Evangelical Dilemma – Christian Message of Victory Apr-Jun 1977

But the problem is this.  The conversions do not stick.  The fruit does not remain.  Six months later there is nothing to be seen for all the aggressive evangelism.  The capsule technique of soul-winning has produced stillbirths.
What lies at the back of all this malpractice in bringing souls to the birth?  Strangely enough it begins with the valid determination to preach the pure Gospel of the grace of God.  We want to keep the message simple—uncluttered by any suggestion that man can ever earn or deserve eternal life.  Justification is by faith alone, apart from the deeds of the law.  Therefore, the message is “only believe.”
From there we reduce the message to a concise formula.  For instance, the evangelistic process is cut down to a few basic questions and answers, as follows:
“Do you believe you are a sinner?”
“Yes.”
“Do you believe Christ died for sinners?”
“Yes.”
“Will you receive Him as your Savior?”
“Yes.”
“Then you are saved!”
“I am?”
“Yes, the Bible says you are saved.”
At first blush the method and the message might seem above criticism.  But on closer study we are forced to have second thoughts and to conclude that we have over-simplified the Gospel.
The first fatal flaw is the missing emphasis on repentance.  There can be no true conversion without conviction of sin.  It is one thing to agree that I am a sinner; it is quite another thing to experience the convicting ministry of the Holy Spirit in my life.  Unless I have a Spirit-wrought consciousness of my utterly lost condition, I can never exercise saving faith.  It is useless to tell unconvicted sinners to believe on Jesus—that  message is only for those who know they are lost.  We sugar-coat the Gospel when we de-emphasize man’s fallen condition.
With that kind of a watered-down message, people receive the Word with joy instead of with deep contrition.  They do not have deep roots, and though they might endure for a while, they soon give up all profession when persecution and trouble comes (Matt. 13:21).  We have forgotten that the message is repentance toward God, as well as faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.
A second serious omission is a missing emphasis on the Lordship of Christ.  A light, jovial, mental assent that Jesus is Savior misses the point.  Jesus is first Lord, then Savior.  The New Testament always places His Lordship before His Savior-hood.  Do we present the full implications of His Lordship to people?  He always did.
A third defect in our message is our tendency to keep the terms of discipleship hidden until a decision has been made for Jesus.  Our Lord never did this.  The message He preached included the cross as well as the crown.  “He never hid His scars to win disciples.”  He revealed the worst along with the best, then told His listeners to count the cost.  We popularize the message and promise fun.
The result of all this is that we have people believing without knowing what to believe.  In many cases they have no doctrinal basis for their decision.  They do not know the implications of commitment to Christ.  They have never experienced the mysterious, miraculous work of the Holy Spirit in regeneration.
And of course we have others who are talked into a profession because of the slick salesmanship techniques of the soul-winner.  Or some who want to please the affable, personable young man with the winning smile.  And some who only want to get rid of this religious interloper who has intruded on their privacy.  Satan laughs when these conversions are triumphantly announced on earth.
I would like to raise several questions that might lead us to some changes in our strategy of evangelism.
First of all, can we generally expect people to make an intelligent commitment to Christ the first time they hear the Gospel?  Certainly there is the exceptional case where a person has already been prepared by the Holy Spirit.  But, generally speaking, the process involves sowing the seed, watering it, then sometime later reaping the harvest.  In our mania for instant conversion, we have forgotten that conception, gestation, and birth do not occur on the same day.
A second question:  Can a capsule presentation of the Gospel really do justice to so great a message?  As one who has written several Gospel tracts, I confess to a certain sense of misgiving in even attempting to condense the Good News into four small pages.  Would we not be wiser to give people the full presentation as it is found in the Gospels, or in the New Testament?
Thirdly, is all this pressure for decisions really Scriptural?  Where in the New Testament were people ever pressured into making a profession?  We justify our practice by saying that if only one out of ten is genuine, it is worth it.  But what about the other nine—disillusioned, bitter, perhaps deceived, en-route to Hell by a false profession?
And I must ask this:  Is all this boasting about conversions really accurate?  You’ve met the man who solemnly tells you of ten people he contacted that day and all of them were saved.  A young doctor testified that every time he goes to a new city, he looks in the phone book for people with his last name.  Then he calls them one by one and leads them through the four steps to salvation.  Amazingly enough, every one of them opens the door of his heart to Jesus.  I don’t want to doubt the honesty of people like this, but am I wrong in thinking that they are extremely naïve?  Where are all those people who are saved?  They cannot be found.
What it all means is that we should seriously re-examine our streamlined, capsule evangelism.  We should be willing to spend time teaching the Gospel, laying a solid doctrinal foundation for faith to rest on.  We should stress the necessity for repentance—a complete about-face with regard to sin.  We should stress the full implications of the Lordship of Christ and the conditions of discipleship.  We should explain what belief really involves.  We should be willing to wait for the Holy Spirit to produce genuine conviction of sin.  Then we should be ready to lead the person to saving faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
If we do this, we’ll have less astronomical figures of so-called conversions, but more genuine cases of spiritual rebirth.
—Reprinted from Help and Food, by kind permission of the publishers, Loizeaux                               Brothers, Neptune, New Jersey, U.S.A.

