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Take an example from our American early history as it relates to social justice. A case in point is slavery. Some of the criticism, and not always without some justification, has been aimed at Christians for supporting the “institution” of slavery. Some well known Christians such as Jonathan Edwards actually owned slaves. How could that be? Did they not think that slaves were human beings made in God’s image? If so, why did they not react against it? If you travel throughout the south and visit some of the old churches built back in early American times or read some of the older history books dealing with American history, you find that slaves were included in the church and given assigned places to sit and worship, along with the rest. Slavery was not seen as an issue that was connected with the spiritual and religious part of life. Slavery was primarily viewed as social or political issue and because the church failed to understand the kingdom concept and the church’s role in the kingdom, a tragic war was fought in the 1860’s from which our country has never repented or recovered morally and spiritually. As a matter of fact in many incidences, it was Christian against Christian in that terrible war.

If a proper biblical understanding of the church and the kingdom had been in place things might have played out quite differently. I agree with Dr. Harry (Skip) Stout of Yale University both in a conversation with me and later reflected in the book Religion and the American Civil War, that religion was the energy behind that Civil War, and we failed to repent.

The following timeline shows some of the major influences that have contributed to the downward spiral:

The real issue is: should the institutional church inject itself in the broader kingdom realm, particularly politically and socially? Or should it withdraw and focus internally and exclusively on the organized church? And is that the only alternative? It would not be too difficult to demonstrate that the failure to understand and apply the church and kingdom concept drove many to a more liberal view of Christianity by focusing on the broader kingdom thus taking the church, as an institution, into the broader realm, creating a great rift within the organized church, especially among those advocates of church and state separation.

The church’s role is to disciple its people with a kingdom focused world and life perspective who in turn realize you cannot separate religion from any part of life, because that is who we are, made in God’s image. Christians are not to be discipled to withdraw from the world, though they are called to be different and to have a different agenda in this world. Christians, trained, discipled, and equipped, are to move into every area of life, as the salt and light, as ambassadors of Christ seeking to make a difference in those areas. If people like John Calvin, Abraham Kuyper, and Carl Henry are correct that there are no areas of life disconnected from Christ, then we must reflect that in our lives. We must be trained in the Word of God, which is the basic step toward developing a Christian mind that knows how to think, reason, and apply God’s Word in all of life. The church must prepare us for that responsibility. There is no legitimate dualistic philosophy of life where Christ is concerned. God is the Creator and Redeemer who permeates all of his creation and generally he does that through Christians.

William Wilberforce is a good example. He did not do what he did in the name of the institutional church but in the name of Christ the King. He set out to abolish slavery in the British Kingdom and stuck with it until that happened. It was the Christian religion, applied to that area of life, that set him on his course with the determination and commitment to end that sinful institution. He did not do that in the name of the church but rather in the name of Christ the King and Lord.

I think of another illustration that grew out of a discussion in a recent sunday school class. In discussing the topic of human rights and justice, the teacher raised the question, “What was the word that caused so many problems for President George W. Bush?” The answer was “crusades.” That word was offensive to Muslims because of their understanding of the historic crusades in the middle ages. As the discussion progressed, I thought, Dr. Billy Graham has conducted numerous evangelistic crusades around the world. Criticism about “those crusades” were not heard, at least in the same way. If that is true, I ask why? The difference was the individuals involved. President Bush is a political figure with a political agenda, according to his audience. Billy Graham is a religious figure who used the word crusade with a spiritual vs. a political connotation. For a Muslim and from their world and life view, they saw the whole picture and were threatened by President Bush, but not necessarily from Graham. He represented no militant, political agenda with his crusades. In most other countries of Eastern orientation, people’s worldview incorporates religion and politics in a symbiotic relationship. European countries and especially America, embrace more of a dualistic separation of the two, following an Aristotelian and Acquinas model of dualism. This really became clearly evident in the late and early parts of the 1700’s and 1800’s.

If you have a biblically based kingdom perspective, you cannot leave God out of any area of life, education, science, economics, politics, law and any other area. “In all things,” said Paul, “Christ preeminent” or present. We are to seek first his kingdom in all things.

