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- What Kind Of Being Is Man Part 5
What Kind of Being Is Man - Part 5
Paris Reidhead

Paris Reidhead (1919 - 1992). American missionary, pastor, and author born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Raised in a Christian home, he graduated from the University of Minnesota and studied at World Gospel Mission’s Bible Institute. In 1945, he and his wife, Marjorie, served as missionaries in Sudan with the Sudan Interior Mission, working among the Dinka people for five years, facing tribal conflicts and malaria. Returning to the U.S., he pastored in New York and led the Christian and Missionary Alliance’s Gospel Tabernacle in Manhattan from 1958 to 1966. Reidhead founded Bethany Fellowship in Minneapolis, a missionary training center, and authored books like Getting Evangelicals Saved. His 1960 sermon Ten Shekels and a Shirt, a critique of pragmatic Christianity, remains widely circulated, with millions of downloads. Known for his call to radical discipleship, he spoke at conferences across North America and Europe. Married to Marjorie since 1943, they had five children. His teachings, preserved online, emphasize God-centered faith over humanism, influencing evangelical thought globally.
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Sermon Summary
In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes that our purpose as human beings is to receive Christ into our lives. It is not about following a set of doctrines or rules, but about having a personal relationship with Jesus. The preacher highlights the importance of understanding our origin, responsibilities, and why God created us in order to navigate the contradictory pressures and philosophies of the world. Ultimately, the only way to subdue our rebellious nature and prepare for eternity is through being born again and having a vital relationship with Jesus Christ. The sermon references Psalm 8 to illustrate the significance of humanity in God's creation and our role as stewards over the earth.
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Sermon Transcription
I shall make no attempt to review it all today. There have been some tapes made, and they are available of the other two or four sessions. We go directly to Psalm 8, and I want you to know that if you have a Bible or an attestment of a psalm, do turn to it, because we'll be back to it again and again in the days that lie ahead. O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is Thy name in all the earth, who hath set Thy glory above the heavens! Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings hast Thou ordained strength, because of Thine enemies, that Thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger. When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars which Thou hast ordained, what is man that Thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that Thou visitest him? For Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honor. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of Thy hands. Thou hast put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field, the fowls of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the sea. O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is Thy name in all the earth. I would lift forth the first phrase in the sixth verse, Thou madest him. Now there's been a raging controversy over this for well over a hundred years. Thou madest him. When my children were getting ready to go to university, we had a dinner time session because they were going to go to universities that had no Christian impact at all. Although I must, I'll tell you about that perhaps later, how God used some at that school to bring one of my sons to a vital knowledge of himself. But as they were getting ready to leave, I tried to instill in their minds two or three important, important facts. I knew from my own experience at the university that there was a tendency for teachers to confuse science and metaphysics. And so we talked about a definition of science. What is science? And the definition we used at our table is that science is the observation, classification, and verification by experiment of facts and of information. Classification, I mean observation, classification, and verification by experiment. So that may be too restrictive a definition, but at least the one we used in our house. And I've heard others that have been satisfied with it as well. And then I tried to point out to them that there were many splendid scientists who, because of the prejudgments they had made, failed to accept the limitations such a definition imposed on them. They were prepared to agree that science is the observation and the classification and the verification by experiment. But then they also wanted to have the explanation of what they had observed, classified, and verified equally scientific. And because they had a PhD or series of them, as the case might be, they were convinced that their explanation was equally scientific and failed to realize that the moment they started to explain, they had ceased to be scientists and they had become metaphysicians. Now I tried to get my children to make that distinction. I said, now look, when they are telling you what they've observed, what they've classified, what they've verified by experiment, listen, listen