01.25. Preaching the Great Instrumentality of Salvation

Chapter 25 .PREACHING THE GREAT INSTRUMENTALITY OF SALVATION.

God has ordained preaching as the great potential instrumentality of recovering the world. The Bible declares that it has pleased God to save the world by the foolishness of preaching. It does not say foolish preaching, but the foolishness of preaching. That is, in the judgment and according to the wisdom of this planet God’s plan of sending men to instruct, warn, rebuke, exhort and preach that the race may be saved and sanctified, looks like a silly, senseless undertaking and is a great loss of time, talent, labor and money. No one in his senses would underrate the necessity, value and power of prayer, but we should none the less properly relate the means of grace to each other, and not contradict God who has exalted preaching to the first rank, and declares it is His chosen method, the Sword of His right hand for producing conviction, moving men, drawing them to the point of surrender and consecration, and so obtaining pardon and holiness.

Let the reader recall the revivals of the present and past and see if it was not the preaching which drew the crowd, cut down into hearts, illumined the mind, convinced the understanding, swept people to the altar and actually started the praying.

It is because of the high honor and responsible office God has given to preaching, that we so jealously notice every encroachment upon it, and cry out against every slur and indignity put upon it.

It is God’s method of saving the world, and who could doubt for an instant what a tremendous revival, what a tide of salvation would sweep the entire nation and continent if right preaching could be poured forth from every pulpit in the land. So well does the nevil know of this power that his constant attack is on the pulpit in some way. The assaults are many and various, and this very persistency of evil movements against preacher and preaching is alone sufficient to impress most profoundly and anxiously every thoughtful mind.

One attack is to put men in the pulpit who were never called by the Holy Ghost to declare the Gospel. No man should take this honor upon himself, Paul states, except he who is called to it as Aaron was to his ministry. All men then thus entering the sacred desk come not in by the door, but the Saviour says climbed in some other way, and He adds, are thieves and robbers. Such men e# existed in His day; abounded in Wesley’s time; and still are to be met in great numbers in the Established Church of England. Not a few are in our own so-called evangelical churches.

Vanderbilt University is putting a lot of such unconverted and uncalled men into the Southern Methodist ministry as the years roll by.

All such pulpit occupiers are interlopers, and Christ brands them thieves and robbers, God cannot bless them. Nor can they without the Holy Spirit preach truly and really and properly the book of books given us by the Holy Ghost. So we see how the Word of God can be nullified and actually prevented by a band of hirelings as the Saviour called them, men who without the spirit and without His call to wield the Sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, certainly cannot do so. And here again comes a trouble; that the world has been taught to regard their little sermonettes, essays, and brief literary talks as preaching. Who wonders at men’s contempt for such ministrations when spiritual and supernatural results never appear? A second attack on preaching is made by the adversary in the effort to get the preacher to sin and backslide so that he will not have the heart to deliver the whole Word, and have no fire, energy or unction to preach any part of it.

It is needless to say that nothing ever happens in the line of conviction and salvation in such congregations and churches. There are no doubt, earnest prayers going up from the pew, but the pulpit gun, the gospel cannon which God has selected and brought forth to win the battle is silent, and so the altar is empty, the audience listless and dead, and Hell scores another victory in shutting off the message which alone could win the day. A third attack on preaching is seen in cutting God’s true preacher down in the time that should be given him in public worship. Fully three-quarters of the hour that should be devoted to the Gospel message is relegated to or has been usurped by a befeathered, beribboned, bejeweled, bepowdered and begiggling choir who solo and duet, and triet and quaver and semi-quaver and demi-semi-quaver, and hemidemisemiquaver, and all that time worse than nothing has been presented to the eyes, ears and hearts of the people.