EDITORIAL
MEMBERSHIP IN CHRIST DEMANDS HOLY LIVING

“Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ?  shall I then take the members of Christ, and make them the members of an harlot?  God forbid.  What?  know ye not that he that is joined to an harlot is one body?  for two, saith he, shall be one flesh.  But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit.  Flee fornication.  Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body” (1 Cor. 6:15-18).
Surely the greatest incentive to holy living is the knowledge that we are members of Christ.  Not only are we joined to Him as our head; we are in Him; part of Him.  This great fact not only is our incentive; it furnishes our enabling.  How can unclean living proceed from him who has the life of Jesus flowing through him?
It is, therefore, unthinkable that we should for one moment tolerate knowingly one unholy thing.  First, let us consider the vital need of inward purity.  Purity of heart, motives, desires and affections must be our constant goal; and through Him Who is purity itself, must be our enabling and our realization.  It is one thing to battle for goodness and cleanness as an individual, struggling Christian, but when it comes to being joined to Christ it is a tremendous necessity as well as a glorious possibility.  It is a high standard to contemplate.  Many think it impossible, and so it is if we are to attain it by our poor trying.  Like the struggler under the law in Romans seven, we fail utterly.  Romans eight, thank God, shows the glorious provision, “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.”  We could but cry, “For to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not.”  But as we read in Romans 13:2, we are to be “transformed by the renewing of your mind.”  It is therefore no longer we, but Christ living in us.
It is unthinkable that any member of Christ’s body can harbor impurity in thought, word or deed, and call it anything else.  Many people, who today claim the indwelling presence of the Holy Ghost, will still live unclean lives and even sometimes contend that sinning and the possession of the Holy Spirit are not incompatible.  Indeed, there are plenty of instances where the very emphasis on love leads to a mixture which includes something unclean, such as undue familiarity between the sexes, even in worship.  Let us make no mistake.  Where there is unholy behavior, there is no Holy Spirit.  This is exactly what St. Paul is teaching in the Scripture passage quoted at the beginning of this article.
The chapter ends with a reference to another picture, that of our bodies being the temples of the Holy Ghost.  Paul uses the same expression of amazement employed earlier in the chapter.  “What?”  he commences.  He displays incredulity that people could be so blind as to be ignorant of the fact.  “Know ye not, that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?  For ye are bought with a price:  therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.”
In Ephesians, chapter five, we read, “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.”
Can any statement be stronger?  The thought staggers us.  Let us supplement this wonderful reading by also quoting from Hebrews 13:  “Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate.  Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach.”  If His physical body was slain outside the camp and we are now a part of His unseen body, the Church, we can only remain so by being where He is and suffering crucifixion and ostracism with Him.
We could quote many more Scriptures relevant to this great subject.  We call your attention to two more.  In 2 Corinthians 6, we read, “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers; for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness?  and what communion hath light with darkness?  And what concord hath Christ with Belial?  or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel?  And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols?  for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.  Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you.”
We end this Scripture lesson with another picture contained in St. Paul’s second letter to Timothy, chapter two.  The picture is of Christ’s great building.  “Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are his.  And, Let every one that nameth the name of Christ (Berkley’s translation—that names himself by the Lord’s name) depart from iniquity.  But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and of silver, but also of wood and of earth, and some to honour, and some to dishonour.  If a man therefore purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honour, sanctified, and meet for the master’s use, and prepared unto every good work.”  Christ’s work in this dispensation must be carried on by His members who are sanctified, set apart and prepared unto every good work for Christ, their Head, to His glory alone.
The above Scriptures and many others afford a sure foundation for the early teaching by John Wesley and others of Perfect Love or Christian Perfection.  Alas, too many exponents and claimants have brought reproach on this wonderful truth by their dogmatic attitude, their glorifying of the crisis only, without looking momentarily as well, for the blood to continue to flow and cleanse.  Also, it cannot be too much emphasized that any righteousness or holiness are His alone.  One moment’s failing to look and trust shows any honest man how utterly helpless and defeated he can be.  It is only that wonderful bond and connection with the Head that matters.  “Alive in Him, my living Head . . . bold I approach the eternal throne.”

