04 More experiences

04. More experiences Autobigraphy - James H. Oliphant

CHAPTER IV.

I attended Indian Creek church fourteen years, a distance of seventeen miles on horseback. I missed nine meetings during the fourteen years. About the same length of time I served Friendship church, and for a like period I attended Guthrie’s Creek church, thirty-five miles away, and Little Flock and Spring Creek, each about twelve miles away, and Plum Creek and Smyrna, both thirty-five miles away. I did all this attending churches on horseback for twenty years. When I think of all that toil and travel I wonder that I am yet alive. The churches were weak in numbers, and cold, when I undertook the task. But our associations everywhere stood with us, and the elders visited us and strengthened us, and we had many additions in all the churches. My brothers, Richard and Peter T., both were ordained and served the churches. Also Solomon Inman and Thomas Mitchell. A period of prosperity was given to White River association. The churches were not well instructed in the doctrine. Some of the most popular elders had imbibed the Fuller view that the atonement was general, but special in its application, sufficient for all the race, but designed for the elect only. My father had become confused on this point, and I studied this point closely. He would visit me and talk it over often and with tears. In studying it, it came to me that the sufficiency of the atonement to save anyone lies in the fact that Christ bore his sins. "The iniquity of us all was laid upon Him." "He bare our sins in His own body." "By His knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many, for He shall bear their sins." I found a great many texts like the above, and it was plain to me that our sins were laid on him.

"My soul looks back to see The burden Thou didst bear, While hanging on the tree, And hopes her guilt was there."

I went to father’s a cold winter day and found him mending shoes. I told him I thought that Christ did not merely bear the penalty due sin, but the sin itself. I quoted to him the above texts and others. He objected to the idea. Then I proposed to him that we read the Bible to see whether Christ bore the sins of men or the penalty only. Father saw that if He bore the sin itself and "put it away" "by the sacrifice of Himself" the Fuller view is wrong, and the sufficiency of the atonement to save any sinner lies in the fact that He bore his sins. It was apparent that the death and sufferings of Christ for our sins would certainly result in salvation. Father saw the force in what I said, and agreed that we would try to find out whether He bore the sins of His people or the penalty only. Mother said to him, "Your father held that Christ bore our sins," and quoted the words, "Dear, dying Lamb, Thy precious blood Shall never lose its power, ’Till all the ransomed church of God Be saved to sin no more."

I went home and studied this point with care, and father did also. When we next met he was convinced that my view was right, that Christ did bear the sins of His people and that the atonement and salvation are the same in extent. "He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him freely give us all things?" "He died for our sins that He might deliver us from this present evil world." A great many texts unite the atonement and salvation together as cause and effect in such way as to leave no room to talk of a sufficiency in the atonement to save any only on the ground that Christ bore their sins, and this results in more than a sufficiency, it results in a certain salvation. Father became settled in his views on the subject and remained so until death.