There are good men in the pastorate today who are thus shut off and out. Some protest in vain, some give up in despair. Both alike know that nothing can be done in a mere handbreadth of time, and above all, when the Holy Ghost plan has been ignored, and the Word of God discounted, belittled, set aside and regarded as a nuisance to be endured for a quarter of an hour, and never over thirty minutes. A fourth attack on preaching is made by a deliberate, premeditated effort on the part of certain leaders (not preachers) and some singers to arouse a storm of enthusiasm, and create a wave of religious excitement and feeling which runs so high that handling the Word becomes impossible. No one doubts a moment, the right of the Holy Ghost to come upon a meeting, change its course, stop the sermon or do anything else He sees fit to do. Though we must affirm that the Spirit is not likely, when He has right preaching and true preachers on hand, to set aside the very instrument He has chosen to bring conviction and salvation to the people. We certainly would not be surprised if He headed off some kind of so-called preaching, but hardly that which pleases Him and which He desires the people to hear.

Moreover, all grant that the Spirit has a right to fall on true messages and send such tides of glory over the congregation that God alone is heard, felt and thought about. The objection urged is against the deliberate, whooped-up excitement which as all who are experienced in large religious gatherings well know can easily be done, and after all nothing be done. There are excitable natures to begin with, and emotional individuals, and also good people who are set like hairtriggers. All that is needed is a hymn like "Meet Me There" and "I Saw the Moonlight on My Mother’s Grave," a few whoops, a jump or two, and the whole thing is off on natural, sympathetic and even fleshly lines, and once more the Word of God has been prevented from being delivered.

It is noticeable by the most spiritual and experienced of evangelists that when the "rapture" which was "worked up" and did not "fall suddenly from the skies," is over, and used up; that it leaves the meeting in a collapsed and worse condition. The sermon seems to fall flat, the audience appears to be switched off from the main line, and the workers are "wind blown." They cannot do much in the battle around the altar, as they exhausted themselves on a skirmish before the real conflict began. They are like the man who ran an hundred yards to jump a ditch, but when he reached it he was so tired that he could not jump at all and had to sit down and rest. So deeply impressed are some evangelists with this mistake that they are careful to keep the opening of each meeting in their own hands, select hymns of solemn, convicting power, and so head off the hoop-la element, that would ignore preparatory conditions, would make the spiritual clock hit twelve when it is not yet nine o’clock, and actually get ahead of God. While there are singers who so deliberately try to work up this religious furor and evanescent gush that they have lost scores of good calls from these who love them personally, but deplore their method of discounting, setting aside and silencing the Word of God, which is God’s chosen instrument to win the Gospel battle.

There are numerous other attacks made on the Word in the form of "The Tongue Movement ;" overdrawn Testimony Meetings in our camps; and other mistaken as well as deplorable things which virtually sheath the Sword of the Spirit in a scabbard and substitutes lectures, social gatherings and lollypop in general for the mighty truth of God which He said should be preached with the Holy Ghost sent down from Heaven.

We honor and observe every means of grace, but when we see God placing preaching (real, true preaching) at the head of the line, and hear Him declaring that it is His chosen and ordained instrument and agency of spreading truth and salvation over the world, we can but view with suspicion anything, person or movement which discounts, belittles, or would in any way set it aside.

Christ’s preaching brought the disciples to the Upper Room to obtain the Baptism with the Holy Ghost. Peter’s preaching, not his prayers, led three thousand souls to God on the morning of Pentecost. The disciples after Herod’s persecution "went everywhere preaching the Gospel," and saw marvellous results. Luther’s preaching moved Europe and sent a revival wave in every direction. Wesley’s and Whitefield’s preaching swept England and America with a tide of salvation. And Holiness preaching is securing victory for Christ and Full Salvation all over the land. No wonder that Asbury said to his preachers, preach holiness in every sermon. No wonder that pastors and evangelists backslide who cease to declare and urge this great salvation of God. No wonder the fire of Heaven falls when its true follower wields the Sword of the Spirit and holds up an uttermost salvation to all through the Blood of the Son of God. That the will of God might be done, and the human race redeemed, it would be well indeed if the harangue of unconverted men; and the sermonizing of Spirit-forsaken men; and lecturing; and the unintelligible bawling and squalling of worldly choirs; and whooped up enthusiasm; and every other sham and counterfeit, introduced by men and devils to take the place of Holy Ghost preaching, be done away with now and forever.

Christ has chosen the weapon, ordered the line of march, set the battle in array, and revealed the heavenly plan in the divine commission. We can hardly improve on it. "Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature." And, "Lo, I am with you alway even unto the end of the world."

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