 |
| The Nampy Pamby Almost Good News [continued] Oh, friends! will you get this baptism of love! Then you will, like the Apostles, be willing to push your limbs into a basket, and so be let down by the wall, if need be, or suffer shipwreck, hunger, peril, nakedness, fire, or sword, or even go to the block itself, if thereby you may extend His Kingdom and win souls for whom He shed His Blood. The Lord fill us with this love and baptize us with this fire, and then the Gospel will arise and become glorious in the earth, and men will believe in us, and in it. They will feel its power, and they will go down under it by thousands, and, by the grace of God, they SHALL. Acts 26: 16,� But rise, and stand upon thy feet: for I have appeared unto thee for this purpose, to make you a minister and a witness unto whom now I send thee, to open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive omitting, REMOVAL of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified, recreated holy, pure and set aside by faith that is in Me [His faith].� 'Oh!' people say, 'it is good news.' Yes, thank God, it is good news, indeed--news without which we must all have been lost. It is the news of the free, measureless, undeserved, reconciling mercy of God, offered to me through the vicarious, infinite, glorious sacrifice of His Son, to the end that I may BE DELIVERED FROM SIN [not to sin] here and from Hell hereafter!! Take the illustration of the Prodigal Son. The mischief was all in him--not in his father. The father loved him before he went away, and the father loved him afterwards.The father's benevolent heart yearned over him all the time he was away, and many a time, perchance, he went to the roof of his house to look over the expanse of country over which the rebellious lad had gone and wondered w hether he would ever come back. The father's heart was yearning over him all the time. How was it that he could not be reinstated in the father's love and in the family privileges? Because there needed a change of heart-a change of mind in HIM. If he had come back to the old homestead with the same rebellious spirit in him, the same desire to be free from the father's oversight, the same unwillingness to be put under the FATHER's DOMINION and DISCIPLINE, he would still have been a rebel and a prodigal. In the very nature of the case, until there was the necessary change, a wise and righteous father could not pardon him; he must insist, though he loves him dearly, upon a certain change of mind before he can consistently pardon him. Just as the father might not pardon the prodigal, irrespective of the prodigal's state of mind and heart, so neither can God pardon the sinner irrespective of the state of his mind and heart. Having, by the Holy Ghost, made us realize our desperate condition, then comes the Gospel to meet us just where we are, on condition that we abandon our evil ways, and do the works meet for repentance, which we are able to do by the power of the Holy Spirit, as well as to lay down the weapons of our rebellion and accept of Christ, put our neck under His yoke, and pledge ourselves in heart to FOLLOW HIM ALL THE DAYS OF OUR LIFE. These are the conditions involved. The heart of the rebel is won back to its Lord, and the indispensable change has taken place in the being himself. He has come back to God. His eyes are opened to see the evil of sin, and the desperate state he is in. Tired of himself, and tired of his evil ways, as the Prodigal was of the swine yard, he arises, leaves them, and goes to his father. You will say, 'If we are able to abandon our evil courses, and lay down the weapons of rebellion, is that not saving ourselves?' No, dear friends; it is altogether different. You see it is the indispensable condition of Salvation in every one of the passages we read, and in many others--that we abandon our evil ways. As John 1: 12 states, �to as many received Him, to them He gave power to become the children of GOD, to them that believe on His name/nature.� God requires me to abandon all that I CAN, as a condition of Salvation, and then, when He saves, He will give me power to abandon all that I could; not before. The Prodigal had to come away from the swine yard, the filth, and the husks, before he got into the father's house, and sat down at the father's feast, but when he had done so, then the father said, 'Come in,' and he brought the best robe and put it on him, and killed the fatted calf, and put the ring of forgiveness upon his hand. Hence, as the old divines used to put it, 'You must wait for the Lord in the path of His ordinances,' the path of obedience, as far as is possible to you. And is there any other way? Can the drunkard wait for Him while he abides at his cup? Can the thief wait for Him while he continues in his diabolical trade? Can any man indulging in absolute open sin find the Lord? Must he not, as the Savior says, cut off that right hand, and pluck out that right eye? He never can cleanse his guilt, but he CAN cut off his hand, and when he does that, then the Holy Spirit will come in and apply the Blood, and do the cleansing. I must be MADE RIGHT, as well as treated as if I were right. I must be changed [sancrified ICor.6:11] as well as justified. This is the Gospel put as clearly in our text as it could be, and also the Epistles written by the Apostle Paul, the great expounder of the doctrine of justification by faith, but not without sanctification, made holy and set aside, as it only culminates in this order, 1Cor. 6:11 �But you were washed, you were set aside holy, you were justified, made innocent in the name [nature] of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of Holiness. [1Cor. 6:11] Open their eyes'--that is the first thing. Oh! How my soul has often shrunk and wept under the sense of the awful responsibility this brings upon us Christians. The world is asleep. Yes, friends, your relations, your neighbors-they are asleep. They are preoccupied. They are full of the world, and the things of the world. They will not think--they will not see--they will not look into the Word of Life. Your responsibility comes here tenfold. Go AND WAKE THEM! You CAN DO IT, if you have the Holy Ghost in you! Jesus Christ set Paul to do this, and Paul did it. He says, 'Knowing, therefore, the terror of the Lord, we persuade men.' His was no meek and mild putting of the truth, and leaving people to do as they liked. 'Knowing, therefore, the TERROR of the Lord, we PERSUADE men, because we thus judge that if one died for all, then were all dead'; and, Oh! What success the Lord gave him in his desperate enterprise. What multitudes did he persuade, and succeed in turning round from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God! The above was, in part, written by, Catherine Booth, in �Aggressive Christianity.� |
 |
 |
 |