Zeal - Love Ablaze # 2
The Pharisee's Prayer
The Pharisee who prayed in the temple said, "God, I thank Thee that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers." There are many so-called Spirit-filled men today, who cannot even pray that prayer! Unjust they are for sure; they pay low wages and tell their workers that they are "doing this sacrifice for Jesus." They, of course, have an explanation for their infidelity, yet many are accepted at conferences as keynote speakers. Extortioners the radio preachers almost have this as a monopoly. A $25 Bible (God's Holy Word) is offered for a $100 gift! Other books are offered five times their cost. "You are judging!" someone will say. Correct, I am told to judge (John 7:24). Jesus says, "Judge with righteous judgment." Also, I, along with other true preachers of the Gospel, am a watchman and so have to warn others. Also, "judgment must begin at the house of the Lord." This bait to get money is an abomination. Preachers whine for money over the radio and television. "For this ministry" they say, and yet much of it is to sustain their extravagant lifestyle, costly airplanes, and fixing up luxury Bible conference grounds. And now they have joined the Pharisees who "rob widows" houses." After emptying your pockets while you live, they ask for your house and estate after you die. What next?
Stealing the Glory
This is a day of the personality cult. Men on TV gospel shows are presented at having given up so much for the Lord. All they gave up with their retirement from stardom was hell and eternal punishment. Let it be shouted from the housetops that no man does God a favor. Elegant living for the rich evangelists proves nothing except that they have not left all to follow Him. The Spirit-filled need no status symbols!
The flattering introduction for gospel preachers is another great piece of blockage to revival. John 5:41 and 44 need soul-searching consideration. My heart is burdened and burning. God's house is polluted. The sinners scoff and say of the rich preachers, "Their creed is greed and their god is gold." We need a baptism of holy zeal to get us back to holy indignation that the money grabbers are back in the temple, and that God's heart is hurting!
The Church began in the Spirit; now She is operating in the flesh. There is no pillar of fire over the sanctuary. There are no preachers who can hold the hell-bound spell-bound. I am not sure that it can be proved that Nero fiddled while Rome burned. It can be proved that the Church is fiddling while the world is burning! The one reason that we do not have revival today is that we are content to live without it!
O for a generation of believers who can honestly say, "The Zeal of Thine house hath eaten me up."
~Leonard Ravenhill~
(The End)
_____________________________
Thomas Watson Gems
We spend our years with sighing - it is a valley of tears. Death is the funeral of all our sorrows.
None are so empty of grace - as he who thinks he is full.
How soon are we broken on the soft pillow of ease! Adam in paradise was overcome - when Job on the dunghill was a conqueror!
Though we as Christians are like Christ, having the first fruits of the spirit - yet we are unlike him, having the remainders of the flesh.
To know that nothing hurts the godly, is a matter of comfort. But to be assured that all things which happen shall cooperate for their good, that their crosses shall be turned into blessings, that showers of affliction water the withering root of their grace and make it flourish - this may fill their hearts with joy until they run over.
God takes away the world - that the heart may cleave more to Him in sincerity.
The growth of grace is the best evidence of the existence of grace in the heart. Things which have no life, will not grow.
God sweetens outward pain - with inward peace.
When God calls a man, He does not repent of it. God does not, as many friends do - love one day, and hate another. This is the blessedness of a saint; his condition admits of no alteration. God's all is founded upon His decree, and His decree is immutable. Acts of grace cannot be reversed. God blots out His people's sins - but not their names!
A man's greatest care should be for that place where he lives longest - therefore eternity should be his scope.
The right manner of spiritual growth, is to grow less in one's own eyes!
~Thomas Watson~
Saturday, September 29, 2018
Saturday, September 22, 2018
Zeal - Love Ablaze! # 1
Zeal - Love Ablaze # 1
Enoch had prophesied, saying, "Behold, the Lord came with many thousands of His holy ones." If Jesus had entered history like that, or had come on a dark night over Jerusalem in a blazing chariot of (fire like Elijah went up to heaven), then the clamoring crowds would have accepted and adored Him. But as the poet once said, "They were looking for a king, to bring salvation nigh, He came a little infant thing, that made a woman cry."
Cleansing the Temple
The local folk knew Jesus well. He was the best carpenter in the nation. But now He had stepped out of bounds. He accepted the nomination of that wild preacher John the Baptist as the Lamb of God. He had agreed to let the people mount Him on an ass and enter the city amid cries of "Hosanna." Now He had stirred the city by routing the money changers and cattle dealers from the temple. For almost thirty years He had watched men desecrate the place. He was outraged at their insolence and greed. He was disgusted that they had carpeted the temple courts with animal excrement and polluted the place with the stench of urine.
Each of the Gospels tells of the whipping Christ. But Luke makes a very valuable difference as he records the events in the life of Jesus. He says that before Jesus had entered the temple, while He was still entering Jerusalem, He had stopped to weep over the great city. So we have the weeping Christ before we had the whipping Christ. Since He was about His Father's business at twelve years of age, Jesus had trod the temple courts and had always been grieved and outraged that they were defiled not just with animal dung, but with re-eyed extortioners, cheating money changers, and cattle dealers. For thirty years He had been growing in grace and in the knowledge of His Father - now He knew His mission! And His explanation for this one-man attack on the sacrilege and defilement of the house of God is summed up in these words: "Zeal for thy house will consume me."
Zeal! What a baptism of this same zeal the weak and wilting Church of this day needs! Zeal in this context is love ablaze!. Zeal without reason becomes fanaticism. Jesus was not a fanatic. Yes, His love was blind to all the possible dangers of His mission. This love ignores personal safety, disregards the odds against it, drops "sacrifice" from its vocabulary, requires no crutches, ignores all danger, is intolerant of sin, but not fanatical.
He was no sudden burst of anger; He had contemplated it all His life, but now the hour had come and men fled before His whip and holy anger.
Spiritual Ecology
"Pollution! Pollution!" cry the ecologists about our food, air, waters, and our auto emissions. But where, O where are the preachers crying out against the pollution in the churches? The heart of Jesus was broken over a nation that had the elect prophets of the Lord as its advisors. But who had heeded these prophets? They had not dined at kings' tables; they, like their master, were despised and rejected of men. Some were men with scorching tongues; but they were also men with weeping eyes. Ah! but tell me if you can, where are the weeping preachers today?
The cattle dealers in the temple were more interested in selling sacrifices than in offering them. And so today there are Christians at this very hour fighting feverishly for some political cause, and yet they are never heated over the wretched filth in their own church!
Will we crusade against uncleanness in the "Church?" If not, better tell the sleepy saints again to eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we shall be raptured. But Jesus will not rapture a ruptured Church!
The Worst Thing In The World
There are some frightful tragedies in the world at this moment. When "wise" men swept aside the Bible, they told us that we would move into a new freedom for men. These wise men have proved that they are otherwise. Other smart men put their brains together to make a bomb so that we can turn a living city crisp in seconds. Then think of the implication of Afghanistan and Iran, the daily bleeding of millions in Kampuchea, and the masses waiting to leave Cuba. There are horrible things to contemplate, and yet I think there is one thing infinitely worse. It is a sick Church in a dying world!
Never has the great U.S. ever been more broken than today. Broken marriages, leaving millions of broken homes. Thousands and thousands of teenagers whose minds are broken with drugs. The people's confidence and trust in the government is broken. The economy is broken - the once mighty dollar is broken. All is broken except the hearts of the believers.
We need broken hearts to face this colossal mess. Weeping is not only in order in the pulpit; it is commanded! "Let the priests weep between the porch and the altar... let them howl" (Joel 2:17; 1:13). Jeremiah wept over the sin of Israel. David wept. Paul wept. John wept. Shall we remain dry-eyed in the most crucial chapter in world history and in our own?
Counterfeit Zeal
The present lethargy in the Church is almost unpardonable. The Jehovah's Witnesses have zeal. The Mormons claim they are gaining more people from the evangelicals than we are gaining from them. The cultists zealously persist in getting a hearing in the streets.
Saul of Tarsus had fanatical zeal. He threw men and women in prison and broke up their families, persecuting them from city to city. Miraculously God cleansed him, baptized him with fire, and made him a model zealot for His kingdom.
It is not enough in these day of such vast worldliness in the Church to say that we are fundamental or uncompromising in "doctrine." We must be ablaze with Holy Spirit-born anger! ("Be angry, and yet do not sin" (Eph. 4:26). We must feel the hurt of God over the devil's domination of this age. We must apologize to the Almighty that we have turned to our own way, and have been more loyal to a man-made theology than to the exceedingly sober words of our Master. Like Paul, we must be able to say in His holy presence, "This one thing I do..." I bear a broken heart over the coldness in the Church (including my own!). True, the zealous man of God lives for one thing only; to please God. He is impervious to the opinions of others about his zeal. He cares not what it costs him to burn out for God. In sickness or in health, in poverty or in wealth, whether he is esteemed or despised, flattered or flattened, considered a fool or a philosopher, through evil report or good report, kisses or curses, he is set to do the will of God!
This man sees the Church today fouled with showmanship, bingo and bake sales, dances, tinsel and trivia, "holding a form of godliness, although they have denied its power" (2 Tim. 3:5). He sees the ministers condoning divorce in high places. Maybe the minister is divorced and remarried himself.
