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"The Gospel and Computer Technology" (the transcript from a
Christian Research Institute audio tape, February 1987) by Walter
Martin.
   The President of the Christian Research Institute is Hank
Hanegraaff.
-------------

(This message was the keynote address at a national symposium by
the same name held at the Sheraton Music City Hotel in Nashville,
Tennessee on February 26, 1987.)

    It is a real pleasure for me to be here and to have this
opportunity. In 1962, I looked at a bank statement from my bank
resources, which were at that time anything but robust, and I
noticed that they were utilizing computer technology, beginning to
use computerized technology for bank statements. And the Lord put
it in my mind (because I wasn't bright enough to think of it), that
if they could index bank statements we could index the information
necessary for the proclamation and defense of Christianity and that
it was only a matter of time before this came to pass.

    I contacted IBM's Research Division at Armonk, New York, and
sat down with them and discussed the views that I had. Between
them, the Allen-Babcock computer network and others that were then
beginning in this field, we felt at the Christian Research
Institute that this was the ultimate tool of the future, so far as
we could see, and we began to publish on the subject. Publications
came out and this was the first of them. I have a copy of the
ancient vintage, 1967, on the use of computer technology in
Christian apologetics. And that's what I'm here this morning to
discuss in the time that we have together -- the application of
computer technology to the world of Christian apologetics.

    What is Christian apologetics? It is a reasoned defense of
Christianity. I'd like to invite your attention for a moment, at
the beginning of a conference like this, to the words of Holy
Scripture as found in the writings of the Apostle Paul in II
Corinthians, chapter ten: "The weapons we fight with are not the
weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to
tear down strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretention
that sets itself up against the knowledge of God. We take captive
every thought to make it obedient to Jesus Christ." This is the
strongest military language in the Greek text that you could ever
find. It is one of spiritual combat using spiritual weapons against
the forces of darkness. "For our warfare is not against flesh and
blood but against the spiritual rulers of the darkness of this
age," says the Apostle Paul, "against wickedness in heavenly or
high places of authority." The Christian is supposed to be
demolishing arguments. The Christian is supposed to be tearing down
the strongholds of the enemy of the Gospel. Forty-seven percent of
the New Testament, according to F.F. Bruce, is apologetic in
nature. Fifty-three percent of it is evangelical. Apologetics is
the "hand-maiden" of evangelism. You can preach the Gospel from now
until Christ returns, but if you don't defend it, you are looking
into the face of another Dark Ages.

    People say: "Well, the Gospel is going to go ahead anyhow,
whether you defend it or not." Yes, but we paid for 900 years for
not defending the Gospel after the first five centuries. The church
fathers gave us the means to defend Christianity. From the fifth
century, through the Reformation times, we had what is known as the
Dark Ages. Why? Because we didn't use it. Instead, we retreated
from the world rather than encountering the world.

    Christian apologetics is the lost art of giving people answers
to their questions. Not just telling them that Jesus loves them and
died for them on the cross and rose from the dead, but when they
start asking you questions of _why_ you believe what you believe,
you had better have some answers. Because if you don't have the
answers, you don't have any credibility. You can smile at the
world, tell the world that Jesus loves them, give them all the
Bible texts in the world, and if we are Christians and we believe
in the Biblical concept of preaching and giving reasons for our
faith, to ignore Christian apologetics is to drop, unilaterally,
our entire defense net, and to simply say that we're not going to
do anything, that we're just going to think "positive". Why?
Forty-seven percent of the New Testament is negative; it tells you
what to look out for; it tells you how to defend yourself; it tells
you what you're supposed to know; and if we really believe that
computer technology is a viable application of the Christian
church, I submit that it's necessary to apply that technology to
our defense. Otherwise, in a few short years, when the world gets
onto the system; liberal theology gets onto the system; the cults
and the occult get onto the system; you will be standing there in
your spiritual "BVDs" facing a large tank coming right at you and
you will have sling shots to use against it! Now I know that this
is a fact because I've lived through this.