THE CROSS AND THE BODY

By Watchman Nee

“Now in Christ Jesus ye . . . are made nigh by the blood of Christ.  For he is our peace who made both (Jew and Gentile) one . . . that he might create in himself of the twain one new man . . . and might reconcile them both in one body unto God through the cross” (See Eph. 2:11-22).
What, we must ask ourselves, is this “one body,” this “one new Man?”  What is this mystery of Christ that Paul has come to see?
In Romans 6:6 he has spoken of “our old man,” by which he means everything that comes to us from “the first man, Adam”; and he sees this “old man” as having been nailed to the cross with Christ.  In Colossians 3:11-12 he speaks of “the new Man” as the sphere where now “there cannot be Greek and Jew . . . but Christ is all and in all.”  For our old man there was only crucifixion with Christ; in the new Man we are found in union with Him, risen and ascended.  Between the one and the other towers the Cross as the only gateway into this fellowship with one another in Jesus Christ.
You ask me, what do I mean when I use the term “the Cross” in this way?  I think it is best summed up in the words the crowd used of its Victim:  “Away with him!”  Crucifixion, humanly speaking, is an end.  The Cross of Christ is intended by God to be, first of all, the end of everything in man that has come under His sentence of death, for there it was that He took our place, and the judgment of God was fulfilled upon Him.
But the Cross has a further value for us, for it is there also that the Christian believer’s self-sufficient and individualistic natural life is broken, as Jacob’s strength and independence of nature were broken at Jabbok.  There comes a day in God’s dealings with each of us when we suffer in our souls that incapacitating wound, and ever afterwards “go halting.”  God never allows this to remain for us a mere theory.  Alas, I must confess that for many years it was no more than theory to me.  I myself had “preached the Cross” in this very sense, yet without knowing anything of it in my own experience—until one day I saw that it had been I, Nee To-sheng, who died there with Christ.  “Away with him!”  they had said, and in saying it they unwittingly echoed God’s verdict upon my old man.  And that sentence upon me was carried out in Him.  This tremendous discovery affected me almost as greatly as did my first discovery of salvation.  I tell you, it left me for seven whole months so humbled as to be quite unable to preach at all, whereas for long, I have to confess, preaching had been my consuming passion.
But if to see this somewhat negative aspect of the Cross can be so drastic an experience, it is not surprising that its positive aspect—the revelation to our hearts of the heavenly Body of Christ—has proved for many to be no less revolutionary.  For it is like suddenly finding yourself in a place which you have hitherto known only by hearsay.  And how different the reality proves!  Reading a guide to London is no substitute for visiting that city.  Nor can a book of recipes take the place of a spell of work in the kitchen.  To know anything experimentally, we must sooner or later find ourselves personally involved in it.
Yes, there are certain fundamental experiences we must have, and this “seeing” of the Body of Christ, the heavenly Man, is one such.  What is it?  It is simply a discovery of values that, as I have said, lie on the resurrection side of the Cross.  There, what has been for us already a way of release from our old selfish “natural life” in Adam becomes the gateway into the new, shared “everlasting life” in Christ.  For unlike other Roman crucifixions, the Cross of Christ is not just an end; it is also a beginning.  In His death and resurrection, our disunion gives way to oneness of life in Him.
God is not satisfied with single, separate Christians.  When we believed on the Lord and partook of Him we became members of His Body.  Oh that God would cause this fact to break upon us!  Do I seek spiritual experiences for myself?  Do I make converts for my denomination?  Or have I caught the wisdom of the one heavenly Man, and realized that God is seeking to bring men into that?  When I do, salvation, deliverance, enduement with the Spirit, yes, everything in Christian experience will be seen from a new viewpoint, everything for me will be transformed.
We shall now seek to develop some aspects of this subject further.  In the New Testament we find the Church variously described, as a spiritual house or temple (“a habitation of God through the Spirit”), as a body or a man (“the Body of Christ,” “one new man”), and as a wife (“a bride adorned for her husband”), and we must keep these analogies in mind in what follows.  In the remainder of this chapter we shall speak of the Church’s foundation, and then, in four subsequent chapters, we shall touch in turn upon her eternal character, her fellowship, her ministries and her present high calling and task.  We shall not, even then, have finished with this matter of the Church, for so great is its significance to God that, when we come to the ministry of the apostle John, we cannot fail to see the large place it takes at the end.
—Reprinted by kind permission of Kingsway Publications Ltd, from their book, What Shall This Man Do?