carefully, and you probably can accept all that they present. But when they explain how it happened, why it happened, don't believe a word they say. Their authority ceases at the moment they begin to explain. They're not scientists. They're religionists. That is their own personal metaphysics beyond the physical. That is their religion. And if you can make that distinction, said I to the children leaving the home, so that you can listen to what they present as science and understand that and accept that, but also reject, if you find it disagrees with your own metaphysics, the explanation as to how it happened or why it happened, because that is not properly science. Well, it had a beneficial effect. I mentioned that in the service something like this, and afterwards someone came to me and said, what do you think about the theory of evolution? And I said, yeah, that's quite a theory, isn't it? Well, do you accept the theory of evolution? Certainly, as a theory. I accept it as it's a theory, but not as a fact. You see, the tragedy is that many of the men that are in our university chairs do not accept their own definition, or at least my definition of science, and proceed then to take a theory and to assign to it the weight and the value as though it were a fact and present the theory as though it were a fact. Well, this becomes... I don't object to the theory of alchemy either. You know, that had a great deal of many supporters in the years gone by, that you could, by certain processes, change lead into gold. I think they have a right to it as a theory, and I accept it as a theory. I'll even go so far as to say I accept as a theory the idea of bringing commercial wine from Portugal to make mayonnaise. I know it's a good theory. But when you present it as a fact, it becomes a crime that people go to jail for not distinguishing between a theory and a fact. And collecting money for the support of a theory is held to be a crime. And I would suggest to you that setting forth a theory as a fact, if it had anything to do with a pocketbook, would equally be criminal. But since it doesn't, all it has to do is the eternal destiny of men and women. We permit it to go unchallenged because it doesn't affect the decimal point. You see, the only thing that society really is finally concerned about is the decimal point. That is the supreme architectural unit in the universe, is the decimal point. Where it is, which way, how far to the right or to the left, that's the important thing. And so we have laws that say you can't present a theory as though it were a fact and collect money for it. But you can present a theory as though it were a fact in the university and collect toll from it and nobody seems particularly upset about it. But it's terribly important for us to accept as the scripture says it, thou madest him. I used someone who has said to me, well, how did he do it? I said, what's our definition of science? The observation, I wasn't there to observe, and the classification and the verification by experiment. If I tell you how I did it, it'll be nothing but read-head metaphysics and you don't need to pay any attention to that. He hasn't told us precisely how he did it. I accept what he said, but there may be some things he didn't say. So as far as I'm concerned, I haven't any intellectual necessity. And by the way, the only problem I've ever had with the Bible occurred when I was a student at the University of Minnesota. I really was thrown into a tizzy. I had come from a very fine Bible school and went to the university and came under the impact of all this intellectual metaphysics, or pseudo-scientific metaphysics, the science and the metaphysics in the name of science. And it threw me, really a bit. And I began to question everything. And finally I went back to the book and I started reading it. I was going to read it through and I got hung up on the first four verses of the word. And I figured if I wasn't terribly smart, and haven't improved much since, but I figured that if I could accept the first four words, I wouldn't have any real problem with any of the rest. Because the first four words are in the beginning God. And if the human mind can grasp the fact that there was a being, an intelligent, self-existent, self-supporting, willing, choosing being that existed before the beginning, then you aren't going to have any question about anything else. Because that's totally other than everything in human experience. And so the only real intellectual problem I ever had with the word of God was in the beginning God. And when I came to the fact that I could accept that, then if he had said that Jonah followed the whale, I wouldn't have had any real problem with it. Because he had existed long before there was a Jonah or a whale. And if he could exist apart from all others and dependent upon none before the beginning, then I had every confidence that anything that he proposed to do he was adequate to do. So with how of it, or to explain how he made that, that actually doesn't impress me as being a valid challenge, because I can't explain precisely how he did it. It does not, for a moment, make me question the fact that he did it. Now I realize that this may have a problem with some, but may I ask you, what is electricity? If we're going to go to definitions and explanations as to why. What is electricity? Well, I