    There are 34-to-50 million people in the United States, and on
our mission fields right now, who belong to non-Christian cultic
and occultic structures. Time magazine says that 60 million people
in America are involved in the occult from astrology through ouija
boards, right down to Satanism. ...The cults are not fun and games.
The cults are a determined, systematic attack upon biblical
Christianity and they have absolutely no intention of stopping.
They're growing; they're powerful, they're effective; and they're
doing the job far more effectively than large segments of the
Church can do the job.

    Jehovah's Witnesses alone have 488,000 full and part time
missionaries. You know what the entire missionary force of the
Christian church is? Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox? Less than
110,000. _One cult_ has three times as many people in the field,
calling on people's homes and evangelizing them, than the entire
Christian church has! The Watchtower's presses turn out more
information in six months, than all the presses in all the
denominations turn out in a year, and in more languages! The Mormon
church, in a new book just recently published, The Mormon Corporate
Empire, has assets in excess of $7.5 billion dollars. They double
their membership every ten years. [They have] a church income ...
that will permit them to evangelize any place on earth. And
Mormonism and all the cults and the occult imitate Christianity.
They look like us, they act like us, and they sound like us. And
unless the Church is prepared to give an answer to them, we're
going to continue to abdicate our leadership. Seventy-eight percent
of the people who are in the cults today are former Catholics,
Methodists, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Pentecostals, Baptists --
"they went out from us but they were not of us. They left us that
it made be made clear that they are not all of us."

    Christian apologetics demands a systematic answer and reasons
for faith. Computer technology can be effectively applied to this.
How? By indexing the basic materials on the subject of apologetics.
By selecting the materials that young people need to resist secular
humanism when they go into school. Marshall McLuhan said that "the
pen is the logical extension of man's thought processes, he writes
them down, and then the printing press was the logical extension of
his writing it down. The computer," said McLuhan, "is the logical
extension of his mind." And McLuhan accurately predicted artificial
intelligence in the 1960s which now exist in the computer industry
in frightening proportions. We are looking at computers that can,
indeed, think and are coming up with information not programmed
into them. This is scary, because we're looking now at the ultimate
mind without an ethic, without a morality, without any religious
convictions, just survival. "2001" is becoming state-of-the-art
today in computer technology.

    Now, if we can harness this technology, we can do what the
Apostle Paul said it was necessary to do. He said in Philippians,
chapter one: "I am set for the defense of the Gospel." He also
said: "I am set for the defense and confirmation of the Gospel." He
also said: "We are to take a stand fearlessly confirming the
Gospel." Our problem in the Christian church can be explained in
one simple sentence: millions for evangelism, not one cent for
defense! Millions for evangelism, not one cent for defense! We have
not only not defended ourselves, we have discouraged apologetics in
the curriculum of our seminaries and schools. We have discouraged
any attempt to effectively answer the world and have retreated into
a tower of mysticism or into our own subculture and vocabulary. So
our children go into schools with a Bible in their hands saying
"Praise the Lord" and they come out bearded, bathless, and
rebellious and nobody knows that happened to them. Do you want me
to tell you what happened to them? We didn't give them any tools to
defend themselves! We didn't teach them the reasons for their
faith. We didn't give them the "why" of Christianity, not just the
"what" of Christianity. And we think we're going the job in the
Christian church if we have Christian education.

    You can send a man through four years of college and three
years of seminary and a 90 day wonder from the Watchtower Bible and
Tract Society will twist them into a doctrinal pretzel in 20
minutes! I've seen it done. I can do it! I go to theological
seminaries and schools all the time. I'm enormously popular for the
first 20 minutes -- until I start playing the role of a non-
believer. I was an agnostic, very ecumenical, baptized an
Episcopalian, educated in Roman Catholic schools, converted as an
agnostic, trained under a Presbyterian, ordained a Baptist,
pastored a Lutheran church and taught at a non-denominational
seminary. I am now a Professor in a Christian Law School. I am here
to tell you that we are in trouble. You can build all the indices
for law libraries and medical libraries, you can enter every
application of computer technology imaginable that you want, but if
you don't come to the effective defense of Christianity, in the
spectrum of Christian education and make it a priority and apply
computer technology to _that_ effect, you are not going to have
much Christianity by the year 2000 because we went into the Dark
Ages once, and the forces against us in the world today are
unbelievably powerful. In fact the only ray of light that we had
recently was in Alabama where it was for the first time recognized
that secular humanism was anti-theistic, anti-Christian and that
its principal application was to ignore God and to program all
information around Him.