AN INDICTMENT ON MODERN EVANGELISM

Unconverted Converts by John Flavel

There are always more who profess conversion than are truly converted—Christians of their own making rather than new-born believers.  Such professing Christians are familiar enough with the outward practice of the faith, but they remain ignorant of faith found in the heart.  They have not learned to leave the world and pour out their hearts before the Lord.  In time of trial their religion is found to be entirely external, and like dry leaves in autumn they are blown away.
How is it that these outward Christians are so deceived?  The answer is that they believe their own hearts.  God has warned us that our hearts are deceitful, but many prefer to listen to their own reasonings, rather than His Word.  The time will come when men will see their folly.  Their own hearts will appear as the source of their laziness, their dislike of godliness, their doubt and unbelief.
Many are encouraged to believe they are converted because they have experienced the emotions of spiritual experience.  But they have not known the substance of it in their hearts.  The similarity between themselves and the true Christian causes them to think themselves rich and in need of nothing.

Commendation Without Condemnation by Charles Finney

It is absurd to suppose that a careless, unconvicted sinner can intelligently and thankfully accept the Gospel offer of pardon until he accepts the righteousness of God in his condemnation.  Conversion to Christ is an intelligent change.  Hence the conviction of ill desert must precede the acceptance of mercy; for without this conviction the soul does not understand its need of mercy.  Of course, the offer is rejected.  The Gospel is no glad tidings to the careless, unconvicted sinner.
The spirituality of the law should be unsparingly applied to the conscience until the sinner’s self-righteousness is annihilated, and he stands speechless and self-condemned before a holy God.  In some men this conviction is already ripe, and the preacher may at once present Christ, with the hope of His being accepted; but at ordinary times such cases are exceptional.
The great mass of sinners are careless and unconvicted.  To assume their conviction and preparedness to receive Christ, and hence, to urge sinners immediately to accept Him, is to begin at the wrong end of our work—to render our teaching unintelligible.  And such a course will be found to have been a mistaken one, whatever present appearances and professions may indicate.  The sinner may obtain a hope under such teaching; but, unless the Holy Spirit supplies something which the preacher has failed to do, it will be found to be a false one.  All the essential links of truth must be supplied.

Instant Christianity by A. W. Tozer

Instant Christianity tends to make the faith-act terminal, and so smothers the desire for spiritual advance.  It fails to understand the true nature of the Christian life, which is not static but dynamic and expanding.  It overlooks the fact that a new Christian is a living organism, as certainly as a new baby is, and must have nourishment and exercise to assure normal growth.  It does not consider that the act of faith in Christ sets up a personal relationship between two intelligent moral beings, God and the reconciled man, and no single encounter between God and a creature made in His image could ever be sufficient to establish an intimate friendship between them.
By trying to pack all of salvation into one experience, or two, the advocates of instant Christianity flaunt the law of development which runs through all nature.  They ignore the sanctifying effects of suffering, cross-carrying and practical obedience.  They pass by the need for spiritual training, the necessity of forming right religious habits, and the need to wrestle against the world, the devil and the flesh.
Undue preoccupation with the initial act of believing has created in some a psychology of contentment, or at least of non-expectation.  To many, it has imparted a mood of quiet disappointment with the Christian faith.  God seems too far away, the world is too near and the flesh too powerful to resist.  Others are glad to accept the assurance of automatic blessedness.  It relieves them of the need to watch and fight and pray, and sets them free to enjoy this world while waiting for the next.
Instant Christianity is 20^th century orthodoxy.  I wonder whether the man who wrote Philippians 3:7-16 would recognize it as the faith for which he finally died?

Caricature of Faith by Booth-Tucker

The caricature of faith implied in only-believism also called forth strenuous protest from Mrs. Booth.  The practice of picking out some text, such as 1 John 5:10-14, separating it from its context, and applying it indiscriminately to all descriptions of sinners, she believed to have been the cause of the damnation of thousands of souls.  She pointed out that the direction to “only believe” was applied strictly by the Apostles to convicted sinners, while hardened, impenitent, or careless ones were warned to repent, and flee from the wrath to come.  To divorce repentance from faith was to separate two things which God had indissolubly joined together.  An unrepentant sinner could no more exercise saving faith than he could fly.  And to confound mere intellectual assent to a set of doctrines with conversion was calculated to ensure the shipwreck of countless souls, as surely as to confound the Eddystone Lighthouse with the North Fore Light!