Jesus today sees His Church unclean with disobedience by a watered-down gospel. We do not obey His commandments to "love one another," or rejoice to act out Matthew 23:11 - "But the greatest among you shall be your servant." If there comes a man into the assembly with a gold ring, we do give him honor (James 2:2). If he has great wealth but little spirituality, he is still welcomed as a member of the board. We do not insist that our young preacher boys tarry (until they get a seminary diploma? No!) until they are endued with power from the Holy Spirit.
~Leonard Ravenhill~
(continued with # 2)
Enoch had prophesied, saying, "Behold, the Lord came with many thousands of His holy ones." If Jesus had entered history like that, or had come on a dark night over Jerusalem in a blazing chariot of (fire like Elijah went up to heaven), then the clamoring crowds would have accepted and adored Him. But as the poet once said, "They were looking for a king, to bring salvation nigh, He came a little infant thing, that made a woman cry."
Cleansing the Temple
The local folk knew Jesus well. He was the best carpenter in the nation. But now He had stepped out of bounds. He accepted the nomination of that wild preacher John the Baptist as the Lamb of God. He had agreed to let the people mount Him on an ass and enter the city amid cries of "Hosanna." Now He had stirred the city by routing the money changers and cattle dealers from the temple. For almost thirty years He had watched men desecrate the place. He was outraged at their insolence and greed. He was disgusted that they had carpeted the temple courts with animal excrement and polluted the place with the stench of urine.
Each of the Gospels tells of the whipping Christ. But Luke makes a very valuable difference as he records the events in the life of Jesus. He says that before Jesus had entered the temple, while He was still entering Jerusalem, He had stopped to weep over the great city. So we have the weeping Christ before we had the whipping Christ. Since He was about His Father's business at twelve years of age, Jesus had trod the temple courts and had always been grieved and outraged that they were defiled not just with animal dung, but with re-eyed extortioners, cheating money changers, and cattle dealers. For thirty years He had been growing in grace and in the knowledge of His Father - now He knew His mission! And His explanation for this one-man attack on the sacrilege and defilement of the house of God is summed up in these words: "Zeal for thy house will consume me."
Zeal! What a baptism of this same zeal the weak and wilting Church of this day needs! Zeal in this context is love ablaze!. Zeal without reason becomes fanaticism. Jesus was not a fanatic. Yes, His love was blind to all the possible dangers of His mission. This love ignores personal safety, disregards the odds against it, drops "sacrifice" from its vocabulary, requires no crutches, ignores all danger, is intolerant of sin, but not fanatical.
He was no sudden burst of anger; He had contemplated it all His life, but now the hour had come and men fled before His whip and holy anger.
Spiritual Ecology
"Pollution! Pollution!" cry the ecologists about our food, air, waters, and our auto emissions. But where, O where are the preachers crying out against the pollution in the churches? The heart of Jesus was broken over a nation that had the elect prophets of the Lord as its advisors. But who had heeded these prophets? They had not dined at kings' tables; they, like their master, were despised and rejected of men. Some were men with scorching tongues; but they were also men with weeping eyes. Ah! but tell me if you can, where are the weeping preachers today?
The cattle dealers in the temple were more interested in selling sacrifices than in offering them. And so today there are Christians at this very hour fighting feverishly for some political cause, and yet they are never heated over the wretched filth in their own church!
Will we crusade against uncleanness in the "Church?" If not, better tell the sleepy saints again to eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we shall be raptured. But Jesus will not rapture a ruptured Church!
The Worst Thing In The World
There are some frightful tragedies in the world at this moment. When "wise" men swept aside the Bible, they told us that we would move into a new freedom for men. These wise men have proved that they are otherwise. Other smart men put their brains together to make a bomb so that we can turn a living city crisp in seconds. Then think of the implication of Afghanistan and Iran, the daily bleeding of millions in Kampuchea, and the masses waiting to leave Cuba. There are horrible things to contemplate, and yet I think there is one thing infinitely worse. It is a sick Church in a dying world!
Never has the great U.S. ever been more broken than today. Broken marriages, leaving millions of broken homes. Thousands and thousands of teenagers whose minds are broken with drugs. The people's confidence and trust in the government is broken. The economy is broken - the once mighty dollar is broken. All is broken except the hearts of the believers.
We need broken hearts to face this colossal mess. Weeping is not only in order in the pulpit; it is commanded! "Let the priests weep between the porch and the altar... let them howl" (Joel 2:17; 1:13). Jeremiah wept over the sin of Israel. David wept. Paul wept. John wept. Shall we remain dry-eyed in the most crucial chapter in world history and in our own?
Counterfeit Zeal
The present lethargy in the Church is almost unpardonable. The Jehovah's Witnesses have zeal. The Mormons claim they are gaining more people from the evangelicals than we are gaining from them. The cultists zealously persist in getting a hearing in the streets.
Saul of Tarsus had fanatical zeal. He threw men and women in prison and broke up their families, persecuting them from city to city. Miraculously God cleansed him, baptized him with fire, and made him a model zealot for His kingdom.
It is not enough in these day of such vast worldliness in the Church to say that we are fundamental or uncompromising in "doctrine." We must be ablaze with Holy Spirit-born anger! ("Be angry, and yet do not sin" (Eph. 4:26). We must feel the hurt of God over the devil's domination of this age. We must apologize to the Almighty that we have turned to our own way, and have been more loyal to a man-made theology than to the exceedingly sober words of our Master. Like Paul, we must be able to say in His holy presence, "This one thing I do..." I bear a broken heart over the coldness in the Church (including my own!). True, the zealous man of God lives for one thing only; to please God. He is impervious to the opinions of others about his zeal. He cares not what it costs him to burn out for God. In sickness or in health, in poverty or in wealth, whether he is esteemed or despised, flattered or flattened, considered a fool or a philosopher, through evil report or good report, kisses or curses, he is set to do the will of God!
This man sees the Church today fouled with showmanship, bingo and bake sales, dances, tinsel and trivia, "holding a form of godliness, although they have denied its power" (2 Tim. 3:5). He sees the ministers condoning divorce in high places. Maybe the minister is divorced and remarried himself.
Jesus today sees His Church unclean with disobedience by a watered-down gospel. We do not obey His commandments to "love one another," or rejoice to act out Matthew 23:11 - "But the greatest among you shall be your servant." If there comes a man into the assembly with a gold ring, we do give him honor (James 2:2). If he has great wealth but little spirituality, he is still welcomed as a member of the board. We do not insist that our young preacher boys tarry (until they get a seminary diploma? No!) until they are endued with power from the Holy Spirit.
~Leonard Ravenhill~
(continued with # 2)
Saturday, September 15, 2018
The Devil and the Church # 4
The Devil and the Church # 4
The perversion and subversion of the Church is secured by satan when the spiritual forces are retired or made subordinate to the natural; and social entertainment, and not edification becomes the end. This process involves not only the aims and ends of entertainment, but it is intended to soften and modify the distinctly spiritual aim, and to widen from what is deemed the rigid exclusiveness of spiritual narrowness. But in the end it eliminates all that is distinctly spiritual, and that which is in any sense deeply religious will not survive the death of the spiritual edification as the end of God's Church is wholly lost sight of - and entertainment, that which is pleasing and pleasant, comes to the forefront! The social forces not only retire the spiritual forces, but effectually destroy them.
A modern church with its kitchen and dining room, with its club and gymnasium, and with its ministries to the flesh and to the world - is both appealing and alarming. How suggestive in the contrast it presents between the agencies which the primitive Church originated and fostered, as the conserver of its principles and the expression of its life, and those which the modern and progressive Church presents as its allies or substitutes.
The original churches took it for granted that all who came to them, really desired to flee from the wrath to come, and were sincerely desiring after Christlikeness, and that their obligation to furnish to these the best aids, were of the most sacred and exacting kind. It never occurred to them that sports or social events were channels through which God's grace would flow and could be laid under tribute for spiritual uses.
These social and fleshly events are regarded in many quarters as the perfection of spiritual things. These agencies are arrayed as the mature fruit of spiritual piety, flavored and perfected by its culture and progress, and ordained henceforth as the handmaids of the prayer and preaching meeting. We object most seriously to the union. What have they in common? "How indeed can two walk together, unless they are agreed!?"
What elements of piety are conserved by social events and entertainment? What phases of spiritual life do they promote? By what feature of the gymnasium is faith invigorated? Where do you find in it any elements which are distinctly pious, or are aids to piety? How do social events produce a more prayerful, a holier life? What secret springs has entertainment to bring the soul nearer to God? Wherein does it form or strengthen the ties of a Christly fellowship? Is it not frivolous and worldly? Is it not sensuous and fleshly? Does it not cater to and suit the tastes of the carnal, the superficial and worldly? What unity of purpose and spirit is there between gymnasium and witnessing for Christ? The one is intensely spiritual - the other has in it no jot or tittle of spiritual uses.
We might as well add to the list of heavenly helpers, the skating rink, calisthenics and the gymnasium. If the young people desire to join a gym, enjoy a social or have fun - then let them do so; but do not deceive them and degrade piety by calling these things holy institutions and nourishers of spiritual life.