When we refer to kingdom education, we are including all of the above. As we do, we are attempting to avoid a dualistic approach that makes a distinction between religious education and that which is not religious. The kingdom of God includes light and darkness. It includes the kingdom general areas of life and the kingdom special areas. For example: mathematics would be a kingdom general discipline and Bible study would be a kingdom special activity. While our attempt is to talk about kingdom education as our paradigm, we will have to learn all of God’s truth, from both general and special revelation. That paradigm includes how that is done plus the relationships necessary to make it effective in its mission.

We should be careful in discussing Christian education lest we fail to distinguish at which level or from which perspective we are speaking. While every aspect of Christian education should be biblical, i.e. consistent with the Word of God, there is a broader aspect of Christian education than biblical data which I why we prefer Kingdom education as our nomenclature.

Within the kingdom of God model, which represents both the broad (general) and the special definition or we could say, the formal and informal approach to Christian education, God is the ruler and the sovereign over all.

Within His all encompassing kingdom there are various spheres o areas over which He rules as Lord. As Abraham Kuyper and later Carl Henry were famous for saying, there is not any area of life over which Christ has not said “mine.”

A second aspect of kingdom education is that it is all inclusive in its subject matter. The church has a primary role of teaching God’s special revelation in a way that will enhance, encourage, and implement the learning process from a whole life perspective. While the church focuses its teaching primarily on the Word of God, because of the church’s centrality within the kingdom, it must teach the Bible in manner that demonstrates Christ’s sovereignty and Kingship over his kingdom and the source of all truth. Actually the church, along with the family and the school, are to see the wholeness of God’s truth. For example: The Bible is not intended to be a textbook on mathematics or science but what is taught, studied, and learned in those areas must correlate to or not contradict wha God’s word teaches, thereby giving us in God’s Word a foundational base for al learning.

By “the kingdom” I mean the rule and reign of the sovereign God over all things. Presently, it is a spiritual vs. a geographical rule and reign. This present concept of the kingdom foreshadows the final stage of the kingdom initiated with the return of Jesus Christ the King at which time the kingdom will not only encompass the spiritual domain but will also be realized as a place, called the new heavens and new earth, rev. 21.

Also, we understand from God’s revelation in the scriptures, while the kingdom of God encompasses all things, the church has a special but restricted spiritual mission to make kingdom disciples by teaching people to observe and live obediently in all things and in all areas of life that Christ has commanded. It is restricted in the sense of mission and assignment. unlike the church’s role, the kingdom of God includes the public square and every other area of life. This means that Christianity is the religion of the kingdom including the church, but as a religion, Christianity is broader than the institutional church. The church is the body of Christ, an organized organism, according to the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 12. The term institutional church refers to the organization of that body. In early America when reference was made and correctly understood, church and state separation referred to the organized or institutional church. The Westminster Divines, who authored the famous Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms, indicated only two areas in which the organized church should enter the broader kingdom realm, as far as rule and politics are concerned. one allowance is proactive while the other is reactive. This is spelled out in chapter 31 of the WCF: “synods and councils are to handle, or conclude nothing, but that which is ecclesiastical: and are not to intermeddle with civil affairs which concern the commonwealth, unless by way humble petition in cases extraordinary; or by way of advice, for satisfaction of conscience, if they be thereunto required by the civil magistrate.”

Originally, the phraseology “church and state separation” did not mean a separation of state and religion. rather it meant the organized or institutional church and the state.

The contention is that if there had been a biblical understanding of the kingdom of God, the church and the state tensions, schisms, and confusions could have been avoided or at least more clearly understood. By the way, that is not directed simply to those who are not part of Christianity or the church. What has happened due to a lack of kingdom world and life view perspective is that Christians have embraced a dualistic philosophy that characterizes-western culture which separates the natural from the supernatural, faith from fact, the secular from the sacred, the spiritual and the natural, the secular from the religious. How that tends to play out in the above scenario suggests that religion belongs to the supernatural realm. Things like politics and science belong to the natural realm. Values and beliefs belong to the upper spiritual realm while science, fact, and history belong to the lower natural realm and never should the two meet. How this has played out, especially in American history, has created much confusion. Does the institutional church become involved in the political realm or does the church remain silent about political and social issues?