    I have talked to secular computer people in the field of
education, and I said to them: "How do you intend to deal with the
problem of religion?" The answer is always the same: "We're not
going to deal with the problem of religion, we're going to program
around it. We're going to eliminate the terminology. We're going to
redefine everything so that we will have a secular context." Now
that's already in full scale operation. Anybody who doesn't know
that has been asleep for the last 25-30 years at least and doesn't
recognize what's going on in secular education.

    Now sitting in this room are enough collective brains in the
area of computer technology to apply that technology to the
effective defense of Christianity. [It is] possible to index the
major sources of the brains of the church, the first five centuries
of the Church, the great years when we defended ourselves
effectively against all of those things which are cropping up
today. In this room is the capacity to apply computer technology to
the storage and retrieval of information so that young people will
be able to effectively defend themselves. Give reasons for faith
when they go into secular schools, and Christianity can start
graduating from its schools people who know how to answer the world
before they get in the world and get bombed by it and are not
capable of defending themselves at all.

    Isaac Asimov, a science writer and one of the most dangerous
men alive, wrote a book in 1969 on the subject of the Bible and
miracles in which he gave a rationalistic explanation,
scientifically, for virtually all of the miracles in the Old and
New Testament. In that book and in subsequent writings, Asimov
accurately predicted that "We will eventually develop computer
technology and a computer in our image in which we will be the
Creator, it may end up as our god. But we will have the
satisfaction of knowing," says Asimov "that we have at least
created our own god." "Glory to men in the highest! And heaven on
earth without God." That is the advancing philosophy of a new age,
occultic movement which is sweeping throughout the world,
amorphous, growing, and powerful.

    How do we apply Christian apologetics in a computer age? You
have to overcome one of the church's basic, I would call it
"traps", thinking traps. That is, that anytime you give a reasoned
defense for the Gospel you're being unloving. Anytime that you
speak out against error, you're being hostile. What we forget is,
Jesus said the world is hostile to us. The world hated Him, it
hates those who will follow Him. And Jesus said, accept it as an
occupational hazard. Love them for My sake, but don't ever make the
mistake of thinking that the world is the friend of the church. It
isn't. But technology is our friend. The technology of video discs,
the technology of computer storage, the technology that can take
the minds of the church and translate them into the effective
defense of Christianity.

    Apologetics is the hand-maiden of evangelism. After you preach
Jesus Christ, the Apostle Peter says: "Sanctify the Lord God in
your hearts and be ready always to give to everyone that ask of you
an answer, a reason for the hope that lies within you in humility
and reverence." We have forgotten that we are Christian soldiers!
We have forgotten that we are in a spiritual war! We have forgotten
that our young people are defenseless, essentially! As a result of
that, we are graduating people from our schools right now who
become neutralized in their lives and are incapable of dealing with
the problems that they encounter. They can't deal with atheism,
agnosticism, skepticism. They can't deal with arguments against
Christianity because nobody ever taught them how. Nobody ever gave
them any reasons for believing it. They absorbed our faith by a
form of evangelistic osmosis. But so far as being able to
articulate that effectively and give reasons for faith, it's
virtually non-existent.

    So we are faced with a dilemma. We have the technology -- now
will we use it? We have the ammunition -- will we fire it? We can
defend ourselves -- will we? And that's Christian Research
Institute's ministry. The effective defense of Christianity against
the cults, the occult, and emerging religious structures. For
example, a militant Islam right now, fueled by Arab oil money, is
sweeping into the United States and into Europe and other parts of
the world. What Islam could not do with the sword, it now does with
petro-dollars. And Islam is as evangelistic now as Christianity.
Buddhism in the United States is growing at an enormous rate of
speed. The Hindu-based cults such as Transcendental Meditation,
Krishna Consciousness, all of these amorphous groups which are
Hindu in basic theology are today to be found on our college
campuses, in our classrooms and unfortunately, in a lot of our
pulpits. Now, the reason why it exists is because we have forgotten
to teach people how to give reasons for faith.

