| Praying in the Spirit by John Bunyan - Prayer is a command of God, and is to be practiced both in public and in private; yes, such a command brings those that have the spirit of prayer, into great intimacy with God; and the prevailing prayer, will receive great things from God. |
Praying in the Spirit
by John Bunyan
"We do not know what we ought to pray for, the Spirit helps us in our weakness." Romans 8:26
"I will pray with my spirit, but I will also pray with my mind" 1 Corinthians 14:15
Prayer is a command of God, and is to be practiced both in public and in private; yes, such a command brings those that have the spirit of prayer, into great intimacy with God; and the prevailing prayer, will receive great things from God, both for the person that prayed, and for those that are prayed for. Prayer opens the heart of God, and is a means by which the empty soul is filled. By prayer the Christian can open his heart to God, as to a friend, and obtain fresh testimony of God's friendship to him. My purpose today will be to show you the very heart of prayer, without which, all your lifting up, of hands, eyes, and voices, will be to no avail.
My outline will be as follows:
I. I will show you what true prayer is.
II. I will show you what it is to pray in the Spirit.
III. I will show what it is to pray with my spirit and with my mind.
IV. I will make application of what we have learned.
I. WHAT TRUE PRAYER IS
Prayer is a sincere, sensible, affectionate pouring out of the heart and soul to God, through Christ, with the strength and assistance of the Holy Spirit, for such things as God has promised, or according to the Word, for the good of the church, with submission, in faith, to the will of God. In this description are seven things that we need to consider:
1. Prayer is to be sincere.
Prayer is a sincere pouring out of the soul to God. Sincerity runs through all the graces of God in us, and influences all the actions of a Christian, or else our actions are not really from God. It is the same with prayer, as shown when David speaks about prayer, "I cried out to [the Lord] with my mouth; his praise was on my tongue. If I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened [to my prayer]" (Psalm 66:17, 18).
Part of the exercise of prayer is sincerity, without which God will not look upon it as prayer in its proper sense. God says in his Word, "You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart" (Jeremiah 29:13). The lack of this sincerity made the Lord reject the prayers in Hosea 7:14, where he said, "They do not cry out to me from their hearts," that is, in sincerity, "but wail upon their beds." Their prayers were only a fake, a hypocritical show, only to be seen by men, and applauded by them.
And why must sincerity be one of the essential ingredients of prayer which is acceptable to God? Because sincerity causes the soul to open its heart to God, and to plainly tell him the situation, without rationalization; to clearly condemn itself, without deceit; to cry out to God as a friend, without flattery. Sincerity is the same no matter if you are praying alone in a closet, or before the face of the world. The sincere praying Christian does not know how to wear two masks, one before men, and another in the closet; rather it must have God, and be honest with him in prayer. God will not listen to lip service, for God looks at the heart, and listens only to prayer which is accompanied with sincerity.
2. Prayer is to make sense.
It is a sincere and rational pouring out of the heart or soul. It is not, as many take it to be, a few babbling, verbose, flattering expressions, but rather, a sensible utterance of the heart. Prayer has in it a reasonable understanding of different things; for example, sometimes the sense of sin, and sometimes an understanding of mercy received.
A. Sometimes it is an awareness of the need of mercy, because of the danger of sin.
Effective prayer bubbles out of the heart when it is overcome with grief and anguish. David experienced this, saying that he was "feeble and utterly crushed; groaning in anguish of heart, his heart was pounding, his strength failed him; even the light was gone from his eyes" (Psalm 38:8-10). The Lord heard Ephraim's moaning (Jeremiah 31:18). Peter weeps bitterly (Matthew 26:75). Christ "offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears" (Hebrews 5:7). And all of this came from a sense of the justice of God, the guilt of sin, the pains of hell and God's wrath. The Psalmist said, "The cords of death entangled me, the anguish of the grave came upon me; I was overcome by trouble and sorrow. Then I called on the name of the LORD" (Psalm 116:4). In all these instances, and in hundreds more that might be named, you will see that prayer carried with it a reasonable understanding of the situation, and that coming from a sense of sin.
B. Sometimes in prayer, there is a sweet sense of mercy received; encouraging, comforting, strengthening, and instructive mercy,
Thus David pours out his soul, to bless, and praise, and admire the great God for his loving-kindness to such poor vile wretches. "Praise the LORD, O my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name. Praise the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits-who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion, who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's" (Psalms 103:1-5). And we can see that sometimes the prayer of saints are turned into praise and thanksgiving, and yet they are still prayers. This is a mystery; God's people pray with their praises, as it is written, "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God" (Philippians 4:6). A conscious thanksgiving, for mercies received, is a mighty prayer in the sight of God; and it has a great influence on His actions.
A good sense of sin, and the wrath of God, with some encouragement from God to come to him, is a better prayer-book than that which is taken out of the Roman Catholic mass-book, which are nothing but the scraps and fragments of the inventions of some popes, monks, and who knows what else.
3. Prayer is to be an affectionate pouring out of the soul to God, through Christ.
O! the heat, strength, life, vigor, and affection, that is in the right kind of prayer! "As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God" (Psalm 42:1). "How I long for your precepts" (Psalm 119:40). "I long for your salvation" (Psalms 119:17). "My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the LORD; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God." (Psalm 84:2) "My soul is consumed with longing for your laws at all times." (Psalm 119:20). Note in these verses that I just quoted how the Psalmist's, "pants, yearns, and is consumed," for God and his Word. O what affection is revealed here in prayer!
Again, it is a pouring out of the heart and soul. There is in prayer a disclosure of a man's inner self, an opening of the heart to God, an affectionate outpouring of the soul in requests, sighs, and groans. "All my longings lie open before you," said David, and "my sighing is not hidden from you" (Psalm 38:9)." And again, "My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God? These things I remember as I pour out my soul" (Psalm 42:2, 4). Note, "I pour out my soul." It is an expression signifying, that in prayer the very life and entire strength is poured out to God. And in another place, "Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your hearts to him" (Psalm 62:8). This is the kind of prayer to which the promise is made, for the delivering of a poor creature out of captivity and bondage. "But if from there you seek the LORD your God, you will find him if you look for him with all your heart and with all your soul" (Deuteronomy 4:29).
Again, it is a pouring out of the heart and soul TO GOD. This also shows the excellency of the spirit of prayer. It is the great and holy God that prayer is addressed to. "When can I go and meet with God?" And it argues, that the soul which prays in this manner, sees an emptiness in everything under heaven; that in God alone there is rest and satisfaction for the soul. "The widow who is really in need and left all alone puts her hope in God and continues night and day to pray and to ask God for help" (1 Timothy 5:5). David said, "In you, O LORD, I have taken refuge; let me never be put to shame. Rescue me and deliver me in your righteousness; turn your ear to me and save me. Be my rock of refuge, to which I can always go; give the command to save me, for you are my rock and my fortress. Deliver me, O my God, from the hand of the wicked, from the grasp of evil and cruel men. For you have been my hope, O Sovereign LORD, my confidence since my youth" (Psalm 71:1-5).
Many speak to God with lots of empty words; but the right kind of prayer makes God his hope, rest, and his all in all. The right kind of prayer sees nothing more important, nor worth looking after, but God.
Again, it is a sincere, sensible, affectionate pouring out of the heart and soul to God, THROUGH CHRIST. We must add that prayer must come through Christ, or else it is to be questioned, whether it really is a prayer, even though it may appear so lofty and eloquent.
Christ is the way through whom the soul has admittance to God the Father, and without Christ it is impossible that even one prayer request would be heard by our Heavenly Father (John 14:6). Jesus said, "I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it" (John 14:13, 14). This was Daniel's way in praying for the people of God; he did it in the name of Christ. Listen, "Now, our God, hear the prayers and petitions of your servant. For your sake, O Lord, look with favor on your desolate sanctuary" (Daniel 9:17). Likewise, David prayed, "For the sake of your name, O LORD, forgive my iniquity, though it is great" (Psalm 25:11).
But note this, it is not every one that makes mention of Christ's name in prayer, that truly prays to God in the name of Christ. This coming to God through Christ is the hardest part of prayer. A man may be aware of his deeds, and sincerely desire mercy, and yet not be able to come to God through Christ. That man that comes to God by Christ, must first have a knowledge of Christ; "because anyone who comes to [Christ] must believe that he exists" (Hebrews 11:6). And so he that comes to God through Christ, must know Christ. Moses said to the Lord, "teach me your ways so I may know you" (Exodus 33:13).
4. Prayer is to be by the strength and assistance of the Holy Spirit.
These things are so dependent on one another, that it is impossible that one could have an acceptable prayer, without all of these things working together; without these things, it is only a prayer that will be rejected by God. For without a sincere, sensible, affectionate pouring out of the heart to God, it is nothing but lip-service; and if it is not through Christ, then it falls far short of ever sounding acceptable in God's ears. In the same way, if it is not prayed in the strength and assistance of the Holy Spirit, then it is the same as the sons of Aaron, presenting an offering with unauthorized fire (Leviticus 10:1, 2). Any prayer which is not petitioned through the teaching and assistance of the Holy Spirit, cannot possibly be "according to the will of God (Romans 8:26, 27).
5. Prayer is to be for things that God has promised.
It is prayer when it is within the compass of God's Word; and it is blasphemy, or at best vain babbling, when the petition is for things outside of God's Holy Book. David, when he prayed, kept his eye on the Word of God, "I am laid low in the dust; preserve my life according to your word" (Psalm 119:25). And again, "My soul is weary with sorrow; strengthen me according to your word" (Psalm 119:28; see also 41, 42, 58, 65, 74, 81, 82, 107, 147, 154, 169, 170). And, "Remember your word to your servant, for you have given me hope" (Psalm 119:49). And surely the Holy Spirit does not immediately stir up the heart of the Christian without the Word of God, rather it is by, and with, and through the Word, by bringing it to the heart, and by opening the sinful heart, whereby the man is provoked to go to the Lord, and to tell him how it is with him, and also to plead, and supplicate, according to the Word.
So I say, as the Spirit is the helper and the governor of the soul, when it prays according to the will of God; so it is guided by and according to, the Word of God and his promise. Therefore, our Lord Jesus Christ himself did not pray except in accordance with the Word, even though his life was at stake. He said, "Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels? But how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way?" (Matthew 26:53, 54).
In other words, Jesus was saying, "Were there only a word for it in the scripture, I would soon be out of the hands of my enemies, I would be helped by angels; but the scripture will not warrant this kind of praying, for that says otherwise. It is praying then according to the Word of God. The Spirit by the Word must direct, both in the manner, and the matter of prayer. "So what shall I do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will also pray with my mind (1 Corinthians 14:15). There is no understanding without the Word. For if they reject the word of the Lord, "what kind of wisdom do they have?" (Jeremiah 8:9)
6. Prayer is to be for the good of the church.
This means that the prayer must be for the honor to God, or Christ's advancement, or his people's benefit. For God, and Christ, and his people are so linked together that if the good of the one be prayed for, then the church, the glory of God, and advancement of Christ, must also be included. For as Christ is in the Father, so the saints are in Christ; and he that touches the saints, touches the apple of God's eye. He that prays for the peace and good of the church, does, in fact, ask in that prayer that which Christ has purchased with his blood; and also that which the Father has given to him for paying that price. Now he that prays for this, must pray for abundance of grace for the church, for help against all its temptations; that God would let nothing be too difficult for it; and that all things might work together for its good, that God would keep them blameless and harmless, the sons of God, to his glory, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation.
7. And prayer must submit to the will of God.
As Christ has taught us, prayer must say, "Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven" (Matthew 6:10); therefore the people of the Lord in humility are to lay themselves and their prayers, and all that they have, at the feet of their God, to be disposed of by him as he in his heavenly wisdom sees best. And never doubting that God will answer the desire of his people in a way that will be most advantageous for them and for his glory. Therefore when the saints pray with submission to the will of God, they are not to doubt or question God's love and kindness to them. But because they are not always wise, and sometimes Satan may take advantage of them, so as to tempt them to pray for that which, if they had it, would neither be to God's glory nor for his people's good.
"This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us-whatever we ask-we know that we have what we asked of him" (1 John 5:14, 15). For, as I said before, that petition that is not prayed in and through the Spirit, will not be answered, because it is outside the will of God. For only the Spirit knows the will of God, and therefore only he knows how to pray according to the will of God. "For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man's spirit within him? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God" (1 Corinthians 2:11). But more of this later. Thus we have seen what prayer is.
II. WHAT IT IS TO PRAY WITH MY SPIRIT
1. I will pray with my spirit.
There is no man nor church in the world that can come to God in prayer, but by the assistance of the Holy Spirit. "For through Christ we have access to the Father by one Spirit" (Ephesians 2:18). Therefore Paul said, "We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will" (Romans 8:26, 27). And because there is in this scripture a complete discovery of the spirit of prayer, and of man's inability to pray without it; therefore I will in a few words comment on it.
"We." Consider the person speaking, Paul, an apostle, the extraordinary elder, the wise master-builder, he that was taken up into paradise (2 Cor 12:4). "We do not know what we ought to pray for." Surely everyone will admit, that Paul and his fellow apostles were able to have done any mighty work for God, yet, he says, "We do not know what we ought to pray for," without the help and the assistance of the Spirit. Should we pray for communion with God through Christ? Should we pray for faith, for justification by grace, and a truly sanctified heart? We do not know the answer to any of these things. "For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man's spirit within him? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God" (1 Corinthians 2:11).
"We do not know what we ought to pray for." Paul said, we must pray as we ought; and this we cannot do by the skill, and cunning devices of men or angels. "We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit"; no, it must be "the Spirit HIMSELF" that helps us in our weakness; not the Spirit and man's lusts. What man's own brain may imagine and devise, is one thing, and what they are commanded, and ought to do, is another. Many ask and do not receive, because they ask with wrong motives; and so they never enjoy those things they pray for (James 4:3).
While we are praying, God is searching the heart, examining our motives and spirit (1 John 5:14). "And he who searches our hearts knows," that is, approves only, what is agreeable to, "the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will." (Romans 8:27) For he only hears that which is in accordance with his will, and nothing else. And it is only the Spirit that can teach us what to ask; only the Spirit is able to search every thing out, even the deep things of God.
Without the Holy Spirit, though we pray a thousand different prayers, yet we would be unable to know what to pray for, because we have a built-in weakness that makes us absolutely incapable of praying correctly. These weaknesses within us, although it is difficult to name them all, yet the following are eight key weaknesses which prevent effective praying.
Weakness #1 - Not having the Holy Spirit within us.
Without the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, man is so weak that he cannot think one right saving thought of God, of Christ, or of his blessed things; and therefore the Word of God declares about the man without the Spirit, "In all his thoughts there is no room for God" (Psalm 10:4); unless it is that they imagine God to be basically like one of them (Psalm 50:21). For "every inclination of the thoughts of [unsaved man's] heart is only evil all the time" (Genesis 6:5; 8:21). Thus, since unbelievers are not able to correctly conceive who God is, the very God to whom they pray, the Christ through whom they pray, nor of the things for which they pray, as was shown before, then how will they be able to address themselves to God, without the help of the Holy Spirit?
The acceptable prayer to God must, in the outward expression, and as well in the inward intention, come from what the soul understands by the illumination of the Holy Spirit; otherwise the prayer is condemned as a vain abomination, because the heart and tongue do not agree, neither can they, unless the Spirit help us in our weakness (Mark 7; Proverbs 28:9; Isaiah 29:13). And David knew this full well, which caused him to cry out, "O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise" (Psalm 51:15).
I suppose no one would doubt that David could speak and express himself as well as any one in our generation, as is clearly manifested by his words recorded in the Scriptures. Nevertheless when this good man, this prophet, comes to worship God, then the Lord must help him too, or he can do nothing. "O Lord, open my lips," and then "my mouth will declare your praise." He could not speak one proper word, unless the Spirit gives him the utterance. "The Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for.
Weakness #2 - Not praying with the Spirit.
We may have the Holy Spirit within us, but if we do not pray with the Spirit, then we are senseless, hypocritical, and cold, and both we and our prayers are abominable to God (Matthew 23:14; Mark 12:40; Luke 18:11, 12; Isaiah 58:2, 3). It is not the quality of the voice, nor the apparent affection, and earnestness of him that prays, that means anything to God. For man, as man, is so full of all kinds of wickedness, that he cannot keep a word, or thought, much less a part of a prayer pure, and acceptable to God through Christ; and because of this the Pharisees, and their lengthy prayers, were rejected. There is no question that they expressed themselves with excellent words, and also said long prayers; but they did not have the Holy Spirit to help them, and therefore in their weakness they fell short of a sincere, sensible, affectionate pouring out of their souls to God, through the strength of the Spirit.
Weakness #3 - Not being aware of our unconfessed sins.
No one but the Holy Spirit can clearly show a person their sins, and therefore cause them to have the proper attitude of prayer. Without an clear sense of the sin of our hearts then our prayers are nothing but "lip-service" to God. O the cursed hypocrisy that is in most hearts, and that accompanies many thousands of praying men and women today, and all because they lack a sense of their sin! But now the Spirit, will sweetly show the soul its sinful state, and exactly the areas where the sin exists, and what is likely to be the consquence of that sin if it remains unconfessed, and also that it is an intolerable condition. For it is the Spirit that effectually convinces men and women of their sin and misery, and therefore causes the soul to pray in a pure, discerning, and tender way to God according to his word (John 16:7-9).
Weakness #4 - Seeing our sins and being unable to pray.
Even if men and women are aware of their sins, yet without the help of the Holy Spirit they would not pray. For they would run away from God, with Cain and Judas, and utterly despair of mercy, were it not for the Spirit. When a man is aware of his sin, and God's curse on it, then it is very difficult to persuade him to pray; for, his heart says, "It's no use," it is in vain to seek God (Jeremiah 2:25; 18:12). I am so vile, so wretched, and so cursed, that I will never be forgiven! Now here comes the Spirit, and calms the soul, helping it to hold up its face to God, by letting into the heart some small sense of mercy to encourage it to go to God, and for that reason the Holy Spirit is called "the Counselor" (John 14:26).
Weakness #5 - Not knowing how to come to God-His way.