made a statement up in the Cranford Alliance Church years ago about dealing with the Trinity. I said, no one can explain how God exists in three persons. But I said, I don't feel terribly bad about that. No one has ever defined electricity. And afterwards, the young Sapphire University representative in the area who had been in the service took me to the train. He and his girlfriend, we were sitting in the car going down to the train that takes me back to New York. And there was the green light on from the dash, you know, and he said, boy, I'm so glad that those college kids I invited didn't come. I said, why, what did I say? Oh, I said, look, what did I do? Have another attack of foot and mouth disease? I do have that occasion. What did I say? Well, he said, you said that no one has ever defined electricity. I said, yeah, I said that. I think that's right, isn't it? Why, no, he said. Any sophomore in college knows it. Of course, that's the time when you know more than you'll ever know again. So you'd expect it to come then. And I said, what is it? Why, he said, electricity is the flow of electrons from the negative to the positive pole. Gee, I said, that's helpful. One little question, though. What's an electron? And even in the car I could see him blushed with the green light on his face. And the green blush is the most unusual kind. He said, you know, I said, oh, oh, oh, you know, sort of choking on it. You can't define itself. An apple is not something that falls from a tree, you know. What happens does not explain what it is. Right. Okay. Right. That's right. But we don't know what it is. All right. That's nice. That's good. Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you. See, I do have frequent attacks of foot and mouth disease. Okay. Now, if we don't know what electricity is, you heard of the fellow that was in the class afternoon after a big, dark lunch at the school dining room and the butterflies were buzzing and the sirena was playing and he's half asleep and the professor's worried with it and he says, Smith, stand up. Smith, stand up! And Smith stands up. He said, what is electricity? And he scratches one cheek and the other cheek and rubs his hair and he says, ah, oh, professor, before I came to class I knew, but I've forgotten. And the professor's words, he said, just think, only you and God knew and now you've forgotten. I don't know how God made man. I know he did. I know he did. And I know that he made him in his image and in his likeness. He made him a little lower than the angels that he might crown him with glory and honor and he gave him dominion over all that he is made. Now it's on this that we have to rest. Man is a responsible creature. We've talked about some of the things that he has. The area in which God is, man is most like God, it seems to me, is in the non-material aspects of his being. The fact that he has the ability to think and to feel his emotional capacities and to will that these are the areas in which his likeness to God, that he has the power to imagine, to see what isn't as though it were, and then to take the appropriate steps necessary to bring what he has seen into being. Now we accept this definition of man that he's a thinking and a feeling and a willing being that is responsible for what he thinks, that he has the power to decide what he will think, that he has control over his mind. I would go so far as to say that the only part of your being over which you do have control is your thoughts. You can't control, as we pointed out last week, what you smell. You can't control what you hear. You can't control even what you feel. The people in Honduras the other night felt something, but they couldn't control it. But what they can control, what you can control, is what you think. You can't control what people say about you, what they do to you, but you can control your response to what they say and do. I would go so far again as to say that no one can hurt you, nothing that happens to us hurts us. It's what we do about what happens to us that hurts us. Oh, they might behead us, but if we know and love Christ, all that has done is to send us by express into his presence. They might hit us, but all they've done is bruise the flesh, which either will heal or won't heal, but the flesh is not me, and someday it will be laid by. I am a thinking, feeling, willing being that will always be somewhere seeking and healing and willing, and I will someday leave this robe of flesh. I've stood so many times in pastoral ministry at the bedside and watched as the last gasping sobs would come from the dying person, and when the chest subsided and the last gasp was over, to look across at the tear-stained faces of those on the other side and say, she's gone. What do we mean? She's gone to be with him, into his presence, to see him step through a thin gossamer veil into the presence of him we love. Gone. Gone. But there is the form, eyes still moist, and flesh still warm, and yet gone, and to that part it goes. That's the part that will be forever. Thinking, feeling, willing. The rich man in hell lifted up his eyes and said, Father Abraham, feeling, thinking, choosing, willing. This is what man is. He lives in a curtain of flesh. He lives in a drapery, a robe of flesh, and this becomes the tool for implementing him. But you see, sin did something to