    When we started out in a world of computer technology, we
couldn't get enough material into the computers because the input
costs would bankrupt you. We were supported by foundations who told
us in 1967 that what we were talking about, a Christian computer
network, oriented toward the effective evangelism and the defense
of the Gospel of Christ, was "not technologically feasible." That's
a direct quote. Not technologically feasible; they are chewing crow
today, but the terrible part about it is, the Church passed up the
computer revolution as the Church generally passes up most things,
because "we never did it that way before." Well we have to start
doing it this way, now.

    So I came here today, not to raise funds. I didn't come here
today to ride a hobby. I came here today to deliver a most
unpleasant message to you. If you're a Christian you're in trouble.
If you recognize the fact that the gospel is God's method of saving
the world, you better start doing something to defend it, because
right now we're killing off our apologists, we're discouraging the
defense of Christianity and the result is the resurgence of non-
Christian religions, cults, atheism, agnosticism, skepticism, and
humanism on a scale that is absolutely unimaginable! And it's not
going to get better, it's going to get worse. Brethren, let's face
the fact that God has placed in our hands a magnificent tool. It's
neutral -- it's as good or as bad as the person who uses it.

    If secular humanism, atheism, agnosticism, skepticism and the
kingdom of the cults develops this tool for the effective defense
of their position, we will have no defense against it. On that you
can absolutely rely. In our denominations in Christianity, we have
already our lost our major seminaries to liberal theology; our
colleges. Anybody who doesn't know that, hasn't been studying
church history. We already have people who are always asking the
question: But why? But why? But why? I have a program called the
Bible Answer Man. It's on satellite radio across the United States.
We clock 15,000 calls a month that I can't answer. And now listen,
this get's scary: from all across America; east coast, west coast
and everything in between, the people that call the Bible Answer
Man Program are asking the same questions. Do you know what that
means? That means ... the need is universal and they're not getting
the answers. Otherwise they wouldn't be calling a Southern Baptist
theologian, who is an expert on the cults and apologetics, to
answer the questions their Pastors should be answering; to answer
the questions that Christian education departments should be
answering and are incapable of answering. Why? Because we neglected
the defense of the Gospel.

    We don't like military language. Get used to it. Christ used it
all the time. "Occupy till I come" is a military phrase. It means
"hold until relieved." But what are you holding onto? What are you
using to defend yourself? Nothing. Our most effective defense today
in the evangelical Christianity is big, mass rallies. We bring all
the Christians together and evangelize and talk to each other. And
the world tunes in on television and sees most of the time that all
we're interested in is fund raising. And when they hear a major
evangelist say he's going to be dead by March 12th unless you give
him $4.5 million dollars, they hee haw us to death.

    When Johnny Carson has to clean up the church's act on national
television by showing that an evangelist speaking to millions of
people with a huge ministry is actually getting his information
from an ear plug and his wife circulating through the audience, and
attributing it to the Holy Spirit, and _he_ has to blow the whistle
on the Church and we can't do it on ourselves, then the world is
cleaning up the church's act. And the church is not cleaning up her
own. Why is it on national television now? It's almost impossible
to get a program in defense of Christianity. I know, I appear on
Christian television programs fairly regularly, about once every
six months -- because it takes about six months to recover from the
initial appearance -- the Christian public doesn't realize that the
whole leadership of evangelical communication sits in the hands of
a handful of people who are telling you what you will hear, what
you will see and what you will believe. And if you speak against
it, that's the end of you. Censorship, it's over with, you can't
get on.