Disguise it as we may; reason about it as we will; apologize for it as we do; we may vainly philosophize of growth and change and culture. But the truth is, we have lost that intense type of personal experience; that deep conviction of eternal things which are such evident features of all great spiritual movements. Many preachers and people have fallen so low in their experience that they do not relish these distinct and strongly spiritual agencies; and are devising schemes and institutions to gratify their non-spiritual testes with schemes which are midway between Christ and the world; which, while not essentially wrong, do not posses one grain of spiritual power, and can never be the channels of heavenly grace.
It is said we cannot get the people to attend the distinctly spiritual means of grace. What is the trouble? Are the institutions worn our and no longer of value to the humble, pious soul? Who will dare affirm this? The tastes of the people are base and perverted. Shall we then change the agencies to suit their unsanctified appetites? NO! Let us tone up the appetite for spiritual things, and correct and elevate the tastes of our people.
Let the revolution begin with the preacher. Let him wrestle with God until his ordination vow becomes vitalized, so that all can feel the pressure of his aim, the ardor of his zeal, his singleness of purpose, and the holiness and elevation of life - and until the people catch the fire and purpose of his heart, and all press on to Christlikeness.
Under this united, mighty, divine impulse - entertainment and the social meeting will be forgotten and become stale, and all saintly assemblies will be attractive and delight some.
The Church cannot confederate with non-spiritual agencies. By doing this, she discards the Holy Spirit. She cannot be the caterer to unsanctified desires. Neither is it her province to fall down to the beggarly task of entertaining the people. This is her saddest mistake, when her solemn assemblies are surrendered to the concert and social, her praise is turned into worldly music, her classrooms are turned into parlors, her socials become more popular than her prayer meetings, the house of God made a house of feasting, and social cheer is sought after rather than a house of prayer. The unity of the Spirit and the holy brotherhood are displaced and destroyed - to make room for social affinities and worldly attractions. Her high and royal duty, that by which she maintains her spotless fidelity to her Lord - is to stress holiness and afford all means for its advancement and growth. This done, spiritual character and affinities will order all the rest.
~E. M. Bounds~
(The End)
The perversion and subversion of the Church is secured by satan when the spiritual forces are retired or made subordinate to the natural; and social entertainment, and not edification becomes the end. This process involves not only the aims and ends of entertainment, but it is intended to soften and modify the distinctly spiritual aim, and to widen from what is deemed the rigid exclusiveness of spiritual narrowness. But in the end it eliminates all that is distinctly spiritual, and that which is in any sense deeply religious will not survive the death of the spiritual edification as the end of God's Church is wholly lost sight of - and entertainment, that which is pleasing and pleasant, comes to the forefront! The social forces not only retire the spiritual forces, but effectually destroy them.
A modern church with its kitchen and dining room, with its club and gymnasium, and with its ministries to the flesh and to the world - is both appealing and alarming. How suggestive in the contrast it presents between the agencies which the primitive Church originated and fostered, as the conserver of its principles and the expression of its life, and those which the modern and progressive Church presents as its allies or substitutes.
The original churches took it for granted that all who came to them, really desired to flee from the wrath to come, and were sincerely desiring after Christlikeness, and that their obligation to furnish to these the best aids, were of the most sacred and exacting kind. It never occurred to them that sports or social events were channels through which God's grace would flow and could be laid under tribute for spiritual uses.
These social and fleshly events are regarded in many quarters as the perfection of spiritual things. These agencies are arrayed as the mature fruit of spiritual piety, flavored and perfected by its culture and progress, and ordained henceforth as the handmaids of the prayer and preaching meeting. We object most seriously to the union. What have they in common? "How indeed can two walk together, unless they are agreed!?"
What elements of piety are conserved by social events and entertainment? What phases of spiritual life do they promote? By what feature of the gymnasium is faith invigorated? Where do you find in it any elements which are distinctly pious, or are aids to piety? How do social events produce a more prayerful, a holier life? What secret springs has entertainment to bring the soul nearer to God? Wherein does it form or strengthen the ties of a Christly fellowship? Is it not frivolous and worldly? Is it not sensuous and fleshly? Does it not cater to and suit the tastes of the carnal, the superficial and worldly? What unity of purpose and spirit is there between gymnasium and witnessing for Christ? The one is intensely spiritual - the other has in it no jot or tittle of spiritual uses.
We might as well add to the list of heavenly helpers, the skating rink, calisthenics and the gymnasium. If the young people desire to join a gym, enjoy a social or have fun - then let them do so; but do not deceive them and degrade piety by calling these things holy institutions and nourishers of spiritual life.
Disguise it as we may; reason about it as we will; apologize for it as we do; we may vainly philosophize of growth and change and culture. But the truth is, we have lost that intense type of personal experience; that deep conviction of eternal things which are such evident features of all great spiritual movements. Many preachers and people have fallen so low in their experience that they do not relish these distinct and strongly spiritual agencies; and are devising schemes and institutions to gratify their non-spiritual testes with schemes which are midway between Christ and the world; which, while not essentially wrong, do not posses one grain of spiritual power, and can never be the channels of heavenly grace.
It is said we cannot get the people to attend the distinctly spiritual means of grace. What is the trouble? Are the institutions worn our and no longer of value to the humble, pious soul? Who will dare affirm this? The tastes of the people are base and perverted. Shall we then change the agencies to suit their unsanctified appetites? NO! Let us tone up the appetite for spiritual things, and correct and elevate the tastes of our people.
Let the revolution begin with the preacher. Let him wrestle with God until his ordination vow becomes vitalized, so that all can feel the pressure of his aim, the ardor of his zeal, his singleness of purpose, and the holiness and elevation of life - and until the people catch the fire and purpose of his heart, and all press on to Christlikeness.
Under this united, mighty, divine impulse - entertainment and the social meeting will be forgotten and become stale, and all saintly assemblies will be attractive and delight some.
The Church cannot confederate with non-spiritual agencies. By doing this, she discards the Holy Spirit. She cannot be the caterer to unsanctified desires. Neither is it her province to fall down to the beggarly task of entertaining the people. This is her saddest mistake, when her solemn assemblies are surrendered to the concert and social, her praise is turned into worldly music, her classrooms are turned into parlors, her socials become more popular than her prayer meetings, the house of God made a house of feasting, and social cheer is sought after rather than a house of prayer. The unity of the Spirit and the holy brotherhood are displaced and destroyed - to make room for social affinities and worldly attractions. Her high and royal duty, that by which she maintains her spotless fidelity to her Lord - is to stress holiness and afford all means for its advancement and growth. This done, spiritual character and affinities will order all the rest.
~E. M. Bounds~
(The End)
The devil and the Church # 3
The devil and the Church # 3
The very heart of this disgraceful apostasy, this dethroning Christ and enthroning the devil - is to remove the Holy Spirit from His leadership in the Church, and put in unspiritual men as leaders to plan for and direct the Church. The strong hands of men of great ability and men with the powers of leadership - have often displaced God's leadership. The ambition for, and the enthronement of worldly leadership - is the doom and seal of apostasy. There is no true leadership in God's Church but the leadership of the Holy Spirit. The man who has the most of God's Spirit is God's chosen leader, ambitious and zealous for the Spirit's sovereignty, ambitious to be the least, the slave of all.
There are two ways of directing the Church - God's way and the devil's way. God's way and man's way of running the Church are entirely opposite. Man's wise plans, happy expedients and easy solutions, are satan's devices. The Cross is retired and the world comes in. Self-denial is eliminated - and all seems bright, cheerful and prosperous. But satan's hand is on the ark, men's schemes prevail, the Church fails under these attractive devices of men, and the church's spiritual bankruptcy is complete.
All God's plans have the mark of the Cross on them, and all His plans have death to self in them. All God's plans have crucifixion to the world in them. But men's plans ignore the offense of the Cross - or despise it. Men's plans have no profound, stern or self-immolating denial in them. Their gain is of the world. How much of these destructive elements, esteemed by men, does the devil bring into the Church, until all the high, unworldly and holy aims, and heavenly objects of the church are retired and forgotten?
One of these attractive, man-savoring, satanic devices - is to pervert the aims of the Church so that the main object of the Church is not so much to save individuals out of society - as to save society; not to save souls - so much as to save the community. The world, not the individual, is the subject of redemption.
This popular, seductive and deadly fallacy, entirely subverts the very foundation of Christ's Church. Its materializing trend is so strong that it will sweep away every vestige of the spiritual and eternal - if we do not watch, work and speak with sleepless vigilance, tireless energy, and fearless boldness. The attitude and open declaration of much of the religious teaching we now hear, is in the same strain and spirit which characterized Unitarian, Jewish, or rationalistic utterances half a century ago.
To save society is a kind of religious fad to which much enterprising, lauded church work is committed. Advanced thinkers and discoverers have elaborated the same idea. They entomb religion in the grave where Judaism has been buried all these centuries.
The phrase "to save the world," is pompous sounding; and it is appealing to flesh and blood, for the Church to apply itself to better the temporal surroundings of the individual, and improve his sanitary conditions; to lessen the bad smells that greet his nose, to diminish the bacteria in his water, and to put granite in the pavement for him to walk on instead of wood or brick. All this sounds finely, and agrees well with a material age, and becomes practical in operation and evident and imposing in results.