man. Now, man was an inverted pyramid as God made us. It was the spirit that knew God. There's a spirit in man, and the inspiration of the Lord giveth him almighty. And our fulfillment was to come from him, and the spirit was that part that found fellowship and union with him. Then, if you wish, the soul and the body. And with an inverted pyramid, and the body touching the earth, only enough for sustenance, only enough for expression. But with sin, like a Salvador Dali picture where the watch begins to melt and flow, so with sin coming in, that pyramid sort of began to melt and flow, and what happened was that it became something like this. It became... Man is plastered to the earth. He's now, by virtue of his rebellion against God and this enormous crime of sin, he's earth-plastered, if you please. He gets his comfort from the weeds of the earth. He gets his illusions of peace from the fermented... misuse of the foods of the earth. He's an earth... earth-plastered being. And then the soul, it has a little bit of response to it, and then the spirit of the unregenerate man. It bears up the pulse, the blows, but has no contact. There are some in other cultures, as in India, where they recognize that this pyramid once was, and that the earth-plasteredness of man is inappropriate to him, and so in India you'll find the efforts made to discover God by the abnegation of the flesh. You'll see the fatir sitting in one of the fires in Khardung, and there he is with these little fires all around him and the smoke coming until his body gets almost like leather from the acids and the toxins in the smoke. Thus he's saying, living in death, living already on the fire, before I'm dead I have no regard for the body. Or he lies down, and puts a mark in the soil with his fingers, and then gets up, stretches out as far as he can, puts his toe in the mark, his finger, and he lies down thrown around the ground, prays while he's down, marks with the finger, and so crosses the subcontinent in a very empty effort to meet God and to know God because he knows that there's something there. He's incomplete. You see, when God made us, he made us in such a way that nothing in the universe can fulfill or satisfy or complete us, but God. We're made for God. When God made me and you, he made and carved in us an empty place so enormous that only God can fill it. Nothing in the universe can fill this man, but God. We're made for God. And we either know God or we live our lifetime in the futility and the frustration and the emptiness of never knowing our reason for being. This was a great mercy on God's part, an act of tremendous kindness. Augustine, who had spent so many years of his life in this earth-clusteredness seeking somehow to quench and satisfy the pressures and the leads and the longings of his spirit, cried out on one occasion, O Lord, thou hast so made us that we cannot rest until we rest in thee. And we're made for God. If you read the book of Ecclesiastes, what you have is the preacher giving a description of the efforts that he made to satisfy his heart and need apart from God. And it's astounding when you discover that all the things that challenge and entice and allure most, he had at his command in a measure none of the rest of us will ever be privileged to experience should we wish to do so. For instance, power. He came to the throne of his father David, and the neighbors had been subdued, and they saw in Solomon wisdom and strength and character and intelligence, and so they didn't want to make war with him. And thus he became the king of all the kings in the neighborhood, in the area. They all sent tribute to him, and no one wanted to meet him and engage with him. And so here he could sit on his throne and say, All other potentates respect me and pay tribute to me, and I in a sense am the king of all the kings. O soul, are you satisfied? Did this make you happy? Did this complete you? Did this fulfill you? And the answer that he gets comes back and says, Vanity of vanity, emptiness of emptiness, or as one has translated it, soap bubbles of soap bubbles. It looks pretty until you get it, and when you get it you haven't anything. That's what he had. Then the next thing he tried, after he had tried this was possessions, things that he could make, the works of his hands. He had great wealth. And so he looked at things. He began to build. Every place when you travel in the Holy Land, you know, travel in Israel, or every place you go, he had a palace and a stable. He had more horses than all the rest of the world put together. Solomon's stables, I mean, you could throw a stick and almost hit it. He had stables. He had gardens. He had ponds and fountains and summer houses and spring and fall houses. And he built because it was creative. It was the exercise of his imagination. He could dream and bring his dreams into being. A friend of mine, very wealthy, said, the only benefit you get out of money after you have enough for your own security is to have the opportunity of implementing your imagination. And Solomon could do that. And when he had made all these magnificent things, he said, now are you satisfied? And the answer that he got back was vanity of vanity. All was empty. Then he tried wisdom and he brought to him teachers, the wisest of the world. And he learned all that they could give. And when finally