    Right now, we have on Christian television, doctrines being
taught that are totally abhorrent to all biblical theology. But
there's no defense against it because the people that _can_ defend
it and the people that _can_ get up and say something are
prohibited from doing so. As one nationally famous Christian
broadcaster said to me, "Dr. Martin, you have a great ministry.
Unfortunately, you irritate people." I said, "Unfortunately? Thank
God _somebody_ irritates, otherwise we would never know what's
going on!"

    Now, I will tell you what is going on in the field of theology
and apologetics. We are totally unprepared to educate the Christian
public because we haven't harnessed the technology. If we harness
the technology, we can do the job. We need to do that job. We need
to take the collective brains of people like you and harness them
to the effective defense of Christianity; to give people reasons
for faith. Why is it that these resurgent religions are successful?
Because the Church isn't answering them. Why is it that liberal
theology captured our theological seminaries? Because the Church
wanted to be "Mr. Nice Guy" and wouldn't deal with the people in
the theological seminaries [so] we now have their products in our
pulpits and unfortunately, spreading through our pews.

    What are we dealing with? We're dealing with an information
explosion, we're dealing with a technology that can harness it, and
the Church is sitting there watching it happen as they did
twenty-five years ago, and saying: "Well, we gotta do something.
What are we gonna do? Well, we're certainly not going to get
involved in confrontation. We get involved in confrontation, that's
unloving." Why? Jesus Christ was the most confrontational Person
that ever lived. I was on one television program not long ago and
the lady who was interviewing me with her husband (the program
shall remain nameless for public relations purposes), said to me:

"We love your ministry, Dr. Martin," (she had this lovely smile --
I call it the Christian charismatic smile -- no matter what
happens, it never erases. It's always there, it's painted on.) And
she said: "We love your ministry."

I said: "Thank you."

She said "But, I have a criticism."

I said:"Only one? I'm way ahead today!"

She said: "You're not very loving." She smiled when she said it.

I said: "I'm not?"

She said: "No!"

I said: "Why?"

She said: "Because you criticize other people's religions."

I said: "Sister, has it ever occurred to you that the Christian
church is under attack and that we're not doing the attacking,
we're doing the defending?" She looked at me for a moment and I
said: "If you give me 30 seconds, I'll prove to you I'm loving.
Don't interrupt me."

She said, "Go ahead." (This is in front of an audience of 16
million people she's already told I'm unloving).

I asked: "Who is the most loving person that ever lived?"

She said: "Jesus."

I said: "Listen to Him; 'You generation of slimy snakes, who warned
you to flee from the damnation of hell? You white-washed sepulchres
filled with rotting corpses, you invisible graves over which men
stumble and fall, you are of your father the devil and the lusts of
your father you will do. He was a liar and murderer from the
beginning, he did not abide in the truth. You will seek for me and
you will not find me! You will die in your sins for where I am
going you cannot come. Leave Me, into everlasting fire prepared for
the Devil and his angels since the foundation of the ages.'"

You could have heard a pin drop in that audience. This lady looked
at me, I kid you not, and she said: "Couldn't you smile when you
say that?"

I said (grinning): "Sure! 'You generation of slimy snakes, who
warned you to flee...'"

Her husband said: "Stop! Stop! Stop! You made your point! You
cannot tell people they're lost, smiling! You have to tell them the
truth."

    Now, Christian apologetics is the science of telling the truth.
Giving reasons for your faith. If you destroy your first line of
defense, will you defend yourself? Will you defend your children?
Will you give answers to the world? Will you answer the cults? Will
you come up against the forces of darkness or are you going to be
a happy, smiling spectator believing that the power of positive
thinking and possibility thinking is somehow a substitute for the
truth? It's not. The truth is that God loved the world and sent His
Son to be its Savior. The truth is that you and I are supposed to
be out there proclaiming it and the truth is that we're supposed to
know how to defend ourselves and to tear down the fortresses of the
enemy and demolish its arguments and take captive his thoughts and
make it all subject to Jesus Christ. That's what the Reformers did.