But does this agree with the sublime dignity and essential aim of the Church? It needs no church, no Bible, no Christ, no personal holiness, to secure these ends - and this is the point to which all this vaunted advance tends. If the ends of the Church are directed to those results which can be as well or better secured by other agencies - then the Church will soon be regarded as a nuisance, a thing to be abated by the most summary process.
The purposes of the Church rise in sublime grandeur above these childish dreams and decadent philosophies. Its purpose is to regenerate and sanctify the individual, to make him holy and prepare him by a course of purifying and training, for the high pursuits of an eternal life. The Church is like the net cast into the sea. The purpose is not to change the sea - so much as to catch the fishes out of the sea. Let the sea roll on in its essential nature, but the net catches its fishes.
No bigger fools would ever be found than fishermen who were spending all their force trying by some chemical process to change the essential elements of the sea, vainly hoping thereby to improve the stock of the fish that they had not and never could catch. By this method, personal holiness, the great desideratum for church operation and ends, would be impossible, and Heaven would be stricken from creed and life and hope.
To save the world and ignore the individual, is not only foolishly utopian, but every way damaging. It is the process, fair and laudable in name, to save the world, but in results it is to lose the Church, or, which amounts to the same, making the Church worldly - and thereby unfitting her for her holy and sublime mission. Christ said that gaining the world and saving the man, are antagonistic ends. Christ teaches Peter that his satanic device would gain the world to and for the Church - but would lose the soul. Everything would seem thrifty to the worldly cause - when in reality all was death.
The Church is distinctly, preeminently and absolutely a spiritual institution - that is, an institution created, vitalized, possessed and directed by the Spirit of God. Her machinery, rites, forms, services and officers have no loveliness, no pertinency, no power - except as they are channels of the Holy Spirit. It is His indwelling and inspiration, which make its divine being and secure its divine end. If the devil can by any methods shut the Holy Spirit out from the Church - he has effectually barred the church from being God's Church on earth. He accomplishes this by retiring from the Church, the agencies or agents which the Holy Spirit uses - and displaces them by the natural, which are rarely if ever the media of His energy. Christ announced the universal and invariable law when He said, "That which is born of the flesh, is flesh; that which is born of the Spirit is spirit."
Imagine a church with the leadership of holy men, not highly cultured, but well-versed in the deep things of God, and strong in devotion to Christ and His cause, not wealthy, nor of high social position. Now change these officers and put in men who are every way decent in morality, but not given or noted for prayer and piety, men of high social position and fine financiers, and the Church scarcely realizes the change - except marked improvement in finances. But an invisible and mighty change has taken place in the Church, which is radical. It has changed from a spiritual Church to a worldly one. The change noonday to midnight, is not more extreme than that. At this point satan is doing his deadliest and most damning work - the more deadly and damning because it is unnoticed, unseen, producing no shock and exciting no alarm.
It is not by overt, conspicuous evil that satan perverts the Church - but by quiet displacement and by unnoticed substitution. The spiritual gives place to the social - and the divine is eliminated, because it is made secondary.
~E. M. Bounds~
(continued with # 4)
The very heart of this disgraceful apostasy, this dethroning Christ and enthroning the devil - is to remove the Holy Spirit from His leadership in the Church, and put in unspiritual men as leaders to plan for and direct the Church. The strong hands of men of great ability and men with the powers of leadership - have often displaced God's leadership. The ambition for, and the enthronement of worldly leadership - is the doom and seal of apostasy. There is no true leadership in God's Church but the leadership of the Holy Spirit. The man who has the most of God's Spirit is God's chosen leader, ambitious and zealous for the Spirit's sovereignty, ambitious to be the least, the slave of all.
There are two ways of directing the Church - God's way and the devil's way. God's way and man's way of running the Church are entirely opposite. Man's wise plans, happy expedients and easy solutions, are satan's devices. The Cross is retired and the world comes in. Self-denial is eliminated - and all seems bright, cheerful and prosperous. But satan's hand is on the ark, men's schemes prevail, the Church fails under these attractive devices of men, and the church's spiritual bankruptcy is complete.
All God's plans have the mark of the Cross on them, and all His plans have death to self in them. All God's plans have crucifixion to the world in them. But men's plans ignore the offense of the Cross - or despise it. Men's plans have no profound, stern or self-immolating denial in them. Their gain is of the world. How much of these destructive elements, esteemed by men, does the devil bring into the Church, until all the high, unworldly and holy aims, and heavenly objects of the church are retired and forgotten?
One of these attractive, man-savoring, satanic devices - is to pervert the aims of the Church so that the main object of the Church is not so much to save individuals out of society - as to save society; not to save souls - so much as to save the community. The world, not the individual, is the subject of redemption.
This popular, seductive and deadly fallacy, entirely subverts the very foundation of Christ's Church. Its materializing trend is so strong that it will sweep away every vestige of the spiritual and eternal - if we do not watch, work and speak with sleepless vigilance, tireless energy, and fearless boldness. The attitude and open declaration of much of the religious teaching we now hear, is in the same strain and spirit which characterized Unitarian, Jewish, or rationalistic utterances half a century ago.
To save society is a kind of religious fad to which much enterprising, lauded church work is committed. Advanced thinkers and discoverers have elaborated the same idea. They entomb religion in the grave where Judaism has been buried all these centuries.
The phrase "to save the world," is pompous sounding; and it is appealing to flesh and blood, for the Church to apply itself to better the temporal surroundings of the individual, and improve his sanitary conditions; to lessen the bad smells that greet his nose, to diminish the bacteria in his water, and to put granite in the pavement for him to walk on instead of wood or brick. All this sounds finely, and agrees well with a material age, and becomes practical in operation and evident and imposing in results.
But does this agree with the sublime dignity and essential aim of the Church? It needs no church, no Bible, no Christ, no personal holiness, to secure these ends - and this is the point to which all this vaunted advance tends. If the ends of the Church are directed to those results which can be as well or better secured by other agencies - then the Church will soon be regarded as a nuisance, a thing to be abated by the most summary process.
The purposes of the Church rise in sublime grandeur above these childish dreams and decadent philosophies. Its purpose is to regenerate and sanctify the individual, to make him holy and prepare him by a course of purifying and training, for the high pursuits of an eternal life. The Church is like the net cast into the sea. The purpose is not to change the sea - so much as to catch the fishes out of the sea. Let the sea roll on in its essential nature, but the net catches its fishes.
No bigger fools would ever be found than fishermen who were spending all their force trying by some chemical process to change the essential elements of the sea, vainly hoping thereby to improve the stock of the fish that they had not and never could catch. By this method, personal holiness, the great desideratum for church operation and ends, would be impossible, and Heaven would be stricken from creed and life and hope.
To save the world and ignore the individual, is not only foolishly utopian, but every way damaging. It is the process, fair and laudable in name, to save the world, but in results it is to lose the Church, or, which amounts to the same, making the Church worldly - and thereby unfitting her for her holy and sublime mission. Christ said that gaining the world and saving the man, are antagonistic ends. Christ teaches Peter that his satanic device would gain the world to and for the Church - but would lose the soul. Everything would seem thrifty to the worldly cause - when in reality all was death.
The Church is distinctly, preeminently and absolutely a spiritual institution - that is, an institution created, vitalized, possessed and directed by the Spirit of God. Her machinery, rites, forms, services and officers have no loveliness, no pertinency, no power - except as they are channels of the Holy Spirit. It is His indwelling and inspiration, which make its divine being and secure its divine end. If the devil can by any methods shut the Holy Spirit out from the Church - he has effectually barred the church from being God's Church on earth. He accomplishes this by retiring from the Church, the agencies or agents which the Holy Spirit uses - and displaces them by the natural, which are rarely if ever the media of His energy. Christ announced the universal and invariable law when He said, "That which is born of the flesh, is flesh; that which is born of the Spirit is spirit."
Imagine a church with the leadership of holy men, not highly cultured, but well-versed in the deep things of God, and strong in devotion to Christ and His cause, not wealthy, nor of high social position. Now change these officers and put in men who are every way decent in morality, but not given or noted for prayer and piety, men of high social position and fine financiers, and the Church scarcely realizes the change - except marked improvement in finances. But an invisible and mighty change has taken place in the Church, which is radical. It has changed from a spiritual Church to a worldly one. The change noonday to midnight, is not more extreme than that. At this point satan is doing his deadliest and most damning work - the more deadly and damning because it is unnoticed, unseen, producing no shock and exciting no alarm.
It is not by overt, conspicuous evil that satan perverts the Church - but by quiet displacement and by unnoticed substitution. The spiritual gives place to the social - and the divine is eliminated, because it is made secondary.
~E. M. Bounds~
(continued with # 4)
The Devil and the Church # 2
The Devil and the Church # 2
These may be but the gilded delusions which we mistake for the true riches, and while we are vainly saying, "We are rich and increased in good," God has written of us that we are "wretched and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked!" They will be, if we are not sleeplessly vigilant - but the costly spices and splendid decoration which embalm and entomb our spirituality. True strength lies in the vital godliness of the people. The aggregate of the personal holiness of the members of each church is the only true measure of strength. Any other test offends God, dishonors Christ, grieves the Holy Spirit, and degrades religion.