Mock Salvation by Catherine Booth

Any theory which leads men to suppose that they are safe without being actually saved is the most dreadful of all.  Such a theory adds an intellectual opiate to the deceit of the heart, and prevents the truth from troubling the conscience.  Now, the only use of appealing to the understandings of the unregenerate is, that through their understandings you may get at their hearts, but if Satan has “blinded their minds” by some intellectual opiate there is no chance.  The understanding is darkened, the conscience seared and the soul paralyzed.  These are the worst people in the world to preach to; when I had to preach to them, how I groaned many a time for a congregation of heathen!
A man is either saved or not; the fact is independent of his theory, and it is of comparatively little consequence what his theory may be if he be saved.  Hence many savages and Catholics have rejoiced in a consciousness of pardon, while many evangelicals have never known it.  A man is either under the dominion of sin, or else he is delivered from it.  If he is under the dominion of sin, what an awful theory is that which makes him believe he is saved!  Could the devil have invented a more damning theory than that?  And yet, alas!  alas!  he allures millions to destruction through it, who otherwise would take alarm and begin to seek salvation.  He says to all the qualms of conscience and pangs of remorse, “You are all right; you believe this or the other, your faith is orthodox, you are safe.”  Frequently he quotes separated or mutilated texts to back up his lying insinuations, such as, “By faith ye are saved”; “He that believeth shall be saved”; “You are complete in Him,” etc.
This latter phrase has come to express, in numbers of instances, the most utter ruin to which the human soul can be brought.  “Complete in Christ!”  “Complete” without any true repentance, without any offering of the heart, without the slightest change, inward or outward; “complete in Him,” while living without Him, and having no conscious connection with Him whatever; “complete” without losing one evil feature of the godless life, without receiving one grace of any kind, without doing or suffering anything, except perhaps, a whispered “I believe”; “complete” all in a minute, since somebody pointed to a text with which perhaps the poor victim had been familiar all his life!  “Complete in Christ” with a gnawing consciousness at the heart that it is as sinful, as empty, as powerless and as joyless as ever; “complete” as a poor corpse would be “complete” if painted and dressed in the clothes of a living man!  May God save you from any such mock salvation as this.

Self-Adoption by John Fletcher

The old Puritans strongly insisted upon personal holiness, and the first Methodists upon the New Birth; but these doctrines seem to grow out of date.  The Gospel is cast into another mold.  People, it seems, may now be in Christ without being new creatures, or new creatures without casting old things away.  They may be God’s children without God’s image; and born of the Spirit, without the fruits of the Spirit.  If our unregenerate hearers get orthodox ideas about the way of Salvation in their heads, evangelical phrases concerning Jesus’s love in their mouths, and a warm zeal for our party and favorite forms in their hearts; without any more ado we help them to rank themselves among the children of God.  But alas!  this self-adoption into the family of Christ will no more pass in Heaven.

Who is the True Gospel Preacher?  by John Wesley

Not every one who deals in the promises only without ever showing the terrors of the law; that slides over “the wrath of God revealed from Heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness,” and endeavors to heal those that never were wounded.  These promise-mongers are no Gospel ministers.
Not every one (very nearly allied to the former) who bends all his strength to coax sinners to Christ.  Such soft, tender expressions, as “My dear hearers; My dear lambs,” though repeated a thousand times, do not prove a Gospel minister.
Lastly.  Not every one that preaches justification by faith, he that goes no farther than this, that does not insist upon sanctification also, upon all the fruits of faith, upon universal holiness, does not declare the whole counsel of God, and consequently is not a Gospel minister.
Who then is such?  Who is a Gospel minister, in the full, scriptural sense of the word?  He, and he alone, of whatever denomination, that does declare the whole counsel of God; that does preach the whole Gospel, even justification and sanctification, preparatory to glory. He that does not put asunder what God has joined, but publishes alike “Christ dying for us, and Christ living in us.”  He that constantly applies all this to the hearts of the hearers, being willing to spend and be spent for them; having himself the mind which was in Christ, and steadily walking as Christ also walked; he and he only, can with propriety be termed a Gospel minister.

Puny Efforts—Weakling Christians by E. C. Horn

How vastly different is Paul’s standard of Christian living from the soft, easy-going idea so prevalent today of “receiving Christ as Savior while never submitting to Him as Lord!”  How can we do one without the other?  He is both “Lord and Christ.”  Where today, is the labor, the zeal, the activity, the perseverance which would confirm that we are “born again,” “steadfast, unmoveable . . . always abounding in the work of the Lord?”  Our puny, spasmodic, intermittent efforts—how far short they come of the Divine purpose for our lives!
When we speak so glibly today of “leading souls to Christ” with a “technique” reduced almost to a scientific formula, we need afresh to study the New Testament instances of conversion, and to ponder the words of one of the older hymn-writers who portrays the Lord as saying to His faithful servants:

“I know how hardly souls are wooed and won,
My choicest wreaths are always wet with tears.”