    You wouldn't be sitting in this room today, unless Martin
Luther did what I'm doing now. Only he did it on a massive scale
against the Catholic Church. That's why you're here. You're
Pro-test-ants: you "protested," if you hadn't protested, you
wouldn't be here! If the Church fathers hadn't written for the
first five centuries, you wouldn't be here! Because they answered
all of the arguments raised against Christianity when it was in its
infancy. And we have taken all of those resources and deep-sixed
them, scrapped them, pushed them aside and said: "we don't need to
do that anymore!" Well, our children are the product of what "we
didn't need to do anymore." The cults are the product of what "we
didn't need to do anymore," the occult and the resurgence of world
religions.

    My plea this morning, removed from every context of tact, is
that we wake up to the fact that we are in massive trouble. Think
small, you can now carry a computer like a little briefcase around
with you. Microminiaturization. And finally, the ultimate
confirmation of what I've said -- here's a bulletin from the
Evangelical Missions Association [Information Service] which covers
all of the missionary agencies in the evangelical world. Let me
quote you from an article by Bradley Hill:[1]

    "Church Growth is sluggish in missions because rival faiths are
making powerful claims for allegiance. Evangelism in Zaire faces
profound changes. At this time the cults and eastern religions
have continued to multiply. Muslims, Ba'hai, Jehovah's Witnesses,
Buddhists, and Mormon missionaries are planting churches which are
growing, often at the expense of Christian churches. The
inheritants of these various systems are the unreached people of
tomorrow's strategies. How will the body of Christ approach this
task? ...The current discussion among Church leaders in Zaire
suggests two thrusts of the future evangelism: the growing presence
of non-Christian sects will require AN EMPHASIS ON APOLOGETICS..."

    That is the first time a Christian mission agency in 25 years
has stated that we've got to defend the Gospel because we're
reaching the people but we're not protecting them. They can't give
reasons for their own faith.

    "The alternative faiths are aggressively evangelizing among
Zairian believers, seeking to persuade them to leave the Christian
church and join theirs." The categories of the Church are four:
(these are categories of opposition to Christianity), "...the
Church is worldly ... the Church is western ... the Church is not
charismatic ... the doctrines of the Church are wrong." Those four
things are being used to pry people loose by the cults and the
sects. "[They] will have to develop an apologetic sensitivity [to
their] own context. ...But the future evangelism in Africa will
also depend upon its ability to ... defend the faith in a
persuasive manner. The villager faced with two holy books, the
Koran and the Bible, with two Messiahs, one Jewish and one African,
is asking which way is true? Which way is best?" And how do you
answer that? "...Apologetics as the defense of the Gospel is an
essential element to the evangelistic task. The philosophies of men
have to be evaluated. Presuppositions which are contrary to the
Gospel laid bare and false doctrines and practices condemned. This
will involve careful study and reflection. Who will do this careful
study and reflection?" Christian scholars and technology.

    We can't compete with the world one-on-one. But using
technology, we can produce the information necessary for them to
effectively defend themselves, and in this room there is enough
ability to accomplish that now! Now! Do you believe that? Let's
wake up to the fact that we're losing the battle of evangelism.
Let's wake up to the fact that Christianity is being spoken of as
the post-Christian era. Let's wake up to the fact that we're not
going to get any help from the World Council of Churches and the
National Council of Churches and from ecumenical groups, because
they are as cultic in their theology as the cults ever dreamed of
being.

    We're going to have to get back to the bedrock of creating a
database of basic Christian facts in opposition to the strongholds
of the world. We must structure this, index it and make it quickly
and cheaply available to Christian groups throughout the world. We
need a terminal in major churches, we need terminals in Christian
Bible institutes, colleges and seminaries, we need a communication
system that will give people reasons for faith. And if you give
them reasons for faith, then they are no longer afraid to witness,
they are no longer reticent to stand before secular humanism and
all the challenges of the cults and the occult. Give them the
tools, do not send them out to do warfare with slingshots and in
their underwear. Give them the whole armor of God, give them the
means for the effective proclamation and defense of Christianity.
Translate the technology of the day into the information explosion
of the defense of Christianity. And if we do it now, while we have
the chance and the technology, if Christ tarries, the future
generations will bless us in the name of God innumerable times. If
we leave them alone, and do nothing to fill the gap, there is no
doubt about the fact that the wreck and ruin of human lives, just
in the cults and the occult alone, will stagger the imagination by
the year 2000.

