his enemies, what right have you to ask absolute allegiance from me who have no relation at all to him? There have been many great and good men in this world. Confucius, Socrates, Shakamuni, and all other founders of the world religions were more or less great, and we are indebted to them for their teachings and precepts and inspired by their fine examples. ”

“ One is an inexhaustible mine of eternal truth stored up by God; the other is a shallow pit dug by men. One is the living oracles of God; the other, dead documents of ancient wisdom. The Bible in the hand of New Theology has become an entirely different thing from that of the true Christian faith of the nineteenth century. It has entirely lost its divine authority, and therefore its teachings and commandments have no more binding power than mere human instruction. ”

“ Oh, I beg and entreat you, my dear American friends, to look upon this billion of heathen souls with the eye of your heavenly Father and the heart of your Lord Jesus Christ, who loved them and died for them. Then you cannot help making a desperate effort for their salvation.
And I believe that if you American Christians will seriously and earnestly take up the great work of evangelizing the world in this generation, and will do the work according to its magnitude, God on his part will surely bless you and your work, and the day of great victory will be at hand. ”

“ We don’t care much which way the people think about the nature and person of Christ, whether he is God or man, if we only love him and obey him with our whole heart. The supreme love and absolute allegiance to our Lord are the only essentials which we should always hold up as the life of our Christian faith. If we hold fast to these truths then we can safely let go such non-essentials as the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection.”
Thus we are exhorted by New Theology to love Jesus supremely and obey him absolutely, regardless of our belief about the person and nature of Christ. ”

“ As to allegiance to Christ, do you think you can require of any man such absolute allegiance to a mere man, though he may have been the greatest and best that the world has ever produced? My orthodox faith taught me that I should obey Jesus because he is my Creator as well as my Saviour. In the first place, as God he created me, and then as Saviour he came down from heaven and died upon the cross to save me, but he rose again from the dead, and now sits at the right hand of his Father, making intercession for me, and he will come again to rule the whole world. ”

“ Let me show how such unsound teaching of the essentials of Christian doctrine as denying the deity of Christ will exert its baneful influence upon the mind of the believer, especially upon the mind of the newly converted Christian in a heathen land. Be sure that the belief in the deity of Jesus Christ is not one of the non-essentials of the Christian doctrine, as those New Theologians try to make us believe, but it is the very life and essence of Christianity. If you take away this belief from the Christian faith it will die. ”

“ I know the American people, and I love them, because I was converted by the ministry of an American teacher, and was brought up by the American missionaries. I regard America as my spiritual fatherland. I feel perfectly at home in this country. Moreover, I admire the true American spirit. When once that American spirit is roused up, and you are determined to gain any object, you always get it. Why won’t you send out, not only a few thousand, but a few hundred thousand, Christian soldiers throughout the length and breadth of the whole earth to fight with the Devil? ”

“ And moreover, I believe I have a right to represent not only my own heathen land, but also the whole world. Because, though I love my own country very dearly, yet my Christian heart [106] is a little too big to confine itself to my own country alone. I love China, I love India, I love Africa, just as much in regard to the salvation of their souls as I love the salvation of my own people. I always feel that if God wants me for a missionary in Africa, I am more than ready to start at once. In our Christian love there are no national boundaries or racial distinctions. ”

“ In Christian lands we see many who, while embracing such destructive views of the Bible and Christianity, are yet holding on to Christian practise, not as a result of their own thinking, but as a result of time-honored customs, life-long habits, and early training and education in the Christian homes, Christian institutions, and Christian [50] society in which they were brought up. They are like men who, when thrown into a deep well, instead of going down straight to the bottom, cling to the stony sides, or hold on to the ropes, and so are prevented from dropping at once to the bottom. ”

“ It was only in the strength of a belief that the living Saviour was right at their side with his outstretched arms to catch and carry them straight into the bosom of our heavenly Father that the martyrs braved the fire and sword. If such unsound doctrine as the liberals are now teaching had prevailed at the beginning of the introduction of Christianity into the world, there would have been no martyrdom for the Christian faith, and Christianity must have ceased to exist long ago. ”