he'd exhausted their store of knowledge, he went to God and asked God and God gave him wisdom. So that he could write the book of Proverbs. And if you think that isn't wise, you write the book. Another edition of it. How many deathless Proverbs have you written in the last week or so? This was a wise man to be able to take human experience in its universal form and couch it down to a few words. You know, every time he starts to write a proverb, it comes out something like a six in time. Say, you know, you want to change a six to seven or something like that. It's hard to write Proverbs. And Solomon did. He was a wise man. And finally, the teachers that he brought to his court sat at his feet as his pupils. And he taught them what God had taught him. And when he was the wisest man in the world, he said, now, so are you satisfied? And the answer he got back was vanity of vanity, emptiness of emptiness. Nothing is satisfied. And finally, he tried pleasure. He had no satisfaction from power, no satisfaction from possession of things, no satisfaction from wisdom and knowledge. There had to be some other area. And there were those who sold all they had for pleasure. And so he said he kept not back from anything that his ears had heard or that his mind had imagined. He did everything that anyone had ever done. Anything he'd ever heard about and anything he could invent that had the effect of satisfying his appetite for pleasure. And when he had exhausted everything, he got the reputation of a voluptuary and so they began to send him wives and a thousand wives and concubines. And God just, he just gave everything to this. And when he was so jaded and exhausted with nothing to stimulate him or excite him or stir him at all, he said, Now, soul, are you satisfied? And the answer he got back is that melancholy does. So troubles, emptiness, vanity. Why? He said, what's the end of it? Is it just to be born to live, to dance, to die? Is that all there is in there? No. Remember now thy creator in the days of thy youth. Don't spend your life trying to satisfy yourself with something that isn't capable of doing it. You're made for God. And nothing in the universe can meet you, fulfill you, complete you but God. Now that's the man that he made. We're made for him. Made in his image, made by him and made for him. We are served as us as the object of God's love and God would pour his love upon us and so fulfill and complete and reveal himself to us and we in turn pour our love upon him and reveal ourselves to him in such a way as to satisfy the ancient longing in his heart as father for children who loved him and as bridegroom for brides who delighted in him. And that's so he made man for himself. Now, if we understand that and we accept that then anything that comes in to challenge that or any premise that is counter to this we have to reject as far as being committed to the word of God and the truth of God is concerned. So we're not surprised, not surprising. In the experience that my wife and I had in Africa we went into several tribes that had no contact with missionaries and in some we were the first to ever come with the name of Christ in several groups, three at least, Margie was the first white woman that they'd ever seen. And so we had an opportunity to see people that had been living as it were in an unbroken exclusion from all of the stream of history and culture. It was just amazing to me, astounding to me to discover how much they knew that I had not been led to think they would know. I found out for instance that they knew the name of God as distinct from Satan. They knew the name of God and the way of obtaining that information was to pick up a stick or a stone and say who made it? Who made it? And they give you one name. Who made the tree? And they give you a name. And who made you in the same name? Who made, made, made? All was this one person. He might be described as where he lived in the Arctic, the one that was above. Or the one, Wanamish, the one that was at the head of the river. These people were at the west side of the Ethiopian mountains and the rivers came down out of the mountain and they saw the sun come up and they thought that Wanamish lived there where the sun came up and then it came up out of a hole in the ground there at the top of these mountains that they've never seen. But Wanamish, this one that was above, was the one that made. He was the one that controlled. Made them. I found out that they knew that certain things they did were wrong. Is it wrong to murder? Is it wrong to steal? Is it wrong to, is it wrong to, and invariably, what is wrong to change it with another person? What should, what does Wanamish want you not to do? And put it in a variety of ways so that we weren't just sort of prejudicing the answer. It came back again and again. This is not to be thought strange is it? Because in Romans the 2nd chapter we are told that when the Gentiles, the pagans, who have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these having not the law are a wrong to themselves which show the work of the law written on their hearts. In other words, God didn't leave men without a witness. He put it on their hearts. He wrote it there. That he is. And that he is holy. And that he expects men to do certain things and to refrain from doing certain things. And after such a session