the last christian on earth

© 2010 Os Guinness
Illustration on page 22 by Nick Butterworth

Published by Baker Books
a division of Baker Publishing Group
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.bakerbooks.com

Baker Books edition published 2014

ISBN 978-1-4412-2389-0

Previously published by Regal Books

Formerly published as The Gravedigger File: Papers on the Subversion of the Modern Church (InterVarsity Press, 1983).

Ebook edition originally created 2011

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

All Scripture quotations are taken from the following:

NASB—Scripture taken from the New American Standard Bible, © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

NEB—From The New English Bible. © The Delegates of Oxford University Press and The Syndics of the Cambridge University Press 1961, 1970, 1989. Reprinted by permission.

NIV—Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.

DOM

and to CJ and his generation, who are the ones to make the critical difference on these issues

Contents

AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW EDITION

PREFACE: How These Papers Came Into My Hands

MEMORANDUM 1:   Operation Gravedigger

MEMORANDUM 2:   The Sandman Effect

MEMORANDUM 3:   The Cheshire-Cat Factor

MEMORANDUM 4:   The Private-Zoo Factor

MEMORANDUM 5:   The Smorgasbord Factor

MEMORANDUM 6:   Creating Counterfeit Religion

MEMORANDUM 7:   Damage to Enemy Institutions

MEMORANDUM 8:   Damage to Enemy Ideas

MEMORANDUM 9:   Fossils and Fanatics

MEMORANDUM 10: Trendies and Traitors

MEMORANDUM 11: The Last Christian in the Modern World

AFTERWORD: On Remembering the Third Fool and the Devil’s Mousetrap

APPENDIX: An Evangelical Manifesto

REFERENCES

Author’s Introduction to the New Edition

Some years ago, I had the privilege of addressing a forum of Chinese CEOs in the business school of one of China’s leading universities. As we were walking back to the conference after a magnificent dinner, the dean asked me the most searching question of the day.

“What am I missing?” he said. “We in China are fascinated by the Christian roots of the Western past, in order to see what we can learn for China’s future. But you in the West are cutting yourself off from your roots. What am I missing?”

The dean’s question highlights one of the most urgent questions facing Western Christians in the advanced modern global era. We are living in the global era. The global era is a product of the West, just as the ...