In application we need to understand the relation and roles of the church and the kingdom. We must understand the relation of Christianity to all of life. We must understand how the church and individual Christians or groups of Christians are to relate to the public square. And, we must further free ourselves and our western culture from the dualistic philosophy that continues to keep us from the wholistic total kingdom world and life view of Christianity. The prophet Micah has written, “He has told you o man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” We understand that Micah did not for that to apply only to the organized church, but all of life, the kingdom, as well.

Another example developed at the recent (2009) General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America. The Assembly was presented with an overture requesting it to address the President of the United States regarding homosexuality relating to the military. The Assembly declined to respond in the affirmative to the overture concluding that it was not an extraordinary issue. According to the church’s constitution, namely WCF 31:4, it could have legitimately responded by doing just what the overture asked. some believed that homosexuality with its many significant implications on the doctrine of God, the doctrine of man as God’s image, as well as the institution of marriage, was indeed extra-ordinary and were disappointed over the Assembly’s action. I mention this not to re-vi sit the arguments raised but to demonstrate the two options before the assembly. Christianity is about the Gospel, but the Gospel is the good news of the kingdom and not simply man’s salvation and his relation to God. Christianity is a world and life view with a kingdom focus, and the church has the assignment of making kingdom disciples to help its people develop a Christian mind capable of dealing with all types of moral and ethical situations plus how to think biblically about them.

We must wake up to the fact that the church’s role is to disciple its people, the body of Christ, to live in the kingdom realm “24/7” and remember that there is no area of life over which Christ has not said “mine.” Our responsibility is to proclaim the Gospel of the kingdom in its fullness. Another way of stating this-the organized church has the Lord’s assignment to disciple the body of Christ, his people, in order that they may live for him in all of life throughout all the world. We have and will continue to pay a great price, if we fail to understand and apply this to all of life.

If we are on target with our understanding of a kingdom disciple, namely one that is transformed by changing the way he thinks (rom.12:2) by intentionally thinking God’s thoughts, (2 Cor. 10:5) then to exclude God from any area of life as does the dualistic model of secular and sacred, church and state separation is dangerous. We will never fully serve our sovereign King and Lord because we will not have the Christian mind that knows how to think and act in a transforming way. And, unless God is our predicate of knowledge and basic reference point, we will have a faulty view of life and reality because as the Psalmist says, “In his light, we see light.”

I have been challenged reading Hunter Baker’s book The End Of Secularism (see book reviews) in which he has clearly opened the notion that secularism’s approach leaves God out of the picture. While showing this historic phenomena such as the struggles between the church and state, the pope and the king, etc., he has applied it to the u.s. today and “the naked public square” as the late John Neuhaus described it. Following the dualistic thinking route, politics and science are neutral topics and should not be impacted by religion or God. Hence Americans have bought into the notion that God and the state do not intermingle. But as Baker concluded in the last paragraph of the book, “removing God from our public deliberations doesn’t help us focus on the things we have in common. The truth is that the great majority of us have God in common. God matters. He matters in how we think about human rights and civil rights. He matters in how we think about bioethics and in helping us to know how far we dare go. He matters in how we treat criminals. He matters in the decisions we make about the economy and in how we go to war. In order to preserve our freedom to talk about him in all that we do, even in politics, we need only respect others by seeking to persuade rather than to coerce. Surely that is preferable to replacing the organic heart of our civilization with a mechanical one.” Pluralism yes; dualism and secularism no! Need more be said?

From there Stott states with conviction that the church is no afterthought with God. “It is at the very center of the eternal purpose of God.” He reminds us that the church in the West is not presently growing. He also, like Packer, refers to the stuntedness of the church. Using Acts 2:42-47, he then sets out four essentials which he says are the parts of God’s vision for his church. They are:

A learning church – The first thing Luke said in Acts 2 was that the church devoted itself to the apostles’ teachings. We cannot bypass teaching sound doctrine, as well as what is in accord with sound doctrine, and expect God to bless us. Anti-intellectualism plagues the broader evangelical church today. Some world leaders are saying that the church “is a mile wide and an inch deep.” Not knowing what we believe and not being able to give a reason to those who ask why we believe what we believe is incompatible with biblical Christianity. What we believe does in fact matter greatly. Truth matters!

