Quiet Talks with World WinnersGordon, S. D. (Samuel Dickey)
Religion
Quiet Talks with World Winners
Gordon, S. D. (Samuel Dickey)
Christian life
A like difference is showing itself between the results there and here.
Here they are scantier, and gotten with great difficulty; there much
larger, and with greater ease. There the door is wide-open, and people
crowding in; here there is a feeling that the door is closing, surely and
not slowly people turn away elsewhere. There has come to be an unusual
proportion of pickles and salads and other relishes served with every
spreading of the Gospel meal here. There, just plain unbuttered bread is
eagerly and thankfully sought for. They are hungry. And their hunger is a
wide-open door to us. We need the exercise of foreign travel, and a great
deal of it, to bring back our zest.
<u>"Inasmuch."</u>
May I speak very softly of another side of this knocking at our door?
<i>Who</i> is it that is knocking? Aye, <i>Who</i>?
Do you remember Jesus' words in Matthew, chapter twenty-five? He is
speaking of the settling-up time that is to come at the close of things.
And He does something there that is startling. He <i>identifies Himself</i>
with the hungry and cold and poor. That is, He puts Himself in their
place. They are reckoned as though they were He. He says that when they
asked for some food and warm clothes <i>it was really Himself asking for
food and warmth!</i> We have been really dealing with Him when we have met
these needy ones. The one test question He makes for all is this--What did
you do for these hungry people? Because what you did, or didn't do for
them, was done or refused to <i>Me</i>. Jesus comes in the guise of the needy.
Who is it knocking at our door so loudly to-day?
I suppose if you could think of Jesus actually coming to-day to New York,
the human Jesus I mean, coming as a man just as He came to Jerusalem, but
known to us as He is now--I suppose there is hardly a door that would not
open to Him. He might not be any better understood in New York than He was
in Jerusalem, but the doors of the wealthy would quickly open to Him. I
mean the Christian wealthy, the Church wealthy; other doors, too, no
doubt, but these surely. He would have a great welcome.
And I suppose, too, that if in some wealthy home on Fifth Avenue or
Madison Avenue He were to ask His host to give some large sum, a million
dollars or ten millions, for sending the Gospel to China or Japan His
request would likely be granted. It seems to me rather probable that it
would. Well, how can it be put plainly enough that He does come to our
doors, rich, and less rich, and poor. He's at the front door now, knocking
and asking our help.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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