Half Conversions by Thomas Walker

I am tired of the half conversions which are the order of the day in most places, in England as well as India, and am longing to see something like the reality of the 1859 revival.

Half-asleep, Deluded Christians by C. T. Studd

True love wakens a man to reality; sham love soaps him down to Hell, greases his trail, in fact, to Hell.  Very many are half-asleep or deluded and make up fancy doctrines of their own, which practically mean that an unholy man can get to Heaven without being holy.  But remember, Christ did not die to whitewash us.  He died to re-create us, and none but His re-creations enter Heaven.

HOW GOD DEALT WITH MY LOVE FOR GAIN

Sheridan Baker came from an irreligious home in a rural district of America.  A revival of Divine grace swept over his college and surrounding country.  This produced deep and profound reflections upon the young student, and he attended local services in a Methodist Church.  A Divinely wrought experience, with a strong inward witness of the Spirit, resulted and laid the foundation for a long life of service to God.  He entered the itinerant ministry among the Methodists.  Now read on.
After sixteen consecutive years in the itinerancy, and the educational department of our Church work, I was forced by feeble health to retire from the active ranks of the ministry.  During my efficiency I had accumulated a small sum of money, which was increased by several hundred dollars from my father-in-law’s estate.  To use these means so as to support my young and growing family, I entered into the mercantile business.  In this, my industry, frugality and care were rewarded to such a degree that I not only kept my family, but accumulated with astonishing rapidity, as compared with my capital and size of my trade.
This prosperity so increased my attachment to business, and intensified my love for gain that, within the short period of four or five years, I found my spiritual interests greatly imperiled by the love of money.  This led me to call earnestly upon God for protection against this danger, and to more liberal giving to benevolent purposes.  And, though my liberality seemed to myself considerably greater than my brethren’s who had equal and much larger ability, yet the danger remained and the love of gain was fast becoming the dominant passion.
At this stage of my experience I was thrown among a number of persons who enjoyed freedom from the power of this world, and were made perfect in love.  From one of these I bought a copy of Perfect Love, by J. A. Wood.  The testimony of these humble Christians and the reading of this book were used by the Spirit to start me in pursuit of the same gracious state as a desirable religious experience, and as the only remedy for my fears and danger.
Very soon after I commenced to seek for entire sanctification, a few minor tests were presented and disposed of satisfactorily to my conscience, and a temporary relief was obtained.  Among these early tests was the tobacco habit.  This now began to appear inconsistent with a state of holiness.  I therefore abandoned the indulgence with the purpose of never resuming it, unless by a Divine permit, which never has been granted.  I fought the appetite for two or three weeks when, either in sleep or not noticing the fact, it was removed, and has not to this day returned.  This loss of the desire for tobacco took place nearly two months before I had the assurance of inward purity, and gave me great satisfaction in the new-found freedom.
But I was soon convinced that the object of my pursuit, and the gracious work needed, had not been reached.  I was, however, quite encouraged, and with the conviction that the way to the attainment of this grace was nearly cleared, I continued my suit with greater ardor.
I was now ready for severer tests, and questions concerning the appropriation of funds began to arise in my mind and to stir me profoundly.  I had in my safe some $2,000 in Government bonds, and held also a mortgage claim on a neighboring farm for $1,200, besides some smaller savings which I did not need in my business.  These had been carefully laid away as a source of revenue to increase my yearly returns, and a source of supply when infirmity or age might retire me from my work.  It was therefore a severe strain upon my strength of purpose, and my feeble longings for holiness, when these serious financial questions commenced to lie heavily upon my conscience.
The first test on this line which the Spirit gently pressed was whether I was willing, for so great a favor as I was asking, to part with my bonds, to sell them and devote the proceeds to benevolent uses.  After a day or two of worry and anxiety over the matter, and seeing there could be no advancement in my pursuit without facing the issue and making the sacrifice, I resolved to do it if the Lord should ask it and open the way for it.
This victory over self and the ruling passion was attended with more than usual religious joy, and for a day or so I seemed near the prize.  Soon, however, it was suggested that the principle which required the bonds as an offering to God demanded also the mortgage claim, for neither of them was necessary to the successful prosecution of my business.  The thought was almost unbearable, but the Lord graciously aided me to bear the deep probing and virtually make the offering.
I now supposed that nothing more could be asked, and I rejoiced for some time in a good degree of religious freedom, and, as my business was flourishing, I could foresee all these losses replaced in less than twelve months.  Then it was suggested that if these savings were required as a precedent condition to a state of holiness, the funds to replace them would be required as a condition to retain the grace, and thus I was forced to face the obligation of giving all I could make hereafter, and of being contented with my present stock in trade, my business house, and family residence.
This was indeed plucking out the right eye and cutting off the right hand, but the Lord mercifully helped me, and I was enabled to make up my mind to this condition of my worldly affairs.
My religious experience at this stage in the process, though deeper than anything I had known heretofore, was far from being joyful and satisfactory.  I continued to read the Scriptures, and to pray and trust for the witness of the Spirit to the work of inward purity.
One day I opened the Scriptures at Matt. 19:21:  “If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.”  The Spirit applied the word, and the truth, like keen steel, entered my heart, and after some days of doubting, I was enabled finally to yield, but not without a great deal of debating the matter, and with pains and heartaches which my pen cannot describe.  The struggle was now ended.  I felt that I was no longer possessor of these things, but simply a steward, and the stewardship to last no longer than necessary to make a wise distribution of the funds.
After this complete devotement of property to God, two considerations prevented a speedy appropriation to benevolent uses.  One was the conviction that a careless and indiscriminate giving would be acting the part of a cross child that dashes to the ground and destroys what it is not allowed to keep, and, of course, would be as displeasing to God as no giving.  The other was the conviction that a hasty movement would awaken the suspicion of my friends, and they would have me arrested on a charge of derangement.  Such had been my earnestness in seeking holiness, that my family had noticed a change in my conduct, and some of my patrons in the store had observed something unusual.  Hence the most cautious and quiet procedure was necessary to keep down all suspicion of mental disturbance, and meet my covenant engagements with God.
