01.10. The Delay of the Gospel
Chapter 10 THE DELAY OF THE GOSPEL.
It seems very strange to some that after nearly twenty centuries Christianity has not yet taken the world for God. They reason that it is the truth; has the power of an omnipotent being to enforce it on mind and conscience; while the same infinite author possesses a multitude of physical agencies by which He could defend His own, and overwhelm His adversaries. And yet here, after nearly two thousand years have passed away, Christianity is still struggling for victory, while hundreds of millions have never heard the name of Christ, and Mohammedanism, which sprang up centuries later, has more than doubled the numbers of our holy religion, and did it in several hundred years. The effect on many in the world, in view of these things, is to awaken doubt as to the genuineness of the Christian religion. While with many careless thinkers in the church itself, there is an equally dishonoring unbelief or question as to the power of Christianity through the Holy Ghost to win the battle and bring the world back to God.
Over against this downright infidelity in and out of the church, we have the statement of the Bible of a final worldwide conquest. We have also a declaration concerning the Saviour’s mind about the long-drawn out war, where the Scripture affirms that He will not faint nor be discouraged until victory is conclusive and eternal. Also the vivid portrayal of His perfect assurance as to the complete triumph of His cause, in the words that the Heavens receive Him until the restitution of all things. and that He has sat down on His throne in the heavens, there to remain until all His enemies shall be made his footstool.
These two verses alone would convince the thoughtful, well-balanced mind that Christianity is all right; that "Christ has all power in Heaven and earth;" and that the Holy Ghost in the third and last dispensation is not and will not be defeated. The apparent slowness of the Christian religion to capture the world and redeem the race from sin and the power of the devil can be accounted for from a number of reasons.
One cause is discernible in the character of the Gospel itself.
Unlike the compromises of earthly religions; different from the easy demands, as well as promises of a sensuous paradise made by the Koran of Moslemism; the Gospel strikes plainly at all and every sin, insists on the destruction of every heart and life idol, the perfect cleansing of the soul, the complete submission of the will to God, and the being filled and led continually by the Spirit of God.
Cannot the most thoughtless see the difference on the multitude between the preaching of the Gospel over against the teaching of the Koran? The first insisting on the crucifixion and death of the carnal mind, and after that the proper subjugation of the life to God, while the latter permits sin to remain in the present life and promises a fleshly enjoyment in a world to come. Who wonders that Christianity crept as to numbers while Mohammedanism bounded at once up into the five and six hundred million figures. The truth of this statement finds confirmation in our midst by contrasting the reports of evangelists who preach a superficial gospel, with the account given of a meeting by men who went to the bottom of the sin question, showed the desperate wickedness of the heart, and demanded a perfect consecration of all to God, faith in the Blood alone, and a waiting and dying out at the altar until the Fire fell from Heaven. In these days it is rare for these latter named workers to count over forty or fifty souls who really get through in a ten days’ meeting; but when Bible terms are dropped by some preachers, the sin question glanced at, the consecration exacted only partial, while the tarrying at the altar scarcely exceeds ten minutes, and men full of inbred sin are called on to pray for such seekers -- who wonders that the members sent out from the battlefield (battlefield!) sweep easily from two to five hundred? It is the character of the true Gospel to offend. To substitute it with a vitiated, emasculated, eviscerated, attenuated Religion, is to have crowded houses, hundreds joining something, hundreds standing in the aisle, hundreds not able to get in, while the "oldest inhabitant" (who is both blind and deaf) says he has never seen nor heard for years anything to equal that same meeting. The same principle and rule applied to the nations shows the difference between Christianity and Moslemism as to numbers. A second explanation of the apparent slowness of gospel progress is to be found in the freedom of man’s moral nature.
