How is a life shaped?  By family and friends, by schools and circumstances, by tragedies and triumphs, but sovereignly by the hand of an Almighty God.

When Donald Grey Barnhouse invaded a room, the response was electrifying.  Some people idolized him; some hated him.  Some found him charming; others found him a bore.  Instantly, he divided a crowd between those who found him stimulating and others who couldn’t stand his dogmatism.

How can we measure this man?  He had long established himself as a courageous leader of evangelicalism; his stand on the fundamentals of the faith never wavered.  Yet in 1953 after his famous “New Year’s Resolution,” he evidenced a deepening understanding of the place of the church in Christian witness.

During this period, many asked, “Where is Barnhouse going?”  And when he tried to answer, some were not satisfied.  Others, however, sensing his growing love for fellow Christians, were thankful for his new spirit.  Donald Grey Barnhouse was willing to risk the support of friends to follow his deep convictions.

Yes, he was a complex man -- a man recklessly industrious, yet he admitted to being basically lazy; a man of determined convictions, yet he could easily reverse himself when convinced of a wiser course; a man of tremendous purpose and planning, yet he believed implicitly in God’s sovereignty over his life; a man who revered higher education, yet he maintained such a simple belief in the Word of God that he could spend 12 years teaching the Epistle to the Romans on The Bible Study Hour (e.d, which later became known as “Dr. Barnhouse & The Bible”);  a man who disliked evangelistic altar calls, yet he brought thousands to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.

What made this complex man?  What formed his character?  What guided his gifts?

His father, Theodore Barnhouse, was married to Jane Ann Carmichael, whom he met in a little Methodist church in San Francisco.  At first a farmer, Theodore Barnhouse later became a carpenter and then a contractor and builder.  He was a strong, rugged man who built with his own hands the house in which Donald was born.  Unquestionably, he passed on to his son the great physical strength which later made it possible for Donald to stand grueling 18-hour days and tiresome miles of traveling.

Though not a student, Theodore Barnhouse read his Bible, and conducted family worship.  Whenever the church was open, the Barnhouses were there.  A tither, he kept strict records of “his accounts with God.”  His simple faith took the Bible to mean just what it said — literally.  His pastor, a Mr. Rich, once said, “We need to have a study of how we got our Bible in this church so that our people can appreciate the different translations.  But I’m afraid to get into it because it might destroy Mr. Barnhouse’s faith.”

Jennie Barnhouse was different.  Her pastor described her as “a very brilliant person” even though she had very little formal education.  She had a remarkable memory and loved to keep record of unusual things—like the funniest names she had ever heard.

She was raised a Roman Catholic.  One of her brothers became a Jesuit priest.  But when she was about 17, she left the church and was repudiated by her family, who turned her out on the streets of San Francisco to find her own living.

For many years Donald’s family didn’t know about her background.  One day, however, when Jennie attended a Roman Catholic neighbor’s funeral, an old friend mentioned how glad she was to see “Jennie back in the mother church.”

Then the story had to be told.  On going to confession one day, she had run into a priest who was no credit to his church.  He had made improper advances to her, and she ran from the church in fear and disgust.  The young priest unwisely had followed up the matter until Jennie felt she had no choice but to leave the church.  When her staunch Roman Catholic family took sides with the church against her, she had found work in a dressmaker’s shop and Christian fellowship in the little Methodist church where she later met Theodore Barnhouse.

Five children were born from their union, four girls and one boy in that order.  In the evening in their Watsonville, California home, the family often played games together, and, aided by his photographic memory, Donald excelled.  After working a short while on a jig-saw puzzle of the United States, Donald soon knew not only the names and locations of the states but also their capitals.  In another game, “Around the World with Nellie Bly,” he memorized a great deal of world geography.  But perhaps his favorite was when the church young people came to play a game in which a trayful of objects would be exposed for two minutes and then removed from sight.  The object was to see how many items could be remembered and recorded.  One of the youngest of the group, Donald photographed the tray in his mind and frequently won.

As a matter of fact, winning became an obsession.  While he could win readily on memory games, winning games of skill was more difficult and Donald often resorted to “fudging” to come out on top.

Because Jennie Barnhouse was a good cook and Theodore Barnhouse loved to have guests, they often entertained preachers and missionaries in their home.  Quite early, therefore, young Donald was introduced to real, live people who had been to very remote places.  He loved to hear people talk and listened attentively.