A caring church – “They devoted themselves… to the fellowship.” They had all things in common and shared with one another according to their needs (Act 2:44-45). Here, Stott particularly positions small group ministry in the life of the church. There was a general pastoral model for a caring church in the early church.

A worshiping church – “They devoted themselves to the breaking of the bread.” The early church experienced both a joyful and reverent worship. First of all, the church is to pay attention to the biblical soundness of our worship; and then under that umbrella we can then think of each other’s preferences. The church, though being one body, is a diversified people who need each other, even in worship. Stott wrote, “When I attend some church services, I almost think I have come to a funeral by mistake… At the same time the early church’s worship was never irreverent… Some church services today are flippant.”

An evangelizing church – To be preoccupied with itself is a danger for the churches to beware of. The early church was committed to missions (Acts 2:47). Christ added to the church such as were saved. The two go together, and trying to make that merely a reference to the mystical body of Christ and by-pass the local church was not the model of the early church. Converts to Christ were added daily; and as Stott says, they related both to the apostles and their teaching and to one another. They loved each other, which is the basic ingredient of a loving and caring church.

I would encourage each pastor, elder, deacon, and others who teach and lead in the church to read Stott’s book, but only with the warning that it might change the way you think about some things. Stott does not give out mixed signals. For example, Jesus defines Christians as salt and light, implying that Christians are to be radically different in the way we think and live in contrast to non-Christians. Jesus made it perfectly clear in places such as the Sermon on the Mount and the parables that Christians are to be different. One way we function as salt and light is to take our Christianity into the marketplace, or as Stott says, “permeate secular culture for Christ in our daily work.” You do not have to be a professional minister or missionary to do that. This is where the process of making kingdom disciples reminds us that no matter what we do, we are to do all to God’s glory. Stott asks, “Why don’t we Christians have a more wholesome effect on society?…Who’s to blame?…Where is the light?” Those rhetorical questions set the stage for Stott to remind us that “we must accept the role which Jesus has assigned to us.”

I agree with him that the church is in need of, and hopefully even looking for, a new freshness. Stott says that while he is in the ninth decade of his life, “I often find myself looking into the future and longing that God will raise up a new generation of Timothys who are called to be different from the prevailing culture.”

Unlike some appear to be doing today by ignoring or speaking badly of the church, I think of the need to offer counsel to the Bride. All is not well for the wedding or consummation where the church is concerned; and as counsel is offered, we are aware of the need to deal with the Bride’s role in the overall design of God. It is to make kingdom disciples. As I apply this to our own church, the PCA, I believe we are facing great challenges and opportunities that we must address collectively. We are a connectional church, though sometimes, even as one of the organizers in 1973, I tend to think that the PCA is a Presbyterian denomination in theory but in a parachurch shroud in practice. I believe with all my heart that God has given us an opportunity to make a difference by being kingdom minded people. I believe with a little tweaking, by being sound in doctrine, committed to Christ by developing a Christlike character, by demonstrating the marks of the church set forth in Acts 2:42-47 and the historic Reformed marks of the church, learning how to downplay our American independency and experience a real body life, and realizing that as we are discipled by the church to be kingdom disciples, God sends us into the world with the mandate to claim all of life for his glory.

The PCA has a great opportunity to make a difference for Christ and his kingdom but only if we practice our theory. As is true of the kingdom, the church is not about us. Packer is right. We must not center on man but rather on God. We must come together with a working connectionalism that enables us to be all that God would have us to be. We must not look to parachurch ministries to relieve us of our assignment to make kingdom disciples and prepare God’s people to move into the world under the banner of Christ, seeking to do all and claim all to the glory of God. The ball is now in our court, and our future will reveal whether or not we have been and done what God intended for us.

Black Liberation Theology – What It Is .

Black Liberation Theology arose in the turbulent 1960s. During that period, violent anarchy destroyed property and fire-bombed buildings in cities like Los Angeles, Detroit, and Newark. James Cone was the principle originator and developer of this theology which sought to explain, even to justify, this angry, destructive behavior.

Black Liberation Theology understood that THE issue in God’s activity in the world was, and is, the oppression of black people by white people, particularly in the United States. Some oppression may be obvious, such as in denial of voting or other civil rights; some may be more subtle, such as in prejudicial treatment of employees.