In order to pray we must be in the Spirit; for without that no man can know how to come to God the right way. Men may easily say they come to God through his Son: but without being in the Spirit, it is impossible to come to God the right way-his way. It is "the Spirit" that "searches all things, even the deep things of God" (1 Corinthians 2:10). It is the Spirit that must show us the way of coming to God, and also what there is in God that makes him desirable: Moses said, "Teach me your ways so I may know you" (Exodus 33:13).
Weakness #6 - Being unable to call God our "Father."
Without the Holy Spirit, though a man sees his misery, and also the way to come to God; yet he would never be able to claim a share in either God, Christ, or mercy, because God would not allow him. O how great a task it is, for a lost soul that becomes aware of his sin and the wrath of God, to say in faith, this one word, "Father!" I tell you, even the Christian finds difficulty in this very thing, it cannot say God is its Father. "O!" he says, "I dare not call him Father"; and therefore the Holy Spirit must be sent into the hearts of God's people for this very reason, to cry "Father": for without the Spirit it would be too difficult for any man to knowingly and believingly call God his Father (Galatians 4:6).
When I say knowingly, I mean, knowing what it is to be a child of God, and to be born again. And when I say believingly, I mean, for the soul to believe, and that from experience, that the work of grace is completed in him. This is the right way to call God, our Father; and not as many do, by saying it in a babbling way, the Lord's prayer (so called) from memory, just as it is written in the words of a book. No, here is the life of prayer, when with the Spirit, a man being made aware of his sin, and how to come to the Lord for mercy; comes in the strength of the Spirit, and cries out "Father." That one word spoken in faith, is better than a thousand prayers, as men call them, written and read, in a formal, cold, or lukewarm way.
Many people think it is enough to teach themselves and their children to say the Lord's prayer, the creed, and other sayings; when, in reality, God knows, they are senseless of themselves, their misery, or what it is to be brought to God through Christ! Oh, poor soul! Study your misery, and cry to God to show you your blindness and ignorance, before you get into the habit of calling God your Father, or teaching your children to do so. And know this, that to say God is your Father, without any work of grace in your souls, is to say you are Christians when you are not, therefore you lie to God.
You say, "Our Father"; God says, "You blasphemer!" You say I am "a true Christian"; God says, "You are a liar!" "You are of the synagogue of Satan, you who claim to be a Jew though you are not, you are a liar" (Revelation 3:9). "I know the slander of those who say they are Jews and are not, but are of the synagogue of Satan" (Revelation 2:9). And the more the sinner hypocritically boasts of God being his Father, then so much greater is his sin. The Jews did this to Christ, in the 8th chapter of John, which made Christ, even in plain terms, to tell them of their doom, because of all their hypocritical pretences (John 8:41-45).
And even today, prostitutes, thieves, drunkards, blasphemers, and liars; are considered by some to honest people because with their blasphemous throats, and hypocritical hearts, they will come to church, and say, "Our Father!" But because they obey the "traditions" of their religions saying the "Our Father" over and over, they are considered to be members in good-standing in their church, while God's true children are, as it has always been, looked upon to be a troublesome, opposing, and dissident people (Ezra 4:12-16).
Weakness #7 - Being unable to keep our "heart" in our prayers.
Just as the heart must be lifted up by the Spirit in order to pray acceptable prayers to God , so also it the heart must be held up by the Spirit, if it is to continue to pray correctly. It is impossible that all the prayer-books, that men have made in the world, can lift up, keep up, or prepare the heart; for that is the work of the God himself. And truly here is the life of prayer, to keep the heart devoted to God while praying. We see in the Book of Exodus that it was very difficult for Moses to keep his hands lifted up to God in prayer; likewise, it is difficult to keep the heart in our prayers! (Exodus 17:12).
The lack of this heart in prayer is that which God complains of, when He says, "These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is made up only of rules taught by men" (Isaiah 29:13). And truly I can speak of my own experience; I can tell you the difficulty I have of praying to God as I should. For, when I go to pray, I find my heart hates to go to God, and when it is with him, it hates to stay with him. Many times I am forced in my prayers, first to beg God that he would take my heart, and set it on himself in Christ, and when it is there, that he would keep it there. Many times I do not know what to pray for, I am so blind, nor do I know how to pray, I am so ignorant, but praise God's grace: the Holy Spirit can help us in our weakness in prayer (Psalm 86:11).
Weakness #8 - Praying without the help and strength of the Spirit.
It is impossible for the heart to pour itself out before God, with those groans and sighs that come from a truly praying heart, without the assistance of the Spirit. It is not the mouth that is the main thing to be looked at in prayer, rather one needs to look at the heart and see if is full of love and earnestness in prayer to God. There are times when the desires of a man's heart are so great, that all the words, tears, and groans that can come from the heart, cannot be uttered by his mouth: It is then that "The Spirit helps us in our weakness-and intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express" (Romans 8:26).
We must pray with the Spirit, or else our prayers will fail. Prayer is a mandate from God, that must continue with a soul so long as it is on this side of glory. But, as I said before, it is not possible for a man to turn his heart to God in prayer; likewise it is just as difficult to keep it there, without the assistance of the Spirit. Therefore, for a man to continually be in prayer with God, it must of necessity be with the Spirit.
III. WHAT IT IS TO PRAY WITH MY SPIRIT, AND WITH MY MIND.
The apostle makes a clear distinction between praying with our spirit, and praying with our minds: therefore when he said, "I will pray with my spirit," he also adds, but I will also pray with my mind." This distinction was made because the Corinthians did not realize that it was their duty, when they spoke in tongues, to edify others and not to simply edify themselves. It appears that many of them had extraordinary gifts, one being the ability to speak in different known languages, but they focused on these mighty gifts, edifying themselves, rather than edifying the church; which caused Paul to write to them, to make them understand, that though extraordinary gifts were excellent, yet it was more important to edify the church.
For, the apostle said, "If I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my mind [and the minds of those listening] is unfruitful" (1 Corinthians 14:3, 4, 12, 19, 24, 25. Read the scope of the whole chapter). Therefore, "What shall I do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will also pray with my mind" (1 Corinthians 14:15).
It is necessary then that the mind should be involved in prayer, as well as the heart and mouth. That which is done with the mind, is done more effectually, sensibly, and heartily, than that which is done without it; which made the apostle pray for the Colossians, that God would fill them "with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding" (Colossians 1:9). And for the Ephesians, that God would give them "the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that [they] may know him better" (Ephesians 1:17). And also for the Philippians, that God would make their love abound "more and more in knowledge and depth of insight" (Philippians 1:9). A suitable understanding is good in everything a man undertakes, either secular or spiritual; and therefore it must be desired by all Christians that they would be a praying people. I will now show you what it is to pray with your mind.
In order for God to accept our prayers, there must be a spiritual understanding in all those who pray to God.
1. To pray with our minds, is to be guided by the Holy Spirit to pray with an understanding of the need of those things which the soul is to pray for.
Though a man is desperately in need for forgiveness of sin, and deliverance from the wrath to come, yet if he does not understand this, he will either not pray these things at all, or else be so cold and lukewarm when he asks for forgiveness and deliverance, that God will detest the attitude of his heart when he asks for them. Thus it was with the church of the Laodiceans, they wanted knowledge or spiritual understanding; yet they did not know that they were wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.
Because of their condition and all of their empty prayers, they were detestable to Christ, so much so that he threatens to spit them out of his mouth (Revelation 3:16, 17). Men who pray without their minds engaged may say the same words in prayer as others do; but there is a great difference in effectiveness of the prayers! The one speaking with his mind engaged brings understanding to his words, but the other person who prays without an understanding of what he is saying is only babbling words.
2. To pray with our minds will cause the heart of God to be ready and willing to give those things to the soul that it needs.
David prayed with his mind and therefore could surmise the very thoughts of God towards him (Psalm 40:5). And so it was with the Canaanite woman; by her faith and the understanding in her mind, she was able to discern, that although Christ was refusing her initial requests to help her demon-possessed daughter, there was a tenderness and willingness in his heart to save, which caused her to be vehement and earnest, yes, restless, until she received the mercy she needed for her daughter (Matthew 15:22-28).
A proper understanding in our minds, of the willingness of the heart of God to save sinners, will be the primary motive for the soul to seek after God, and to cry out for forgiveness. If a man should see a pearl worth thousands of dollars lying in a ditch, and yet did not understand the value of it, he would most likely pass it by: but if he knew in his mind its true value, then he would climb down into the filth of the ditch to acquire it.
So it is with souls concerning the things of God: once a man understands their value, then his heart, and the very strength of his soul, will run after them, and he will never stop praying for them until he has them. The two blind men in the gospel, clearly knew that Jesus, who was going by them, was both willing and able to heal their blindness: therefore they cried out, and the more they were rebuked, the more they cried out (Matthew 20:29-31).
3. To pray with our minds allows us to clearly see God's promises, which is a great encouragement to pray.
The enlightened understanding sees the magnitude of God's promises and is therefore encouraged to pray. It is like men who make great promises to do such and such to all that will come and ask for them, it is great encouragement to those that know what promises are made, to come and ask for them.
4. To pray with our minds enables us to present to God suitable arguments to justify our requests.
Once our minds are enlightened by the Spirit, then the way is made for the soul to come to God with suitable arguments, sometimes in a way of reasoning with God, as Jacob did in the 32nd chapter of Genesis (Genesis 32:9). Sometimes in the way we verbally petition God, yet not always in a verbal way only, but even from the heart there is forced by the Spirit, through the mind, effective arguments that move the heart of God. Our example is Ephraim who gets a clear understanding of his own sin towards the Lord, then he begins to express sorrow for his sins (Jeremiah 31:18-20).
And in his expression of sorrow, he used various arguments with the Lord, that affected his heart, draws out forgiveness, and makes Ephraim pleasant in his eyes through Jesus Christ our Lord: God said, "I have surely heard Ephraim's moaning [to me] saying, 'You disciplined me like an unruly calf, and I have been disciplined. Restore me, and I will return, because you are the LORD my God.
After I strayed, I repented; after I came to understand, I beat my breast. I was ashamed and humiliated because I bore the disgrace of my youth' " (Jeremiah 31:19). These are Ephraim's complaints and expressions of sorrow; at which the Lord breaks forth into these heart-melting expressions, saying, "'Is not Ephraim my dear son, the child in whom I delight? Though I often speak against him, I still remember him. Therefore my heart yearns for him; I have great compassion for him,' declares the LORD" (Jeremiah 31:18-20).
5. To pray with our minds enables us to see our needs and therefore what type of prayer we should pray.
Praying with our mind enables us to be aware of the feelings, and pressures that lie heavy on our spirit, provoking us to groan out our request to the Lord. When David felt the "cords of death entangle [him], and the anguish of the grave coming upon [him]," he did not need a bishop dressed in a fancy robe to teach him to say, "O Lord, save me!" (Psalm 116:3, 4). Nor did he need to look into a book, to teach him a form of a prayer to pour out before God. It is the nature of the heart of sick men, in their pain and sickness, to express itself for comfort, by sorrowful groans and moanings to those who are near them. Thus it was with David, in Psalm 38:1-12. And thus, blessed be the Lord, it is with them that are endowed with the grace of God.
6. To pray with our minds will keep us praying continually.
It is necessary that there be an enlightened understanding in our minds for us to see the need to continue in prayer.
The people of God are not ignorant of the many schemes, tricks, and temptations the devil has to tempt a Christian, who is truly willing to serve the Lord Jesus Christ, yes, to tempt that very sincere soul to be weary of seeking the face of God, and to think that God is not willing to have mercy on such a person as he. "Yes," says Satan, "you may truly pray, but you will not prevail. You see your heart is hard, cold, dull, and fearful; you do not pray with the Spirit, you are not sincere in your prayers, your thoughts are running after other things, when you pretend to pray to God.
Away with you, you hypocrite, go no further, it is vain to strive any longer!" Oh, if the soul is not praying with its mind, then it will soon cry out, "The LORD has forsaken me, the Lord has forgotten me" (Isaiah 49:14). Whereas, the soul that is praying with his mind and enlightened by the Spirit, will say, "I will seek the Lord, and wait; I will not stop, though the Lord remains silent, and does not speak one word of comfort" (Isa 40:27). The Lord loved Jacob dearly, and yet he made him wrestle before he gave him the blessing (Genesis 32:25-27).
Apparent delays in our prayers being answered by God are not signs of his displeasure; he may hide his face from his dearest saints (Isaiah 8:17). He loves to keep his people praying, and to find them ever knocking at the gate of heaven; it may be, says the soul, that the Lord is testing me, or that he loves to hear me groan out my condition before him.
Oh, how many souls are there in the world, that truly fear the Lord, who, because they are not well informed in their minds, are often ready to give up hope, at almost every trick and temptation of Satan! The Lord pity them, and help them to "pray with their spirit, and also with their minds."
In my own life, when I have been in the agony of spirit, I have been strongly persuaded to stop praying, and to seek the Lord no longer; but being made to understand in my mind, what great sinners the Lord has had mercy on, and how great are his promises to sinners; and that it was not the well person, but the sick, not the righteous, but the sinner, not the full, but the empty, that he extended his grace and mercy to. This made me, through the assistance of his Holy Spirit, to cleave to him, to hang on him, and still to cry out, though for the present he did not answer.
Thus have I briefly showed you, FIRST, What prayer is; SECOND, What it is to pray with the Spirit; and THIRDLY, What it is to pray with my spirit, and also with my mind.
IV. Application of what we have learned.
I will now speak a word or two of application, and so conclude with, First, A word of wisdom; Second, A word of encouragement; Third, A word of rebuke.
Application #1 - A word of wisdom.
First be wise and know; that prayer is the duty of every one of the children of God, and carried on by the Spirit of Christ in the soul; so every one that prays to the Lord, needs to be very careful, and be sure to pray in his heart with a fear of God, as well as with hopes of the mercy of God through Jesus Christ.
Prayer is a command of God, in which a man draws very near to God; and therefore it especially calls for the assistance of the grace of God to help the soul to pray as is fitting for one that is in the very presence of the Almighty God. It is a shame for a man to behave irreverently before a king, but it is a sin to do so before God. And just as an earthly king is not pleased with an speech made up with inappropriate words and gestures, so God takes no pleasure in the sacrifice of fools (Ecclesiastes 5:1, 4). It is not long discourses, nor eloquent tongues, that are the things which are pleasing to the ears of the Lord; rather it is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, that is pleasing to the heavenly Majesty (Psalm 51:17; Isaiah 57:15). Therefore, be wise and know that there are four things that are obstructions to prayer, and even make void the requests of the creature:
First Obstruction to Prayer - When we cherish sin in our hearts.
"When men cherish sin in their hearts," at the time of their prayers before God, "then the Lord will not listen" to their prayer (Psalm 66:18). The Lord will not listen to the prayer when there is a secret love for that very thing which you with your deceitful lips ask for strength against. For this is the wickedness of man's heart, that it will even love, and hold tightly to that which the mouth is praying against! And when we do this, then we become the same as those who honor God with their mouths, but whose hearts are far from him (Isaiah 29:13; Ezekiel 33:31).
Second Obstruction to Prayer - When we pray only to be heard by others.
When men pray with the sole purpose to be heard by others, so as to be considered someone very religious, then these prayers will fall far short of God's approval, and will never be answered.
There are two sorts of men that pray this way:
(1.) Private chaplains, that thrust themselves into great men's families, pretending the worship of God, when in truth their motive is their own stomachs; and are clearly pictured by Ahab's prophets, and also Nebuchadnezzar's wise men, who, though they pretended great devotion, yet their lusts and their stomachs were the great things aimed at by them in all their devotions.
(2.) Those that seek honor and applause for their eloquent terms, and seek more to tickle the ears and heads of their hearers than anything else. These are they that pray to be heard of men, and have received all their reward already (Matthew 6:5). These persons are easily discovered because:
(a.) They focus only on the eloquence of their expressions.
(b.) They look for commendation when they are done.
(c.) Their hearts either rise or fall according to their praise received.
(d.) The length of their prayer pleases them; and to make it long, they will vainly repeat things over and over (Matthew 6:7).
Third Obstruction to Prayer - When we pray for the wrong things.
A prayer that will not be accepted by God, is when men either pray for wrong things, or if for the right things, yet that the thing prayed for might be spent on their lusts. "When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures" (James 4:2-4). When we pray for something contrary to God's will then God will frustrate the petitions presented before him. Therefore, many pray for this and that, and yet do not receive it. God answers them only with silence; they have their words for their labor; and that is all.
Objection - But God hears some persons, though their hearts are not right with him, as he did Israel, in giving quails, though they spent them on their lusts (Psalm 106:14).
Answer - If he does, it is in judgment, not in mercy. Indeed, he gave them what they asked for, but they would have been better off without it, for he also "sent a wasting disease upon them." (Psalm 106:15). Woe be to that man that God answers in this manner.
Fourth Obstruction to Prayer - Not asking in the Name of Christ.
Another type of prayers that are not answered, are those that are made by men, and presented to God in their own persons, without asking in the name of Christ. It is true that God has ordained prayer, and promised to hear the prayers of men and women, yet not the prayer that fails to come through Christ. Jesus said "I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father" (John 14:13). The Apostle Paul said, "Whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him" (Colossians 3:17). Even though you may be devout, zealous, earnest and constant in prayer, yet it is only in Christ that you will be heard and accepted. But, I am sorry to say, that most men do not know what it means to come to God in the name of the Lord Jesus, which is because they live wicked, pray wicked, and also die wicked.
Application #2 - A word of encouragement.
I want to encourage the poor, tempted, and discouraged soul, to pray to God through Christ. Though all prayer that is acceptable to God must be in the Spirit-for only the Spirit makes intercession for us according to the will of God, (Rom 8:27)-yet because many poor souls may have the Holy Spirit working on them, and stirring them to cry out to the Lord for mercy, though through unbelief they do not, nor, for the present, cannot believe that they are the people of God, yet I encourage them to pray. Note carefully the following three encouragements to pray:
Encouragement #1 - God answers persistent prayers.