As the youngest child and the only boy, he was surrounded by loving women and a proud father.  A beautiful child with spun-gold curly hair, big blue eyes and long eyelashes, he attracted the attention of most everyone in Watsonville.

As he grew up, his mischievous spirit and keen mind often got him in trouble with his teachers.  One day when Donald reported to the principal’s office for correction, the principle asked what should be done.  Donald’s oldest sister, who was teaching at the school, replied, “Why not talk to his father?”

The principal said:  “Simply because his father thinks his son is perfect.  It is utterly useless to talk to his father about him.”

In the midst of the easy-going home, Mabel Jean, the oldest sister, emerged as Donald’s ideal.  She had taken four years of Latin in high school and had majored in languages in college.  Because she was quite active in Christian Endeavor, Donald joined Junior C.E. when he was six and followed in her footsteps until he went to Bible institute.

Christian Endeavor shaped Donald in many ways.  It emphasized evangelism; conventions were times to make life decisions.  And it emphasized Bible study, prayer and pledging to keep a quiet hour daily.

It was at a State C.E. Convention in San Jose in 1910 that Donald underwent a momentous experience.  Here he met Tom Haney, C.E. State Field Secretary and a friend of Mabel Jean.  As the teen-ager looked at the man in his 30’s, he suddenly found a polar star which was to guide his course for three crucial years.  His whole life took on new meaning; even his high school principle noticed the difference.

Years later, Dr. Barnhouse recalled the incident:  “I was about 15 and a man dealt with me concerning my spiritual life.  He showed me the verse that reads, ‘All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all’ (Isa. 53:6).  My friend had me read this in the first person singular:  ‘I, like a sheep, have gone astray; I have turned to my own way; and the Lord has laid on Him all of my iniquity.’  I can never forget it.  For several years, in my ignorance of Scripture, I thought that I was born again at that moment.  Only years later did I realize that I was alive in Christ long before that.”

“What had happened then was that I received full assurance of forgiveness, and knew that my sins were removed from me.  I knew that I had been accepted by the Father…and was truly a child of God…A day or two after this great experience, I wrote in the margin of my Bible, opposite this verse, ‘Here I met God,’ and placed the date beside it.  How many times I went back to that verse when there was occasion to doubt!  I would see some imperfection, some fault, some grievous sin.  Immediately I would wonder if it were possible to have the life of God and yet the life of the flesh be so strong.  Sometimes I pressed my fingers to the page and cried out to God that this was His Word and that he had to make it good because He is God and cannot deny Himself.  Time and again I found certainty there, and learned stedfastness and the consolation of the Scriptures.”  

Tom Haney taught Donald many things that he could never forget.

Once as they were traveling by train to a C.E. rally, Tom Haney was reading his New Testament while Donald was reading the newspaper. Dr. Barnhouse recalled: “In the providence of God, there happened an incident which I count as one of the great turning points of my entire life.  I dropped my paper and looked at him reading the New Testament and said:  `Tom, I wish I knew my Bible like you know yours.’  And Tom looked up at me said something I shall not forget as ling as I live: ‘You’ll never learn it reading the newspaper.’  And he went right back to his reading.  I can still see myself putting my newspaper down, thrusting it from me, leaning over and opening my valise and taking out my Bible and opening it…”

“It was from that moment that I made the utmost decision that nothing, nothing, nothing would ever stand between me and the Word of God.  This was first and final.  And while I have naturally spent thousands of hours in secular study, yet everything I have ever done was for the purpose of getting material that I could use in expounding the Word of God.”

On graduation from high school, Donald naturally enrolled in the Los Angeles Bible Institute (now BIOLA), for this was where his sister was studying and where Tom Haney had graduated.

Here a new light shone into his life.  Donald’s chief teacher at the Bible institute was Reuben A Torrey, a Yale-educated lawyer.  Torrey brought to the Bible institute the terse, clear thinking he had acquired in his legal training.  He taught by gathering everything the Bible taught on a given subject and then making his deductions.  Woe to the unwary student who couldn’t back up his ideas with Scripture references: Book, chapter and verse!

