January

Road Signs

By

Cornelius Van Til

ARTICLE

DRIVING back to Philadelphia from a vacation in Indiana recently, I was approaching "that dreadful Pittsburgh area". Coming down on Route 19 from New Castle I was anxiously looking for turnpike signs that would enable me to avoid something of the metropolitan district. But for the keen eyes of my wife I would have missed them. Nor was I drowsy or tired. The signs were poor. They were small and dirty. Do you suppose that the proper authorities would put up some better signs if I wrote them about it? Perhaps they would repaint or at least wash some of the most needed ones. I do not know.

I do know that as ministers of the gospel we have the responsibility of washing or painting with pure white paint the signs that lead to the turnpike of the Reformed Faith. And we must help our people to be on the alert for signs that we ourselves have failed to keep clean and bright. Perhaps we should put up a few new and larger signs at critical points. Failure to do so will at the least result in great loss of time and energy on the part of the people of God.

May I wash one such sign in this little article. I was in my home town church recently, where The God of Creation, a picture prepared by the Moody Institute of Science, was being shown. The unfolding of the flowers and the development of the caterpillar into a beautiful butterfly were presented on the screen. The whole picture was a pleasure to see. But at the end there came a thoroughly Arminian invitation to accept the gospel. The almighty God of creation was said to be not almighty to save. He was presented as powerless to save unless man himself should see fit to open the door of his heart, by his own power. What a pity! Surely the sovereign God of creation is also the sovereign God of salvation.

But did the audience by and large notice the fact that if they followed the road suggested at the end of that picture, they would miss the turnpike of the Reformed Faith? Most of them were trained in Reformed homes. Most of them hear Reformed preaching every Sunday. Many of them, no doubt, attended a Reformed Christian day school. Not a few attend a Reformed high school. All that should help them to distinguish the truth from error readily. Yet I am not fully at ease but that some of them might have missed the right road and landed in an Arminian blind alley unless they had been warned by a newly painted sign arresting their attention at this specific turn in the road. But perhaps I am too pessimistic. Am I? How would the people in your church react under similar circumstances?

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Notes

Cornelius Van Til

Cornelius Van Til (1895-1987) served as Professor of Apologetics at Westminster Seminary until 1975. His work in presuppositional apologetics remains a hallmark of our institution.

Road Signs

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