That scripture in Luke 11:8 is very encouraging to any poor soul that hungers after Christ Jesus. In verses 5-7, he speaks a parable of a man that went to his friend to borrow three loaves of bread, but because his friend was in bed he denied his request. Yet the man who needed the bread kept knocking, and finally his friend did arise and give him what he wanted, clearly signifying that though poor souls, through the weakness of their faith, cannot see that they are the friends of God, yet they should never stop asking, seeking, and knocking at God's door for mercy. Note, what Christ said, "I tell you, though he will not get up and give him the bread because he is his friend, yet because of the man's boldness," or persistence, "he will get up and give him as much as he needs" (Luke 11:8)
Poor heart! you feel that God will not pay attention to you, you are not his friend, but rather his enemy in your heart because of your wicked deeds (Colossians 1:21). And you claim that you can hear the Lord saying to you, "Don't bother me. I can't give you anything"; yet I say, continue knocking, crying, and moaning. I tell you, "though he will not get up and give you what you want because you are his friend, yet because of your boldness [in your persistence] he will get up and give you as much as you need." And truly, my own experience tells me, that there is nothing that prevails more with God than persistence.
Encouragement #2 - That God is sitting on a "Throne of Grace"
Another encouragement for a poor trembling soul is to consider the place, throne, or seat, on which the great God has placed himself to hear the petitions and prayers of poor creatures; and that is a "throne of grace" (Hebrews 4:16). Which signifies that in these days of gospel grace, God has taken up his seat, his abiding-place, in mercy and forgiveness; and from there he listens to the sinner, and communes with him, as he said (Exodus 25:22),-speaking before his place of mercy-"I will meet with you."
Often, poor troubled souls are very apt to entertain strange thoughts of God, and his attitude towards them: and suddenly they conclude that God will not care for them, when in fact, he is sitting on a throne of mercy, and has taken that place on purpose, so that he may hear and answer the prayers of poor creatures. If he had said, I will commune with you from my throne of judgment, then indeed you might have trembled and fled from the face of the great and glorious Majesty. But when he said he will hear and commune with souls from the throne of grace, this should encourage you, and cause you to hope, yes, to "approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that you may receive mercy and find grace to help you in your time of need" (Hebrews 4:16)
Encouragement #3 - God's "Throne of Grace" is sprinked with the "Blood of Christ"
Just as there is a "Throne of Grace" from where God is willing to commune with poor sinners; so there is also next to his throne, Jesus Christ, who continually sprinkles it with his blood. Therefore it is called "the sprinkled blood" (Hebrews 12:24). When the high-priest under the law was to go into the Most Holy Place, where the seat of God's mercy was, he could not go in "without blood" (Hebrews 9:7).
Why? Because, though God was on sitting on a seat of mercy, yet he was perfectly just as well as merciful. Now the blood was to stop justice from being poured out upon the persons needing the intercession of the high-priest, (as in Leviticus 16:13-17), to signify that all your unworthiness that you fear, should not hinder you from coming to God in Christ for mercy. You cry out that you are wicked, and therefore God will not listen to your prayers; it is true, if you delight in your wickedness, and come to God out of a mere pretence.
But if from a sense of your wickedness you pour out your heart to God, desiring to be saved from the guilt, and cleansed from the filth, with all your heart; then do not fear, your wickedness will not cause the Lord to stop listening to you. The value of the blood of Christ which is sprinkled on the place of God's mercy stops the course of justice, and opens a floodgate for the mercy of the Lord to be extended to you. You therefore have, the "confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us" (Hebrews 10:20).
Besides, Jesus is there, not only to sprinkle the place of mercy with his blood, but he speaks, and his blood speaks; and God has said, "When I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you" (Exodus 12:13).
Be earnest and humble; go to the Father in the name of the Son, and tell him your case, with the assistance of the Holy Spirit, and you will then feel the benefit of praying with your spirit and also with your mind.
Application #3 - A word of reproof
I sadly speak to you who never pray at all. You are not a Christian if you are not a praying person. The promise is that every one that is godly will pray (Psa 32:6). You then are a wicked miserable creature that does not pray. People that forget prayer, that do not call on the name of the Lord, they have a prayer prayed against them, Jeremiah prayed, "Pour out your wrath on the nations that do not acknowledge you, on the peoples who do not call on your name" (Jeremiah 10:25).
O you that refuse to pour out your heart to God, you that go to bed like a dog, and rise like a hog, and forget to call upon God? What will you do when you will be damned in hell, because you could not find it in your heart to ask God for heaven? Who will grieve for your sorrow, since you did not think mercy was worth asking for? I tell you, the ravens, the dogs, and other animals, will rise up in judgment against you, for they, according to their kind, make signs, and a noise for something to refresh them when they need it; but you have not found it in your heart to ask for heaven, and now you must perish eternally in hell, because you would not pray.
Must the holy, harmless, and undefiled Spirit of grace, the very nature of God, the promise of Christ, the Counselor of his children, that without which no man can do any service acceptable to the Father-must this Holy Spirit, be taunted and mocked by you? If God sent Korah and his entire family headlong into hell for speaking against Moses and Aaron, do you think that you can mock the Spirit of Christ and escape unpunished? (Numbers 16; Hebrews 10:29). Did you never read what God did to Ananias and Sapphira for telling just one lie against the Holy Spirit? (Acts 5:1-8). Also, are you aware what happen to Simon Magus for undervaluing the Holy Spirit? (Acts 8:18-22). It is a fearful thing to defy the Spirit of grace (Compare Matthew 12:31, with Mark 3:28-30).
THE CONCLUSION
I will conclude this message with some words of advice to all God's people:
1. Believe that if you seek to walk in a way pleasing to God, then you will meet with many temptations from the evil one."Fight the good fight of faith" 1 Timothy 6:12
It is a curious fact that there is no subject about which most people feel such deep interest as 'fighting.' Young men and maidens, old men and little children, high and low, rich and poor, learned and unlearned, all feel a deep interest in wars, battles, and fighting.
This is a simple fact, whatever way we may try to explain it. We should call that Englishman a dull fellow who cared nothing about the story of Waterloo, or Inkermann, or Balaclava, or Lucknow. We should think that heart cold and stupid which was not moved and thrilled by the events at Sedan, and Strasburg, and Metz, and Paris.
But, reader, there is another warfare of far greater importance than any war that was ever waged by man. It is a warfare which concerns not two or three nations only, but every Christian man and woman born into the world. The warfare I speak of is the spiritual warfare. It is the fight which every one who would be saved must fight about his soul.
This warfare, I am aware, is a thing of which many know nothing. Talk to them about it, and they are ready to set you down as a madman, an enthusiast, or a fool. And yet it is as real and true as any war the world has ever seen. It has its hand-to-hand conflicts and its wounds. It has his watchings and fatigues. It has its sieges and assaults. It has its victories and its defeats. Above all, it has consequences which are awful, tremendous, and most peculiar. In earthly warfare the consequences to nations are often temporary and remediable. In the spiritual warfare it is very different. Of that warfare, the consequences, when the fight is over, are unchangeable and eternal.
Reader, it is of this warfare that St. Paul spake to Timothy, when he wrote those burning words: 'Fight the good fight of faith; lay hold on eternal life.' It is of this warfare that I want to speak to you today. We meet each other at a critical period of the world's history. Men's minds are full of 'wars and rumors of wars.' Men's hearts are full of fear while they look at the things which seem coming on the earth. On every side the horizon looks black and gloomy. Who can tell when the storm will burst? Give me your attention for a few moments, while I try to impress on you the solemn words which the Holy Ghost taught St. Paul to write down: 'Fight the good fight of faith.'
I. The first thing I have to say is this: True Christianity is a fight.
'True Christianity'-mind that word 'true.' Let there be no mistake about my meaning. There is a vast quantity of religion current in the world which is not true, genuine Christianity. It passes muster; it satisfies sleepy consciences; but it is not good money. It is not the real thing which was called Christianity eighteen hundred years ago. There are thousands of men and women who go to churches and chapels every Sunday, and call themselves Christians. Their names are in the baptismal register. They are reckoned Christians while they live. They are married with a Christian marriage-service. They are buried as Christians when they die.
But you never see any 'fight' about their religion! Of spiritual strife, and exertion, and conflict, and self-denial, and watching, and warring they know literally nothing at all. Such Christianity may satisfy man, and those who say anything against it may be thought very hard and uncharitable; but it certainly is not the Christianity of the Bible. It is not the religion which the Lord Jesus founded, and His Apostles preached. True Christianity is 'a fight.'
The true Christian is called to be a soldier, and must behave as such from the day of his conversion to the day of his death, he is not meant to live a life of religious ease, indolence, and security, He must never imagine for a moment that he can sleep and dose along the way to heaven, like one travelling in an easy carriage. If he takes his standard of Christianity from the children of this world he may be content with such notions, but he will find no countenance for them in the Word of God. If the Bible is the rule of his faith and practice, he will find his lines laid down very plainly in this matter. He must 'fight.'
With whom is the Christian soldier meant to fight? Not with other Christians. Wretched indeed is that man's idea of religion who fancies that it consists in perpetual controversy He who is never satisfied unless he is engaged in some strife between church and church, chapel and chapel, sect and sect, party and party, knows nothing yet as he ought to know. Never is the cause of sin so helped as when Christians waste their strength in quarrelling with one another, and spend their time in petty squabbles.
No, indeed! The principal fight of the Christian is with the world, the flesh, and the devil. These are his never-dying foes. These are the three chief enemies against whom he must wage war. Unless he gets the victory over these three, all other victories are useless and vain. If he had a nature like an angel, and was not a fallen creature, the warfare would not be so essential. But with a corrupt heart, a busy devil, and an ensnaring world, he must either 'fight' or be lost.
He must fight the flesh. Even after conversion he carries within him a nature prone to evil, and a heart weak and unstable as water. To keep that heart from going astray, there is need of a daily struggle and a daily wrestling in prayer. 'I keep under my body,' cries St. Paul, 'and bring it into subjection.' 'I see a law in my members warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity.' 'O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? . They that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts.' 'Mortify your members which axe upon the earth' (1 Cor. ix. 27; Rom. vii. 23, 24; Gal. v. 24; Coloss. iii. 5).
He must fight the world. The subtle influence of that mighty enemy must be daily resisted, and without a daily battle can never be overcome. The love of the world's good things, the fear of the world's laughter or blame, the secret desire to keep in with the world, the secret wish to do as others in the world do, and not to run into extremes-all these are spiritual foes which beset the Christian continually on his way to heaven, and must be conquered. 'The friendship of the world is enmity with God: whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world, is the enemy of God.' 'If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.' 'The world is crucified unto Me, and I unto the world.' 'Whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world.' 'Be not conformed to this world' (James iv. 4; 1 John ii. 15; Gal. vi. 4; 1 John v. 4; Rom. xii. 2).
He must fight the devil. That old enemy of mankind is not dead. Ever since the fall of Adam and Eve he has been going to and fro in the earth, and walking up and down in it, and striving to compass one great end-the ruin of man's soul. Never slumbering and never sleeping, he is always going about as a lion seeking whom he may devour. An unseen enemy, he is always near us, about our path and about our bed, and spying out ail our ways.
A murderer and a liar from the beginning, he labours night and day to cast us down to hell. Sometimes by leading into superstition, sometimes by suggesting infidelity, sometimes by one kind of tactics and sometimes by another, he is always carrying on a campaign against our souls. 'Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat.' This mighty adversary must be daily resisted if we wish to be saved. But 'this kind goeth not out' but by watching and praying, and putting on the whole armour of God. The strong man armed will never be kept out of our hearts without a daily battle. (Job i. 7; 1 Peter v. 8; John viii. 44; Luke xxii. 31; Ephes. vi. 11).
Reader, perhaps you think these statements too strong. You fancy that I am going too far, and laying on the colours too thickly. You are secretly saying to yourself, that men and women in England may surely get to heaven without all this trouble and warfare and fighting. Listen to me for a few minutes, and I will show you that I have something to say on God's behalf. Remember the maxim of the wisest general that ever lived in England: 'In time of war it is the worst mistake to underrate your enemy, and try to make a little war.' This Christian warfare is no light matter. Give me your attention and consider what I say.
What saith the Scripture? 'Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life. . Endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.' 'Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.' 'Strive to enter in at the strait gate.' 'Labour for the meat that endureth unto everlasting life.' 'Think not that I am come to send peace on the earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.' 'He that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one.' 'Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong.' 'War a good warfare; holding faith, and a good conscience' (1 Tim. vi. 12; 2 Tim. ii. 8; Ephes. vi. 11-13; Luke xiii. 24; John vi. 27; Matt. x. 84; Luke xxii. 36; 1 Cor. xvi. 18; 1 Tim. i. 18, 19). Words such as these appear to me clear, plain and unmistakable. They all teach one and the same great lesson, if we are willing to receive it. That lesson is, that true Christianity is a struggle, a fight, and a warfare.
What says the Baptismal Service of the Church of England? No doubt that service is uninspired, and like every uninspired composition, it has its defects, but to the millions of people all over the globe, who profess and call themselves English Churchmen, its voice ought to speak with some weight. And what does it say? It tells us that over every new member who is admitted into the Church of England the following words are used: 'I baptise thee in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.' 'I sign this child with the sign of the cross, in token that hereafter he shall not be ashamed to confess the faith of Christ crucified, and manfully to fight under His banner against sin, the world, and the devil, and to continue Christ's faithful soldier and servant unto his life's end.'
Of course we all know that in myriads of eases baptism is a mere form, and that parents bring their children to the font without faith or prayer or thought, and receive no blessing. The man who supposes that baptism in such cases acts mechanically, like a medicine, and that godly and ungodly, praying and prayerless parents all alike get the same benefit for their children, must be in a strange state of mind. But one thing at any rate is very certain. Every baptised Churchman is by his profession a 'soldier of Jesus Christ,' and is pledged 'to fight under His banner against sin, the world, and the devil.' He that doubts it had better take up his Prayer-book, and read, and mark, and learn its contents. The worst thing about many very zealous Churchmen is their total ignorance of what their own Prayer book contains.
Reader, whether you are a Churchman or not, one thing is very certain, this Christian warfare is a subject of vast importance. It is not a matter like Church government and ceremonial, about which men may differ, and yet reach heaven at last. Necessity is laid upon us. There are no promises in .the Lord Jesus Christ's Epistles to the Seven Churches, except to those who 'overcome.'
It is a fight of absolute necessity. Think not that in this war you can remain neutral and sit still. Such a line of action may be possible in the strife of nations, but it is utterly impossible in that conflict which concerns the soul. The boasted policy of non-interference, the 'masterly inactivity' which pleases so many statesmen, the plan of keeping quiet and letting things alone-all this will never do in the Christian warfare. Here at any rate no one can escape under the plea that he is 'a man of peace.' To be at peace with the world, the flesh, and the devil, is to be at enmity with God, and in the broad way that leadeth to destruction. We have no choice or option. We must either fight or be lost.
It is a fight of universal necessity, No rank, or class, or age, can plead exemption, or escape the battle. Ministers and people, preachers and hearers, old and young, high and low, rich and poor, gentle and simple, kings and subjects, landlords and tenants, learned and unlearned, all alike must carry arms and go to war. All have by nature a heart full of pride, unbelief, sloth, worldliness, and sin. All are living in a world beset with snares, traps, and pitfalls for the soul. All have near them a busy, restless, malicious devil. All, from the king in His palace down to the pauper in the workhouse, all must fight if they would be saved.
It is a fight of perpetual necessity. It admits of no breathing time, no armistice, no truce. On weekdays as well as on Sundays, in private as well as in public, at home by the family fireside as well as abroad, in little things like the management of tongue and temper, as well as in great ones like the government of kingdoms-the Christian's warfare must unceasingly go on. The foe we have to do with keeps no holidays, never slumbers, and never sleeps. So long as we have breath in our bodies we must keep on our armour, and remember we are on the enemy's ground. 'Even on the brink of Jordan,' said a dying saint, 'I find Satan nibbling at my heels.' We must fight till we die.
Reader, consider well what I have been saying. Take care that your own personal religion is real, genuine, and true. The saddest symptom about many so-called Christians, is the utter absence of anything like conflict and fight in their Christianity. They eat, they drink, they dress, they work, they amuse themselves, they get money, they spend money, they go through a scanty round of formal religious services once every week.
But of the great spiritual warfare-its watchings and strugglings, its agonies and anxieties, its battles and contests-of all this they appear to know nothing at all. Take care that this case is not your own. The worst state of soul is when the 'strong man armed keepeth his palace, and his goods are at peace,' when he leads men and women 'captive at his will,' and they make no resistance. The worst chains are those which are neither felt nor seen by the prisoner. (Luke xi. 21; 2 Tim. ii. 26).
Reader, take comfort about your soul, if you know anything of an inward fight and conflict. It is not everything, I am well aware, but it is something. Do you find in your heart of hearts a spiritual struggle? Do you feel anything of the flesh lusting against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh, so that you cannot do the things you would? (Gal. v. 17). Are you conscious of two principles within you, contending for the mastery?
Do you see anything of war in your inward man? Well, thank God for it! It is a good sign. It is evidence not to be despised. Anything is better than apathy, stagnation, deadness, and indifference. You are in a better state than many. The most part of so-called Christians have no feeling at all. You are evidently no friend of Satan. Like the kings of this world, he wars not against his own subjects. The very fact that he assaults you, should fill your mind with hope. Reader, I say again, take comfort, the child of God has two great marks about him, and of these two you have one. HE MAY BE KNOWN BY HIS INWARD WARFARE, AS WELL AS BY HIS INWARD PEACE.
II. I pass on to the second thing which I have to say, in handling my subject: True Christianity is the fight of faith.
In this respect the Christian warfare is utterly unlike the conflicts of this world. It does not depend on the strong arm, the quick eye, or the swift foot. It is not waged with carnal weapons, but with spiritual. Faith is the hinge on which victory turns. Success depends entirely on believing.
A general faith in the truth of God's written Word is the primary foundation of the Christian soldier's character. He is what he is, does what he does, thinks as he thinks, acts as he acts, hopes as he hopes, behaves as he behaves, for one simple reason-he believes certain propositions revealed and laid down in Holy Scripture. 'He that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him' (Heb. xi. 6).