There can be no compulsion in the matter of a human being’s salvation. He is to be reasoned with, entreated, conscience appealed to, but cannot be coerced. Physical forces cannot and do not reach the case. A person may be compelled to an outward submission by muscular force, while the heart and soul is in complete rebellion to the so-called subduer. God wants no such sacrifice and service as this. It must be free and voluntary. The Saviour does not propose to win the nations to His side by the use of a Mahomet’s sword, or as Spain converted Mexico and Peru with the spear, arrow and gun. He has no idea of corralling or herding the race into heaven by a mere physical omnipotence. Heaven is a condition as well as locality, and men must be changed to its likeness of spirit and character, or it would be torment to those who are dragged or otherwise forced in. The fact is that the nature of man, and the character of the conflict going on, utterly forbids the use of material force to obtain victory for the truth. So when men marvel at the slow advance of a religion they know to be true and divine, and say God is omnipotent, and ask why does He not end this long struggle against sin, the devil and an ungodly world by floods, pestilences, tempests of fire, earthquakes and cyclones, they speak as one of the foolish ones. The battle cannot be settled this way, a moral nature cannot be changed by simple physical might.
According to the papers, quite recently, wealthy gentleman who had been pursuing a runaway son over the country found him eating at a restaurant table in company with an actress. He took the young man of twenty by the ear, he himself being a Jeffries in stature and strength, and led him out of the place to the depot close by, and, so to speak, policed him home. He might have added crime to his lack of humanity and true wisdom, and killed his son; but the point we make is that in either case there would have been no spiritual or moral change in the youth.
If this would be the best method, God has no lack of dynamic forces by which we could be hurled out of the theater into a pew of the church, or caught by the neck and flung up towards Heaven. Yet just as the youth we have spoken about now doubtless hates the being who put public shame on him and will never rest until he leaves his home forever; so the man physically dragged from an opera box to a church seat remains the same in nature, while if shot by a tremendous force of nature towards the skies, and even inside the gates of pearl, there would be another law and power at work which would pull him out and back and land him away down in the kind of world for which he was morally fitted. And it came to pass, said Luke, that Judas after his death went unto his own place.
Such being the moral freedom of man, who needs to wonder that Christianity does not sweep immediately on to perfect victory over all the earth? The triumph of Christ is in the change of heart, cleansing of soul, submission of the free will to God, and the holy life which follows. Evidently it is much easier to secure joiners to a church, get people to be baptized with water, to hold up their hands and say they want to meet their mother in Heaven, "desire a better experience," etc., etc., than to obtain genuine followers of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
It is this freedom that He has to confront and deal with, and which causes the years to stretch out in the individual case, and the centuries to roll by in the struggle with the world, while victory in the complete sense still has not been obtained. A third reason for the seeming Gospel delay or failure is found in the fact that the church has lost the baptism with the Holy Ghost.
Christ distinctly taught that His followers must have this blessing in order to carry victory everywhere and brings the nations to God. Nothing could be more specific in His teachings than this, and so He "commanded" them that they should tarry in Jerusalem until this marvellous purifying and empowering grace should be obtained. After that He said you will be witnesses for Me unto the uttermost part of the earth. He did not tell them to take the blessing by faith and go, but to "TARRY" until they got it. When some of the disciples, with their eyes and thoughts fixed on the time that he should return, asked when that coming would be; great was the rebuke they received and He answered: "It is not for you to know the times and seasons -- but ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you." In other words, the great essential thing was the Baptism with the Holy Ghost. That was to enable them to be witnesses for Him; that would sweep them to the uttermost part of the earth, while it also gave them victory in Judea and Samaria; and it was that which would bring the times and seasons all right, and the world itself back to God.
Alas for it that the church as a whole has lost this conquering grace and irresistible blessing, which brought three thousand souls to God the first morning the disciples obtained it. A blessing in the power of which they saw five thousand men saved the next day. And in the might and force of this great culminating, crowning work of grace Christianity swept to the ends of the earth and bade fair to bring universal victory to the Son of God in the first two centuries. But it was lost. And in the third century the church became so popular that an emperor joined it. Still later the devil applied for membership. And then the world got in! and the Holy Dove took flight into the skies. Would that the faithful who are left today would forget sinners for a while, as did the one hundred and twenty, and pull away from the sluggard stay-at-home "three hundred and eighty" and go at once to the Upper Room. And there Tarry! until the fire fell and they would all be filled with the Holy Ghost.
Then would come times and seasons indeed! The glory would pour out of the Upper Room! The streets would be filled with converts! And then we would begin to see the nations turn to God and His Christ, the multitudes would flock to the church as doves to the windows, and the vision of Ezekiel in regard to the Holy Waters would be fulfilled in the sight of a world submerged with the knowledge and grace of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.
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