Let me begin by apologizing to those whose announcements in the Front Lines section of this magazine are past due. I hope it doesn’t affect those who attended your conference and trust the Lord blessed your event in spite of my tardiness. (This might be a good spot to remind all those who send in news items to have them to us at least three months prior to your event!)
Now a word of explanation. Circumstances dictated that I needed to write the bulk of this issue on China alone. That was fine, and I set aside 10-12 days to do the final assembly. What I didn’t know was that several funerals would intervene. Two of these were at some distance and involved several days of travel. I was honored to attend and participate, but it meant that this magazine had to wait untouched for more than a week. So I thought I might take a page to tell you a little about two of these, special friends of mine.
For the last month, almost daily, we have been receiving news of some dear friends going home. Without question, a generation is passing. Of course the passing of a generation is not a new phenomenon. Solomon wrote: “One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever” (Eccl. 1:4). There are at least two factors, however, that make this passage so dramatic.
First, there is a startling gap in the ranks immediately behind this passing generation. Those from the late 50s to the late 60s are rare in assembly fellowship. Of the few that attend, even fewer are suited to take leadership. Many people ask why this is. I confess that post mortems are not a happy occupation. But a few observations may help.
This missing generation were born just after two World Wars and the Great Depression; they knew little of personal hardship, hearing only about it in the anecdotes told by their parents.
They were also the first generation to go almost wholesale to college—it seems, whether the Lord had called them or not. It was expected by society, and many of them unfortunately went unprepared and unarmed to their spiritual slaughter. These were the days before Francis Schaeffer, Josh McDowell, and Creation Science Research to arm young believers for the coming attack. They went like sheep thrown to a pack of wolves. Many did well educationally and, later, financially, but often suffered spiritually.
Add to this intellectual assault the rampant hostility of their peers in the world. Given everything they wanted, that generation rebelled en masse. They were anti everything—ani-war, anti-big business, anti-government, anti-establishment, anti-institution, anti-morality, and anti-God. Theirs was the generation of draft dodgers, war protesters, pot smokers, love-ins, situation ethics, the “God is dead” philosophy, and the rise of the rebel as folk-hero. It was a wonder any of our young people in that era survived the onslaught.
But it isn’t just the missing generation that makes these older Christians’ passage so abrupt and costly. It is the quality of their lives. We are not only going to miss them personally; I’m afraid we are going to miss having that caliber of Christians among us to watch, learn from, and emulate. Let me tell you about these two friends who went Home within days of each other. Their lives were very different in some ways, but shared the common qualities that made their generation so valuable.
Ed Harlow at 94 was born on one edge of that era, and Bob McEachern at 74 was at the other. Ed lived in Toronto and Chicago and New York and Africa and Florida, and travelled throughout every continent of the world (except Antarctica). Bob McEachern rarely travelled more than 100 miles from his home.
Ed’s ministry was public—among other things doing missionary work in the Congo, starting the world’s largest Bible correspondence school, and, with his hard-working wife, was founder of a publishing house that led the charge for commentaries in limited-vocabulary English for ESL students. Bob’s ministry was quiet and unassuming—a consistent testimony in his community as an honest businessman and compassionate friend, an encourager of scores of young people, a faithful elder, and with his dear wife a generous giver and hospitable host to hundreds of grateful recipients. But let me tell you something they had in common.
Ed Harlow came from a home that was not only believing but taught him the truth concerning New Testament Church life. Until his dying day—although gracious and accepting to all God’s people—he was passionate both about the gospel and about Church truth. One of the last times I talked with him, we discussed the delights of remembering the Lord simply every week, something he had done for so long without it ever losing its freshness or delight.
Bob McEachern, on the other hand, didn’t hear the gospel until out of his teens, but when he trusted the Lord it became his life-long love. He never got over being saved and found his place at the Lord’s Supper every week. Canadian winters couldn’t provide weather severe enough to keep him from bringing his family on country roads into town every Sunday morning. In fact he was on his way to meet with the Christians when his final heart attack occurred, “because,” he said, “the Lord will be there.”
Some cringe when they hear that. Don’t get legalistic about it, they say. When you hear some people talk about “the assemblies,” they say, you would think they were the only Christians around. We know lots of lovely believers who don’t meet the way we do, they say.
Granted. Some people do get prideful and exclusive in their thinking. Some people do get legalistic. It’s a problem as old as Corinthians and Galatians. But does that mean that if you love the truth and hold it unashamedly up for all to see—since the Church is supposed to be the pillar of the truth, 1 Tim. 3:15—it makes you bigoted or legalistic? I think not!
Let me tell you, the next generation, a secret. Many of these older folk (Bob McEachern included) paid a steep price for leaving denominationalism and gathering simply in the name of the Lord Jesus. Many of their relatives cut them off. Sometimes their old friends would cross the street to avoid them. They knew that wherever the Word of God was preached in sincerity and truth, His Spirit would be there to bless it. But they also believed that the Lord Himself drew near in a real and special way when they gathered simply “unto Him.” They knew there were many dear and devoted Christians in various churches who met under various names but they wanted to meet just to Him. They thought the Lord Jesus was the only One who deserved that place of honor and would give it to no other man, even though it often ostracized them.
Those who knew both Bob and Ed would tell you that neither of them had a sectarian bone in their bodies. But they loved the truth and enjoyed the ongoing experience of gathering every Lord’s Day with others to personally meet with their Saviour whom they loved and to tell Him so.
If I were summing up what I appreciated about Dr. Harlow and how he influenced me, it would be in the two words, passion and vision. He understood that vision was not human creativity but seeing things God’s way. He saw the big picture: in the words of the Lord Jesus, “The field is the world” (Mt. 13:38).
He never lost focus. I called him up last winter and said, “Ed, I want to come over and visit. What should we talk about?” “Tell me how to cover the world with gospel literature,” he replied without hesitation. At age 94!
He always looked calm and collected, but in R. E. Harlow’s soul there burned a passion for Christ, for His Church, for His Word, for His people. And the fire never went out. Now we need the next generation to lay aside their personal agendas and career plans to let the Lord light their fire, to catch a vision of a needy world, and put their minds and money and might—all of it— on the altar for our worthy Lord.
When I think of Bob McEachern, I think of genuine warmth and winsomeness. His face reflected the glow of the Master. When you came into his presence, you knew you were in the company of a humble servant who kept himself in the love of God (Jude 1:21). Bob made you want to live like he did: “…in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God, we have had our conversation in the world” (2 Cor 1:12).
We’ll sorely miss men like these. But, thank God, it’s not too late for the rest of us to follow in their track.
Rise up, O men of God;
Have done with lesser things;
Give heart and mind and soul and strength
To serve the King of kings.
Written by J. B. Nicholson Jr