Richard Dawkins is blind. Spiritually blind. I say this not to pick on him especially; multitudes of people are spiritually blind. In one sense, it is nobody’s fault; we were all born that way. And unless our eyes have been opened through the Holy Spirit and holy baptism, we remain that way.
One of the many things Mr. Dawkins cannot see is the Church of God. He thinks, of course, that he does see the Church, and that it is hard to miss—he is, after all an Emeritus Fellow of New College in Oxford, and the state Church of England leaves its traces everywhere around Oxford. Like anyone else, he sees the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the local English bishops, and the Pope, and the Vatican, and television evangelists, and even the Russian Orthodox. By observing these earthly things, Mr. Dawkins imagines that he has seen the Church.
But the Church, with its inner reality and glory and power—the Church as seen by the angels and the demons—is not visible to merely fleshly eyes such as Mr. Dawkins must use. This Church is only observable with spiritual eyes, eyes that have been opened in holy baptism. This Church not only fills the earth, but stretches on into eternity. The holy bodiless powers fight under its banner, calling us Christians of flesh and blood their brothers (Revelation 12:10). The heavenly saints swell its ranks, and look down upon its earthly struggle and support it with their prayers. The Mother of God from her heavenly glory spreads the veil of her protection over its hosts, and upholds it by her matchless intercession. Death cannot touch the members of this Church, and the Satan is powerless to stop it, however much he rages and screams impotently at it as it marches through the centuries. Tens of thousands of souls join her ranks every day, and confess the Name of the Son of God, some of them shedding their blood for Him. Tens of thousands of its souls ascend from earthly existence every day, escorted to heavenly courts by assisting angels. Divine light shines from the Church’s heart and illumines the world, and the gates of hell can do nothing about it.
This Church is one and unified at its heart, and it casts its protection over all those who confess Jesus as Lord. Perceptive readers of Holy Scripture will find this church described in unlikely places—such as the Song of Solomon 10:10, in which the Church “grows like the dawn, is as beautiful as the full moon, as pure as the sun, as terrible as an army with banners.” This verse describes the bride of the King, the bride of Christ, and Mr. Dawkins has never gazed upon her beauty.
Mr. Dawkins is only the latest of our detractors. People as long in the tooth as I am and who live north of the forty-ninth parallel will perhaps remember a detractor of the Church who was immensely popular in his day. His name was Mr. Pierre Berton, and he wrote a critique of the Church titled, The Comfortable Pew. He was answered by Mr. Ted Byfield, in his own book titled Just Think, Mr. Berton (A Little Harder), and I would like to give the last word to Mr. Byfield. In his final chapter, “The Church Mr. Berton Couldn’t See,” he writes these words: “[If Mr. Berton thinks harder, he may] see that all these [external] things were not the real church, but only a kind of shadow of it…. He will see that the real struggle of this world is not the atomic weapons issue, nor the racial question, nor the quest for social improvement. It is the slow, vicious, deadly war between good and evil and the battleground is the heart of each man. Then he will know that upon that battleground has come an army, its weapons gleaming with the brilliance of truth, its ranks stretching back to the roots of antiquity, its leader the light of every man that comes into the world. Then for the first time, he will have seen it—awesome, devastating, relentless as love—the Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ, militant here in earth.” With eyes opened at baptism, we can see this Church, and join her ranks. And it is our privilege to serve our King under its banner, until our dying breath.
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