A religion without doctrine or dogma, is a thing which many are fond of talking of in the present day. It sounds very fine at first. It looks very pretty at a distance. But the moment you sit down to examine and consider it, you will find it a simple impossibility. You might as well talk of a body without bones and sinews. No man will ever be anything or do anything in religion, unless he believes something. Even those who profess to hold the miserable and uncomfortable views of the Deists are obliged to confess that they believe something. With all their bitter sneers against dogmatic theology and Christian credulity, as they call it, they themselves have a kind of faith.
As for true Christians, faith is the very backbone of their spiritual existence. No one ever fights earnestly against the world, the flesh, and the devil, unless he has engraven on his heart certain great principles which he believes. What they are he may hardly know, and certainly not be able to define or write down. But there they are, and consciously or unconsciously they form the roots of his religion. Wherever you see a man, whether rich or poor, learned or unlearned, wrestling manfully with sin, and trying to overcome it, you may depend there are certain great principles which this man believes. The poet who wrote the famous lines:
'For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight,
He can't be wrong whose life is in the right,'
was a clever man, but a poor divine.
There is no such thing as right living without faith and believing.
A special faith in our Lord Jesus Christ's person, work, and office, is the life, heart and mainspring of the Christian soldier's character.
He sees by faith an unseen Saviour, who loved him, gave Himself for him, paid his debts for him, bore his sins, carried his transgressions, rose again for him, and appears in heaven for him as his Advocate at the right hand of God. Seeing this Saviour and trusting in Him, he feels peace and hope, and willingly does battle against the foes of his soul.
He sees his own many sins-his weak heart, a tempting world, a-busy devil, and if be looked only at them he might well despair. But he sees also a mighty Saviour, an interceding Saviour, a sympathising Saviour-His blood, His righteousness, His everlasting priesthood-and he believes that all this is his own. Believing this, he cheerfully fights on, with a full confidence that He will prove 'more than conqueror through Him that loved him.'
Habitual lively faith in Christ's presence and readiness to help is the secret of the Christian soldier fighting successfully.
It must never be forgotten that faith admits of degrees. All men do not believe alike, and even the same person has his ebbs and flows of faith, and believes more heartily at one time than another. According to the degree of his faith the Christian fights well or ill, wins victories, or suffers occasional repulses, comes off triumphant, or loses a battle. He that has most faith will always be the happiest and most comfortable soldier.
Nothing makes the anxieties of warfare sit so lightly on a man as the assurance of Christ's love and God's protection. Nothing enables him to bear the fatigue of watching, struggling, and wrestling against sin, like the indwelling confidence that God is on his side and success is sure. It is the 'shield of faith' which quenches all the fiery darts of the wicked one. It is the man who can say: 'I know whom I have believed,' who can say in time of suffering: 'I am not ashamed.'
'Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory,' was the man who wrote with the same pen, 'We look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal' (Ephes. vi. 16; 2 Tim. i. 12; 2 Cor. iv. 17, 18). The more faith the more victory! The more faith the more inward peace!
Reader, I think it impossible to overrate the value and importance of faith. Well may the Apostle Peter call it 'precious' (2 Peter i. 1). Time would fall me if I tried to recount a hundredth part of the victories which by faith Christian soldiers have obtained.
Take down your Bible and read with attention the eleventh chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews. Mark the long list of worthies whose names are thus recorded, from Abel down to Moses. Note well what battles they won against the world, the flesh, and the devil. And then remember that believing did it all. 'By it the elders obtained a good report.' (Heb. xi. 2).
Turn to the pages of early Church history. See how the primitive Christians held fast their religion even unto death, and were not shaken by the fiercest persecutions of heathen emperors. For centuries there were never wanting men like Polycarp and Ignatius, who were ready to die rather than deny Christ. Fines, and prisons, and torture, and fire, and sword, were unable to crush the spirit of the noble army of martyrs. The whole power of imperial Rome, the mistress of the world, proved unable to stamp out the religion which began with a few fishermen and publicans in Palestine! And then remember that believing was the Church's strength. They won their victory by faith.
Examine the story of the Protestant Reformation. Study the lives of its leading champions-Wycliffe, and Huss, and Luther, and Ridley, and Latimer, and Hooper. Mark how these gallant soldiers of Christ stood firm against a host of adversaries, and were ready to die for their principles. What battles they fought! What controversies they maintained! What contradiction they endured! What tenacity of purpose they exhibited against a world in arms! And then remember that believing was the secret of their strength. They overcame by faith.
Consider the men who have made the greatest marks in Church history in the last hundred years. Observe how men like Wesley, and Whitefield, and Venn, and Romaine, stood alone in their day and generation, and revived English religion in the face of opposition from men high in office-and in the face of slander, ridicule, and persecution from nine-tenths of professing Christians in our land. Observe how men like William Wilberforce, and Havelock, and Hedley Vicars, have witnessed for Christ in the most difficult positions, and displayed a banner for Christ even at the regimental mess-table, or on the floor of the House of Commons. Mark how these home witnesses never flinched to the end, and won the respect even of their worst adversaries. And then remember that believing is the key to all their characters. By faith they lived, and walked, and stood, and overcame.
Reader, would you live the life of a Christian soldier? Pray for faith. It is the gift of God; and a gift which those who ask shall never ask for in vain. You must believe before you do. If men do nothing in religion, it is because they do not believe. Faith is the first step toward heaven.
Would you fight the fight of a Christian soldier successfully and prosperously? Pray for a continual growth of faith. Let your dally prayer be that of the disciples-'Lord, increase my faith.' Watch jealously over your faith, if you have any. It is the citadel of the Christian character, on which the safety of the whole fortress depends. It is the point which Satan loves to assail. All lies at His mercy if faith is overthrown. Here, if you love life, you must especially stand on your guard.
III. The last thing I have to say is this: True Christianity is a good fight.
'Good' is a curious word to apply to any warfare. All worldly war is more or less evil. No doubt it is an absolute necessity in many cases, to procure the liberty of nations, to prevent the weak from being trampled down by the strong; but still it is an evil.
It entails an awful amount of bloodshed and suffering. It hurries into eternity myriads who are completely unprepared for their change. It calls forth the worst passions of man. It causes enormous waste and destruction of property. It fills peaceful homes with mourning widows and orphans. It spreads far and wide poverty, taxation, and national distress. It disarranges all the order of society. It interrupts the work of the Gospel and the growth of Christian missions. In short, war is an immense and incalculable evil, and every praying man should cry night and day: 'Give peace in our times.' And yet there is one warfare which is emphatically 'good,' and one fight in which there is no evil. That warfare is the Christian warfare. That fight is the fight of the soul.
Now what are the reasons why the Christian fight is a 'good fight?' What are the points in which his warfare is superior to the warfare of this world? Let me examine this matter, and open it out in order. I dare not pass the subject, and leave it unnoticed. I want no one to begin the life of a Christian soldier without counting the cost. I would not keep back from any one that the Christian fight, though spiritual, is real and severe. It needs courage, boldness, and perseverance. But I want my readers to know that there is abundant encouragement, if they will only begin the battle. The Scripture does not call the Christian fight 'a good fight' without reason and cause. Let me try to shew what I mean.
(a) The Christian's fight is good because fought under the best of generals. The Leader and Commander of all believers is our Divine Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ-a Saviour of perfect wisdom, infinite love, and almighty power. The Captain of our salvation never falls to lead His soldiers to victory. He never makes any useless movements, never errs in judgement, never commits any mistake. His eye is on all His followers, from the greatest of them even to the least. The humblest servant in His army is not forgotten. The weakest and most sickly is cared for, remembered, and kept unto salvation. The souls whom He has purchased and redeemed with His own blood are far too precious to be wasted and thrown away. Surely this is good!
(b) The Christian's fight is good, because fought with, the best of helps. Weak as each believer is in himself, the Holy Spirit dwells in him, and his body is a temple of the Holy Ghost. Chosen by God the Father, washed in the blood of the Son, renewed by the Spirit, he does not go a warfare at his own charges, and is never alone. God the Holy Ghost dally teaches, leads, guides, and directs him. God the Father helps him by His almighty power. God the Son intercedes for him every moment, like Moses on the mount, while he is fighting in the valley below. A threefold cord like this can never be broken! His dally provisions and supplies never fall. His commissariat is never defective. His bread and his water are sure. Weak as he seems in himself, like a worm, he is strong in the Lord to do great exploits. Surely this is good!
(c) The Christian fight is a good fight, because fought with the best of promises. To every believer belong exceeding great and precious promises-all yea and amen in Christ-promises sure to be fulfilled because made by Him who cannot He, and has power as well as will to keep His word. 'Sin shall not have dominion over you.' 'The God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly.' 'he which hath begun a good work in you, will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.' 'When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee.'
My sheep 'shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of My hand.' 'Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out.' 'I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.' 'I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, . . . nor things present, nor things to come . shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus' (Rom. vi. 14; Rom. xvi. 20; Philip. i. 6; Isaiah xliii. 2; John x. 28; John vi. 37; Is. xiii. 5; Rom. viii. 38, 39). Words like these are worth their weight in gold! Who does not know that promises of coming aid have cheered the defenders of besieged cities like Lucknow, and raised them above their natural strength? Who does not know that the promise of help before night had much to say to the mighty victory of Waterloo? Yet all such promises are as nothing compared to the rich treasure of believers, the eternal promises of God. Surely this is good!
(d) The Christian's fight is a good fight, because fought with the best of issues and results. No doubt it is a war in which there are tremendous struggles, agonising conflicts, wounds, bruises, watchings, fastings, and fatigue. But still every believer, without exception, is 'more than conqueror through Him that loved him.' No soldiers of Christ are ever lost, missing, or left dead on the battlefield. No mourning will ever need to be put on, and no tears be shed for either private or officer in the army of Christ.
The muster-roll, when the last evening comes, will be found precisely the same that it was in the morning. The English Guards marched out of London to the Crimean campaign a magnificent body of men; but many of the gallant fellows laid their bones in a foreign grave, and never saw London again. Far different shall be the arrival of the Christian army in 'the city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.' Not one shall be found lacking. The words of our great Captain shall be found true: 'Of them which Thou gavest Me have I lost none' (John xviii. 9). Surely this is good!
(e) The Christian's fight is good, because it does good to the soul of him that fights it. All other wars have a bad, lowering, and demoralising tendency. They call forth the worst passions of the human mind. They harden the conscience, and sap the foundations of religion and morality. The Christian warfare alone tends to call forth the best things that are left in man.
It promotes humility and charity, it lessens selfishness and worldliness, it induces men to set their affection on things above. The old, the sick, the dying, are never known to repent of fighting Christ's battles against sin, the world, and the devil. Their only regret is that they did not begin to serve Christ long before. The experience of that eminent saint, Philip Henry, does not stand alone. In his last days he said to his family: 'I take you all to record that a life spent in the service of Christ is the happiest life that a man can spend upon earth.' Surely this is good!
(f) The Christian's fight is a good fight, because it does good to the world. All other wars have a devastating, ravaging, and injurious effect. The march of an army through a land is an awful scourge to the inhabitants. Wherever it goes it impoverishes, wastes, and does harm. Injury to persons, property, feelings, and morals invariably accompanies it. Far different are the effects produced by Christian soldiers. Wherever they live they are a blessing. They raise the standard of religion and morality. They invariably check the progress of drunkenness, Sabbath-breaking, profligacy, and dishonesty. Even their enemies are obliged to respect them. Go where you please, you will rarely find that barracks and garrisons do good to the neighbourhood. But go where you please, you will find that the presence of 4 few true Christians is a blessing. Surely this is good!
(g) Finally, the Christian's fight is good, because the end is a glorious reward for all who fight it. Who can tell the wages that Christ will pay to all His faithful people? Who can estimate the good things that our Divine Captain has laid up for those who confess Him before men? A grateful country can give to her successful warriors medals, Victoria crosses, pensions, peerages, honours, and titles. But it can give nothing that will last and endure for ever, nothing than can be carried beyond the grave.
Palaces like Blenheim and Strathfield say can only be enjoyed for a few years. The bravest generals and soldiers must go down one day before the king of terrors. Better, far better, is the position of him who fights under Christ's banner against sin, the world, and the devil, He may get little praise of man while he lives, and go down to the grave with little honour; but he shall have that which is far better, because far more enduring. It shall have 'a crown of glory that fadeth not away.' Surely this is good.
Reader, settle it in your mind that the Christian fight is a good fight, really good, truly good, emphatically good. You see only part of it yet. You see the struggle, but not the end; you see the campaign, but not the reward; you see the cross, but not the crown. You see a few humble, broken-spirited, penitent, praying people, enduring hardships and despised by the world; but you see not the hand of God over them, the face of God smiling on them, the kingdom of glory prepared for them. These things are yet to be revealed. Judge not by appearances. There are more good things about the Christian warfare than you see.
And now, reader, let me conclude my whole subject with a few words of practical application. Our lot is cast in times when the world seems thinking of little else but battles and fighting. The iron is entering into the soul of more than one nation, and the mirth of many a fair district is clean gone. Surely at a time like this a minister may fairly call on men to remember the spiritual warfare. Bear with me while I say a few parting words about the great fight of the soul.
(1) It may be you are struggling hard for the rewards of this world. Perhaps you are straining every nerve to obtain money, or place, or power, or pleasure. Reader, if that be your case, take care. You are sowing a crop of bitter disappointment. Unless you mind what you are about your latter end will be to He down in sorrow.
Thousands have trodden the path you are pursuing, and have awoke too late to find it end in misery and eternal ruin. They have fought hard for wealth, and honour, and office, and promotion, and turned their backs on God, and Christ, and heaven, and the world to come. And what has their end been? Often, far too often, they have found out that their whole life has been a grand mistake. They have tasted by bitter experience the feelings of the dying statesman who cried aloud in his last hours: 'The battle is fought: the battle is fought: but the victory is not won.'
Reader, for your own happiness' sake resolve this day to join the Lord's side. Shake off your past carelessness and unbelief. Come out from the ways of a thoughtless, unreasoning world. Take up the cross, and become a good soldier of Christ. Fight the good fight of faith, that you may be happy as well as safe.
Think what the children of this world will often do for liberty, without any religious principle. Remember how Greeks, and Romans, and Swiss, and Tyrolese, have endured the loss of all things, and even life itself, rather than bend their necks to a foreign yoke. Let their example provoke you for emulation. If men can do so much for a corruptible crown, how much more should you do for one which is incorruptible! Awake to a sense of the misery of being a slave. For life, and happiness, and liberty, arise and fight.
Fear not to begin and enlist under Christ's banner. The great Captain of your salvation rejects none that come to Him. Like David in the cave of Adullam, he is ready to receive all who come to him, however unworthy they may feel themselves.-None who repent and believe are too bad to be enrolled in the ranks of Christ's army. All who come to Him by faith are admitted, clothed, armed, trained, and finally led on to complete victory. Reader, fear not to begin this very day. There is yet room for you.
Fear not to go on fighting, if you once enlist. The more thorough and whole-hearted you are as a soldier, the more comfortable will you find your warfare. No doubt you will often meet with trouble, fatigue, and hard fighting, before your warfare is accomplished. But let none of these things move you. Greater is He that is for you than all they that be against you. Everlasting liberty or everlasting captivity are the alternatives before you. Choose liberty, and fight to the last.
(2) Reader, it may be you know something of the Christian warfare, and are a tried and proved soldier already. If that be your case, accept a parting word of advice and encouragement from a fellow-soldier. Let me speak to myself as well as to you. Let us stir up our minds by way of remembrance. There are some things which we cannot remember too well.
Let us remember that if we would fight successfully we must put on the whole armour of God, and never lay it aside till we die. Not a single piece of the armour can be dispensed with. The girdle of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shield of faith, the sword of the Spirit, the helmet of hope, each and all are needful. Not a single day can we dispense with any part of this armour. Well says an old veteran in Christ's army, who died 200 years ago: 'In heaven we shall appear, not in armour, but in robes of glory. But here our arms are to be worn night and day. We must walk, work, sleep in them, or else we are not true soldiers of Christ.' (Gurnall's 'Christian Armour').
Let us remember the solemn words of an old warrior, who went to his rest more than 1800 years ago: 'No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life; that he may please Him who hath chosen him to be a soldier' (2 Tim. ii. 4). May we never forget that saying!
Let us remember that some have seemed good soldiers for a little season, and talked loudly of what they would do, and yet turned back disgracefully in the day of battle. Let us never forget Balaam, and Judas, and Demas, and Lot's wife. Whatever we are, and however weak, let us be real, genuine, true, and sincere.
Let us remember that the eye of our loving Saviour is upon us morning, noon, and night. He will never suffer us to be tempted above that we are able to bear. He can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, for He suffered himself being tempted. He knows what battles and conflicts are, for He Himself was assaulted by the prince of this world. Having such a High Priest, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession.
Let us remember that thousands of soldiers before us have fought the same battle that we are fighting, and come off more than conquerors through Him that loved them. They overcame by the blood of the Lamb; and so also may we. Christ's arm is quite as strong as ever, and Christ's heart is just as loving as ever. He that saved men and women before us, is one who never changes. He is able to save to the uttermost both you and me and all who come unto God by Him. Then let us cast doubts and fears away. Let us follow them who through faith and patience inherit the promises, and are waiting for us to join them.
Finally, let us remember that the time is short, and the coming of the Lord draweth nigh. A few more battles and the last trumpet shall sound, and the Prince of Peace shall come to reign on a renewed earth. A few more struggles and conflicts, and then we shall bid an eternal goodbye to sin and sorrow and death. Then let us fight on to the last, and never surrender. Thus saith the Captain of our salvation: 'he that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be My son' (Rev .xxi. 7).
Let me conclude all with the words of John Bunyan, in one of the most beautiful parts of 'Pilgrim's Progress.' He is describing the end of one of his best and holiest pilgrims:-
'After this it was noised abroad that Mr. Valiant-for-truth was sent for by a summons, by the same party as the others. And he had this word for a token that the summons was true, 'The pitcher was broken at the fountain' (Eccles. xii. 6). When he understood it, he called for his friends, and told them of it. Then said he: ' I am going to my Father's house; and though with great difficulty I have got hither, yet now I do not repent me of all the troubles I have been at to arrive where I am.