A church can often make the fairest and best showing of material strength when death in its deadliest form is feeding on its vitals. There can scarcely be a more damaging delusion that to judge of the conditions of the Church by its material exhibits or churchly activity. Spiritual barrenness and rottenness in the Church are generally hidden by a fair exterior and an obtrusive parade of leaves and an exotic growth. A spiritual church converts souls from sin soundly, clearly and fully.
This spirituality is not a by-play, not to be kept in a corner of the Church, not its dress for holiday or parade days, but it is its chief and only business. If God's Church is not doing this work of converting sinners to holiness and perfecting saints in holiness, wherever and whenever this work is not blazing and conspicuous, wherever and whenever this work becomes secondary, or other interests are held to be its equivalent - than the Church has become worldly! Wherever and whenever the material interests are emphasized until they come into prominence, then the world comes to the throne and sways the scepter of satan!
There is no readier and surer way to make a Church worldly - than to put its material prosperity to the forefront; and no surer, readier way to put satan in charge. It is an easy matter for worldly assessments to become of first importance, by emphasizing them until a sentiment is created that these are paramount. When collecting money, building churches, and statistical columns are to stand as evidences of real church prosperity - then the world has a strong lodgment, and satan has gained his end.
Another scheme of satan is to eliminate from the Church all the lowly, self-denying ordinances which are offensive to unsanctified tastes and unregenerate hearts, and reduce the Church to a mere human institution - popular, natural, fleshly and pleasing.
satan has no scheme more fearfully destructive and which can more thoroughly thwart God's high and holy purposes - than to transform God's Church and make it a human institution according to man's views. God's right arm is thereby paralyzed, the body of Christ has become the body of satan, light turned into darkness, and life into death.
Men who sit in apostolic seats often through a marvelous blindness, sometimes through a false attachment to what they deem truth, and for what they consider the honor of Christ - are found trying to eliminate from the system of Christ those painful, offensive, unpopular, and self-denying features to which it owes all its saving efficacy, and beauty and power, and which stamp it as divine.
We have a painful illustration most instructive and warning in Peter, recorded thus: "From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that He must be killed and on the third day be raised to life. Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him. "Never, Lord!" he said "This shall never happen to You!" Jesus turned and said to Peter, "Get behind me, satan! You are a stumbling block to Me; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men." Then Jesus said to His disciples, "If anyone would come after Me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for Me will find it. What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? For the Son of Man is going to come in His Father's glory with His angels, and then He will reward each person according to what he has done!" (Matt. 16:21-27).
Here is a lesson most suggestive, a lesson for all times, a warning for each man, for all men, for church men, for saintly men and for apostolic men. An apostle has become the mouthpiece of satan! Alarming, horrible, unnatural and revolting picture! An apostle, zealous for his Master's glory, advocating with fire and force a scheme which would forever destroy that glory! An apostle, the apostle Peter - satan's vice-regent! The apostle who had but just made that inspired confession, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God," which placed him in highest honor and commendation with Christ and the Church! Before the words of that divine and marvelous confession had died from his lips, this same apostle is the inflamed and self-willed advocate of views and plans which will render this confession void, and raze the impregnable and eternal foundations of the Church.
Peter, a chief apostle, fathering and advocating schemes which would dis-crown Christ of His Messiahship, and bring Heaven's favorite plan to a most disastrous and shameful end!
How did this come about? What baneful impulse impels Peter? satan has entered him and for the time being, has mastered his purposes, and so Christ reproves Peter, but in the reproof strikes a crushing blow at satan. "Get behind me, satan," a reminder and duplicate of the wilderness temptation. "You are a stumbling block to me." The devil's trigger to catch Christ in the devil's trap, "You do not have in mind the things of God - but the things of men."
The devil is not in sight. Man appears and his views are pressed to the front. The things which men savor in church plans and church life, are against God's plan. The high and holy principles of self-denial, of unworldliness of life, and of self-surrender to Christ - are all against men's views of religion, a losing thing with them. The devil does not seek to destroy the Church directly. Men's views would eliminate all these unpopular principles of the Cross, self-denial, life surrender and world surrender. But when this is done, the devil runs the Church. Then it becomes popular, cheery, flesh-pleasing, modern and progressive. But it is the devil's church - founded on principles pleasing in every way to flesh and blood! No Christ is in it, no crucifixion of self, no crucifixion of the world, no eternal judgment, no everlasting hell, no eternal heaven. Nothing is in it that savors of God - but all that savors of men. Man makes the devil's church by turning Christ's Church over to worldly leaders. The world is sought and gained in the devil's church - but the man, the soul, Heaven, are all lost - lost to all eternity.
~E. M. Bounds~
(continued with # 3)
These may be but the gilded delusions which we mistake for the true riches, and while we are vainly saying, "We are rich and increased in good," God has written of us that we are "wretched and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked!" They will be, if we are not sleeplessly vigilant - but the costly spices and splendid decoration which embalm and entomb our spirituality. True strength lies in the vital godliness of the people. The aggregate of the personal holiness of the members of each church is the only true measure of strength. Any other test offends God, dishonors Christ, grieves the Holy Spirit, and degrades religion.
A church can often make the fairest and best showing of material strength when death in its deadliest form is feeding on its vitals. There can scarcely be a more damaging delusion that to judge of the conditions of the Church by its material exhibits or churchly activity. Spiritual barrenness and rottenness in the Church are generally hidden by a fair exterior and an obtrusive parade of leaves and an exotic growth. A spiritual church converts souls from sin soundly, clearly and fully.
This spirituality is not a by-play, not to be kept in a corner of the Church, not its dress for holiday or parade days, but it is its chief and only business. If God's Church is not doing this work of converting sinners to holiness and perfecting saints in holiness, wherever and whenever this work is not blazing and conspicuous, wherever and whenever this work becomes secondary, or other interests are held to be its equivalent - than the Church has become worldly! Wherever and whenever the material interests are emphasized until they come into prominence, then the world comes to the throne and sways the scepter of satan!
There is no readier and surer way to make a Church worldly - than to put its material prosperity to the forefront; and no surer, readier way to put satan in charge. It is an easy matter for worldly assessments to become of first importance, by emphasizing them until a sentiment is created that these are paramount. When collecting money, building churches, and statistical columns are to stand as evidences of real church prosperity - then the world has a strong lodgment, and satan has gained his end.
Another scheme of satan is to eliminate from the Church all the lowly, self-denying ordinances which are offensive to unsanctified tastes and unregenerate hearts, and reduce the Church to a mere human institution - popular, natural, fleshly and pleasing.
satan has no scheme more fearfully destructive and which can more thoroughly thwart God's high and holy purposes - than to transform God's Church and make it a human institution according to man's views. God's right arm is thereby paralyzed, the body of Christ has become the body of satan, light turned into darkness, and life into death.
Men who sit in apostolic seats often through a marvelous blindness, sometimes through a false attachment to what they deem truth, and for what they consider the honor of Christ - are found trying to eliminate from the system of Christ those painful, offensive, unpopular, and self-denying features to which it owes all its saving efficacy, and beauty and power, and which stamp it as divine.
We have a painful illustration most instructive and warning in Peter, recorded thus: "From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that He must be killed and on the third day be raised to life. Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him. "Never, Lord!" he said "This shall never happen to You!" Jesus turned and said to Peter, "Get behind me, satan! You are a stumbling block to Me; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men." Then Jesus said to His disciples, "If anyone would come after Me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for Me will find it. What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? For the Son of Man is going to come in His Father's glory with His angels, and then He will reward each person according to what he has done!" (Matt. 16:21-27).
Here is a lesson most suggestive, a lesson for all times, a warning for each man, for all men, for church men, for saintly men and for apostolic men. An apostle has become the mouthpiece of satan! Alarming, horrible, unnatural and revolting picture! An apostle, zealous for his Master's glory, advocating with fire and force a scheme which would forever destroy that glory! An apostle, the apostle Peter - satan's vice-regent! The apostle who had but just made that inspired confession, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God," which placed him in highest honor and commendation with Christ and the Church! Before the words of that divine and marvelous confession had died from his lips, this same apostle is the inflamed and self-willed advocate of views and plans which will render this confession void, and raze the impregnable and eternal foundations of the Church.
Peter, a chief apostle, fathering and advocating schemes which would dis-crown Christ of His Messiahship, and bring Heaven's favorite plan to a most disastrous and shameful end!
How did this come about? What baneful impulse impels Peter? satan has entered him and for the time being, has mastered his purposes, and so Christ reproves Peter, but in the reproof strikes a crushing blow at satan. "Get behind me, satan," a reminder and duplicate of the wilderness temptation. "You are a stumbling block to me." The devil's trigger to catch Christ in the devil's trap, "You do not have in mind the things of God - but the things of men."
The devil is not in sight. Man appears and his views are pressed to the front. The things which men savor in church plans and church life, are against God's plan. The high and holy principles of self-denial, of unworldliness of life, and of self-surrender to Christ - are all against men's views of religion, a losing thing with them. The devil does not seek to destroy the Church directly. Men's views would eliminate all these unpopular principles of the Cross, self-denial, life surrender and world surrender. But when this is done, the devil runs the Church. Then it becomes popular, cheery, flesh-pleasing, modern and progressive. But it is the devil's church - founded on principles pleasing in every way to flesh and blood! No Christ is in it, no crucifixion of self, no crucifixion of the world, no eternal judgment, no everlasting hell, no eternal heaven. Nothing is in it that savors of God - but all that savors of men. Man makes the devil's church by turning Christ's Church over to worldly leaders. The world is sought and gained in the devil's church - but the man, the soul, Heaven, are all lost - lost to all eternity.