God is seen as the God of the oppressed – and therefore against the oppressors and their false god. Jesus is found in the movement for liberation and freedom. Jesus came as a liberator, and he identifies with those mobilized for liberation. He is therefore a “black Jesus,” although blackness “has very little to do with skin color.” If you want to find Jesus, you will do so only among oppressed people. Cone affirmed, “God’s self-disclosure must be found only in the person of Jesus Christ and that Jesus can only be found in the context of liberation.”ⁱ The definition of Christ as black means that he is the complete opposite of the values of the white culture.”ⁱⁱ

Cone continues to say black theology excludes other views. “There are two reasons why Black Theology is Christian theology and possibly the only expression of Christian theology in America.” The first is that Christian theology must arise from an oppressed community. The second is that it is Christ-centered – “The black community itself is where Christ is at work.”ⁱⁱⁱ

Definitions in Black Theology are different from those of our tradition who are committed to the historic Gospel. For example, “In America, the Holy Spirit is black people making decisions about their togetherness, which means making preparations for an encounter with white people.”^iv Cone said further, “This country was founded for white people, and everything that has happened in it has emerged from the white perspective. The Constitution is white, the Emancipation Proclamation was white, the government is white, business is white, the unions are white. What we need,” Cone wrote, “is the destruction of whiteness which is the source of human misery in the world.”^v

Black Liberation Theology Evaluating its Sources

Black Liberation Theology did not arise in a vacuum. It did not come from “nowhere.”

The primary source is called “the black experience.” Many of us should simply admit that we cannot identify or even understand, “the black experience.” I spoke recently with a woman who recalled that Ocean City’s beach was open for her only two weeks of the year and that she was not allowed to worship in a Roman Catholic church in Maryland. I did not participate in “the black experience.” My ancestors were not slaves in the United States, torn from their homelands in Africa, subjected to degrading subhuman treatment and stature. But I offer two objections to the use of “the black experience” as a starting point.

First, I object to the severity of this description. “The black experience….is the totality of black existence in a white world where babies are tort u red, women are raped, and men are shot.”^vi I also object to the following definition. “The black experience is the feeling one has when he strikes against the enemy of black humanity by thro wing a live Molotov cocktail into a white-owned building and watching it go up in flames. We know, of course, that there is more to getting rid of evil than burning buildings, but one must start somewhere.”^vii

While some of us – no matter our color – may not be able to identify with the black experience, we can object to definitions that seem imbalanced and solutions to inequities that are destructive, criminal, and wrong.

Secondly, I wonder about the appropriateness of seeing the focus of God’s interest as being only oppressed black people in the United States. A Christian can surely be proud of his or her heritage and identity and can celebrate the Gospel in various ways. Any kind of oppression is wrong. However, is God’s interest only in the local black population, as the only oppressed people to command His attention? What of the people of Tibet, or the starving and beaten people of North Korea and its crushed Christian population, or the people living in starvation camps in Darfur, or the people of Myanmar/Burma dying of disease and hunger because their military government will not allow supplies to reach them, or the black and white people of Zimbabwe oppressed by President Mugabe, or unborn babies in the United States, perhaps the most powerless, oppressed, endangered population group?

All theology should begin with God, as the word itself indicates.

In contrast, the beginning for Black Liberation Theology is “the black experience.” The second source is the experience of Israel. Peoples who endure suffering and oppression can often find a similar experience in the history of Israel, especially in their time as slaves in Egypt, then set free by the intervention of God and moving toward the Promised Land.

In South Africa, for example, the first white settlers landed at Cape Town about the same time white settlers came to America. Fleeing persecution in Europe, they saw their journey through the middle of what is now South Africa to the Transvaal to be much like that of the people of Israel, free from oppression and moving through the wilderness. More recently, the many black Christians of South Africa have identified with the oppressed people of Israel as they sought freedom from the oppression of apartheid. People of both groups, white and black, identified with Israel and the God who delivers from oppression .

Black preaching has focused – understandably – on the work of God in delivering His people and leading them through the wilderness. “Our experience of oppression is like Israel’s experience,” or so it has been said.