My sword I give to him that shall succeed me in my pilgrimage, and my courage and skill to him that can get it. My marks and scars I carry with me, to be a witness for me that I have fought His battles, who will now be my Rewarder.' When the day that he must go home was come, many accompanied him to the riverside, into which, as he went down, he said, 'O death, where is thy sting?' And as he went down deeper, he cried, 'O grave, where is thy victory?' So he passed over, and all the trumpets sounded for him on the other side.'
Reader, may our last end be like this!
Evan Roberts, while reflecting on the problems of The Welsh Revival of 1904, once wrote, "The mistake was to become occupied with the effects of the revival and not to watch and pray in protecting the cause of the revival." The lasting success of the next move of God may very well depend upon our willingness to receive Mr. Roberts WARNING! There are many today who are foolishly pursuing the effects of revival at the expense of neglecting the conditions of revival.
No harvest is ever any greater than the seeds and soil in which it was planted. To neglect the seeds of revival is to ultimately plague the fruit of revival. A rich source of instruction on this subject is found in the obscure writings of Frank Bartleman. Mr. Bartleman was an active participant in the famous Azusa Street Revival of 1906. While I can not endorse all of Mr. Bartleman's doctrines and opinions, it would be foolish to ignore his genuine spiritual insight.
Unlike many other Church historians, Bartleman paid careful attention to each step the Holy Spirit took in preparing God's people for revival. In fact he wrote more about the Church's preparation for revival than he did about the actual revival. Being a man gifted and active in intercession, he was aware of a revival coming to Los Angeles long before many others. As Bartleman watched and prayed, he was able to accurately trace the Spirit's preliminary movements among the churches in Los Angeles. It is these kinds of observations that make Frank Bartleman's writings so rich and prophetic for our needy generation.
Undeniably, revival is a miraculous work of God, BUT true revival never comes apart from the preparation and the participation of a remnant of God's people. Oh, how the Church needs to rediscover the unchanging principles of revival. It is time for a new wave of young pioneers to rise up and cooperate with the Holy Spirit's revival process. It is time for us to break up our fallow ground and once again nurture the fruitful seeds of revival. Let's now go back with Mr. Bartleman through his own personal records and writings, as he identifies these precious seeds.
Almost a year before The Azusa Street Revival, in an article written for God's Revivalist, Frank Bartleman urged the Church to prepare herself for a mighty visitation. He writes, "Christendom is rapidly assuming an attitude of expectancy, the great prerequisite for a visitation from God. The Lord is choosing His workers, our chance is at the door. This is a time to realize the vision of service, we can not afford to miss the blessing and reward He desires for us. It may be our last great chance to win souls for heaven. Oh what a privilege! What a responsibility!" Bartleman later recorded in his autobiography (My Story: The Latter Rain) how many Christians missed The Azusa outpouring because of their own unwillingness to seek revival on God's terms.
He writes, "During those months preceding the Pentecost, the Spirit was constantly seeking a company through which He could manifest Himself, and gather the people. He used various agencies and instruments just as far as He could. After the Spirit had made several desperate efforts, and a number had failed Him, He finally succeeded with a crude, weak body. There was little to commend itself even in this, aside from a desperate abandonment and childlike faith. But these were the prerequisites for the beginning of the work."
On December 22, 1904, Frank Bartleman and his wife and two daughters moved to Los Angeles. He had a unexplainable impression that God was getting ready to do something wonderful in the Los Angeles area. For months he moved around the city visiting and preaching at various Holiness missions. During this time he also came into a deeper dimension of prayer and intercession. He had been corresponding with Evan Roberts and had received encouragement from him to pray for a mighty awakening in California.
Soon Bartleman began to increasingly experience seasons of intense travailing prayer. After visiting Joseph's Smale's First Baptist church, Mr. Bartleman was greatly encouraged to find some tokens of what he had been praying for. Bartleman writes, "June 17, 1905 I went to Los Angeles to attend a meeting at the First Baptist Church. They were waiting on God for an outpouring of the Spirit there. Their pastor, Joseph Smale, had just returned from Wales. He had been in touch with the revival and Evan Roberts and was on fire to have the same visitation and blessing come to his own church in Los Angeles..."
Upon Joseph Smale's return to Los Angeles, he quickly organized his church into small home prayer groups. He also encouraged his people to look for the return of the apostolic gifts to the church. The prayer meetings lasted fifteen weeks and almost immediately produced a deep sense of need and expectation for revival. Bartleman describes the meetings as follows, "(Pastor Smale) started prayer meetings in his church to wait on God for an outpouring of the Spirit similar to that which they were having in Wales. God wonderfully anointed him to exhort the people. He was full of faith for mighty things.
These prayer meetings ran for a number of weeks, and there was much spontaneous worship and some very wonderful healings. Faith increased rapidly for extraordinary things. God made Pastor Smale a regular Moses to lead us toward the promised land. But soon the church dignitaries could tolerate the new, spontaneous order no longer. They ordered it to cease, or the Pastor to resign. The consequence was the Pastor wisely decided to go on with God, and the Lord and the people went with him. The cloud moved. A New Testament Church was formed. Here God wonderfully led and blessed, up to the Spring of 1906."
Sadly, the freedom in prayer and worship that Joseph Smale had encouraged was ultimately not accepted by some of his fellow Baptists. One of the first signs of this was seen in their open attack on the Spirit of prayer. Bartleman describes one such occasion, "At Smale's church one day I was groaning in prayer at the altar. The spirit of intercession was upon me. A brother rebuked me severely. He did not understand it. The flesh naturally shrinks from such ordeals.
The groans are no more popular in most churches than is a woman in birth-pangs in the home. Soul-travail does not make pleasant company for selfish worldlings. But we cannot have souls born without it. Child bearing is anything but a popular exercise these days. And so with a real revival of new born souls in the churches. Modern society has little place for a child-bearing mother, and so with the church's regarding soul-travail. There is little burden for souls. Men run from the groans of a woman in travail of birth, and so the church desires no groans today. She is too busy enjoying herself."
Again Bartleman comments on the Baptist leader's unwillingness to go on with God. "I went to Smale's church that night, and he resigned. The meetings had run daily in the First Baptist Church for fifteen weeks. It was now September. The officials of the church were tired of the innovations and wanted to return to the old order. He was told to either stop the revival, or get out. He wisely chose the latter. But what an awful position for a church to take, to throw God out. In this same way they later drove the Spirit of God out of the churches in Wales. They were tired of His presence, desiring to return to the old, cold, ecclesiastical order. How blind men are! The most spiritual of Pastor Smale's members naturally followed him, with a nucleus of other workers who had gathered to him from other sources, during the revival. They immediately contemplated organizing a New Testament church..."
Pastor Smale established the First New Testament Church in Burbank Hall at 542 South Main Street, Los Angeles, in early 1906. For months the newly organized church experienced great freedom and blessing. However, before long they too were struggling to keep in step with the Spirit of revival. Bartleman became very concerned for this little fellowship which once looked so promising. "The New Testament Church seemed to be losing the spirit of prayer as they increased their organization.
They now tried to shift this ministry on a few of us. I knew God was not pleased with that, and I became much burdened for them. They had taken on too many secondary interests. It began to look as though the Lord would have to find another body. My hopes had been high for this particular company of people. But the enemy seemed to be sidetracking them now, leading them to miss God's best for them. They were now even attempting to organize prayer, a thing impossible.
Prayer is spontaneous. I felt it were better not to have organized than to lose the ministry of prayer and spirit of revival as a body. It was for this they had been called in the beginning. They had become ambitious for a church and organization. It seemed hard to them not to be like the other nations (churches) round about them. And right here they surely began to fail. As church work increased the real issue was lost sight of. Human organization and human programs leave very little room for the free Spirit of God."
"It is very easy to choose second best. The prayer life is needed much more than even buildings or organizations. These are often a substitute for the other. Souls are born into the Kingdom only through prayer. I feared the New Testament Church might develop a party, sectarian spirit. A rich lady offered them the money to build a church edifice with. The devil was bidding high. But she soon withdrew her offer. I confess I was glad she did. They would soon have had no time for anything but building then. It would have been the end of their revival.
We had been called out to evangelize Los Angeles, not to build up another sect or party spirit. We needed no more organization nor machinery than what was really necessary for the speedy evangelizing of the city. Surely we had enough separate rival church organizations already on our hands. Each working largely for its own interest, advancement, and glory. The New Testament Church seemed to be drifting toward intellectualism. I became much burdened for it. I felt the New Testament Church was failing God, and I was looking to see where the Spirit might come forth. The curse everywhere was spiritual pride. Hiding their nakedness from God. The oil (The Holy Ghost) ceases to flow, as in Elijah's time when there are no more empty vessels to be filled . People do not sense their need of God. But wherever there is a hungry heart, God will fill it. 'The rich or (full) He has sent away empty.'"
"They did not break through at Pastor Smale's assembly (The First New Testament Church). There was too much reserve there. God had taken them as far as He could." Yet God was still determined to find a people whom He could use to bring revival. He now moved in among a small group of humble and praying people at 214 N. Bonnie Brae Street. Bartleman found himself among them just as the revival fires started to burn. He writes, "March 26, I went to a cottage meeting on Bonnie Brae Street. Both white and colored saints were meeting there for prayer. I had attended a cottage meeting shortly before this, at another place, where I first met Brother Seymour. He had just come from Texas. He was a colored man, very plain, spiritual, and humble. He attended the meetings at Bonnie Brae Street. He was blind in one eye. There was a general spirit of humility manifested in the meeting. They were taken up with God.
Evidently the Lord had found the little company at last, outside as always, through whom he could have right of way. There was not a mission in the country where this could be done. All were in the hands of men. The Spirit could not work. Others far more pretentious had failed. That which man esteems had been passed by once more and the Spirit born again in a humble stable, outside ecclesiastical establishments as usual. A body must be prepared, in repentance and humility, for every outpouring of the Spirit. They decided to wait on God in a ten-days special petitioning of God and in yielding themselves to Him. The time had come. God had found the right company at last."
Soon the meeting at Bonnie Brae became dangerously crowded and another place had to be found for the prayer services. The meeting was moved to 312 Azusa Street under the leadership of William Seymour. Discerning as usual, Bartleman describes the spiritual atmosphere in and around the new meeting place; " They opened public meetings in old Azusa St. in an old Methodist Church that had been for a long time in disuse, except as a receptacle for old lumber, plaster, etc. It was very dirty. A space was cleared large enough to seat a score or two of persons. We sat on planks resting on old nail kegs, if I remember correctly. But God was there. The work began in earnest. The fire had fallen.
It was on the 9th of April 1906, that the Spirit was first poured out on Bonnie Brae. On April 18th we had the terrible San Francisco earthquake. It had a very close connection with the Pentecostal outpouring... This shook the whole state, as well as the nation. Men began to fear God... Their conscience needed to be knocked at. This paved the way for the revival. Otherwise they would have mocked us.... God suddenly shut up many little Holiness Missions, Tent meetings, etc., that had been striving with one another a long time for the preeminence. It would not work any more. They had to come together. God only could tame them. There was little going on anywhere else, but at Azusa St.
All the people were coming. Even Pastor Smale finally came to Azusa Mission to hunt his people up. Then he invited them back to let God have His way. The fire broke out at his own Assembly also. When God dries a place up, it is dry. This, many churches which opposed the Azusa work soon found out to their sorrow. And many are yet sorrowing over it. They would not take God's way. They were also among the prophets, but when the Lord came He did not come through them. This killed them. They would not go to Azusa, nor let Azusa come to them. Azusa was despised in their eyes."
Bartleman continues, "The present Pentecostal manifestation did not break out in a moment, like a huge prairie fire, and set the world on fire. In fact no work of God ever appears that way. There is a necessary time for preparation. The finished article is not realized at the beginning. Men may wonder where it came from, not being conscious of the preparation, but there is always such. Every movement of the Spirit of God must also run the gauntlet of the devil's forces. The Dragon stands before the bearing mother, ready to swallow up her child.-(Rev. 12:4.) And so with the present Pentecostal work in its beginning. The enemy did much counterfeiting. God kept the young child well hid for a season from the Herods, until it could gain strength and discernment to resist them."
Frank Bartleman's writings are a prophetic reminder that there are distinct seasons of revival that require our preparation and cooperation. Revivals don't just mysteriously happen, they are born through a cooperative effort between the Church and the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit begins this process by filling us with a holy discontentment over our own impotence and spiritual barrenness. Next, in response to our hunger, He imparts a divine seed vision for revival deep within us.
God then requires us to become broken and willing to cooperate with this vision in an ongoing process of faith, humility, repentance and prayer. Truly, God is the only one who can open the womb of revival, yet no revival is ever born without much costly travail and cooperation by the Church. In the Kingdom of God there is no such thing as the luxury of a surrogate mother or a cesarean. We must become willing to be painfully stretched and disfigured, as we carry and nurture the growing sparks of revival within us. Sleepless nights, a change of appetite and unusual pains are all part of carrying a developing child. Are you willing for your life to be radically changed and inconvenienced in your pursuit of revival?
God longs for a help-meet, a co-laborer, a bride through which He can father a revival of His presence. In God's love and wisdom He has sovereignly chosen to use frail human beings in this birthing process. Therefore it is possible for us to hinder or even completely abort the work of revival within us. Let us BEWARE lest we quench or miscarry the work of the Holy Spirit through our own unbelief and neglect. Like the young virgin Mary, it's time for us to totally yield to the Father's desire, saying " Let it be done unto me according to your word." Luke 1:38.
I believe the opportunity for a lasting revival stands before us today. We need to recognize the time of our visitation. The Holy Spirit is imparting the vision for revival within many hearts. This is no time to be experimenting with untested church growth theories, borrowed from books. Clever human schemes will never substitute for a lack of true heart preparation and travailing prayer. By neglecting these, I fear many are needlessly squandering away their last opportunity for true revival. "Opportunity once passed, said Frank Bartleman, is lost forever. There is a time when the tide is sweeping by our door.
We may plunge in and be carried to glorious success and blessing and victory. To stand on the bank shivering from timidity, or paralyzed by stupor at such a time is to miss all, and most miserably and eternally fail. Oh, our responsibility! The mighty tide of God's grace and favor even now is sweeping by us, in its prayer directed course." Opportunity is pounding at our door. The Father is searching for a people who will yield to His revival birthing process. "For the eyes of the Lord run to and from throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong on behalf of those whose heart is LOYAL to Him." (2 Chronicles 16:9)
The Father has already begun this process among some of His praying people. Still if such a remnant of revival pioneers are to succeed where so many others have failed, they must avoid the mistakes of their forefathers. Within nine years of the Azusa Street Revival, Frank Bartleman was expressing deep concern for the future of the Pentecostal movement. He recognized that many of the revival participants had become distracted by the effects of the revival and thus lost sight of God's primary purposes for revival.
By neglecting the roots of the revival, Bartleman believed they had inadvertently cursed the spiritual fruit they so dearly desired. Our modern churches must take heed and learn that there are no shortcuts to lasting revival. " Except a kernel of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abides alone: but if it dies, it brings forth much fruit. (John 12:24)" There will be no true and lasting revival until we die to our own pride and selfish ambition. We must let God the Holy Spirit have control of His Church again. We need to repent and let the knocking Bridegroom back into His house.
In early 1905 Frank Bartleman wrote, "I received from God the following keynote to revival: The depth of a revival will be determined exactly by the depth of the spirit of repentance..." Again he writes, "A body must be prepared, in repentance and humility for every outpouring of the Spirit." This is one of God's great unchanging laws of true revival. It applies to all people and for all times. We can not afford to ignore these clear warnings from our spiritual forefathers any longer. There will be no glorious, end-time harvest until God finds a people who will embrace and nurture the fruitful seeds of revival; FAITH, HUMILITY, REPENTANCE and PRAYER.
Humility, The Strength Of the Lamb
by Andrew Murray
No tree can grow except on the root from which it sprang. And what is the root and essence of the character of our Redeemer? There can he but one answer: it is His humility. What is the Incarnation but His heavenly humility, His emptying Himself and becoming man? What is His life on earth but taking the form of a servant? And what is His atonement but humility? "He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross." (Phil. 2:8)
And what is His ascension and His glory but humility exalted to the throne and crowned with glory? "He humbled Himself.... Therefore also God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name." (Phil. 2:8,9) In Heaven (where He was with the Father), in His birth, in His life, in His death, in His sitting on the throne - it is nothing but humility.
Christ is the humility of God embodied in human nature, the Eternal Love humbling itself, clothing itself in meekness and gentleness to win and serve and save us. As the love and humility of God make Him the helper and servant of all, so Jesus was the Incarnate Humility. And so He is still in the midst of the throne, the meek and lowly Lamb of God.
Our First Priority
If this be the root of the tree, its nature must be seen in every branch and leaf and fruit. If humility be the first, the all-inclusive grace of the life of Jesus - if humility be the secret of His atonement - then the health and strength of our spiritual lives will entirely depend upon our giving this grace first priority in our lives. We need to make humility the chief thing we admire in Him, the chief thing we ask of Him, and the one thing for which we sacrifice all else.
Is it any wonder that the Christian life is so often feeble and fruitless when the very root of Christ's life is neglected - is unknown? We must have a humility in which we rest in nothing less than the end and death of self. A humility which gives up all the honor of men, as Jesus did, to seek the honor that comes from God alone. A humility which absolutely makes and counts itself nothing so that God may be all and the Lord alone may be exalted.
In the Gospel of John we have the inner life of our Lord laid open to us. Jesus speaks frequently of His relation to the Father, of the motives by which He is guided, and of His consciousness of the power and spirit in which He acts. Though the word "humble" does not occur in the Gospel of John, we shall nowhere else in Scripture see the humility of Jesus so clearly represented.
We have already said that this grace is in truth nothing but the simple consent of the creature to let God be all -surrendering itself to His working alone. In Jesus we shall see how both as the Son of God in heaven, and as a man upon earth, He willingly took an inferior position in order to give God the honor and glory due only to Him.
The Humility Of Jesus
And what Jesus taught His disciples was always true of Himself: "He who humbles himself shall be exalted." (Luke 14:11) Listen to the words in which our Lord speaks of His relation to the Father, and see how unceasingly He uses the words not - and nothing - of Himself. The not I in which Paul expresses his relation to Christ is the very spirit of what Christ says of His relation to the Father.