with the little local chief, and there weren't many people, only about 700 people, but there were two or three chiefs in that 700 people, I saw him going by the next day with a chicken in his hand. I said, where are you going? I'm going off to that Toananish and he burst out laughing. He said, Toananish? Why would I give it to him? He never bothers us. I know, but you told us that he made you and that he doesn't love you. You told us he was going to punish you when you died. Sure, but we don't know whether he wants chickens or what he wants. He never told us what he wants. What are you going to do with the chickens? I said, I'm going to throw them out because that's the evil spirit. I've got a cow that's sick and the witch doctor tells me the evil spirit is making my cow die. But that's Satan. Yes, I know. He's wanted me. He's all right. He never bothers us. And we don't want to waste our chickens on someone who may not want them. We've got to use these chickens as evil spirits because they can tremendous perception. I've never been in any course that I had in preparation for chain emission. No one had told me that I could accept this degree of perception when they had no contact to our knowledge with the Bible at all. Now, there was no revelation of Christ, no word for love. When I was translating John 3, 16 into that language, I could not find a word for love. And it wasn't in their vocabulary. It wasn't in their thinking. It didn't exist. They had 400 words for grass and grasses and not one word for love because they lived by grass and grasses. But love, what was that? And finally, one day a baby had died. Ninety-eight percent of the people in that tribe, that small tribe, had syphilis. It was just rampant, an epidemic in the area. And the baby had died. And my translator, or my assistant said, use the word. And I said, what's that word? And he repeated it. And the word was this. Mother cries for her firstborn son when it dies as a baby. That was how I had to translate John 3, 16. For God cried as a mother cries when her firstborn son dies as a baby for the world. Huh? Huh? Huh? There was an insight. He means that one of these, the one who made the world, cried like a mother cries when her baby dies. That was because there was no word. The only closest we could come to the concept of love. Now, this is what they had. See, God stopped the mouth of Satan. He wouldn't let Satan claim the testimony. The witch doctor was there controlling the lives of the people with fierce and virulent attacks upon them, but at no place, at no time did he ever claim that he, that man had come from the beasts in the field around them or that man was not made by God. Here were people that had no contact at all with anything approximating culture or civilization or history. And yet, they knew that God is, that God is holy, that God made the world, and they were responsible to God, and that they did the things they did. Why do you murder? Why do you... Because we want to do them. And their sacrifices were to Satan because he tortured and tormented them and tyrannized them. Everything, the way they dressed, the kind of house they lived in, the food they ate and didn't eat, was all controlled by Satan. They crawled into their homes like beasts. They didn't have a door. The first thing that they did when they came to Christ was to cut a door in the side of their house so they didn't have to. Why did you shut that hole out? Well, I'm the prophet of God. I'm not under the power of Satan. I'm a man. I walked in. God loved me. Christ died for me. First thing he did was put a door in because under the tyranny of Satan they were forced to. Couldn't wear clothes. Couldn't eat food. We grew tomatoes in our station. And Bill I, our gardener, came and said, do you mind if I eat tomatoes? Why, no, Bill I, go ahead. They're very good for us that I know they are. He said, why don't you take these plants out and plant them at your house? Oh, no. Oh, no. If I planted that tomato at my house and ate one over there, I'd die. Oh, Bill I, why would you die? You eat them here. Sometimes when you don't ask for them, that's all right. You eat them here, you die. Oh, yeah, because you see your spirit is bigger than that over in the village. Oh, but if I go there, the evil spirit, I'll die. My baby will die. What they ate, what they did, everything was under the control and domination and pressure of satanic personalities. Now, we would therefore expect that in cultures where there has been a history of association with the word of God, that it would not be particularly unusual to find that basic to the science, basic to the knowledge is the fact that God was God made man. But 125 years and more, the attack has been on this very point, that God did not make man, that man is the product of other forces and influences and that he is not therefore the act of or the product of God's creative power and thus responsible to God, but he is the product of inanimate and unknowing forces that brought him up and consequently he has no responsibility to anyone. Schmalhauser many years ago wrote a book, Why Do We Misbehave? And his answer was simple. Man isn't misbehaving, he's behaving because he has animal ancestry and animal origin. If he behaves in animal manner, he's being only consistent with himself. Why expect anything other than that from