~E. M. Bounds~
(continued with # 3)
The Devil and the Church # 1
The Devil and the Church # 1
The devil is too wise, too large in mental grasp, too lordly in ambition, to confine his aims to the individual. He seeks to direct the policy and sway the scepter of nations. In his largest freedom, and in his delirium of passion and success, "he goes out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth." He is an adept in deception, an expert in all cunning arts. An archangel is execution, he often succeeds in seducing the nations most loyal to Christ, leading them into plans and principles which pervert and render baneful all Christly principles. The Church itself, the bride of Christ, when seduced from her purity, degenerate into a worldly ecclesiasticism.
The "gates of hell shall not prevail" against the Church. This promise of our Lord stands against every satanic device and assault. But this immutable word as to the glorious outcome, does not protect the Church from the devil's stratagems which may, and often do, pervert the aims of the Church and postpone the day of its final triumph.
The devil is a hydra-headed monster. He is hydra-headed in plans and wisdom - as well as in monstrosities. His master and supreme effort is to get control of the Church, not to destroy its organization, but to abate and pervert its Divine ends. This he does in the most insidious way, seemingly innocent, no startling change, nothing to shock nor to alarm. Sometimes the destructive change is introduced under the disguise of a greater zeal for Christ's glory. Introduced by someone high in church honor, often it occurs that the advocate of these measures is totally ignorant of the fact that the tendency is subversive.
One of the schemes of satan to debase and pervert, is to establish a wrong estimate of church strength. If he can raise false measurements of church power; if he can press the material to the front; if he can tabulate these forces so as to make them imposing and aggregating in commands, influence, and demand - he has secured his end.
In the Mosaic economy, the subversion of the ends of the Church and the substitution of material forces was guarded against. Their kings were warned against the accumulation, parade, and reliance on material forces. It was in the violation of this law, that David sinned when he yielded to the temptations of satan to number the people.
This is one of the devil's most insidious and successful methods to deceive, divert and deprave. He marshals and parades the most engaging material results, lands of power of civilizing forces and makes its glories and power pass in review - until church leaders are dazzled, and ensnared, and the Church becomes thoroughly worldly while boasting of her spirituality.
The strength of the Church lies in its piety. All else is incidental. But in worldly, popular language of this day, a church is called strong when its membership is large, when it has social position and large financial resources. The church is thought successful when ability, learning, and eloquence fill the pulpit, and when the pews are filled by fashion, intelligence, money, and influence. An estimate of this kind is worldly to the fullest extent.
The church that thus defines its strength, is on the highway to apostasy. The strength of the Church does not consist of any or all of these things. The faith, holiness and zeal of the Church are the elements of its power. Church strength does not consist in its numbers and its money - but in the holiness of its members. Church strength is not found in these worldly attachments or endowments - but in the endowment of the Holy Spirit on its members. No more fatal or deadly symptom can be seen in a church, than this transference of its strength from spiritual to material forces, from the Holy Spirit to the world. The power of God in the Church is the measure of its strength, and is the estimate which God puts on it, and not the estimate the world puts on it.
On the contrary, show us a church, poor, illiterate, obscure and unknown, but composed of praying people. They may be men of neither worldly ability nor wealth nor influence. But with them is "the hiding of God's power," and their influence will be felt for eternity, and their light shines, and they are watched. Wherever they go, there is a fountain of light, and Christ in them is glorified and His kingdom advanced. They are His chosen vessels of salvation and His luminaries to reflect His light.
There are signs everywhere unmistakable and of dire import that Protestantism has been blinded and caught by satan's dazzling glare!
We are being seriously affected by the material progress of the age. We have heard so much of it, and gazed on it so long - that spiritual things are tame to us. Spiritual views have no form nor loveliness to us. Everything must take on the rich colorings, luxuriant growth and magnificent appearance of the material - or else it is beggarly. This is the most perilous condition the Church has to meet, when the meek and lowly fruits of piety are to be discounted by the showy and worldly things with which material success crowds the Church.
We must not yield to the flood. The Church must be made to see and feel this delusion and snare, this transference of her strength from God to the world, this rejection of the Holy Spirit by the endowment of "might and power," and this yielding to satan. The Church more and more is inclined not only to disregard, but to despise, the elements of spiritual strength and set them aside - for the more impressive worldly ones.
However imposing our material results may be, however magnificent and prosperous the secular arm appears - we must go deeper than these for its strength. The strength of the Church does not lie in these things.
~E. M. Bounds~
(continued with #2)
The devil is too wise, too large in mental grasp, too lordly in ambition, to confine his aims to the individual. He seeks to direct the policy and sway the scepter of nations. In his largest freedom, and in his delirium of passion and success, "he goes out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth." He is an adept in deception, an expert in all cunning arts. An archangel is execution, he often succeeds in seducing the nations most loyal to Christ, leading them into plans and principles which pervert and render baneful all Christly principles. The Church itself, the bride of Christ, when seduced from her purity, degenerate into a worldly ecclesiasticism.
The "gates of hell shall not prevail" against the Church. This promise of our Lord stands against every satanic device and assault. But this immutable word as to the glorious outcome, does not protect the Church from the devil's stratagems which may, and often do, pervert the aims of the Church and postpone the day of its final triumph.
The devil is a hydra-headed monster. He is hydra-headed in plans and wisdom - as well as in monstrosities. His master and supreme effort is to get control of the Church, not to destroy its organization, but to abate and pervert its Divine ends. This he does in the most insidious way, seemingly innocent, no startling change, nothing to shock nor to alarm. Sometimes the destructive change is introduced under the disguise of a greater zeal for Christ's glory. Introduced by someone high in church honor, often it occurs that the advocate of these measures is totally ignorant of the fact that the tendency is subversive.
One of the schemes of satan to debase and pervert, is to establish a wrong estimate of church strength. If he can raise false measurements of church power; if he can press the material to the front; if he can tabulate these forces so as to make them imposing and aggregating in commands, influence, and demand - he has secured his end.
In the Mosaic economy, the subversion of the ends of the Church and the substitution of material forces was guarded against. Their kings were warned against the accumulation, parade, and reliance on material forces. It was in the violation of this law, that David sinned when he yielded to the temptations of satan to number the people.
This is one of the devil's most insidious and successful methods to deceive, divert and deprave. He marshals and parades the most engaging material results, lands of power of civilizing forces and makes its glories and power pass in review - until church leaders are dazzled, and ensnared, and the Church becomes thoroughly worldly while boasting of her spirituality.
The strength of the Church lies in its piety. All else is incidental. But in worldly, popular language of this day, a church is called strong when its membership is large, when it has social position and large financial resources. The church is thought successful when ability, learning, and eloquence fill the pulpit, and when the pews are filled by fashion, intelligence, money, and influence. An estimate of this kind is worldly to the fullest extent.
The church that thus defines its strength, is on the highway to apostasy. The strength of the Church does not consist of any or all of these things. The faith, holiness and zeal of the Church are the elements of its power. Church strength does not consist in its numbers and its money - but in the holiness of its members. Church strength is not found in these worldly attachments or endowments - but in the endowment of the Holy Spirit on its members. No more fatal or deadly symptom can be seen in a church, than this transference of its strength from spiritual to material forces, from the Holy Spirit to the world. The power of God in the Church is the measure of its strength, and is the estimate which God puts on it, and not the estimate the world puts on it.
On the contrary, show us a church, poor, illiterate, obscure and unknown, but composed of praying people. They may be men of neither worldly ability nor wealth nor influence. But with them is "the hiding of God's power," and their influence will be felt for eternity, and their light shines, and they are watched. Wherever they go, there is a fountain of light, and Christ in them is glorified and His kingdom advanced. They are His chosen vessels of salvation and His luminaries to reflect His light.
There are signs everywhere unmistakable and of dire import that Protestantism has been blinded and caught by satan's dazzling glare!
We are being seriously affected by the material progress of the age. We have heard so much of it, and gazed on it so long - that spiritual things are tame to us. Spiritual views have no form nor loveliness to us. Everything must take on the rich colorings, luxuriant growth and magnificent appearance of the material - or else it is beggarly. This is the most perilous condition the Church has to meet, when the meek and lowly fruits of piety are to be discounted by the showy and worldly things with which material success crowds the Church.
We must not yield to the flood. The Church must be made to see and feel this delusion and snare, this transference of her strength from God to the world, this rejection of the Holy Spirit by the endowment of "might and power," and this yielding to satan. The Church more and more is inclined not only to disregard, but to despise, the elements of spiritual strength and set them aside - for the more impressive worldly ones.
However imposing our material results may be, however magnificent and prosperous the secular arm appears - we must go deeper than these for its strength. The strength of the Church does not lie in these things.
~E. M. Bounds~
(continued with #2)
Saturday, September 8, 2018
Picture Of A Prophet
Picture Of A Prophet
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 his unpopularity. Compromise is not known to him. He has no price tags. He is totally "otherworldly." He is unquestionably controversial and unpardonably hostile. He marches to another drummer! He breathes the rarefied air of inspiration. He is a "seer" who comes to lead the blind. He lives in the heights of God and comes into the valley with a "thus saith the Lord."