“ Christ is our sure foundation. Christianity must stand on this rock of ages. But may I ask a question here? Who is this Christ? Who is this unique personality on which you try to stand as on the sure foundation? Is Christ God, or man? ”

“ A man may marry a second wife, and love her just as much as the first, but when children lose their own mother they can never have a second one whom they can love as their own. It was a most heartrending thought to me that death had made these nine children motherless forever.
[71] While their mother was with them they thought their home was a sweet and bright home,—heaven on earth. They were all so happy and contented, but when their dear mother was taken away from them the home became a dark, dismal hell on earth. Yes, in those days the home was full of weeping and wailing day and night. ”

“ I could preach Christian theism, Christian morality, and Christian sociology. In fact, I could preach all the practical side of Christianity, but not the central fundamental truths of Christianity, Christ and his salvation through the cross.
[39] In those days there were many liberals who were saying, “You may have your own theology in your study, but retain the commonly accepted Christian doctrine in the pulpit. There is no need of entering into the discussion of theological questions in the pulpit, because it is for the common people, and not for the scholars.” ”

“ Suppose in the last great European war America had sent out only a few hundred thousand soldiers to France to fight with the Germans,—do you think you could have beaten that country and saved the world? Though the American soldiers may have been ever so brave and gallant individually, yet what could a few hundred thousand Americans do against millions of Germans and Austrians? But you sent two millions, and were going to send more millions, to fight the Germans. You not only spent a few millions of dollars, but several billions. ”

“ Death is a sad thing. Especially is the death of our dearest one the saddest experience of our life. But when you look at it in the light of heaven, the death of a dear friend is the most precious gift God can ever give in this world. ”

“ And if he is not risen from the dead, can we love supremely such a dead man? We sometimes say that we love such and such great men of history, such as Washington and Lincoln, but in this case we mean we love their memory, not the persons themselves. But we cannot love them as we love our fathers, mothers, wives, and husbands, who are really living among us now. We cannot have the warm, living, personal love for those historical personages that we have for those who are living right among us. What is that supreme love which true Christians cherish toward their Saviour? ”

“ According to the New Theology the work of foreign missions is not to convert the heathen, nor to save them from sin and error, but only to introduce Christianity to them as one of the religions of the world. I heard some liberal missionaries making such statements as this when they were preaching in heathen lands: “We missionaries did not come to you to ask you to throw away your own good religion which you have believed in for so many centuries, and to be converted to our religion, but we came here simply to unite the good in our religion with the good in yours. ”

“ I was introduced into the Christian religion by the front gate of orthodoxy, and led out of it by the back gate of New Theology into my old heathen doubt and unbelief.
The enlightened heathen hold the same [64] view as the liberals with regard to the Bible and Christ. They also believe that the Bible is a good book, but that it contains both truth and error. They too believe that Jesus was a great and good man, but a man only, and not God. ”

“ In Japan and Korea we have eighty million heathen; in China, four hundred million; in India, three hundred and thirty million; in Africa, one hundred and fifty million; and in all countries taken together the heathen population of the world is over one billion. Now your foreign mission work is to evangelize this heathen world. For this purpose, how strong an army of Christian soldiers have you despatched? How many missionaries have you already sent out? Are you doing this work of world evangelization according to the magnitude of the task? ”

“ Christ, according to New Theology, is not God, but man. He is not the Creator, but a creature. He is not infinite, but finite. He may [55] be a godly man, or a man filled with God, or the Spirit of God, but still man, and not God. He may be the greatest, wisest, and holiest man among men, but still he is a man, and not God. New Theology may exalt Christ as high as possible. It can never exalt him to the throne of God. Between God and man there is an infinite distance, and no goodness or greatness or holiness of mere man can ever bridge this distance. ”

