Warren Christian Apologetics Center
Affirm. Defend. Advance.
0
Apologetics Heroes 1.jpg

AH - Mack Lyon

Mack Lyon

 
mack.jpg

Mack Lyon (1921-2015) was born in Muskogee, Oklahoma. Mack committed his life to preaching the gospel at age 14 and preached his first sermon three years later on a Sunday night, November 2, 1939 while still in high school. In those more than sixty-two years, he has lived and worked with local churches in Oklahoma, Arizona, Texas and New Jersey. He was a missionary in Western Australia in the 1960s where he established a congregation in the Riverton suburb of Perth.
Mack Lyon began the IN SEARCH OF THE LORD'S WAY television program in September 1980 on one small TV station in Oklahoma. He has been recognized for his work in religious broadcasting by Freed-Hardeman University in Henderson, TN and by Oklahoma Christian University in Oklahoma City. He has been called a "Pace-Setter" among churches of Christ by the CHRISTIAN CHRONICLE, an international newspaper of churches of Christ. At the end of the 20th Century he was named by THE GOSPEL ADVOCATE, a privately published monthly magazine, as one of 100 "Trail Blazers" of the century among churches of Christ.

Righteousness Exalts A Nation

According to an AP report on Jan. 1, 2001, the people of Detroit, led by their mayor opened a copper box, a time capsule, that had been sealed shortly after midnight a hundred years earlier, Jan. 1, 1901.

The article by Andrea Cecil said that “Detroiters were amazed at what had been accomplished, but were even more excited about what the future would bring.” Some of them were excited about the potential speed of travel. That was two years before the founding of the Ford Motor Company, and you may remember that when Henry Ford announced he would build an automobile that would run at 30 mph, he was laughed to scorn. It was said the human body would disintegrate at such speeds.

One handwritten note found in the capsule was addressed to the mayor of Detroit in 2000. It said, “May we be permitted to express one supreme hope—that whatever failures the coming century may have in the progress of things material, you may be conscious when the century is over that, as a nation, people and city, you have grown in righteousness, for it is this that exalts a nation.”

Thanks be to God for at least one man who had a proper sense of values. Because despite all the marvelous inventions of the century now passed which have enhanced the speed of travel, communication, living, etc. Detroit like the rest of the nation has not grown more righteous, but more degenerate.

It can be said that a hundred years ago, there were standards, which, though they were not always followed, were universally respected as definitions of right and wrong or acceptable and unacceptable behavior. Sadly, it is no longer so. While the nation has advanced exceedingly in technology, etc., we have retrogressed as greatly spiritually.

What will another hundred years bring to America, if she should survive that long? We are told that we “haven’t seen nothing yet.” Perhaps. But what of the true greatness of our communities and nation? The answer is not in inventions and factories, but with Christians and the church. It is righteousness that exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.

It remains with the religious community to define the morality of the people. There can be no morality apart from religious faith. That is one very important reason churches of Christ simply must have a voice in the national media. We must speak out where we can be heard. It is our failure in the past that has brought us to the deplorable condition in which we find ourselves today.

Mack Lyon
(1921-2015)
In Search of the Lord’s Way
(January 2001)

Paolo DiLucaComment