But the experience of Israel is more than that of a people who were oppressed and set free by God’s special intervention and providential care. It began with the call to Abraham. They were a chosen people, before and well beyond their experience as an oppressed people. Through them all the nations were to be blessed, specifically in the coming of the Messiah, Jesus.

In A Black Theology of Liberation, Cone says much about Israel and the pivotal role their deliverance plays as a template for black experience. But he never mentions Abraham. He hardly mentions that the people of Israel became the oppressors in their new land, being told to destroy the gods and even the people of enemies in their new land.

The people of Israel were oppressed and chosen. Some peoples of our world are oppressed – some to the extreme, others in subtle ways – but none of them is the chosen people as was Israel. Selective use of Israel as a model allows subtle movement from saying, “There are similarities between our experience and that of Israel,” to affirming “We are God’s people, we are the new Israel.”

Thirdly, it comes from a view of Jesus that is based on the understanding that His work in the world today focuses on the liberation of black people, specifically in the United States. I have already indicated that the view that a person holds of the Bible’s authority will be reflected in what he or she thinks of Jesus and His ministry.

Let me frame some questions you might like to ask James Cone. The answers are quotations – yes, taken out of context – from his writing.

What do you think of the inerrancy of the Bible?- “… truth is not objective. It is subjective, a personal experience of the ultimate in the midst of degradation.”^viii

Describe Jesus’ ministry. – “Christ is not a man for all people; he is a man for oppressed people…”^ix

What is repentance?- “The appearance of Jesus as the Black Christ also means that the Black Revolution is God’s kingdom becoming a reality in America…. repentance has nothing to do with morality or religious piety in the white sense.”^x

What is salvation?-“Black theology represents an attempt of the black community to see salvation in the light of their own earthly liberation….This is not to deny that salvation is a future reality; but it is hope that focuses on the present.” ^xi

What about efforts to help poor and unfortunate blacks? –“Such acts are sin offerings that represent a white way of assuring themselves that they are basically ‘good’ persons. Knowing God means being on the side of the oppressed, becoming one with them and participating in the goal of liberation. We must become black with God!”^xii

We can understand how these statements can be derived from a view of arising out of experience. But we do not understand them to represent the revealed word of God concerning the work of Jesus, nor indeed what repentance and salvation actually are. David said, “Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight.” What David did to Uriah and Bathsheba could not be corrected. The sin against God was on his permanent record. We all have records like David’s. Repentance and salvation are responses to God’s forgiving those sins and deleting their consequences.

How Should We Respond?

First of all, be grateful that the ultimate meaning of the cross of Jesus does not relate to an oppressed Jew winning freedom for Israel from a Roman oppressor. It is rather the high point in the struggle between the oppression of sin – with all of its severe consequences – and the freedom that new life in the risen Christ brings.

Secondly, be grateful for the revealed word of God in the Bible. Rejoice in the promised Messiah of the Old Testament and for the revealed Son of God in the New Testament.

However, also remember that a major focus of His ministry was toward the suffering and the poor. He worked among and taught about those who were oppressed, not only by sin, sickness and death, but by landowners, Pharisees, priests, and even tax collectors. Early in His ministry, He quoted Isaiah, applying it to Himself, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord ‘s favor.” I remind us all again of Jesus’ words. “I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.”

Pray that the Lord will give us eyes to see, ears to hear, and hearts to respond to people who suffer pain and deprivation of any kind. And ask for wisdom to know how to be the Christians we claim to be in every sphere of life. Jesus summed it up this way, “As the Father has sent me, so send I you.”

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i James H. Cone in Thabiti M. Anyabwile, The Decline of African American Theology: From Biblical Faith to Cultural Captivity, (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2007), 49;
ii James H. Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1970), 215
iii Ibid., 24
iv Ibid., 122
v Ibid., 192-193
vi Ibid., 55
vii Ibid., 56-57
viii Ibid., 48
ix Ibid., 157
x Ibid., 221
x i Ibid., 226
xii Ibid., 226

By Matsu Crawford, taken from the December 1991 Issue of The Messenger.

In Thornton Wilder’s play, Our Town, the stage manager said, “There’s something which we all know but don’t take out to look at it often. Weall know that Something is eternal…. We feel it deep down in our bones …. All the great peo