On the Brink of Eternity

A sovereign God will raise up men in certain epochs of history to rouse a sleeping church and to shake an entire nation. These human instruments appear on the scene like a sudden storm that thunders and gains attention. They are usable vessels in the master's hands because of their sacrificial lives of prayer and their surrendered lives of consecration.

Their mighty preaching is like a trumpet blast that awakens sinners through their lost condition and their perilous position. They hold a Bible in one hand and a bloody cross in the other as they proclaim a bloodstained savior to the world. God is always on the lookout for such men, men like George Whitefield, D.L. Moody, and John Song, men who shook their generation for God, men who have so emptied themselves and who are so full of the Holy Ghost that their hearers were transported into another world as they stood trembling on the very brink of eternity, men whose mighty preaching and powerful prayers tore down mountains of resistance and turned the most hardened sinners into weeping babes seeking forgiveness for sin.

When they preached the Christ of the Cross, hell began to rage and opposition mounted as persecution came. They were not superior humans, but only ordinary men who had had an extraordinary experience of God. They lived not for earth nor its rewards, but only for heaven and its gains.

They each accepted a briefer life down here so others could find eternal life up there. They were so consumed with Christ and eaten up with the gospel that they soon forgot themselves and in the process they became clear channels through which living waters flowed with life changing power as a means of delivering some sin and untold blessings to multitudes. Second Chronicles 16.9 declares, For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth to show himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him.

God is still on the lookout, friends, for those rare individuals who care only for the glory of God and the souls of men and who are willing to lose all they have to gain the pearl of great price. We serve the same God these men served, and we have the same Bible. What is needed are men of prayer who will not fear men, but only God, men who are ready to die so others can live, men who have so forgotten themselves and who are so focused on Christ that they walk in a different atmosphere than other mortals in lives lived on the brink of eternity.

May God raise up such men for our day. Let us pray.