him? He doesn't misbehave, he only behaves. There's no such thing as wrong conduct, there's just human conduct because whatever man does is consistent with what he is which is just the product of a process. That's what's been taught, that's what's being taught and that's what's going to, I suppose, continue to be taught. But it's not what we believe, it's not what I believe, it's not what this book teaches. What thou have made is just him. Thou made is him. All right, now let's go back and see some of the effects that this has. We have, I'll just illustrate it. Here's two economic systems. One system goes back to about the same time as Darwin began his thesis and theory and so on. There came an economic extension and application of it. We come back here and we see that there's a philosophy of life that says there is no God. If I had a blackboard, I'd divide it and one side, on the left side, I would put a right, as you might wish. I would put no God. That's the basic, basic philosophical foundation of the system. There isn't a God. He's good. That is, the man being having the knowledge and that he does is essentially good, but he can't do really anything bad and the only reason he behaves in a bad way is because there are exploitative pressures by certain superior individuals that restrict this man from having the things he needs in order to be him, his good self, and consequently, the next step up. Have you got it down here? No God. Man is good. He only behaves in a bad way because the pressure is put on his environment by certain individuals that are renegade and then there should be centralized government that exercises the power to remove the pressure so that man can behave in the good way that he has the good being that he is. Now, over here, we start with something different. There is a God and he's the God of the Bible. Man is imperfect. Man has revolted. Man has sinned. Man is a traitor and a rebel and an enemy and an anarchist, and because we know this to be true of all men and of ourselves, there is a desire for decentralized government, just like if you've got to have cancer and can choose where, you'd better have it in your little finger instead of metastasized through your whole body. Because you can cut the finger off, but when it gets through the whole system, then it's difficult. So we have, over here, a system. Now, what we're seeing today is that we, as Christians, are being asked to be, to accept philosophical and economic systems that are contradictory to the basic principles. So if we understand the kind of a being that man is, what his origins, what his responsibilities are, how God made him, why God made him, then I believe it's going to enable us to walk in this world of contradictory pressures and philosophies and to live more consistently. But I know this, that there's only one way in the world that this traitor and rebel and anarchist and enemy can ever be subdued enough that he's safe in time or prepared for eternity. And that's to be brought to a personal, vital, experiential relationship with Jesus Christ, who we have in us. We must be born again, must receive him who is life. Now we're made that way. We're made for God. Salvation is not a scheme. It's not a plan. It's not a system of doctrines. It's not a list of scriptures. Salvation is a person. And that empty place that we have in us just fits Jesus Christ. It's Christ in us, the Holy Spirit. And I assure you that I'm going to go on working on this and maybe sometime in the future we'll have something that's embodied. And I'm grateful that you've made records of it. I would like to have copies of the tapes so that I can find out what I've said. Like the speaker who said after his introduction, he said, I'm tremendously gratified with the introduction. In fact, after hearing it, I'm terribly anxious to see what a man like that is going to say. That will be the beginning of the next century. And I'm going to grateful to you. I'm be very grateful to I'm going to be very grateful to I'm be very grateful to you. grateful to I'm going to be very grateful to my nature. May the Nations pray for me and my mother and May you
What Kind of Being Is Man - Part 5
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Paris Reidhead (1919 - 1992). American missionary, pastor, and author born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Raised in a Christian home, he graduated from the University of Minnesota and studied at World Gospel Mission’s Bible Institute. In 1945, he and his wife, Marjorie, served as missionaries in Sudan with the Sudan Interior Mission, working among the Dinka people for five years, facing tribal conflicts and malaria. Returning to the U.S., he pastored in New York and led the Christian and Missionary Alliance’s Gospel Tabernacle in Manhattan from 1958 to 1966. Reidhead founded Bethany Fellowship in Minneapolis, a missionary training center, and authored books like Getting Evangelicals Saved. His 1960 sermon Ten Shekels and a Shirt, a critique of pragmatic Christianity, remains widely circulated, with millions of downloads. Known for his call to radical discipleship, he spoke at conferences across North America and Europe. Married to Marjorie since 1943, they had five children. His teachings, preserved online, emphasize God-centered faith over humanism, influencing evangelical thought globally.