02.05. A Wilderness University
Chapter 5 A WILDERNESS UNIVERSITY. This is a day of schools, universities and training institutes of every kind. Knowledge has increased and in the making of books, and the conferring of degrees there seems to be no end.
We are thankful for learning of every proper kind. We believe in the storing of the mind and in the developing of the intellect. We are glad to see church colleges springing up, and rejoice when we hear of schools founded for the training of young men and women for home and foreign missionary work. And yet we cannot but know that unless a certain famous "Upper Room" with its divine light and fire, its supernatural transformation, impartation and education, finds not only a place, but a prominent and pre-eminent one in the place of learning, that God’s work will never be done as he desires it, salvation will not roll like a flood, and the world never be brought under the power and to the feet of the Son of God.
We have only to look at the Past, and turn our eyes on the Present, to see that the greatest reformers and revivalists, the mightiest rebukers of sin, and most tremendous movers on spiritual lines, were never made so by our scholastic institutes, no matter how great the extent of ground, or how venerable with age were the buildings of these same state, nation, or world famous universities.
God’s marvelous mouthpieces seem all to come up from what we call the Wilderness. They appear unheralded. They were not dreamed of. Nobody knew them or anything about them, when suddenly they burst forth from obscurity upon an astonished and convicted community, country, and even the nations of the world. The astounding fact to the thoughtful mind is that these men, when they do appear before the public, seem to be thoroughly prepared, fitted, filled and furnished for their work! Their faces, lives, messages, courage, readiness, steadfastness, character poise, fullness of mind and heart on living and everlasting issues, and the unmistakable spiritual force dwelling in and proceeding from them, show without doubt that they are not accidents, but have been thoroughly prepared for their life work somewhere in the deep unknown privacy, out of which they suddenly came.
They were getting ready for great battles in life before men ever heard of them. They were studying hard the text books of sin and salvation, poring diligently over the mysteries of the heart and heaven, and getting filled with the knowledge of God and the wisdom of the skies, while the people to whom they were to come later, were dozing, dreaming, idling and sinning their hours, years and lives away. They were faithful student in the Wilderness College, of God, Truth and Everlasting things, while hundreds of millions of their fellow beings were absorbed in pleasure, amusement, fashion and the business of the world; or if in the schools, taken up with the enjoyment of athletic games or the securing of evanescent accomplishments, or the understanding of languages as dead as the people who once spoke them and have passed away. No wonder these graduates of the Wilderness College move and stir the cities and confound the schools and universities. What they say is so new, fresh, spiritual, startling, quickening, powerful and overwhelming, that men go down before such a truth charged, heaven filled instrument. The people muse in their hearts, and are pricked in their souls, and bringing forth fruits meet for repentance turn from the idols of time and earth to serve the living God.
Then how full and ready such scholars of the Wilderness are. They never seem to be confused and upset by questions, no matter who asks them. They know what to say, and how to say it, whether it be to a soldier or citizen, to Pharisee or Sadducee, to Herodian or Essene, and have a message for King Herod himself and his infuriated wife.
There is something in the high, vaulted, star-frescoed chambers and solemn corridors of the Wilderness College that brings a corresponding seriousness of manner and loftiness of thought.
Having been face to face with the sublime so long, such individuals cannot consent to trifle. Away from men’s ideas, ideals, ritualisms, formalisms and superficialisms, they bring back at once to the people, in language, bearing and life the forgotten heaven and the unknown God. They have been so much alone with the Creator in nature that they bring him in their prayers and preaching, in their rebukes and warnings, as they felt and beheld him in the heart of his own works. So their words distill as the dew, emit fragrance like a wild flower, charm like the song of the woodland bird, and yet on the other hand will suddenly change and the speech of the God-filled graduate of the Wilderness leaps and flashes like the lightning, strikes like a thunderbolt and rushes like a storm upon the awe-struck ears and over the trembling consciences of the solemnized and frightened congregation. The graduated students of the Wilderness University all seem to have the Upper Room experience. All speak of the holy fire. All seem to have looked in the deep sense of the word, upon the face of God. And all are fearless, for he who comes from the presence of Jehovah, is never afraid of the countenance of man. The Bible teaches this, and life proves it to be true. When in the Holy Land a few years ago, we stood one morning on the top of a building crowning the summit of Mt. Olivet, and looked southward, eastward and northeastward at the wilderness which stretches today in those directions.
We could but think what that particular rocky, sandy, mountainous waste had been to the world in the way of warning, instruction and spiritual benefit; and what the wilderness in general and in particular has always been to the human family. Its greatest friends and mightiest helpers have come literally and figuratively from the desert.
Moses was a student of high distinction in the Wilderness School. He took a forty years’ course. What he learned there not only enabled him to stand before kings in palaces and lay down the law to them, but elevated him to the leadership of a great nation.
Having talked with God, it was a small matter to come into the audience chamber of Pharaoh and speak to him with steady voice and unflinching eye. More than that, with his countenance luminous from the glory of his protracted interview in the mountain with the Almighty, he towered in moral and spiritual greatness over two hundred and fifty thousand men, and subdued a great rebellious camp of over a million people in a single morning.
Elijah came out of the Wilderness that lay to the northeast. He seemed to love his Alma Mater after his graduation, and would return again and again to the desert for post graduate courses. In one of these trips he took up a special study called "The Ravens and the Brook." This was followed by immediately increased activity and usefulness. On another occasion he visited the University where Moses had gone to school, and there took the degree of "The Cave and the Still Small Voice." It was after this new communion with God in the Wilderness that he secured Elisha for the prophetic office, rebuked King Ahab for his crime against Naboth, and pulled fire down from heaven twice to the overthrow and death of his enemies.
John the Baptist was a graduate of the Wilderness College of Judea. He undoubtedly took first honors. His salutatory to the people around about Jordan will never be forgotten. Jerusalem and numerous other towns and cities turned out en masse to hear later addresses of the man clothed in a shaggy skin and eating wild locusts. As he talked, he presented life-sized pictures and portraits free of charge to everybody who attended his meetings. These photographs that he struck off with his burning mind remain unfaded to this day. The Publican found his likeness was that of a robber. The Pharisee to his surprise and indignation, as well as the anger of his church friends, discovered that his picture was that of a viper.
Soldiers, citizens, indeed everybody, beheld themselves perfectly understood and most thoroughly described. And so it is not to be wondered at that "all men mused in their hearts of John."
It does not appear that he ever received a call to become the pastor of any Jerusalem Synagogue, or the head of their school for the prophets, or to take any kind of position as teacher or ruler in the Temple. His sermons on Repentance were bad enough; but his additional teaching that there was a Baptism with the Holy Ghost and fire to be given by Christ was even worse; while his free gift to every hearer in his audience of an accurate character likeness of the listener himself was simply disgusting and unbearable.
Moreover, his habit of telling the truth was very embarrassing to many in his congregation.
Then instead of confining his rebukes to common people, and persons who were not present but at a great distance, he reproved very prominent individuals like King Herod and his wife, and that, too, when they had done him the great honor of coming to listen to him. For these reasons as well as others we have not time to mention, our first honor man of the Wilderness of Judea never received a city call.
It was well that he did not, as no church in the land could ever have seated his regular congregation. So he continued to hold services in the Desert until the time of his imprisonment and death. The Savior preached his funeral sermon, taking for his text the words, "Verily I say unto you, among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist."
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