Here was the taskmaster Donald needed to prod him along into doing his best.  Donald had a habit of getting along on his usual memory and winsome personality.  His sisters used to say: “With his smile and pleasant conversation, Don can get his own way just about all the time.” 

Torrey liked Donald.  In fact, he liked him so much that he lent Donald his notes — something Torrey very rarely did.  The lad took them to his room, studied them most carefully, copied everything he wanted.  And from that time Torrey’s system of Bible teaching became his own. 

During his years at the institute, he did much practical work under “Daddy” Horton, another of the great teachers at the school.  Horton continually prodded the students to pledge that they would not sleep if they had not witnessed to at least one soul that day.  Donald Barnhouse took the pledge.  In one month he gave out 3,000 tracts.  In addition he conducted three of four Bible classes in the surrounding areas.

Graduation
When it came time to graduate, Donald had been so busy with practical work and Bible classes, in addition to singing at C.E. Conventions, that he had not kept up with his class notes.  And this was a requirement for graduation.

When Torrey discovered this, he was badly shaken and spent a sleepless night trying to decide what to do.  The next morning he called Donald into his office and pierced him with his steel blue eyes.  Sternly he warned Donald that he could not get by on his smile and personality.  He would have to do what others were required to do.  “You must learn,” he said, “to do what is expected of you.  I’m going to help you learn this lesson:  you will not graduate with your class.”

It was stiff punishment for a proud lad, but it caused Donald to settle down, tediously bring his notebooks up to date, and belatedly graduate.

His days at BIOLA were behind him, but they were not forgotten.  Later he wrote: “During these years I began to get a grasp of spiritual truth.  We had a notable succession of white heads who ministered to great audiences in Los Angeles and whom we would hear two or three times a day through a week or two of special meetings: Dr. A. C. Gaebelein, Dr. James M. Gray, Dr. C.I. Scofield, Dr. W. B. Riley, Dr. F. W. Farr and others whose ripe experience, spiritual discernment an intelligence have all left their traces in my own spiritual life.”

One of his seminary professors said: “Donald Barnhouse got his theology from BIOLA, not Princeton,” but that was only half true.

Dr. Barnhouse later credited Princeton as the place “I came under the influence of four giants of the faith….  These four anchored me to the Scriptures so that no attack from any quarter could ever shake my faith that the Scriptures are absolutely the Word of God, impregnable, infallible, in short, divine.  Among these great Princeton professors was Benjamin Breckenridge Warfield in Hebrew, William Brenton Green in apologetics, and John W. Davis in Old Testament.”[dt1]

Princeton
Princeton was difficult for 20-year-old Donald Barnhouse.  Without the benefit of a college degree, he was doing post-graduate work.  Now he faced work which could not be merely memorized.  Another thing also bothered him—World War I was looming.  When a friend bought an airplane, he was one of a small group which trained themselves in aviation in preparation for the coming war.  For these reasons his marks at Princeton were not outstanding.  He completed two years, but by the end of the second year he was in a U.S. Army uniform.

At Princeton, as at BIOLA, he was the youngest in his class.  This made it hard, but Donald added complications.  He bragged incessantly about the paradise of California and was not shy about admitting that he knew a great deal about the Bible.  A classmate recalls, “He was one of the few students who would debate with Professor Benjamin Warfield.”

Another classmate said, “Don had a much better acquaintance with the English Bible than the average student in the seminary.  He knew this and let others know that he knew it.”  For this reason, he made few friends.

Some classmates characterized him as a “fluttering bird who wouldn’t settle down;” others felt he “had a clear vision of his goals and out-and-out consecration.”  Probably both were true.  Already his personality was confounding his foes and confusing his friends.

In later years, he advised a young man preparing for the ministry: “Don’t make the mistake of being in a hurry.  If you knew that our Lord was coming back in five years, I would still advise you to spend four of them in adequate preparation so that you could be used effectively in that last one year.  Youth has great temptations to go too fast.  Don’t do it; take my advice as an older man.  I only wish someone had spoken to me like this when I was your age.”

Donald Barnhouse, who always wanted to travel overseas, was disappointed that the U.S. Army didn’t let him.  Commissioned a First Lieutenant in the Aviation Section of the Signal Corps in 1917, he became a flight instructor at Princeton University and later at Kelly field in Texas.