"The Son can do nothing of Himself..." (John 5:19)
"I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me." (John 6:38)
"My teaching is not Mine" (John 7:16)
"I do nothing of Myself" (John 8:28 KJV)
"I have not come of Myself but He sent Me." (John 8:42 KJV)
"I seek not Mine own glory" (John 8:50 KJV)
"The words that I say, I speak not from Myself" (John 14:10 KJV)
These words open to us the deepest roots of Christ's life and work. They tell us how it was that the Almighty God was able to work His mightily redemptive work through Jesus. They teach us what the essential nature of that redemption is which Christ accomplished and still communicates to us. It is this: He was nothing, that God might be all.
He resigned Himself, by His will and His powers, entirely for the Father to work in Him. Of His own power, own will, and His own glory, of His whole mission with all His works and His teachings - of all this He said: It is not I. I am nothing. I have given Myself to the Father to, work and I am nothing. The Father is all.
Christ found this life of absolute submission and dependence upon the Father's will to be one of perfect peace and joy. He lost nothing by giving all to God. God honored His trust, and did all for Him, and then exalted Him to His own right hand in glory. And because Christ had thus humbled Himself before God, and God was ever before Him, He found it possible to humble Himself before men and become the Servant of all. Jesus' humility was simply the surrender of Himself to God, to allow the Father to do in Him what He pleased - no matter what men said about Him or what they did to Him.
Blessed Are The Meek
We have seen humility in the life of Christ as He laid open His heart to us - now let us listen to His teaching. There we shall hear how He speaks of it and how far He expects men (especially His disciples) to be humble as He was. Let us carefully study the scriptures below to receive the full impression of how often and how earnestly He taught about humility:
Look at the commencement of His ministry. In the Beatitudes with which the Sermon on the Mount opens, He speaks: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth."( Matt. .5:3,5) The very first words of His proclamation of the Kingdom of heaven reveal the open gate through which we must enter. The poor who have nothing in themselves - to them the Kingdom comes, the meek who seek nothing in themselves - theirs the earth shall be. The blessings of heaven and earth are for the lowly. For the heavenly and the earthly life, humility is the secret of blessing.
"Take My, yoke upon you, and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart; and you shall find rest for ,your souls." (Matt. 11 :29) Jesus offers Himself as Teacher. He tells us what the spirit is which we shall find in Him as Teacher and which we can learn and receive from Him. Meekness and lowliness is the one thing He offers us, for in it we shall find perfect rest of soul. Humility is to be our salvation.
The disciples had been disputing who would be the greatest in the Kingdom, and had agreed to ask the Master. He set a child in their midst and said, " Whoever then humbles himself as this child, he is the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven." (Matt. 18:4) Who is the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven? That question is indeed a far-reaching one. What will be the chief distinction in the heavenly Kingdom? The answer - none but Jesus would have given. The chief glory of heaven. the true heavenly-mindedness, the chief of the graces, is humility. "For he who is least among you, this is the one who is great.."' (Luke 9:48)
The sons of Zebedee had asked Jesus in sit on His right and left, the highest place in the Kingdom. Jesus said it was not His to give but the Father's who would give it to those for whom it was prepared. They must not look or ask for it. And then He added, "Who ever wishes to become great among you shall be your servant...just as the Son of Man did not come to he served, but to serve ... ( Matt. 20:26-28) Humility, as it is the mark of Christ the heavenly, will be the one standard of glory in heaven - the lowliest is the nearest to God.
Speaking to the multitude and the disciples of, the Pharisees and their love of the chief seats, Christ said once again: "But the greatest among you shall be your servant." (Matt. 23:11) Humility he only ladder to ladder to honor in God's Kingdom.
In relating the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican, Christ explained, "For everyone who exalts himself shall be humbled, but he who humbles himself shall be exalted." (Luke 18:14) In the temple and presence and worship of God, everything is worthless that is not pervaded by deep, true humility toward God and men.
After washing the disciples' feet, Jesus said, "If I then, the Lord and the Teacher, washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet." (John 13:14) By His own words it is clear that Jesus considered humility to be one of the first and most essential elements of discipleship.
At the Last Supper table, the disciples still disputed who should be the greatest. Jesus said, "Let him who is the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as the servant." (Luke 22:26) The pain in which Jesus walked, and the power and spirit in which He accomplished our salvation, is ever the humility that makes me the servant of all.
How little this is preached! How little it is practiced! How little the lack of it is felt or confessed! I do not say how few attain to some measure of likeness to Jesus in His humility - but rather how few ever even think of making humility the distinct object of their continual desire or prayer! How little the world has seen it! How little has it been seen even in the inner circle of the Church.
Yield Yourself To God
"Whoever wishes to become great among you shall be your servant." (Matt. 20:26) We all know what the character of a faithful servant or slave implies: devotion to the master's interests, thoughtful study and care to please him, delight in his prosperity and honor and happiness. There have been servants on earth in whom these qualities have been seen, and for these men and women the name of "servant" has never been anything but a glory.
To how many of us has it not been a new joy in the Christian life to know that we may yield ourselves as servants, as slaves to God, and to find that His service is our highest liberty - indeed, the liberty from sin and self? We need now to learn another lesson, and that is that Jesus calls us to be servants of one another. And as we come to accept it wholeheartedly, this service too will be a most blessed one, a new and fuller liberty from sin and self.
At first it may appear hard, but this is only because of the pride which still counts itself something of importance. If once we learn that to be nothing before God is the glory of the creature, the spirit of Jesus, the joy of Heaven - then we shall welcome with our whole heart the discipline we may have in serving even those who try to trouble us. When our own heart is set upon this, the true sanctification, we shall study the words that Jesus spoke on "humbling oneself"' with new eagerness. Then no place will be too inferior, and no stooping too deep, and no service too lowly or too long continued, if we may but share and prove the fellowship with Him who said, "I am among you as the one who serves."(Luke 22:27)
Seek The Higher Love
Brethren, here is the path to the higher life. Down, lower down! This was what Jesus said to the disciples who were thinking of being great in the Kingdom. Seek not, ask not for exaltation - that is God's work. Look to it that you consistently lower and humble yourselves, and take no place before God or man but that of a servant. That is your work, and let that be your one purpose and prayer.
God is faithful. Just as water ever seeks and fills the lowest place, so the moment God finds the creature humbled and empty, His glory and power flow in to exalt and to bless. He that humbles himself - that must be our one care - shall be exalted. The rest is God's concern, and by His mighty power and in His great love - He will do it.
Men sometimes speak as if humility and meekness would rob us of what is noble and bold and manlike. Oh, that we would believe that to be humble is the nobility of the Kingdom of heaven - that this is the royal spirit that the King of heaven Himself displayed! That to humble oneself and to become the servant of all is God-like! This is the path to the gladness and the glory of Christ's presence ever in us, His power ever resting on us.
Jesus, the meek and lowly One, calls us to learn of Him the path to God. Let us study the words we have been reading until our heart is filled with the thought: My one need is humility.
And let us believe that what Jesus shows, He gives. And what He is, He imparts to us. As the meek and lowly One, He will come and indwell every human heart that is longing for Him.
I will give you here an infallible piece of advice. With all the strength of your heart, stand all this month, as continually as you can, in the following form of prayer to God: Ask Him to make known to you, and take from your heart, every form and degree of pride - whether it be from evil spirits or from your own corrupt nature. Pray that He would awaken in you the deepest depth and truth of that humility which can make you capable of His light and Holy Spirit.
And when the Lamb of God has brought forth a real birth of His own meekness, humility, and full resignation to God in your soul - then it will be the birthday of the Spirit of love within you. Then your soul will be filled with great peace and joy in God - and this new life will blot out even the memory of what you felt to be peace and joy before.One bright benison which private prayer brings down upon the ministry is an indescribable and inimitable something -- an unction from the Holy One . . . . If the anointing which we bear come not from the Lord of hosts, we are deceivers, since only in prayer can we obtain it. Let us continue instant constant fervent in supplication. Let your fleece lie on the thrashing floor of supplication till it is wet with the dew of heaven. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon
ALEXANDER KNOX, a Christian philosopher of the days of Wesley, not an adherent but a strong personal friend of Wesley, and with much spiritual sympathy with the Wesleyan movement, writes: "It is strange and lamentable, but I verily believe the fact to be that except among Methodists and Methodistical clergyman, there is not much interesting preaching in England. The clergy, too generally have absolutely lost the art. There is, I conceive, in the great laws of the moral world a kind of secret understanding like the affinities in chemistry, between rightly promulgated religious truth and the deepest feelings of the human mind.
Where the one is duly exhibited, the other will respond. Did not our hearts burn within us? -- but to this devout feeling is indispensable in the speaker. Now, I am obliged to state from my own observation that this onction, as the French not unfitly term it, is beyond all comparison more likely to be found in England in a Methodist conventicle than in a parish Church. This, and this alone, seems really to be that which fills the Methodist houses and thins the Churches. I am, I verily think, no enthusiast; I am a most sincere and cordial churchman, a humble disciple of the School of Hale and Boyle, of Burnet and Leighton.
Now I must aver that when I was in this country, two years ago, I did not hear a single preacher who taught me like my own great masters but such as are deemed Methodistical. And I now despair of getting an atom of heart instruction from any other quarter. The Methodist preachers (however I may not always approve of all their expressions) do most assuredly diffuse this true religion and undefiled. I felt real pleasure last Sunday.
I can bear witness that the preacher did at once speak the words of truth and soberness. There was no eloquence -- the honest man never dreamed of such a thing -- but there was far better: a cordial communication of vitalized truth. I say vitalized because what he declared to others it was impossible not to feel he lived on himself."
This unction is the art of preaching. The preacher who never had this unction never had the art of preaching. The preacher who has lost this unction has lost the art of preaching. Whatever other arts he may have and retain -- the art of sermon-making, the art of eloquence, the art of great, clear thinking, the art of pleasing an audience -- he has lost the divine art of preaching. This unction makes God's truth powerful and interesting, draws and attracts, edifies, convicts, saves.
This unction vitalizes God's revealed truth, makes it living and life-giving. Even God's truth spoken without this unction is light, dead, and deadening. Though abounding in truth, though weighty with thought, though sparkling with rhetoric, though pointed by logic, though powerful by earnestness, without this divine unction it issues in death and not in life. Mr. Spurgeon says: "I wonder how long we might beat our brains before we could plainly put into word what is meant by preaching with unction. Yet he who preaches knows its presence, and he who hears soon detects its absence. Samaria, in famine, typifies a discourse without it.
Jerusalem, with her feast of fat things, full of marrow, may represent a sermon enriched with it. Every one knows what the freshness of the morning is when orient pearls abound on every blade of grass, but who can describe it, much less produce it of itself? Such is the mystery of spiritual anointing. We know, but we cannot tell to others what it is. It is as easy as it is foolish, to counterfeit it. Unction is a thing which you cannot manufacture, and its counterfeits are worse than worthless. Yet it is, in itself, priceless, and beyond measure needful if you would edify believers and bring sinners to Christ."
Chapter 15 Unction, the Mark of True Gospel Preaching
Speak for eternity. Above all things, cultivate your own spirit. A word spoken by you when your conscience is clear and your heart full of God's Spirit is worth ten thousand words spoken in unbelief and sin. Remember that God, and not man, must have the glory. If the veil of the world's machinery were lifted off, how much we would find is done in answer to the prayers of God's children. — Robert Murray McCheyne
UNCTION is that indefinable, indescribable something which an old, renowned Scotch preacher describes thus: "There is sometimes somewhat in preaching that cannot be ascribed either to matter or expression, and cannot be described what it is, or from whence it cometh, but with a sweet violence it pierceth into the heart and affections and comes immediately from the Word; but if there be any way to obtain such a thing, it is by the heavenly disposition of the speaker."
We call it unction. It is this unction which makes the word of God "quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." It is this unction which gives the words of the preacher such point, sharpness, and power, and which creates such friction and stir in many a dead congregation.
The same truths have been told in the strictness of the letter, smooth as human oil could make them; but no signs of life, not a pulse throb; all as peaceful as the grave and as dead. The same preacher in the meanwhile receives a baptism of this unction, the divine inflatus is on him, the letter of the Word has been embellished and fired by this mysterious power, and the throbbings of life begin -- life which receives or life which resists. The unction pervades and convicts the conscience and breaks the heart.
This divine unction is the feature which separates and distinguishes true gospel preaching from all other methods of presenting the truth, and which creates a wide spiritual chasm between the preacher who has it and the one who has it not. It backs and impregns revealed truth with all the energy of God.
Unction is simply putting God in his own word and on his own preachers. By mighty and great prayerfulness and by continual prayerfulness, it is all potential and personal to the preacher; it inspires and clarifies his intellect, gives insight and grasp and projecting power; it gives to the preacher heart power, which is greater than head power; and tenderness, purity, force flow from the heart by it. Enlargement, freedom, fullness of thought, directness and simplicity of utterance are the fruits of this unction.
Often earnestness is mistaken for this unction. He who has the divine unction will be earnest in the very spiritual nature of things, but there may be a vast deal of earnestness without the least mixture of unction.
Earnestness and unction look alike from some points of view. Earnestness may be readily and without detection substituted or mistaken for unction. It requires a spiritual eye and a spiritual taste to discriminate.
Earnestness may be sincere, serious, ardent, and persevering. It goes at a thing with good will, pursues it with perseverance, and urges it with ardor; puts force in it. But all these forces do not rise higher than the mere human. The man is in it -- the whole man, with all that he has of will and heart, of brain and genius, of planning and working and talking. He has set himself to some purpose which has mastered him, and he pursues to master it.
There may be none of God in it. There may be little of God in it, because there is so much of the man in it. He may present pleas in advocacy of his earnest purpose which please or touch and move or overwhelm with conviction of their importance; and in all this earnestness may move along earthly ways, being propelled by human forces only, its altar made by earthly hands and its fire kindled by earthly flames. It is said of a rather famous preacher of gifts, whose construction of Scripture was to his fancy or purpose, that he "grew very eloquent over his own exegesis." So men grow exceeding earnest over their own plans or movements. Earnestness may be selfishness simulated.
What of unction? It is the indefinable in preaching which makes it preaching. It is that which distinguishes and separates preaching from all mere human addresses. It is the divine in preaching. It makes the preaching sharp to those who need sharpness. It distills as the dew to those who need to he refreshed. It is well described as:
"a two-edged sword
Of heavenly temper keen,
And double were the wounds it made
Wherever it glanced between.
'Twas death to sin; 'twas life
To all who mourned for sin.
It kindled and it silenced strife,
Made war and peace within."
This unction comes to the preacher not in the study but in the closet. It is heaven's distillation in answer to prayer. It is the sweetest exhalation of the Holy Spirit. It impregnates, suffuses, softens, percolates, cuts, and soothes. It carries the Word like dynamite, like salt, like sugar; makes the Word a soother, an arranger, a revealer, a searcher; makes the hearer a culprit or a saint, makes him weep like a child and live like a giant; opens his heart and his purse as gently, yet as strongly as the spring opens the leaves. This unction is not the gift of genius. It is not found in the halls of learning. No eloquence can woo it. No industry can win it. No prelatical hands can confer it. It is the gift of God -- the signet set to his own messengers. It is heaven's knighthood given to the chosen true and brave ones who have sought this anointed honor through many an hour of tearful, wrestling prayer.
Earnestness is good and impressive: genius is gifted and great. Thought kindles and inspires, but it takes a diviner endowment, a more powerful energy than earnestness or genius or thought to break the chains of sin, to win estranged and depraved hearts to God, to repair the breaches and restore the Church to her old ways of purity and power. Nothing but this holy unction can do this.
Chapter 16 Much Prayer the Price of Unction
All the minister's efforts will be vanity or worse than vanity if he have not unction. Unction must come down from heaven and spread a savor and feeling and relish over his ministry; and among the other means of qualifying himself for his office, the Bible must hold the first place, and the last also must be given to the Word of God and prayer. — Richard Cecil
IN the Christian system unction is the anointing of the Holy Ghost, separating unto God's work and qualifying for it. This unction is the one divine enablement by which the preacher accomplishes the peculiar and saving ends of preaching. Without this unction there are no true spiritual results accomplished; the results and forces in preaching do not rise above the results of unsanctified speech. Without unction the former is as potent as the pulpit.
This divine unction on the preacher generates through the Word of God the spiritual results that flow from the gospel; and without this unction, these results are not secured. Many pleasant impressions may be made, but these all fall far below the ends of gospel preaching. This unction may be simulated. There are many things that look like it, there are many results that resemble its effects; but they are foreign to its results and to its nature. The fervor or softness excited by a pathetic or emotional sermon may look like the movements of the divine unction, but they have no pungent, perpetrating heart-breaking force. No heart-healing balm is there in these surface, sympathetic, emotional movements; they are not radical, neither sin-searching nor sin-curing.
This divine unction is the one distinguishing feature that separates true gospel preaching from all other methods of presenting truth. It backs and interpenetrates the revealed truth with all the force of God. It illumines the Word and broadens and enrichens the intellect and empowers it to grasp and apprehend the Word. It qualifies the preacher's heart, and brings it to that condition of tenderness, of purity, of force and light that are necessary to secure the highest results. This unction gives to the preacher liberty and enlargement of thought and soul -- a freedom, fullness, and directness of utterance that can be secured by no other process.
Without this unction on the preacher the gospel has no more power to propagate itself than any other system of truth. This is the seal of its divinity. Unction in the preacher puts God in the gospel. Without the unction, God is absent, and the gospel is left to the low and unsatisfactory forces that the ingenuity, interest, or talents of men can devise to enforce and project its doctrines.
It is in this element that the pulpit oftener fails than in any other element. Just at this all-important point it lapses. Learning it may have, brilliancy and eloquence may delight and charm, sensation or less offensive methods may bring the populace in crowds, mental power may impress and enforce truth with all its resources; but without this unction, each and all these will be but as the fretful assault of the waters on a Gibraltar. Spray and foam may cover and spangle; but the rocks are there still, unimpressed and unimpressible. The human heart can no more be swept of its hardness and sin by these human forces than these rocks can be swept away by the ocean's ceaseless flow.
