The Heart-Cry of JesusRees, Byron J. (Byron Johnson)
Religion
The Heart-Cry of Jesus
Rees, Byron J. (Byron Johnson)
Pilgrim Holiness Church -- Controversial literature; Sanctification
Bishop Roberts has put the matter of success very succinctly: "If the
lawyer must win his case and the doctor cure his patient in order to be
successful, the minister and worker must save souls if they in their
calling are to be said to be successful." But alas, saving souls is
precisely what we are not doing. Thank God! there is here and there a
man who stands out as a soul-saver. But the average minister is not
distinguished for revivalism so much as proficiency in making a church
social a "blooming success."
FALLEN SAMSONS.
We all want to seem to succeed. We shun and dread the appearance of
failure. When a church begins to rot instead of grow it is natural for
us to do our utmost to find out some way of excusing the retrogression
without admitting our failure to reach men with the gospel. There are
evangelists, who in the palmy days of their power had wonderful,
heaven-gladdening revivals, who have ceased to wield "the sword of the
Lord and of Gideon," and, in order to cover their spiritual nakedness,
are forced to resort to finger-raising, card-signing methods for
stuffing and expanding "the big revival." There is no more sobbing, no
more desperate praying, no more shouting; all is "decent and in order,"
as well it may be, for all is dead.
QUESTION OF EVANGELISM.
Honor to soul-saving! Show us the man who wins men to our Master, that
we may clasp his hand and look into his face. Right here hangs all the
discussion about evangelism. If the evangelist gets men soundly and
scripturally converted and sanctified, let us bid him Godspeed! If he
only amuses them and deals in paltry three-cent sensationalism, away
with more of the same sort of stuff which we already have in so many
pastors!
THE DIVINE RECIPE.
One thing is certain: God intends success and only success for His
people. If, as His children, we fail, it must be because we have not
followed the divine recipe for power and accomplishment. It was because
the one hundred and twenty obeyed Christ and tarried at Jerusalem that
God used the early Church to whip the Roman Empire.
"HOW TO SUCCEED"
"How to Succeed," used as the title for a book, will make any book
sell, though it be as dry as a patent-office report. People want to
know how to succeed in the world. How strange then that ministers and
churches who are brilliant and conspicuous failures should shun the
preaching of Pentecost--the one cure for failure and the sole guarantee
of success.
EMPTY COMFORT.
How many times some of us have sighed over our inefficiency! How
frequently, in default of apparent results, we have been forced to
console ourselves with the thought that we are "sowing seed" and that
there will be an abundant harvest at no distant date! Thank God! there
is success for us all. Pentecost will give it to us.
JOHN THE BAPTIST.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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