Toward the close of his Army days, he attended a big rally in New York City.  Torrey was the speaker.  Spotting Donald in the audience, Torrey called him forward and introduced him as the “sky pilot whom he had trained.”

Afterwards Torrey asked him if he still planned on being a missionary (he had volunteered for Africa while at the Bible institute).  Some friends, Torrey said, were looking for a young man like him, young and well-trained in the Scriptures.  When Donald expressed his interests, he was introduced to Ralph and Edith Norton, founders of the Belgian Gospel Mission.

Donald was demobilized from the Army in 1919 and sailed for Brussels with the Belgium Missionary in April.  He faced missionary work with a determination that had been lacking at Princeton.  He rapidly mastered French and soon was preaching in the language.  However, after two years in Belgium, he resigned from the mission and went to France.

But during those two years, he met Ruth Tiffany.  According to a friend she was “wise and naïve, sweet and salty at the same time.”  She was described as a deeply devoted missionary.  It was said that “although she had received fine teaching, she had no very close relationship with the Lord at the time.  She had been born again but knew very little of a real prayer life.”  She was a lovely personality but above all she was a woman of strong convictions.

After a year as a pastor of a small French Protestant Church in the Alps, Donald married Ruth in a Plymouth Brethren church in England in September 1922.  Then they returned to the Alps where their first daughter, Ruth Tiffany, was born.

When the Barnhouse family returned to Philadelphia, Donald studied at the University of Pennsylvania, taking graduate work in history while serving as an undergraduate instructor.  In September 1925 he accepted the pastorate of Philadelphia’s Grace Presbyterian Church and two years later moved to historic Tenth Presbyterian Church, where he ministered the rest of his life.

The next few years were eventful:  three more children were born, a radio broadcast was launched — in fact, Donald Barnhouse became the first Presbyterian minister to use a national radio network — and weekly Bible classes in New York and other cities were added to his circuit riding schedule.

And at the church itself, attendance was mounting; the prayer meeting became probably the best attended in the city; college and university students flocked to the Sunday evening young people’s meetings.

In June 1933, Dallas Theological Seminary awarded this young man of 38 with a doctor of divinity degree.  His fame had already crossed the country.

But then “the Barnhouse case” exploded in the Presbytery of Philadelphia.

In 1923 the Presbyterian Church had been rocked with charges and counter charges over Harry Emerson Fosdick’s presence in the church, and the fundamentalist won out.  A dozen years later the storm centered around J. Gresham Machen, professor of the new Westminster Theological Seminary and leader in the independent Presbyterian mission board.  In this the fundamentalists lost.

But between those two major conflicts, liberal forces were gaining strength in most sections of the country; Philadelphia was an exception.  There Donald Grey Barnhouse was vigorously proclaiming what he believed.

Both liberals and fundamentalists fought hard.  Fundamentalists were fighting for what might be called an “exclusive church,” a church which held to their views of the Westminster Confession.  Liberals were fighting not so much the fundamentalists’ insistence that everyone had to agree with their view of the church.  In essence the battle was one of polity, but the overtones of theology were so loud that confusion reigned.

The battle raged in papers, printed tracts and wherever religious matters were discussed.  And this gave the liberals their opportunity.

Presbyterian law is quite adamant that charges of heresy cannot be laid against a fellow minister publicly.  Such charges must be brought before his presbytery and prosecuted according to the Constitution. The fundamentalists broke this law.  Because Donald Grey Barnhouse was the most vocal and prominent fundamentalist in his Presbytery, charges were preferred against him and he was tried.

It was an unusual trial.  The prosecution, failing to attain its goals in Presbytery, had the case sent up to Synod (the next highest judicatory in the Presbyterian Church), where a verdict of guilty was reached.

The moderator of presbytery was ordered to deliver a reprimand, which he did under protest.  Following this, according to an Associated Press report, the Presbytery “adopted a resolution commending Mr. Barnhouse for ‘his expressed desire to close this case; for his adherence to the doctrines of the church and his zeal in preaching the full gospel of salvation.’”  Donald Barnhouse had lost an ecclesiastical trial, but he had in no way compromised his doctrinal beliefs.
 His relationship with his Lord was never closer than when he was in difficulty.  Success was a strong wine that caused him to rely on his own strength.  Trouble threw him back on Christ.  During the trouble, his attitude, a friend said, “was one of taking a humble place before the Lord, wanting His will.”