This unction is the consecration force, and its presence the continuous test of that consecration. It is this divine anointing on the preacher that secures his consecration to God and his work. Other forces and motives may call him to the work, but this only is consecration. A separation to God's work by the power of the Holy Spirit is the only consecration recognized by God as legitimate.
The unction, the divine unction, this heavenly anointing, is what the pulpit needs and must have. This divine and heavenly oil put on it by the imposition of God's hand must soften and lubricate the whole man -- heart, head, spirit -- until it separates him with a mighty separation from all earthly, secular, worldly, selfish motives and aims, separating him to everything that is pure and Godlike.
It is the presence of this unction on the preacher that creates the stir and friction in many a congregation. The same truths have been told in the strictness of the letter, but no ruffle has been seen, no pain or pulsation felt. All is quiet as a graveyard. Another preacher comes, and this mysterious influence is on him; the letter of the Word has been fired by the Spirit, the throes of a mighty movement are felt, it is the unction that pervades and stirs the conscience and breaks the heart. Unctionless preaching makes everything hard, dry, acrid, dead.
This unction is not a memory or an era of the past only; it is a present, realized, conscious fact. It belongs to the experience of the man as well as to his preaching. It is that which transforms him into the image of his divine Master, as well as that by which he declares the truths of Christ with power. It is so much the power in the ministry as to make all else seem feeble and vain without it, and by its presence to atone for the absence of all other and feebler forces.
This unction is not an inalienable gift. It is a conditional gift, and its presence is perpetuated and increased by the same process by which it was at first secured; by unceasing prayer to God, by impassioned desires after God, by estimating it, by seeking it with tireless ardor, by deeming all else loss and failure without it.
How and whence comes this unction? Direct from God in answer to prayer. Praying hearts only are the hearts filled with this holy oil; praying lips only are anointed with this divine unction.
Prayer, much prayer, is the price of preaching unction; prayer, much prayer, is the one, sole condition of keeping this unction. Without unceasing prayer the unction never comes to the preacher. Without perseverance in prayer, the unction, like the manna overkept, breeds worms.
— Excerpted from, Power Through Prayer by E. M. Bounds
The prophet in his day is fully accepted of God and totally rejected by men.
Years back, Dr. Gregory Mantle was right when he said, "No man can be fully accepted until he is totally rejected." The prophet of the Lord is aware of both these experiences. They are his "brand name."
The group, challenged by the prophet because they are smug and comfortably insulated from a perishing world in their warm but untested theology, is not likely to vote him "Man of the year" when he refers to them as habituates of the synagogue of Satan!
The prophet comes to set up that which is upset. His work is to call into line those who are out of line! He is unpopular because he opposes the popular in morality and spirituality. In a day of faceless politicians and voiceless preachers, there is not a more urgent national need than that we cry to God for a prophet! The function of the prophet, as Austin-Sparks once said, "has almost always been that of recovery." The prophet is God's detective seeking for a lost treasure. The degree of his effectiveness is determined by his measure of unpopularity.
Compromise is not known to him.
Our national need at this hour is not that the dollar recover its strength, or that we save face over the Watergate affair, or that we find the answer to the ecology problem. We need a God-sent prophet!
I am bombarded with talk or letters about the coming shortages in our national life:
bread, fuel, energy. I read between the lines from people not practiced in scaring folk. They feel that the "seven years of plenty" are over for us. The "seven years of famine" are ahead. But the greatest famine of all in this nation at this given moment is a FAMINE OF THE HEARING OF THE WORDS OF GOD (Amos 8:11).
Millions have been spent on evangelism in the last twenty-five years. Hundreds of gospel messages streak through the air over the nation every day. Crusades have been held; healing meetings have made a vital contribution. "Come-outers" have "come out" and settled, too, without a nation-shaking revival. Organizers we have. Skilled preachers abound. Multi-million dollar Christian organizations straddle the nation. BUT where, oh where, is the prophet? Where are the incandescent men fresh from the holy place? Where is the Moses to plead in fasting before the holiness of the Lord for our moldy morality, our political perfidy, and sour and sick spirituality?
GOD'S MEN ARE IN HIDING UNTIL THE DAY OF THEIR SHOWINGFORTH.
They will come. The prophet is violated during his ministry, but he is vindicated by history.
There is a terrible vacuum in evangelical Christianity today. The missing person in our ranks is the prophet. The man with a terrible earnestness. The man totally otherworldly. The man rejected by other men, even other good men, because they consider him too austere, too severely committed, too negative and unsociable.
Let him be as plain as John the Baptist.
Let him for a season be a voice crying in the wilderness of modern theology and stagnant "churchianity."
Let him be as selfless as Paul the apostle.
Let him, too, say and live, "This ONE thing I do."
Let him reject ecclesiastical favors.
Let him be self-abasing, nonself-seeking, nonself-projecting, nonself- righteous, nonself-glorying, nonself-promoting.
Let him say nothing that will draw men to himself but only that which will move men to God.
Let him come daily from the throne room of a holy God, the place where he has received the order of the day.
Let him, under God, unstop the ears of the millions who are deaf through the clatter of shekels milked from this hour of material mesmerism.
Let him cry with a voice this century has not heard because he has seen a vision no man in this century has seen. God send us this Moses to lead us from the wilderness of crass materialism, where the rattlesnakes of lust bite us and where enlightened men, totally blind spiritually, lead us to an ever-nearing Armageddon.
God have mercy! Send us PROPHETS!
— by Leonard Ravenhill
A Vision Of The Lost
On one of my recent journeys, as I gazed from the coach window, I was led into a train of thought concerning the condition of the multitudes around me. They were living carelessly in the most open and shameless rebellion against God, without a thought for their eternal welfare. As I looked out of the window, I seemed to see them all... millions of people all around me given up to their drink and their pleasure, their dancing and their music, their business and their anxieties, their politics and their troubles. Ignorant, willfully ignorant in many cases, and in other instances knowing all about the truth and not caring at all. But all of them, the whole mass of them, sweeping on and up in their blasphemies and devilries to the Throne of God. While my mind was thus engaged, I had a vision.
I saw a dark and stormy ocean. Over it the black clouds hung heavily; through them every now and then vivid lightening flashed and loud thunder rolled, while the winds moaned, and the waves rose and foamed, towered and broke, only to rise and foam, tower and break again. In that ocean I thought I saw myriads of poor human beings plunging and floating, shouting and shrieking, cursing and struggling and drowning; and as they cursed and screamed they rose and shrieked again, and then some sank to rise no more.
And I saw out of this dark angry ocean, a mighty rock that rose up with it's summit towering high above the black clouds that overhung the stormy sea. And all around the base of this great rock I saw a vast platform. Onto this platform, I saw with delight a number of the poor struggling, drowning wretches continually climbing out of the angry ocean. And I saw that a few of those who were already safe on the platform were helping the poor creatures still in the angry waters to reach the place of safety.
On looking more closely I found a number of those who had been rescued, industriously working and scheming by ladders, ropes, boats and other means more effective, to deliver the poor strugglers out of the sea. Here and there were some who actually jumped into the water, regardless of the consequences in their passion to rescue the perishing. And I hardly know which gladdened me the most, the sight of the poor drowning people climbing onto the rocks reaching a place of safety, or the devotion and self-sacrifice of those whose whole being was wrapped up in the effort for their deliverance.
As I looked on, I saw that the occupants of that platform were quite a mixed company. That is, they were divided into different sets or classes, and they occupied themselves with different pleasures and employments. But only a very few of them seemed to make it their business to get the people out of the sea.
But what puzzled me most was the fact that though all of them had been rescued at one time or another from the ocean, nearly everyone seemed to have forgotten all about it. Anyway, it seemed the memory of its darkness and danger no longer troubled them at all. And what seemed equally strange and perplexing to me was that these people did not even seem to have any care, that is any agonizing care, about the poor perishing ones who were struggling and drowning right before their very eyes... many of whom were their own husbands and wives, brothers and sisters and even their own children.
Now this astonishing unconcern could not have been the result of ignorance or lack of knowledge, because they lived right there in full sight of it all and even talked about it sometimes. Many even went regularly to hear lectures and sermons in which the awful state of these poor drowning creatures was described. I have always said that the occupants of this platform were engaged in different pursuits and pastimes. Some of them were absorbed day and night in trading and business in order to make gain, storing up their savings in boxes, safes and the like.
Many spent their time in amusing themselves with growing flowers on the side of the rock, others in painting pieces of cloth or in playing music, or in dressing themselves up in different styles and walking about to be admired. Some occupied themselves chiefly in eating and drinking, others were taken up with arguing about the poor drowning creatures that had already been rescued.
But the thing to me that seemed the most amazing was that those on the platform to whom He called, who heard His voice and felt that they ought to obey it, at least they said they did, those who confessed to love Him much were in full sympathy with Him in the task He had undertaken, who worshipped Him or who professed to do so, were so taken up with their trades and professions, their money saving and pleasures, their families and circles, their religions and arguments about it, and their preparation for going to the mainland, that they did not listen to the cry that came to them from this Wonderful Being who had Himself gone down into the sea. Anyway, if they heard it they did not heed it. They did not care. And so the multitude went on right before them struggling and shrieking and drowning in the darkness.
A Vision Of The Lost (Conclusion)
And then I saw something that seemed to me even more strange than anything that had gone on before in this strange vision. I saw that some of these people on the platform whom this Wonderful Being had called to, wanting them to come and help Him in His difficult task of saving these perishing creatures, were always praying and crying out to Him to come to them!
Some wanted Him to come and stay with them, and spend His time and strength in making them happier. Others wanted Him to come and take away various doubts and misgivings they had concerning the truth of some letters He had written them. Some wanted Him to come and make them feel more secure on the rock, so secure that they would be quite sure that they should never slip off again into the ocean. Numbers of others wanted Him to make them feel quite certain that they would really get off the rock and onto the mainland someday: because as a matter of fact, it was well known that some had walked so carelessly as to loose their footing, and had fallen back again into the stormy waters.
So these people used to meet and get up as high on the rock as they could, and looking towards the mainland (where they thought the Great Being was) they would cry out, "Come to us! Come and help us!" And all the while He was down (by His Spirit) among the poor struggling, drowning creatures in the angry deep, with His arms around them trying to drag them out, and looking up, oh! so longingly but all in vain, to those on the rock, crying to them with His voice all hoarse from calling, "Come to Me! Come, and help Me!"
And then I understood it all. It was plain enough. The sea was the ocean of life, the sea of real, actual human existence. That lightening was the gleaming of piercing truth coming from Jehovah's Throne. That thunder was the distant echoing of the wrath of God. Those multitudes of people shrieking, struggling and agonizing in the stormy sea, was the thousands and thousands of poor harlots and harlot-makers, of drunkards and drunkard makers, of thieves, liars, blasphemers and ungodly people of every kindred, tongue and nation.
Oh what a black sea it was! And oh, what multitudes of rich and poor, ignorant and educated were there. They were all so unalike in their outward circumstances and conditions, yet all alike in one thing, all sinners before God, all held by, and holding onto, some iniquity, fascinated by some idol, the slaves of some devilish lust, and ruled by the foul fiend from the bottomless pit!
"All alike in one thing?" No, all alike in two things, not only the same in their wickedness but, unless rescued, the same in their sinking, sinking... down, down, down... to the same terrible doom. That great sheltering rock represented Calvary, the place where Jesus had died for them. And the people on it were those who had been rescued. The way they used their energies, gifts and time represented the occupations and amusements of those who professed to be saved from sin and hell, followers of the Lord Jesus Christ.
The handful of fierce, determined ones, who were risking their own lives in saving the perishing were true soldiers of the cross of Jesus. That Mighty Being who was calling to them from the midst of the angry waters was the Son of God, "the same yesterday, today and forever" who is still struggling and interceding to save the dying multitudes about us from this terrible doom of damnation, and whose voice can be heard above the music, machinery, and noise of life, calling on the rescued to come and help Him save the world.
My friends in Christ, you are rescued from the waters, you are on the rock, He is in the dark sea calling on you to come to Him and help Him. Will you go? Look for yourselves. The surging sea of life, crowded with perishing multitudes rolls up to the very spot on which you stand. Leaving the vision, I now come to speak of the fact, a fact that is as real as the Bible, as real as the Christ who hung upon the cross, as real as the judgment day will be, and as real as the heaven and hell that will follow it.
Look! Don't be deceived by appearances - men and things are not what they seem. All who are not on the rock are in the sea! Look at them from the standpoint of the great White Throne, and what a sight you have! Jesus Christ, the Son of God is, through His Spirit, in the midst of this dying multitude, struggling to save them. And He is calling on you to jump into the sea, to go right away to His side and help Him in the holy strife. Will you jump? That is, will you go to His feet and place yourself absolutely at His disposal?
A young Christian once came to me, and told me that for some time she had been giving the Lord her profession and prayers and money, but now she wanted to give Him her life. She wanted to go right into the fight. In other words, she wanted to go to His assistance in the sea. As when a man from the shore, seeing another struggling in the water, takes off those outer garments that would hinder his efforts and leaps to the rescue, so will you who still linger on the bank, thinking and singing and praying about the poor perishing souls, lay aside your shame, your pride, your cares about other people's opinions, your love of ease and all the selfish loves that have kept you back for so long, and rush to the rescue of this multitude of dying men and women.
Does the surging sea look dark and dangerous? Unquestionably it is so. There is no doubt that the leap for you, as for everyone who takes it, means difficulty and scorn and suffering. For you it may mean more than this. It may mean death. He who beckons you from the sea however, knows what it will mean, and knowing, He still calls to you and bids to you to come.You must do it! You cannot hold back. You have enjoyed yourself in Christianity long enough. You have had pleasant feelings, pleasant songs, pleasant meetings, pleasant prospects. There has been much of human happiness, much clapping of hands and shouting of praises - very much of heaven on earth.
Now then, go to God and tell Him you are prepared as much as necessary to turn your back upon it all, and that you are willing to spend the rest of your days struggling in the midst of these perishing multitudes, whatever it may cost you. You must do it. With the light that is now broken in upon your mind and the call that is now sounding in your ears, and the beckoning hands that are now before your eyes, you have no alternative. To go down among the perishing crowds is your duty. Your happiness from now on will consist in sharing their misery, your ease in sharing their pain, your crown in helping them to bear their cross, and your heaven in going into the very jaws of hell to rescue them.
Now what will you do?
By William Booth (1829-1912)
How to Know if You Are a Real Christian
How do you know if you belong to God? We see in these words what some people depend on as an evidence of their acceptance with God. Some people think that they are all right before God if they are not as bad as some evil person. Other people point to their family history or church membership to show that God approves of them. There is an evangelism programme in common use that asks people certain questions.
One of the questions is, "Suppose you were to die today. Why should God let you into his heaven?" A very common response is, "I believe in God." Apparently the apostle James knew people who said the same thing: I know I am in God's favor, because I know these religious doctrines.
Of course James admits that this knowledge is good. Not only is it good, but it is also necessary. Nobody can be a Christian who doesn't believe in God; and more than that, the One True God. This is particularly true for those who had the great advantage of actually knowing the apostle, someone who could tell them of his first-hand experience with Jesus, the Son of God. Imagine the great sin of a person, who knew James, and then refused to believe in God! Certainly this would make their damnation greater. Of course, all Christians know that this belief in the One God is only the start of good things because "anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him" (Hebrews 11:6).
However, James is clear that although this belief a good thing, it is definitely not proof that a person is saved. What he means is this: "You say you are a Christian and you are in God's favor. You think God will let you into heaven, and the proof of it is, you believe in God. But that is no evidence at all, because the demons also believe, and they are sure to be punished in hell." The demons believe in God, you can be sure of that!
They not only believe that He exists, but they believe that God is a holy God, a sin-hating God, a God of truth, who has promised judgments, and who will carry out his vengeance upon them. This is the reason the demons "shudder" or tremble- they know God more clearly than most human beings do, and they are afraid. Nevertheless, nothing in the mind of man, that devils may experience as well, is any sure sign of God's grace in our hearts.
This reasoning may be easily turned around. Suppose demons could have, or find within themselves, something of God's saving grace, proof they would go to heaven. This would prove James wrong. But how absurd! The Bible makes it clear that demons have no hope of salvation, and their believing in God does not take away their future punishment. Therefore believing in God is not proof of salvation for demons, and it is safe to say, not for people, either.
This is seen even more clearly when we think about what demons are like. They are unholy: anything that they experience, cannot be a holy experience. The devil is perfectly wicked. "You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father's desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies" (John 8:44).
"He who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning" (1 John 3:8). Therefore the demons are called evil spirits, unclean spirits, powers of darkness, and so on. "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms" (Ephesians 6:12).
So it is plain that anything in the minds of demons cannot be holy, or lead to true holiness by itself. The demons clearly know many things about God and religion, but they do not have a holy knowledge. The things they know in their minds may make impressions in their hearts- indeed we do see that the demons have very strong feelings about God; so strong, in fact, that they shudder. But they are not holy feelings because they have nothing to do with the work of the Holy Spirit. If this is true of the experience of demons, it is also true of the experience of men. Notice this, that it does not matter how genuine, sincere, and powerful these thoughts and feelings are.
Demons, being spiritual creatures, know God in a way that men on earth cannot. Their knowledge of God's existence is more concrete than any man's knowledge could be. Because they are locked in battle with the forces of good, they have a sincerity of knowledge as well. On one occasion Jesus cast out some demons. "What do you want with us, Son of God?" they shouted. "Have you come here to torture us before the appointed time?" (Matthew 8:29). What could possibly be a more clear-cut experience than this? However, while their thoughts and feelings are genuine and powerful, they are not holy.
Also we can see that the holy objects of their thoughts doesn't make their thoughts and feelings holy. The demons know God exists! Matthew 8:29 shows they know more about Jesus than many people do! They are thoroughly that Jesus will judge them some day, because He is holy. But it is clear that genuine, sincere, and powerful thoughts and feelings about holy, spiritual things, is no proof of God's grace in the heart. Demons have these things, and look forward to eternal punishment in hell. If men have no more than what the demons have, they will suffer in the same way.