“ But such was quite the common practise among the liberals of those days. Not only in those days, but even now, there are many liberals who are practising these worldly counsels of handling the Word of God cunningly and deceitfully. They are proclaiming from their pulpits, not the salvation of souls by the blood of Christ, but only what they call social salvation, moral uplift, and world reconstruction by the example of Jesus of Nazareth, thus hiding their skeptical theology and agnostic philosophy under the cloak of practical Christianity. ”

“ I lose my appetite as I feel the burden of my message to those thousands of unbelievers, whose eternal destiny is now in my hands. If they accept my message and believe in Jesus, it will be life eternal to them, but if they reject it the result will be just the opposite. ”

“ It is very difficult to draw a line between ‘destructive’ and ‘constructive’ in the so-called [42] modern Higher Criticism. But all criticism which destroys faith in the perfect, divine authority of the Bible I call Higher Criticism, and all theological teaching which destroys belief in the perfect deity of Jesus Christ I call New Theology. ”

“ When I faced eternity in the death of my dear one, that solemn and awe-inspiring consciousness of the eternal destiny of man which lay so long dormant in my heart now came back to me with overwhelming force and vividness. ”

“ Persecution could not accomplish the purpose of our enemies. The more bitterly they persecuted us, the more we were confirmed in our faith. We used to comfort one another by saying, “Is not this the living proof of the truth of Christianity? We see right here in our midst the perfect fulfilment of the word of Christ spoken nineteen centuries ago, ‘A man’s foes shall be they of his own household.’”
This band of forty boys was afterwards called the “Kumamoto Band,” well known in the early history of Christian missions in modern Japan. ”

“ In Japanese “friend” is tomo, and my children changed that tomo into “mama,” almost the same sound, and were singing, “Our mama is waiting on the other side.” To them the unseen world seemed so near and real that they felt as if they themselves were living in the same spiritual world with their departed mother.
In the midst of such a spiritual atmosphere, how could I resist the influence pouring in upon me from the other side? You know, I had been a pastor at one time, as well as a professor of theology, so I must have known intellectually things pertaining to the spiritual world. ”

“ When you face eternity, all things which are not eternal, which belong to this world alone, temporary things, such as wealth and possessions, houses and clothing, and all other earthly valuables, which have absorbed your attention while you were healthy and strong, now sink into insignificance before the brightness of the eternal realities. What use is there of wealth and possessions to a dying man? ”

“ In the Old and New Testaments there are more than thirty thousand promises, and they have been life and joy and strength to Christians for nineteen centuries. But if these are not really the promises given by God himself, but only the opinions and conjectures of human beings, how can we trust them? ”

“ It is not by the work of social reform, or world reconstruction, or moral uplift, that this sin-stricken world may be saved. It is not by the teaching of Jesus, nor by his blessed life even, that we sinners are to be saved, but it is only by the preaching of the cross of Christ that salvation comes to this world. ”

“ For a preacher of the cross to win fifty thousand disciples for Christ shows that the days of the apostles are not past, and proves that the evangelization of the world in this generation cannot be an idle dream to one who has experienced the Gospel’s power, and is convinced that there is none other name than that of Christ given under heaven among men whereby they must be saved. ”

“ Just as when our bodies are weak and our vitality is low, we are apt to be attacked by disease, so the best precaution against this disease of the soul, and the most effective remedy for the pestilential doctrines of the present day, is the spiritual health and strength gained by a vital knowledge of God and the unseen world. Thus returning to my old simple faith in my Saviour and Lord, I became the preacher of his cross, and God has wonderfully blessed my work. ”

“ If you will send out missionaries filled with burning zeal for the salvation of souls, who will come into direct personal touch with young men and women and inspire them through their own personalities by the aid of the Holy Spirit, you can find any number of such bands even now.
Not only in Japan, but in all the mission fields of the world, there are thousands of such boys just waiting for some Captain Janes to come and form them into a band of Christian workers. ”