Few events in his life were as significant as this.  From a child, he had always sought to get his own way — and win.  His success in the Tenth Church pulpit was grist for his strong individualistic tendencies.  Had this trial not occurred, he might well have been Philadelphia’s leader in the Machen-Independent Board battle in 1935, his relations with the Presbyterian Church would have inevitably been severed, and the course of his ministry totally changed.

During 1934 and 1935 he circled the world for the first time.  In 1940 Tenth Church released him for six months a year to preach in Bible conferences across the United States and in mission lands. 

Then in 1944, the “woman of strong convictions” who had helped in so many ways to make his ministry a success, Ruth Tiffany Barnhouse, went to be with her Lord.  It has been said that she would never admit that he could do wrong.  She was wife, mother to his children, editorial advisor, writer and many other things to him.  But above all, she believed in him—and let nothing whatever stand in the way of his work for the Lord.

After her death, Donald Barnhouse wandered in a wilderness.  He had cut his denominational cord down to the last thin legal strand.  Although he spoke in churches across the nation for six months each year, few Presbyterian churches would receive him.  Although a fundamentalist, he had not developed fellowship with the independent fundamentalist groups.  Although he cooperated some with the National Association of Evangelicals, his strong Calvinistic theology caused friction there.  From the days of his nationwide CBS broadcast and the large Revelation magazine circulation, he was now without a radio broadcast, and Revelation circulation had suffered.

Some said he was a ship without a rudder, never having recovered from the loss of his wife.  He was a lone wolf.  It seemed that he could work with no one — and no one wanted to work with him.  Yet in the midst of all this, his doctrinal convictions never wavered.

In 1949, the Evangelical Foundation was organized, and The Bible Study Hour began on seven radio stations.  In 1950 Revelation became Eternity.

Then in 1952 a major change occurred in Donald Barnhouse’s life.  His “New Year’s Resolution,” published in Eternity in January 1953, stated it first: “I loved many people, and loved many of them dearly, but I had never thought of them loving me -- my family, yes, but others….  I remembered when I was a small boy and came to my first day in school.  They kept me in first grade for about two hours, and then I was marched into the second grade.  That year the first-graders hated me because I was the smart kid that had gone ahead, and the second-graders hated me because I was the first-grader that had come in to show them up….  At least I thought they hated me --  and to think such a thing conditions one as much as though it were a fact.  So I developed the practice of doing my work in an attitude of not caring what anybody in the world might think.  And I rather carried that attitude through my life.”

On his attitude toward what other people believed, he wrote:  “Early in my ministry I conceived the idea that I must strike out against all error wherever I saw it….  I hit…Christian Science, Unitarianism, or Romanism.  If [error] was in some fundamental leader with whom I was in 95% agreement, I swung hard at the 5%.

On his desire for the future: “I want my circle of Christian fellowship on the basis of the fact that a man is going to be in heaven with me.  If he is, why not get a little closer here and now.  Give him the benefit of the doubt on the things we do not agree upon as soon as we find that we agree upon man’s complete ruin in sin and God’s perfect remedy in Christ…I believe that the love of Jesus Christ must mellow a man, and that the Holy Spirit who dwells in me is the same Holy Spirit who dwells in all who have been born again, and that He must move to draw us all toward the Lord Jesus.”

This was indeed a resolution.  It was the resolution of a man in whose life something new had begun to stir.  Here is how he explained it:  “We have recently celebrated my 25th anniversary as pastor of Tenth Church…One of the members of the committee…speaking of the committee that had worked on the anniversary preparations [said to me]:  `Those fellows certainly love you.’  I was stunned for a moment…But that night, listening to the kind things that were being said, hearing the testimonies of those who had been saved through my ministry, and remembering the words that had been spoken to me, I began to think that perhaps a whole lot of people did love me, and suddenly I saw that this was going to make a big difference in a lot of things.  I knew, of course, that they didn’t love me for anything that was from Adam, but only for that which was from Christ, but perhaps there was enough of this to let me relax some in my attitudes.”

Donald Barnhouse was no longer a “first-grader” in second-grade; nor was he the “young brother of Mabel Jean at BIOLA.”  He wasn’t the “cocky” kid from California in seminary, nor the proud, successful young minister of Tenth Church who had to “watch out for those liberals.”