The prophet shares some of the foreknowledge of God and so is aware of impending judgment. He lives in "splendid isolation." He is forthright and outright, but he claims no birthright. His message is "repent, be reconciled to God or else...!" His prophecies are parried. His truth brings torment, but his voice is never void. He is the villain of today and the hero of tomorrow. He is excommunicated while alive and exalted when dead!
He is dishonored with epithets when breathing and honored with epitaphs when dead. He is a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ, but few "make the grade" in his class. He is friendless while living and famous when dead. He is against the establishment in ministry; then he is established as a saint by posterity. He eats daily the bread of affliction while he ministers, but he feeds the Bread of life to those who listen. He walks before men for days but has walked before God for years. He is a scourge to the nation before he is scourged by the nation. He announces, pronounces, and denounces! He has a heart like a volcano and his words are as fire. He talks to men about God. He carries the lamp of truth among heretics while he is lampooned by men. He faces God before he faces men, but he is self-effacing. He hides with God in the secret place, but he has nothing to hide in the marketplace. He is naturally sensitive but supernaturally spiritual. He has passion, purpose and pugnacity. He is ordained of God but disdained by men.
Our national need at this hour is not that the dollar recover its strength, or that we find the answer to the ecology problem. We need a God-sent prophet! 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. Crusades have been held; healing meetings have made a vital contribution. Organizers we have. Skilled preachers abound. Multi-million dollar Christian organizations straddle the nation. BUT where, oh where, is the prophet? Where are the 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 SHOWING FORTH. They will come. The prophet is violated during his ministry, but he is vindicated by history.
The missing person in our ranks is the prophet. The man with a terrible earnestness. 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 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, 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 no vision no man in this century has seen. God send us this Moses to lead us from wilderness of crass materialism, where the rattlesnakes of lust bits us and where enlightened men, totally blind spiritually, lead us to an ever-nearing Armageddon.
~Leonard Ravenhill~
(The End)
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 his unpopularity. Compromise is not known to him. He has no price tags. He is totally "otherworldly." He is unquestionably controversial and unpardonably hostile. He marches to another drummer! He breathes the rarefied air of inspiration. He is a "seer" who comes to lead the blind. He lives in the heights of God and comes into the valley with a "thus saith the Lord."
The prophet shares some of the foreknowledge of God and so is aware of impending judgment. He lives in "splendid isolation." He is forthright and outright, but he claims no birthright. His message is "repent, be reconciled to God or else...!" His prophecies are parried. His truth brings torment, but his voice is never void. He is the villain of today and the hero of tomorrow. He is excommunicated while alive and exalted when dead!
He is dishonored with epithets when breathing and honored with epitaphs when dead. He is a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ, but few "make the grade" in his class. He is friendless while living and famous when dead. He is against the establishment in ministry; then he is established as a saint by posterity. He eats daily the bread of affliction while he ministers, but he feeds the Bread of life to those who listen. He walks before men for days but has walked before God for years. He is a scourge to the nation before he is scourged by the nation. He announces, pronounces, and denounces! He has a heart like a volcano and his words are as fire. He talks to men about God. He carries the lamp of truth among heretics while he is lampooned by men. He faces God before he faces men, but he is self-effacing. He hides with God in the secret place, but he has nothing to hide in the marketplace. He is naturally sensitive but supernaturally spiritual. He has passion, purpose and pugnacity. He is ordained of God but disdained by men.
Our national need at this hour is not that the dollar recover its strength, or that we find the answer to the ecology problem. We need a God-sent prophet! 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. Crusades have been held; healing meetings have made a vital contribution. Organizers we have. Skilled preachers abound. Multi-million dollar Christian organizations straddle the nation. BUT where, oh where, is the prophet? Where are the 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 SHOWING FORTH. They will come. The prophet is violated during his ministry, but he is vindicated by history.
The missing person in our ranks is the prophet. The man with a terrible earnestness. 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 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, 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 no vision no man in this century has seen. God send us this Moses to lead us from wilderness of crass materialism, where the rattlesnakes of lust bits us and where enlightened men, totally blind spiritually, lead us to an ever-nearing Armageddon.
~Leonard Ravenhill~
(The End)
How Is Your Beloved Better Than Others? (and Others)
How Is Your Beloved Better Than Others? (and others)
Song of Songs 5:9
Does not our Friend as far excel all other friends as heaven exceeds earth, as eternity exceeds time, as the Creator surpasses His creatures?
See all the fullness of the Godhead - dwelling in One who is as meek and mild as a child. See His countenance beaming with ineffable glories - full of mingled majesty, condescension and love. Hear the soul-reviving invitations and gracious words which proceed from His lips. See that hand in which dwells everlasting strength - swaying the scepter of universal empire over all creatures and all worlds. See His arms expanded to receive and embrace returning sinners. While His heart, a bottomless, shoreless ocean of benevolence - overflows with tenderness, compassion, and love.
Such, O sinner, is our Beloved - and such is our Friend.
Will you not then embrace Him as your Friend? If you can be persuaded to do this - you will find that half, nay, that the thousandth part has not been told to you!
All the excellency, glory and beauty which is found in men or angels, flows from Christ - as a drop of water from the ocean, or a ray of light from the sun.
If, then, you supremely love the creature - can you wonder that Christians should love the Creator! Can you wonder that those who behold the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, should be sweetly drawn to Him by the cords of love, and lose their fondness for created glories? All that you love and admire and wish for in creatures, and indeed infinitely more - they find in Him!
Do you wish for a friend possessed of power to protect you? Our Friend possesses all power in Heaven and earth, and is able to save even to the uttermost! Do you wish for a wise friend? In Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Do you wish for a tender, compassionate friend? Christ is tenderness and compassion itself. Do you wish for a faithful, unchangeable friend? With Christ there is no variableness nor shadow of turning. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. His unchangeable love will ever prompt Him to make His people happy! His unerring wisdom will point out the best means to promote their happiness! His infinite power will enable Him to employ those means. In all these respects, our Beloved is more than any other beloved!
~Edward Payson!
_____________________________
Infected and Enfeebled
The Church is infected and enfeebled with worldliness.
"Who gave Himself for our sins, that He might deliver us from this present evil world" (Galatians 1:4).
"And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever" (1 John 2:17).
________________________
These Are the Idols of the Heart
SELF is the great idol which is the rival of God, and which divides with Him the worship of the human race. It is surprising and affecting to think how much SELF enters into almost all we do. Besides the grosser form of self-righteousness, which leads many unconverted people actually to depend upon their own doings for acceptance with God; how much of self-seeking, self-valuing, self-admiration, self-dependence, there is in may converted ones! How covertly do some seek their own praise in what they professionally do for God, and their fellow creatures! How eager are they for the admiration and applause of their fellow creatures! How much of self, yet how little suspected by themselves - is seen by One who knows them better than they know themselves, at the bottom of their most splendid services, donations, and most costly sacrifices!
In how many ways does self steal away the heart from God! How subtle are its workings, how concealed its movements, yet how extensive is its influence. How SELF perverts our motives, lowers our aims, corrupts our affections, and taints our best actions!
How much incense is burned - and how many sacrifices are offered on the altar of this idol!
"Little children, keep yourselves from idols!" (1 John 5:21).
~John Angell James~
Song of Songs 5:9
Does not our Friend as far excel all other friends as heaven exceeds earth, as eternity exceeds time, as the Creator surpasses His creatures?
See all the fullness of the Godhead - dwelling in One who is as meek and mild as a child. See His countenance beaming with ineffable glories - full of mingled majesty, condescension and love. Hear the soul-reviving invitations and gracious words which proceed from His lips. See that hand in which dwells everlasting strength - swaying the scepter of universal empire over all creatures and all worlds. See His arms expanded to receive and embrace returning sinners. While His heart, a bottomless, shoreless ocean of benevolence - overflows with tenderness, compassion, and love.
Such, O sinner, is our Beloved - and such is our Friend.
Will you not then embrace Him as your Friend? If you can be persuaded to do this - you will find that half, nay, that the thousandth part has not been told to you!
All the excellency, glory and beauty which is found in men or angels, flows from Christ - as a drop of water from the ocean, or a ray of light from the sun.
If, then, you supremely love the creature - can you wonder that Christians should love the Creator! Can you wonder that those who behold the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, should be sweetly drawn to Him by the cords of love, and lose their fondness for created glories? All that you love and admire and wish for in creatures, and indeed infinitely more - they find in Him!
Do you wish for a friend possessed of power to protect you? Our Friend possesses all power in Heaven and earth, and is able to save even to the uttermost! Do you wish for a wise friend? In Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Do you wish for a tender, compassionate friend? Christ is tenderness and compassion itself. Do you wish for a faithful, unchangeable friend? With Christ there is no variableness nor shadow of turning. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. His unchangeable love will ever prompt Him to make His people happy! His unerring wisdom will point out the best means to promote their happiness! His infinite power will enable Him to employ those means. In all these respects, our Beloved is more than any other beloved!
~Edward Payson!
_____________________________
Infected and Enfeebled
The Church is infected and enfeebled with worldliness.
"Who gave Himself for our sins, that He might deliver us from this present evil world" (Galatians 1:4).
"And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever" (1 John 2:17).