For some months very few calls for money were made upon me, and these for comparatively small sums, much less than the profits of the business for the same time.  So reticent had I to be, and so slowly did ways open to carry out my purposes, that the property became such a burden, as a trust, that I longed to be clear of it.  In this dilemma I kept looking to the Lord for guidance, when it was suggested that, as ways did not open to distribute this property, possibly the Lord intended me, as I had accumulated most of it, to hold and use it for Him.  Somebody must do this, and would He not more likely appoint the person who made it than any other?
After a careful examination of this impression, I was satisfied that its origin was identical with the suggestions which I had followed, and that this must be heeded as well as they.  I was now enabled, after due consideration, to settle on a financial policy which would meet my engagements with the Lord, and enable me to feel at rest on a matter of finance.  I would use what I had accumulated as wisely as I could, and give away all the proceeds after meeting my family expenses, and hold the principal ready for distribution when Divinely called to make it.  This policy has been followed with scrupulous care ever since, and it has been a pleasure to give my labors gratis to the Church for the last seventeen years, and to distribute yearly all the income from the funds invested, except my necessary expenses in humble living.
This experience in the consecration of money will not be complete without the statement that I have not always been able to please my brethren in the disembursement of these funds.  There are popular enterprises, and worthy ones too, which I do not liberally support, because I would have but little left to give to some more obscure and less popular charities.  I find it just as necessary to discriminate, and follow my honest convictions in the causes supported, as to support any.  I dare not consult the wishes of my brethren, only so far as may be necessary to find the Divine will in the matter of giving.
These statements are a mere summary of the salient points of this part of my experience.  The various frames of mind, the states of the affections and emotions, and the many questions that have come up for settlement in the details have, as far as possible, been passed over.  There is, however, a matter connected with the secret of my rapid accumulation, which does not belong to the experience in the consecration of money, that I will name.  I did not enter this business for the purpose of accumulating riches, but simply to make a living for myself and family; and when I managed it alone, I would lock up every evening of the weekly prayer-meeting, and attend church.  And while the protracted meetings would be in progress, I would close the store during the hours of religious service, and take my place with the worshippers.
I was often tempted to desist from this, as some of my best customers would complain of the disappointment which it caused them.  Especially would I be tried when I learned that some of these, with exhausted patience, had left my house and gone to other stores with their trade.  But almost all of these would, after a few weeks or months, return and bring some of their neighbors with them.  Thus my trade continually increased till I had to secure help; and had these helpers consented to accompany me to church, the store would ever have been closed at the time of religious service.  And to this rigid subordination of business to religion, more than to any business talent which I possess, do I attribute my worldly prosperity.
I must now ask the reader to return with me to the point where, in the irreversible consecration of money and self to God, the old man was nailed to the cross, the self-life crucified, and the struggle ended.
Here my troubles might have ended in perfect peace, had I been at this time with some one to instruct me correctly in the simple way of faith.  But instead of a deep, sweet rest in Christ, I now felt that all my worldly comfort was gone, and my spiritual resources completely exhausted, and I far from being a happy man.
My hungering and thirsting after righteousness now became so intense that I could do nothing but pray for a clean heart.  And in answer to my prayers, I would be consciously blessed, sometimes two and three times a day for nearly two anxious months, yet I could not venture to profess or believe myself every whit whole.  At this juncture, I met at a camp-meeting several persons professing and enjoying perfect love, and immediately sought instruction from them.  I was told that if I was really consecrated to God, with a view of seeking holiness, I might at once, without any further effort or good works upon my part, believe that the Holy Spirit does now fully save me.  I now saw that I had been waiting for a sensible evidence that the work was done, before I could trust God, or believe Him faithful in the fulfillment of His promises.
With this new light I determined I would distrust no longer, but by the help of grace, would believe and “reckon” myself, as ordered, “dead indeed unto sin.”  Here it was suggested that there was danger of practicing a willful self-delusion; but the Spirit helped my infirmities, and I was enabled to see that it was perfectly safe to obey God, and that He, not I, would be responsible for any disastrous results that might follow such obedience.  I now felt very thankful for increasing light upon duty and privilege, and ventured to state to two or three persons in sympathy with my struggles for holiness, and who were solicitous for my success, that I believed myself very near the place where Divine mercy was pledged to give me the victory.
At this juncture I was extremely cautious lest I might profess a measure of grace which I did not possess; yet I noticed that the less ambiguous my statements, and the more positive my confessions, the clearer my light, and the more satisfactory my experience.  This enabled me to declare that if I were not dead to sin, I was certainly dying, and, of course, would soon be dead.  Perhaps it was not over thirty minutes after this till I made the “reckoning” clearly, and stated it positively to others.  Very soon I found myself in a state of adoring wonder at the greatness of salvation, and the simplicity of the way to its possession.  I now could see that Christ was all and in all, and that truly to accept Him was to possess all things, and to confess to too much was an absurdity.
This state of wonder and rapture lasted for several days, and my heart called upon all the angels, all the redeemed, and all beings that had breath, to aid me in praising the Lord for my being and its wonderful possibilities through the provisions of the atonement.  It appeared the most marvelous fact that ever reached my mind, that I should be washed in the blood of the Lamb and made whiter than snow.  I felt such a sense of inward cleanness that I wished all on earth could only see what the Spirit could do for one so worldly, so selfish and so unclean.  An almost irrepressible desire seized me to tell all I met, saint and sinner, at home and abroad, in the families and on the highway, what the Lord had done for me.
This desire, and the accompanying effusions of the Spirit which occurred every few minutes through the day, continued for some years with more or less force.  By and by, I began to turn my attention away from what had been done for me to what I began to see before me, and I perceived that a state of purity and general fulness of the Spirit were small matters in contrast with “all the fulness of God,” and living in the realm of the “exceeding abundantly above all we ask or think.”  Since then I have been a continuous seeker, not for pardon, or purity, or the grace already obtained, but for more and more of the Christ nature.  “Forgetting those things which are before, I press towards the mark for the prize.”