    We have very little option but to act. It is not unloving to
defend the Gospel. It is not unloving to be angry in the presence
of evil. Read Acts, chapter 17 when you go home. Paul stood in the
midst of Mars Hill and he was provoked. The Greek word says:
"angered in his spirit." If he had not been angry in his spirit, he
would never have gotten to Mars Hill to preach Jesus Christ. He was
in the marketplace, and because he disputed and argued for the
Gospel, they hauled him up to Mars Hill and you have the message
recorded in the 17th chapter of Acts. He wouldn't have gotten there
if he used todays' methods of defending Christianity which is, in
effect, "don't do anything at all -- pray." You don't pray about
something God told you do! You obey God!

    Aubrey said something this morning very quietly, in his nice,
comfortable southern way. He asked us to ask ourselves why we were
here. What are our priorities? What are we supposed to do? The
answer is very simple -- we are supposed to do what God commanded,
whether we like it or not. We are to preach the Gospel whether it
is convenient or inconvenient. We are to stand up for Christianity
and we are to give people reasons for faith. We are to be an
adjunct to the evangelical wing of the Church. We are to be what we
were designed to be, the people who defended, by all lawful means,
the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.

    I'm not asking you to help me gather the information. I'm not
asking you to tell me how to do it. I've got it; I know how to do
it. What I'm asking you to do is to work together to harness
technology so that we _can_ do it. Altruistically. Not for our own
ends, aggrandizement or successive ministry, but for the defense of
the faith once for all delivered to the saints. Read in Jude, verse
3 the divine command: "Brothers, when I wrote to you concerning the
common salvation it was necessary for me to urge you: put up a good
fight for the faith once for all deliver to the saints."

    Now, what I'm saying this morning may sound militaristic. It
may sound tactless. You can interpret it any way that you choose,
but I have told you the truth. I said this twenty-five years ago.
It's on tape and in print and every single thing that I said would
happen then has not only happened, it's worse than I possibly
imagined it! It's going to get worse, it's not going to get better.
We don't have any options. We only have a challenge. The challenge,
to obey scripture. And if we do it, God is going to bless us out of
our socks. And if we won't do it, and if we stack our priorities in
the corner and go our own way, we will answer before the judgement
seat of Christ for the souls that end up in hell that we could have
prevented from going there. And if you say that's not true, read
Ezekiel 34 when you go home. That's why I have a sense of urgency.
I don't even ask you to love me, although as Christians you have
to. I just ask you, for Christ's sake, believe me! The challenge is
here, the time is now.

     Thank you.

 ----------------

Notes:

1) "Future of Evangelism in Zaire Demands New Tactics" by Bradley
Hill in Pulse, February 13, 1987, p2.

Doing the final editing of this message has been an emotionally sad
experience for me.  As a young researcher with CRI at the time I
flew to Nashville with Dr. Martin to attend this conference.  I
remember the day he gave this message.  He had plans to utilize
computer technology for the defense of the gospel.  He called it
Project Archimedes.  It was a hybrid of the plan he outlined in the
"Road to Recovery" chapter of his book, The Kingdom of the Cults.
In 1990 I wrote about related progress in an article titled,
"Computer Technology and the Defense of the Gospel" for the
quarterly publication of the seminary from which I graduated in
1984.  Little has changed in comparison to the magnitude of the
growing need.  "Behold, the fields are white for harvest..."

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End of document, CRA0001A.TXT (original CRI file name),
"The Gospel and Computer Technology"
release A, April 30, 1994
R. Poll, CRI

(A special note of thanks to Bob and Pat Hunter for their help in
the preparation of this ASCII file for BBS circulation and to CRI
volunteer Marlayne Giron who transcribed this message from audio
tape.)

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