Time and Christian love had done what nothing else could do.

In his introduction to his first volume of Romans studies, after speaking of the transformation which occurred in his church, following his preaching from Romans for three and a half years, he says: “But just as important as the transformation of the church, there was the transformation of the preacher.”  Nothing could be truer than this of his 12-year teaching of Romans on The Bible Study Hour.  The doctrinal note rang true as ever, but in and through the teaching gradually emerged the warmth of love which so many had not found before.

In 1954, he married Margaret Nuckols Bell.  In one sense this marriage could be considered God’s guaranty to strengthen and help him in his new commitment to minister the gospel in love.

Those who knew them had no doubt that God had chosen wisely in providing this new helpmeet.  A graduate of Bryn Mawr College and with many gifts of her own, Marge had only recently come to know the assurance of trusting Christ as her Savior.  She was greatly desirous of learning from her husband but was unwilling to accept his words as dogma — there was a mutual desire to learn from the Scriptures.  And probably for the first time in his life, there was also a loving close relationship which included the dimension of constructive criticism.

In 1955 the National Council of Churches, through its Broadcasting and Film Commission, released a series of television programs which featured Donald Grey Barnhouse.  If at first he had accepted the love of the people about him and moved out in faith, here was faith’s reward.  Such a thought would have been incredible to both parties five years before.  Now the desire for a wider circle of Christian fellowship had also given him a wider opportunity to use the gifts which were his from God.

In 1956 The Bible Study Hour moved to the National Broadcasting Company network and the radio ministry of Dr. Barnhouse was greater than ever.  He had passed through the wilderness.

Commenting on his new understanding of human love, Dr. Barnhouse said later:

“In those earlier years, I had the great joy and blessing of association with large numbers of deeply spiritual people who had fixed answers to almost every religious question, and who believed, seemingly, that it was not necessary to think any more because the problems were all solved.  But as I lived with the Lord, as I lived with the Word, and as I lived with myself, I soon learned that I must go on thinking because there were questions that could not be solved by a pat answer or by quoting a single verse of Scripture…Within these last few years, it has been positively plain to me that Christ is divided in the midst of the churches today.”

“It ought not to be so.  Some time ago, I published a New Year’s resolution, expressing regret that I had had differences with men who are truly born again….  The results of that resolution were astounding.  In the years which followed its publication, my ministry has been transformed.  I need to know all who have been redeemed by Christ, for I will never know my Lord fully until I see Him in every individual whom He has redeemed saved by the outpouring of His life for us all on the cross.  This is true fellowship.”

Out of this fellowship, Dr. Barnhouse’s developing love and deepening spiritual maturity became evident.  Some of the weaknesses of the flesh which had grown in the boy and became part of the man were never eradicated.  Yet he steadily grew in his love for the whole body of Christ and continually desired to walk closer to his Lord.

As he said shortly before his final sickness:  “God has directed my spiritual growth in the context of my life verse — Philippians 3:10:  ‘That I may know him’ was my youth; ‘the power of His resurrection’ has been the period of most of my ministry; but I believe that He has now brought me to the last part:  ‘the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death.’”

In his last recorded radio message he gives counsel which is both prophetic and important:

“I pity the young Christian who leans upon some pastor, some teacher, some other Christian.  Oftentimes it’s necessary for some great crisis to take place which removes the individual who has become the foundation so that the believer may find himself with no human resource.  Then he is forced to lean upon God, and thus he becomes established, firm on the Rock.  Do we detect this in Isaiah’s experience, ‘In the year that king Uzziah died, I saw the Lord…’ Did he have his eyes on the king rather than on the Lord?  Then God removed the king and the prophet could see past his ideal, his earthly ideal, and let his gaze come to rest upon the Lord Himself.  O this must be the experience of everyone who is to grow mightily in the Lord.  If anyone is leaning upon you, point them away from yourself and to the Lord alone.  If you are leaning on some human leader, ask the Lord to turn your eyes above and beyond the one who may have been the means of bringing you rich blessing, on to the source of  all blessing.”

Let all the glory be to Him who loves us remembering that his gifts were held in an earthen vessel to show the transcendent power which belongs to God and not to man (2 Cor. 4:7).

This article was previously published in Eternity Magazine.