Over against the treasury
He sits Who gave Himself for me;
He sees the coppers that I give
Who gave His life that I might live.
He sees the silver I withhold
Who left for me His throne of gold,
Who found a manger for His bed,
Who had nowhere to lay His head;
He sees the gold I clasp so tight,
And I am debtor in His sight.
—The Herald

Treasures in Heaven are laid up only as treasures on earth are laid down.

From a Reader of The Message of Victory:

What people need today (I mean Christians) is a deeper spiritual experience.  The greatest need is for a greater love of the Bible and to go on to holiness, reaching forth like St. Paul.  I love the Bible and it is the most important reading for me.
These past two years I’ve had wonderful experiences of the leading of the Holy Spirit into a closer walk with God.  Especially of late Colossians 3:1-3 has been revealed to me in a wonderful way which I’d never realized before.  St. Paul says, “If ye then be risen with Christ.”  Suddenly I realized that if we are risen with Christ, then we must have died to something, and when I read the 3^rd verse, “For ye are dead,” then the answer came.
We die to self and sin, and rise victorious by the power of God; the same power which raised Jesus, raised me, and each morning I bow my head and like James tells us, I submit myself unto God so that He will empower me to live that day and be able to resist the devil.  Glory to His wonderful Name, Satan flees from me.
What a mighty God we have; what a wonderful Savior; and what a gracious and loving Holy Spirit.—Mrs. L. Haygarth.