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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, September 11, 1979
Page 7
God, through the prophet Isaiah, prophesied of our end-time loss of leader
ship and great men: "For, behold, the Lord, the Lord of hosts, is taking
away from Jerusalem and from Judah...the mighty man and soldier, the judge
and the prophet, the diviner and the elder, the captain of fifty and the
man ,of rank, the counselor...." (Isa. 3 : 1-3,RSV). Instead of providing in
spiring leaders, men of age and wisdom, God said further: "And I will make
boys their princes, and babes shall rule over them...the youth will be
insolent to the elder, and the base fellow to the honorable (verses 4 & 5).
On that last point, is it not significant that the second most pwerful
political figure in the United States, President Carter's Chief-of-Staff,
Hamilton Jordon, has been embroiled in a continual round of after-hours
affairs that has publicly embarrassed the White House?
Continuing in verse 12: "My people--children are their oppressors, and
women rule over them." Britain now has a woman Prime Minister, the very
able Margaret Thatcher, in the service of her sovereign, Queen Elizabeth II.
And in the United States, the President's wife, First Lady Roslynn Carter
wields such power behind the scenes that TIME magazine called her, in a
recent article, "Mrs. President."
No·Heroes Being Produced
God has taken away the great leaders from our nations. Most of the
"mighty" of World War II and the immediate post-war years have now
died. What is equally significant is that our societies, increasingly
divorced from godly principles and plain common sense, have not regen
erated any towering individuals--any heroes--to take their place. In the
November, 1978 issue of Harper's magazine, author Henry Fairlie, in a
remarkable article titled "Too Rich For Heroes," wrote this:
"We do not have heroes any longer, or perhaps it is more accurate to say,
we do not make heroes anymore. There are some who do not mind this, and
ever1think�may be safer without heroes. But even they acknowledge that
the absence of heroes is � mark of our age, telling us something about the
kind of people we are..."A society that has no heroes will soon grow
enfeebled. Its purposes will be less elevated; its aspirations less
challenging; its endeavors less strenuous. Its individual members will
also be enfeebled. They will 'hang loose' and 'lay back' and be so
'mellowed out,' the last thing of which they wish to hear is heroism.
They do not want to be told of men and women whose example might disturb
them, calling them to effort and duty and sacrifice or even the chance
of glory."
Fairlie was especially critical of the application of psychology to
historical research--"psycho-history" he calls it--and the attempt to cut
the great people of the past down to size, to emphasize their "warts" and
reduce their accomplishments. "A nation that thinks unhistorically of
itself is in present peril," said Fairlie. "That we no longer find heroes
among our own politicians or military leaders, that we do not look up to
heroes in our religions: all this is our right if it is our inclination.
But we have also taken the hero out of history, unable to acknowledge him
where he once was••.."
Such a "demythologizing" of the greats of the past, said Fairlie, could
only have taken place in the "grossly distorted individualism of today,"
where people are now "incapable of imagining the selflessly disinterested