We may make several conclusions based on these truths. First, that no matter how much people may know about God and the Bible, it is no sure sign of salvation. The devil before his fall, was one of the bright and morning stars, a flame of fire, one excelling in strength and wisdom. (Isaiah 14:12, Ezekiel 28:12-19) Apparently, as one of the chief angels, Satan knew much about God.
Now that he is fallen, his sin has not destroyed his memories from before. Sin does destroy the spiritual nature, but not the natural abilities, such as memory. That the fallen angels do have many natural abilities may be seen from many Bible verses, for example Ephesians 6:12 "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms."
In the same way, the Bible says that Satan is more crafty than other created beings. (Genesis 3:1, also 2 Corinthians 11:3, Acts 13:10) Therefore we can see that the Devil has always had great mental ability and is able to know much about God, the visible and invisible world, and many other things. Since his job in the beginning was to be a chief angel before God, it is only natural that understanding these things has always been of first importance to him, and that all his activities have to do with these areas of thoughts, feelings, and knowledge.
How to Know if You Are a Real Christian (Continued)
Because it was his original employment to be one of the angels before the very face of God, and sin does not destroy the memory, it is clear that Satan knows more about God than just about any other created being. After the fall, we can see from his activities as a tempter, etc., (Matthew 4:3) that he has been spending his time increasing his knowledge and its practical applications. That his knowledge is great can be seen in how tricky he is when tempting people. The craftiness of his lies shows how clever he is. Surely he could not manage his deceit so well without an actual and true knowledge of the facts.
This knowledge of God and his works is from the very beginning. Satan was there from the Creation, as Job 38:4 7 shows: "Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation? Tell me, if you understand... while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?" So he must know much about the way God created the world, and how He governs all the events in the universe. Furthermore, Satan has seen how God has worked his plan of redemption in the world; and not as an innocent bystander, but as an active enemy of God's grace.
He saw God work in the lives of Adam and Eve, in Noah, Abraham, and David. He must have taken a special interest in the life of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of men, the Word of God incarnate. How closely did he watch Christ? How carefully did he observe his miracles and listen to His words? This is because Satan has set himself against Christ's work, and it is to his torment and anguish that Satan has watched Christ's work unfold successfully.
Satan, then, knows much about God and God's work. He knows heaven first hand. He knows hell also, with personal knowledge as its first resident, and has experienced its torments for all these thousands of years. He must have a great knowledge of the Bible: at the least, we can see he knew enough to try tempting our Saviour. Furthermore, he has had years of studying of the hearts of men, his battlefield where he fights against our Redeemer. What labours, exertions, and cares the Devil has used over the centuries as he has deceived men. Only a being with his knowledge and experience of God's working, and the human heart, could so imitate true religion and transform himself into an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14).
Therefore we can see that there is no amount of knowledge of God and religion that could prove a person has been saved from their sin. A man may talk about the Bible, God, and the Trinity. He may be able to preach a sermon about Jesus Christ and everything He has done. Imagine, somebody might be able to speak about the way of salvation and the work of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of sinners, perhaps even enough to show others how to become Christians. All these things might build up the church and enlighten the world, yet it is not a sure proof of the saving grace of God in a person's heart.
It also may be seen that for people to merely agree with the Bible is no sure sign of salvation. James 2:19 shows that the demons really, truly, believe the truth. Just as they believe there is one God, they agree with all the truth of the Bible. The devil is not a heretic: all the articles of his faith are firmly established in the truth.
It must be understood, that when the Bible talks about believing that Jesus is the Son of God, as a proof of God's grace in the heart, the Bible means not a mere agreement with the truth, but another kind of believing. "Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God" (1 John 5:1). This other kind of believing is called "the faith of God's elect and the knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness" (Titus 1:1). There is a spiritual holding to the truth, which will be explained later on.
Some people have strong religious experiences, and think of them as proof of God's working in their hearts. Often these experiences give people a sense of the importance of the spiritual world, and the reality of divine things. However, these, too, are no sure proof of salvation. Demons and damned human beings have many spiritual experiences which have a great effect on their heart attitudes. They live in the spiritual world and see first hand what it is like. Their sufferings show them the worth of salvation and the worth of a human soul in the most powerful way imaginable.
The parable in Luke chapter 16 teaches this clearly, as the suffering man asks that Lazarus might be sent to tell his brothers to avoid this place of torment. No doubt people in hell now have a distinct idea of the vastness of eternity, and of the shortness of life. They are completely convinced that all the things of this life are unimportant when compared to the experiences of the eternal world. People now in hell have a great sense of the preciousness of time, and of the wonderful opportunities people have, who have the privilege of hearing the Gospel.
They are completely aware of the foolishness of their sin, of neglecting opportunities, and ignoring the warnings of God. When sinners find out by personal experience the final result of their sin there is "weeping and gnashing of teeth." (Matthew 13:42) So even the most powerful religious experiences are not a sure sign of God's grace in the heart.
Demons and damned people also have a strong sense of God's majesty and power. God's power is most clearly displayed in his execution of divine vengeance upon his enemies. "What if God, choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath-prepared for destruction?" (Romans 9:22). Shuddering, the devils await their final punishment, under the strongest sense of God's majesty.
They feel it now, of course, but in the future it will show to the greatest degree, when the Lord Jesus "is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels" (2 Thessalonians 2:7). On that day, they will desire to be run away, to be hidden from the presence of God. ""Look, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and all the peoples of the earth will mourn because of him" (Revelation 1:7). So everyone will see him in the glory of His Father. But, obviously, not all who see him will be saved.
Now it is possible that some people might object to all this, saying that ungodly men in this world are quite different from demons. They are under different circumstances and are different kind of beings. An objector might say, "Those things that are visible and present to demons are invisible and future to men. Besides, people have the disadvantage of having bodies, which restrain the soul, and keep people from seeing these spiritual things first-hand. Therefore, even if demons do have a great knowledge and personal experience of the things of God, and have no grace, the conclusion does not apply to me." Or, put another way: if people have these things in this life, it may very well be a sure sign of God's grace in their hearts.
In reply, it is agreed that no man in this life has ever had the degree of these things as the demons have them. No person has ever shuddered, with the same amount of fear that the demons shudder with. No man, in this life, can ever have the same kind of knowledge that the Devil has. It is clear that demons and damned men understand the vastness of eternity, and the importance of the other world, more than any living person, and so they crave salvation all the more.
But we can see that men in this world can have experiences of the same kind as those of demons and damned people. They have the same mental outlook, the same opinions and emotions, and the same kind of impressions on the mind and heart. Notice, that for the apostle James it is a convincing argument. He claims that if people think believing in one God is proof of God's grace, it is not proof, because demons believe the same. James is not referring to the act of believing only, but also to the emotions and actions that go along with their belief. Shuddering is an example of emotions from the heart. This shows that if people have the same kind of mental outlook, and respond from the heart in the same way, it is no sure sign of grace.
A Solemn Warning For All Churches
MY LEARNED AND EMINENTLY pious predecessor, Dr. Gill, is of opinion that the different churches spoken of in the Book of Revelation are types of different states through which the church of God shall pass until it comes into the Philadelphia state, the state of love, in which Jesus Christ shall reign in its midst, and afterwards, as he thinks, shall pass into the state of Laodicea, in which condition it shall be when suddenly the Son of Man shall come to judge the world in righteousness and the people in equity.
I do not go with him in all his suppositions with regard to these seven churches as following each other in seven periods of time; but I do think he was correct when he declared that the church in Sardis was a most fitting emblem of the church in his days, as also in these.
The good old doctor says, "When we shall find any period in which the church was more like the state of Sardis as described here, than it is now?" And he points out the different particulars in which the church of his day (and I am sure it is yet more true of the church at the present day) was exactly like the church in Sardis. I shall use the church in Sardis as a figure of what I conceive to be the sad condition of Christendom at the present moment.
My first point will be general defilement, there were but "a few names" in Sardis who had not "defiled their garments;" secondly, special preservation, there were a few who had not defiled their garments; and thirdly, a peculiar reward "And they shall walk with me in white; for they are worthy."
GENERAL DEFILEMENT. The holy apostle, John, said of the church in Sardis, "These things saith he that hath the Seven Spirits of God, and the seven stars; I know thy works, that thou has a name that thou livest, and art dead. Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die; for I have not found thy works perfect before God. Remember therefore how thou has received and heard, and hold fast and repent. If therefore thou shalt not watch, I will come on thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee. Thou hast a few names even in Sardis which have not defiled their garments."
The first charge of general defilement he brings against the church in Sardis was that they had a vast deal of open profession, and but little of sincere religion. "I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead." That is the crying sin of the present age. I am not inclined to be morbid in my temperament, or to take a melancholy view of the church of God.
I would wish at all times to exhibit a liberality of spirit, and to speak as well as I can of the church at large; but God forbid that any minister should shrink from declaring what he believes to be the truth. In going up and down this land, I am obliged to come to this conclusion, that throughout the churches there are multitudes who have "a name to live, and are dead." Religion has become fashionable. The shopkeeper could scarcely succeed in a respectable business if he were not united with a church.
It is reckoned to be reputable and honorable to attend a place of worship; and hence men are made religious in shoals. And especially now that parliament itself doth in some measure sanction religion, we may expect that hypocrisy will abound yet more and more, and formality everywhere take the place of true religion. You can scarcely meet with a man who does not call himself a Christian, and yet it is equally hard to meet with one who is in the very marrow of his bones thoroughly sanctified to the good work of the kingdom of heaven. We meet with professors by hundreds; but me must expect still to meet with possessors by units.
The whole nation appears to have been Christianized in an hour. But is this real? Is this sincere? Ah! we fear not. How is it that professors can live like other men? How is it that there is so little distinction between the church and the world? Or, that if there is any difference, you are frequently safer in dealing with an ungodly man than with one who is professedly righteous?
How is it that men who make high professions can live in worldly conformity, indulge in the same pleasures, live in the same style, act from the same motives, deal in the same manner as other do? Are not these days when the sons of God have made affinity with the sons of men? And may be not fear that something terrible may yet occur unless God shall send a voice, which shall say, "Come out of them, my people, lest ye be partakers of their plagues?"
Take our churches at large, there is no lack of names, but there is a lack of life. Else, how is it that our prayer-meetings are so badly attended? Where is the zeal or the energy shown by the apostles? Where is the Spirit of the living God? Is he not departed? Might not Ichabod be written on the walls of many a sanctuary? They have a name to live, but are dead. They have their piety? Where is sincere religion? Where is practical godliness? Where is firm, decisive, puritanical piety? Thank God, there are a few names even in Sardis which have not defiled their garments; but charity itself will not allow us to say that the church generally possesses the Spirit of God.
Then the next charge was, that there was a want of zeal throughout the church of Sardis. He says, Be watchful. He looked on the church and saw the bishops slumbering, the elders slumbering, and the people slumbering; they were not, as once they were, watchful for the faith, striving together and earnestly contending for it, not wrestling against the enemy of souls, labouring to spread their Master's kingdom, but the apostle saw sleepiness, coldness, lethargy; therefore he said, Be watchful.
Oh! John, if from thy grave thou couldst start up, and see the church as thou didst at Sardis, having thine eyes anointed by the Spirit, thou wouldst say it is even so now. Ah! we have abundance of cold, calculating Christians, multitudes of professors; but where are the zealous ones? where are the leaders of the children of God? where are your heroes who stand in the day of battle? Where are your men who "count not their lives dear unto them," that they might win Christ, and be found in him? where are those who have an impassioned love for souls?
How many of our pulpits are filled by earnest, enthusiastic preachers? Alas! look, at the church. She has builded herself fine palaces, imitating popery; she hath girded herself with vestments; she has gone astray from her simplicity; but she has lost the fire and the life which she once had.
We go into our chapels now, and we see everything in good taste: we hear the organ play; the psalmody is in keeping with the most correct ear; the gown and the noble vestments are there, and everything is grand and goodly, and we think that God is honored. Oh for the days when Whitfields would preach on tubs once more, when their pulpits should be on Kennington Common, and their roofs the ceiling of God's sky. Oh for the time when we might preach in barns again, or in catacombs either, if we might but have the life of God that once they had in such places.
What is the use of garnishing the shell when you have lost the kernel. Go and whitewash, for the life is gone. Garnish the outside of your cups and platters; but ye have lost the pure word of God. Ye have it not for a piece of bread; they flinch to speak the whole truth, or if they seem to speak it, it is with cold, meaningless, passionless words, as if it were nothing whether souls were damned or saved, whether heaven were filled or heaven depopulated, or whether Christ should see of the travail of his would and be satisfied.
Do I speak fierce things? I can say as Irving once did, I might deserve to be broken on the wheel if I did not believe what I say to be the truth; for the utterance of such things I might deserve the stake; but God is my witness, I have endeavoured to judge and to speak impartially. With all that universal cant of charity now so prevalent I am at arm's length; I care not for it. Let us speak of things as we find them.
A Solemn Warning For All Churches (Continued)
WE do believe that the church has lost her zeal and her energy. But what do men say of us? "Oh! you are too excited." Good God! excited! when men are being damned; Excited! When we have the mission of heaven to preach to dying souls. EXCITED! preaching too much! when souls are lost. Why should it come to pass that one man should be perpetually labouring all the week, while others are lolling upon their couches, and preach only upon the Sabbath-day?
Can I bear to see the laziness, the slothfulness, the indifference of ministers, and of churches, without speaking. No! there must be a protest entered, and we enter it now. Oh! Church of God, thou has a name to live, and art dead; thou art not watchful. Awake! awake! arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.
The third charge which John brought against Sardis was that they did not "look to the things that remained and were ready to die." I take it that this may related to the poor feeble saints, the true children of God, who were sorrowing, mourning, and groaning in their midst, who were so oppressed with sorrow on account of the state of Sardis, that they were "ready to die." And what does the church do now? Do the shepherds go after those that are wounded and sick, and those that are weary? Do they carry the lambs in their bosom, and gently lead those that are with young? Do they see to poor distressed consciences, and speak to those who feel their deadness in trespasses and sins?
Yes, but how do they speak? They tell them to do things they cannot do-to perform impossible duties-instead of "strengthening the things that remain and are ready to die" In how much contempt are the truly new-born children of God held in these times! They are called peculiar men, scouted as Antinomians, hissed at as being oddities, high doctrine men who have departed from the usual mode of pulling down God's word to men's fancies; they are called bigots, narrow-minded souls, and their creed is set down as dry, hard, rough, severe Calvinism. God's gospel called hard, rough, and severe! The things for which our fathers died are not called infamous things! Mark whether, if ye stand out prominently in the truth, you will not be abhorred and scouted.
If you go into a village, and hear of poor people who are said to be doing a deal of mischief, are they not the people who understand most of the gospel? Go and ask the minister who are the persons that he most dislikes? and he will say, "We have a nasty lot of Antinomians here." What does he mean by that? Men who love the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and will have it, and are therefore called a nasty set of Antinomians. Ah! we have lost what once we had. We do not now "strengthen the things that remain and are ready to die;" they are not looked after as they ought to be, not beloved, not fostered.
The salt of the earth are now the offscouring of all things; men whom God has loved, and who have attained a high standing in godliness, these are the men who will not bow the knee to Baal, and who therefore are cast into the fiery furnace of persecution and slander. O Sardis! Sardis! I see thee now. Thou hast defiled thy garments. Thank God, there are a few who have not followed the multitude to do evil, and who shall "walk in white, for they are worthy."
Another charge which God has brought against the church is, that they were careless about the things which they heard. He says, "Remember, therefore, how thou hast received and heard, and hold fast; and repent." If I am wrong upon other points, I am positive that the sin of this age is impurity of doctrine, and laxity of faith. Now you know you are told every Sunday that it does not signify what you believe; that all sects and denominations will be saved; that doctrines are unimportant things; that as to the doctrines of God's grace, they are rather dangerous than otherwise, and the less you inquire about them the better; they are very good things for the priests, but you common people cannot understand them.
Thus they keep back a portion of the gospel with cautious reserve; but having studied in the devil's new Jesuitical college, they understand how to call themselves particular Baptists, and then preach general doctrines, to call themselves Calvinists, and preach Arminianism, telling the people that it does not signify whether they preach damnable heresies instead of the truth of God. And what do the congregations say? "Well, he is a wise man, and ought to know." So you are going back into as bad a priestcraft as ever. Presbyter has become priest written large, and minister has become priest in many a place because persons do not search for themselves and endeavour to get hold of the truth of God.
It is everywhere proclaimed that we are all right; that though one says God loved his people from before the foundation of the world, and the other that he did not; though one says that God is changeable and turns away from his people, and the other, that he will hold them fast to the end; though the one says that the blood of Christ avails for all for whom it was shed and the other, that it is inefficacious for a large number of those for whom he died; though one says that the works of the law are in some measure necessary, or at any rate that we must endeavour to improve what we have, and then we shall get more, while the other says, that "by grace we are saved through faith, and that not of ourselves, it is the gift of God," yet both are right.
A new age this, when falsehood and truth can kiss each other! New times these when fire and water can become friendly! Glorious times these when there is an alliance between hell and heaven, though God knows, we are of vastly different families. Ah! now, who cares for truth except a few narrow-minded bigots as they are called. Election-horrible! Predestination-awful! Final perseverance-desperate! Yet, turn to the pages of the Puritans, and you will see that these truths were preached every day.
Turn to the Fathers; read Augustine, and you will see that these were the truths for which he would have bled and died. Read the Scriptures, and if every page is not full of them I have not read them aright, or any child of God either. Ay, laxity of doctrine is the great fault now; we solemnly protest against it. You may fancy that I am raising an outcry about nothing at all. Ah! no; my anxious spirit sees the next generation-what will that be. This generation-Arminianism. What next? Pelagianism. And what next? Popery. And what next? I leave you to guess.
The path of error is always downward. We have taken one step in the wrong direction; God knows where we shall stop. If there had not been sturdy men in ages gone by, the Lord would not have left to us a remnant even now; all grace must have died, and we had become like unto Gomorrah and unto Sodoma. Oh, church of the living God, awake! awake! Once more write truth upon thy banner; stamp truth upon thy sword; and for God and for his word, charge home. Ye knights of truth, and truth alone, shall sit king over the whole world!