________________________
These Are the Idols of the Heart
SELF is the great idol which is the rival of God, and which divides with Him the worship of the human race. It is surprising and affecting to think how much SELF enters into almost all we do. Besides the grosser form of self-righteousness, which leads many unconverted people actually to depend upon their own doings for acceptance with God; how much of self-seeking, self-valuing, self-admiration, self-dependence, there is in may converted ones! How covertly do some seek their own praise in what they professionally do for God, and their fellow creatures! How eager are they for the admiration and applause of their fellow creatures! How much of self, yet how little suspected by themselves - is seen by One who knows them better than they know themselves, at the bottom of their most splendid services, donations, and most costly sacrifices!
In how many ways does self steal away the heart from God! How subtle are its workings, how concealed its movements, yet how extensive is its influence. How SELF perverts our motives, lowers our aims, corrupts our affections, and taints our best actions!
How much incense is burned - and how many sacrifices are offered on the altar of this idol!
"Little children, keep yourselves from idols!" (1 John 5:21).
~John Angell James~
What Is Christianity? (and others))
What Is Christianity? (and others)
"Christ is all!" (Colossians 3:11).
Christianity centers in the glorious Person of Christ!
The aim and purpose of every Scripture truth, is to fix the eye on Christ Himself! He is the Alpha and Omega of Christianity. From Him proceeds every ray of light. To Him all believing hearts are drawn. The Christian finds consolation and strength only in Him. Every motive for Christian living is from Him. The glorious privileges which Christians possess, can only be enjoyed from union and fellowship with Him. Their highest standard of duty is to follow His footsteps and to walk even as He walked.
Christianity, in fact, is Christ! It is Christ in the Scriptures; Christ in the manger; Christ on the Cross; Christ, the Risen One; Christ, the Ascended One; Christ, the Prophet, the Priest, the King; Christ in His glorious appearing, to be revealed from Heaven with His mighty angels!
All our trust, all our love, all our obedience, is due to Him!
The more the eye and the heart is turned fully towards Him - the more true and genuine is our Christianity.
Do not I love You, Oh my Lord?
Behold my heart and see,
And turn each cursed idol out,
That dares to rival Thee!
You know I love You, dearest Lord,
But oh, I long to soar,
Far from the sphere of mortal joys,
And learn to love You more!
(written by: Philip Doddridge)
~George Everard~
____________________________
Have You Received The Holy Spirit?
"Have you received the Holy Spirit?" (Acts 19:2).
What are the evidences of having received the Holy Spirit?
If we have received the indwelling Holy Spirit - the Lord Jesus stands high in our estimation - and our views of ourselves are very humbling. And just in proportion to the power and depth of the Spirit's work - will be our conceptions of the glory, grandeur, and excellency of the Saviour; and our discoveries of the depravity, pollution, weakness, and misery of our own hearts.
If, therefore, we have heart affecting views of the glory of Christ and His finished work - and if we lie low in the dust under a sense of our weakness and worthlessness, so that we are brought to depend wholly on Christ, and on Christ alone - we have surely received the Holy Spirit.
Also, if we have received the Holy Spirit - there is in us a deep-rooted, abiding hatred to sin - all sin, especially sin in ourselves. What was once our darling sin, has become the object of our hatred - and against that sin we set a double guard. For nothing do we sigh so often, for nothing do we desire so ardently - as holiness. The Holy Spirit always sets the whole soul against sin - and longing for perfect holiness.
True, our old desires toward sin will sometimes revive - but then we loath ourselves on account of it, mourn over it, and confess it before God. The cry of the soul is, "Holiness, Lord, more holiness! Deep penetrating, all-pervading holiness!"
If we hate sin everywhere, all sin, and especially the sin that dwells in us; and if we love holiness, admire holiness, pray for holiness, pant for holiness, and strive for holiness - then there is no doubt that we have received the Holy Spirit.
Once more, if we have received the Holy Spirit - then we are ruled by God's Word; we do not follow custom, or allow our desires or prejudices to dictate our course. In all times of difficulty, when in any perplexity, something seems to say within us, "To the law and to the testimony," and to the precepts of the New Testament, we turn.
The Word of Christ is the law of the true believer. Everything short of it, or beyond it, or beside it, or contrary to it - is sin! Only what Jesus commands, all that Jesus commands, and because Jesus commands," is the language of the soul.
And while we thus make the Word of Jesus our rule - we deny ourselves. We deny our own wills, our own passions, our own desires, our likes and dislikes. We are before Him, as He was before His Father, when He cried out, "Not My will - but may Your will be done." If, then, we make the Word of God our guide, and habitually deny ourselves for Christ's sake - we may rest assured, that we have received the Holy Spirit.
"Have you received the Holy Spirit?" Remember, "If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ - do dose not belong to Him!" (Romans 8:9).
~James Smith~
_____________________________
"The more I see of Jesus, the more He opens to me His loving heart, the deeper is my sorrow for sin. I lie down in the dust of His feet closer than ever I did before. I can truly say I abhor myself in dust and ashes before Him. My heart seems ready to melt into contrition in view of the ten thousand thousands of sins, willful and aggravating, that I have committed against Him, who loved me with an everlasting love, and with loving kindness drew me to Himself."
~Mary Winslow~
"Christ is all!" (Colossians 3:11).
Christianity centers in the glorious Person of Christ!
The aim and purpose of every Scripture truth, is to fix the eye on Christ Himself! He is the Alpha and Omega of Christianity. From Him proceeds every ray of light. To Him all believing hearts are drawn. The Christian finds consolation and strength only in Him. Every motive for Christian living is from Him. The glorious privileges which Christians possess, can only be enjoyed from union and fellowship with Him. Their highest standard of duty is to follow His footsteps and to walk even as He walked.
Christianity, in fact, is Christ! It is Christ in the Scriptures; Christ in the manger; Christ on the Cross; Christ, the Risen One; Christ, the Ascended One; Christ, the Prophet, the Priest, the King; Christ in His glorious appearing, to be revealed from Heaven with His mighty angels!
All our trust, all our love, all our obedience, is due to Him!
The more the eye and the heart is turned fully towards Him - the more true and genuine is our Christianity.
Do not I love You, Oh my Lord?
Behold my heart and see,
And turn each cursed idol out,
That dares to rival Thee!
You know I love You, dearest Lord,
But oh, I long to soar,
Far from the sphere of mortal joys,
And learn to love You more!
(written by: Philip Doddridge)
~George Everard~
____________________________
Have You Received The Holy Spirit?
"Have you received the Holy Spirit?" (Acts 19:2).
What are the evidences of having received the Holy Spirit?
If we have received the indwelling Holy Spirit - the Lord Jesus stands high in our estimation - and our views of ourselves are very humbling. And just in proportion to the power and depth of the Spirit's work - will be our conceptions of the glory, grandeur, and excellency of the Saviour; and our discoveries of the depravity, pollution, weakness, and misery of our own hearts.
If, therefore, we have heart affecting views of the glory of Christ and His finished work - and if we lie low in the dust under a sense of our weakness and worthlessness, so that we are brought to depend wholly on Christ, and on Christ alone - we have surely received the Holy Spirit.
Also, if we have received the Holy Spirit - there is in us a deep-rooted, abiding hatred to sin - all sin, especially sin in ourselves. What was once our darling sin, has become the object of our hatred - and against that sin we set a double guard. For nothing do we sigh so often, for nothing do we desire so ardently - as holiness. The Holy Spirit always sets the whole soul against sin - and longing for perfect holiness.
True, our old desires toward sin will sometimes revive - but then we loath ourselves on account of it, mourn over it, and confess it before God. The cry of the soul is, "Holiness, Lord, more holiness! Deep penetrating, all-pervading holiness!"
If we hate sin everywhere, all sin, and especially the sin that dwells in us; and if we love holiness, admire holiness, pray for holiness, pant for holiness, and strive for holiness - then there is no doubt that we have received the Holy Spirit.
Once more, if we have received the Holy Spirit - then we are ruled by God's Word; we do not follow custom, or allow our desires or prejudices to dictate our course. In all times of difficulty, when in any perplexity, something seems to say within us, "To the law and to the testimony," and to the precepts of the New Testament, we turn.
The Word of Christ is the law of the true believer. Everything short of it, or beyond it, or beside it, or contrary to it - is sin! Only what Jesus commands, all that Jesus commands, and because Jesus commands," is the language of the soul.
And while we thus make the Word of Jesus our rule - we deny ourselves. We deny our own wills, our own passions, our own desires, our likes and dislikes. We are before Him, as He was before His Father, when He cried out, "Not My will - but may Your will be done." If, then, we make the Word of God our guide, and habitually deny ourselves for Christ's sake - we may rest assured, that we have received the Holy Spirit.
"Have you received the Holy Spirit?" Remember, "If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ - do dose not belong to Him!" (Romans 8:9).
~James Smith~
_____________________________
"The more I see of Jesus, the more He opens to me His loving heart, the deeper is my sorrow for sin. I lie down in the dust of His feet closer than ever I did before. I can truly say I abhor myself in dust and ashes before Him. My heart seems ready to melt into contrition in view of the ten thousand thousands of sins, willful and aggravating, that I have committed against Him, who loved me with an everlasting love, and with loving kindness drew me to Himself."
~Mary Winslow~
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