Moody's Anecdotes And Illustrations: Related in his Revival Work by the Great EvangelistMoody, Dwight Lyman
Religion
Moody's Anecdotes And Illustrations: Related in his Revival Work by the Great Evangelist
Moody, Dwight Lyman
Christian life -- Fiction; Homiletical illustrations
A few years ago, I was going away to preach one Sunday morning, when a
young man drove up in front of us. He had an aged woman with him. "Who
is that young man?" I asked. "Do you see that beautiful meadow?" said my
friend, "and that land there with the house upon it?" "Yes" "His father
drank that all up," said he. Then he went on to tell me all about him.
His father was a great drunkard, squandered his property, died, and left
his wife in the poor-house. "And that young man," he said, "is one of
the finest young men I ever knew. He has toiled hard and earned money,
and bought back the land; he has taken his mother out of the poor-house,
and now he is taking her to church." I thought, that is an illustration
for me. The first Adam in Eden sold us for naught, but the Messiah, the
second Adam, came and bought us back again. The first Adam brought us to
the poor-house, as it were; the second Adam makes us kings and priests
unto God. That is redemption. We get in Christ all that Adam lost, and
more. Men look on the blood of Christ with scorn and contempt, but the
time is coming when the blood of Christ will be worth more than all the
kingdoms of the world.
All Right or all Wrong.
I remember when in the old country a young man came to me--a
minister--and said he wanted to talk with me. He said to me: "Mr. Moody,
you are either all right and I am all wrong, or else I am right, and you
are all wrong." "Well, sir," said I, "You have the advantage of me. You
have heard me preach, and you know what doctrines I hold, whereas I have
not heard you, and don't know what you preach." "Well," said he, "the
difference between your preaching and mine is that you make out that
salvation is got by Christ's death, and I make out that it is attained
by His life." "Now, what do you do with the passages bearing upon the
death?" and I quoted the passages, "Without the shedding of blood there
is no remission," and "He Himself bore our own sins by His own body on
the tree," and asked him what he did with them, for instance. "Never
preach them at all." I quoted a number of passages more, and he gave me
the same answer. "Well, what do you preach?" I finally asked. "Moral
essays," he replied. Said I, "Did you ever know anybody to be saved by
that kind of thing, did you ever convert anybody by them?" "I never
aimed at that kind of conversion; I meant to get men to heaven by
culture--by refinement." "Well," said I, "If I didn't preach those
texts, and only preached culture, the whole thing would be a sham." "And
it is a sham to me," was his reply. I tell you the moment a man breaks
away from this doctrine of blood, religion becomes a sham, because the
whole teaching of this book is of one story, and this is, that Christ
came into the world and died for our sins.
The Fettered Bird Freed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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