01.06. The Travail of Zion

Chapter 6 THE TRAVAIL OF ZION. The Bible throughout plainly teaches that the salvation of the world is to come through the church. And it is equally clear in teaching that it is not to be by a cold formal ecclesiasticism, but a holy church whose glory shall be beheld and felt and whose divine power shall cause the nations to flock to the light of her burning, calling her gates salvation and her walls praise.

Christ’s prayer for the church was that it might be sanctified, that the world might believe and know that God had sent Him for its redemption.

Ezekiel said that the heathen would know the Lord when He should be sanctified in His people before their eyes. Certainly He is not "sanctified" or "made holy" in most of the denominations and congregations today before the eyes of the world.

Another prophet in perfect harmony with the teachings of the Scripture throughout declares that only when Zion travails will sons and daughters be born unto God.

Travail is one of the sharpest pains known in the physical realm. Its cry is simply heart-breaking. Few can hear it without tears, while husbands are scarce indeed who can listen at all to the agonized wail. With faces set and white we have seen them take their hats and rush away from the sound of the pitiful groans of the one they loved best on earth. God takes this physical pang and heartbreaking wail and applies it to the church, and says that such a suffering, burden and agonizing cry must come on His people, before sons and daughters are born unto Him, or in other words, before genuine conversions can take place. In view of this inspired statement several questions at once arise in the mind.

One is, what shall we say of the policy of those pastors and evangelists who, passing by and over the state of the church as we see it today, endeavor to secure a revival among the unconverted. God conditions salvation among the lost on the spiritual life of the church and a very high plane at that. And yet these leaders of the people deliberately ignore what the Divine Being says about the matter and would have judgment commence among the lost when the Lord says it must begin at the House of God.

It is a well known fact that evangelists who observe the divine requirement and insist upon the Upper Room experience for the church, before conversions can be expected in the streets as at the Day of Pentecost, that all such preachers and leaders are avoided by leading congregations, union meetings and conferences, and workers are sought and selected who "let the church alone and go for sinners," as it is commonly said.

They seem not to know, or have determined to forget that God will not go into business with a morally spotted partner; that He insists that they who bear the vessels of the Lord should be clean; that in unmistakable illustration of His plan He made one hundred and twenty of His most devoted disciples and followers tarry ten days in Jerusalem until they received the Baptism with the Holy Ghost, and then, and not until then, did the revival break out in the streets where we see three thousand born of the Spirit in one day, and five thousand the next day. Zion was in travail and sons and daughters were born unto God by scores and hundreds and thousands. Of course it is very evident to the spiritually illumined why the divine plan is not approved, relished or followed by most of the churches today. It brings an attention on themselves that they do not desire; it rolls an awful obligation upon them which they do not propose to assume; it requires a going down before God and men, a cleansing from all sin, a dying out to this world and a living for and in God that is not on their program at all. Nor will they have it, or listen to a man who preaches and urges upon them such an humbling, praying, seeking and finding.

It is not the financial outlay of the meeting that these church members dread. On the contrary, it is well known that if they can secure an evangelist who will "let the church alone and go for sinners out in the world," they give largely and liberally to such a man and meeting. It is far easier for such people to go down deep into their pocket books than to go down low at the altar.

Giving up money is far less difficult with them than surrendering sins and yielding up the entire self to God. Liberality touches only the vest pocket and a very small section of the person, but holiness takes in the whole man. This is the reason that the Holiness Evangelist leaves a place with but little over his travelling expenses and can lay up nothing against the "rainy day" and the time of a helpless old age, while another kind of evangelist goes off with five hundred to two thousand dollars from every meeting. The congregation or audience gladly pays down the aforesaid "blood money" for the privilege of being "let alone," of not being urged to obtain holiness, or of coming into a great soul agony over the salvation of men. Down in their hearts these givers to such a meeting know that they have escaped cheaply by the payment of twenty-five, fifty or one hundred dollars.

We have often wondered how such workers feel as they go away with the blood money of lost souls in their pockets, knowing they have not declared the whole counsel of God, that they have withheld essential truth, and completely ignored the method God lays down for a real revival and the genuine salvation of men. A second question that arises in the mind is that where God’s plain commands and directions are not followed for the obtainment of a meeting of supernatural transforming and converting power, what are we to think of the paraded, printed and trumpeted results of all such union and so-called gospel services? How are we to regard the converts and accessions to the church of these same greatly advertised meetings? God says before there can be conversions, or sons and daughters born unto Him, Zion must travail. But in these meetings Zion did not travail.

There was no upper room tarrying nor upper room receiving of the Baptism with the Holy Ghost. No messages were given declaring that judgment must begin at the House of God. The evangelist had been corresponded with and bought off beforehand with the express understanding that he should preach to the goats or the sinners out in the world. So Zion not receiving the attention God demands, and the health of God’s people not attended to, there was not only no travail of the church, but as the Bible says, "Zion had no strength to bring forth."

We stand amazed at the utter ignorance shown by many leaders in the church of the law of analogy which God lays down for our information and guidance in this matter. In the home life, a certain all important period affecting especially one member of the family is most anxiously prepared for in the building up and strengthening of her upon whom the great trial is to come. Every sacrifice is made, and every attention is devoted to her in view of the approaching crisis. For if in that hour she has not strength to bring forth, there is not only no life added to the household and family, but there are really two deaths. The mother then is the object of supreme interest, properly and necessarily if we would see a son or daughter born into the family. At once the thoughtful spiritual person must recognize the philosophy and meaning of the Holiness Movement. It is to get Zion ready to bring forth children to God. It is to prepare the church as a spiritual mother to have genuine conversions, to present sons and daughters unto the Almighty.

We repeat the question then, what are the kind of accessions to the church that we are having today in our so-called Gospel Union Meetings; and what are these converts that Christianity is getting, and what kind of sons and daughters of God are these that are being reported, that come not only from a non-travailing, but from a dead mother? Can a dead mother bring forth offspring? Must we close our understanding to the laws of analogy, and deny the Word of God, and say that this card-signing crowd of so-called converts have been born of God through a spiritually dead mother? Reformation is not transformation. The first a man can do, the second only God can perform. Joining the church is not salvation, but being born of the Spirit. Now look at the brigade of card signers and by close questioning it is evident that they not only know nothing of regeneration, but have not even experienced the bitterness of repentance. They know not a thing about the birth of the Spirit, and stare in silence and ignorance in answer to the question if they have had the witness of the Holy Ghost to their being children of God. And lo! These puppet figures, these joiners of a meeting house, these doll babies stuffed with saw dust, are labeled and printed and publicly called the sons and daughters of God.

Here and there an honest and ripe soul finding salvation in the deadest meeting, and in no meeting at all as was the case with the writer, is no disproof of the argument in this chapter founded on the Word of God. God once used an animal to rebuke a disobedient servant of His. This was an exception. His rule is to send men to reprove men. The rule of salvation according to the Bible and according to an analogy laid down by the Lord Himself is that Zion must travail before sons and daughters can be born unto God. In view of this double truth and statement it is easy to read through the lines of a report where we are informed that several hundred were at the altar, but nothing is said about several hundred being saved. In some newspapers, we are informed, the figures having been given by the evangelist that five, six or seven thousand people passed through the inquiry room. But passing through an inquiry room is not salvation. Five thousand goats and snakes can move through an inquiry room and pass out as they came in, still snakes and goats.

Verily God’s way is the true way and the best. When Zion travails, sons and daughters will be born unto God.

He who would prevent the Judgment that must begin at the House of God. and would rob the church of Christ of the Upper Room experience is really the enemy of his race, and is standing between God and the salvation of the world.

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