Scriptural Christianity – Message of Victory July-Sep 1978

Nothing is easier than self-deception; few things are so difficult as real self-disclosure.  We may be claiming and even expressing the experience of holiness, and yet know nothing of a total death to the carnal or natural life.  The dress and conversation of the inhabitants of Canaan are imitable; but the true divine life is as inimitable as life always is.  Let us not mistake phraseology for experience, the maiming of the enemy for his death, sanctimoniousness for sanctification, unctuousness for unction, or the knowledge of the truth for the Spirit of truth, for “when truths have once been fully revealed and been made a part of orthodoxy, the history of them does not necessarily imply an operation of the Spirit of God.”
Before we can live the unmixed life, and belong no longer to the carnal but to the spiritual Christians, we must be willing to know the extent of the mixedness in our own nature, for what the eye does not see the heart will not grieve over.  Before we invite God to search us, let us pause and ask whether we are willing that He should make a thorough work of this self-discovery, however painful and humbling it may be.  If not, we had better not begin; for it is better to be without light than to possess it and be disobedient.
For obvious reasons no branch of knowledge is so neglected as knowledge of ourselves.  In other sciences knowledge flatters the vanity of the unsanctified heart; it exalts men in the eyes of others, it increases their influence in the world.  But true self-discovery wounds our pride, and spoils the good opinion we had formed and cherished of ourselves.  We may be skilled in every other science and ignorant in this.  We may be able to calculate the motions of the heavenly bodies, and know nothing of the movements of our own sinful nature.  We may be able to plant our foot on a mountain summit where no human foot has ever before trod, and yet be ignorant of the dimensions of the black mountain of self in our heart.  We may be able by chemical analysis to detect and decompose the material substance around us, and yet never analyze the motives by which we are influenced, and which color and stain all our conduct.
What is necessary then, since self-love will cause us to live such a fool’s paradise if we follow its interested opinion, is the searchlight of God.  This, and this alone, will disturb our self-complacency and self-deception.  “Because thou sayest, I am rich, and have gotten riches, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art the wretched one and miserable and poor and blind and naked:  I counsel thee to buy of me gold refined by fire, that thou mayest become rich; and white garments, that thou mayest clothe thyself, and that the shame of thy nakedness be not made manifest; and eye-salve to anoint thine eyes that thou mayest see” (Rev.3:17-18).
There is a striking thought in the literal translation of Heb. 4:13:  “Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in His sight:  but all things are naked, and lying open unto the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.”  The passage might be rendered:  “All things are stripped and stunned,” the figure being that of an athlete in the Coliseum, who has fought his best in the arena, and has at length fallen at the feet of his adversary, disarmed and broken down in helplessness.  There he lies, unable to strike a blow or lift an arm.  He is stripped and stunned, disarmed and disabled, and there is nothing left for him but to lie at the feet of his adversary, and throw up his arms for mercy.  It means not only the stripping off of all covering and concealments, but the lying prostrate in exposure before the eye of God (Alford).  That is what the Holy Spirit and the searching Word will do for us if we are willing, and until we are willing, we shall be living a mixed life, with more or less of self, and more or less of Christ.—From the book Beyond Humiliation (The Way of the Cross).

EDITORIAL
SPIRIT-INSPIRED UNITY

Every true work of God will be counterfeited by the devil.  He is an arch-deceiver and has sought to outwit God in His plan for man’s redemption from the very beginning.  He is quite content that he himself should be pictured as a demon with horns, hoofs, tail and pitchfork and to be robed in hideous black because that misconception suits his purpose.  But in real life he more often appears as an angel of light, quoting Scripture, promoting “moral good” under the cloak of self-righteousness.  He is disturbed when anyone, serving under his banner, leaves the path of seeming rectitude and strays.  The alcoholic, the prostitute, the far-gone drug addict or the thief are an embarrassment to him:  all these reveal the end to which the depraved human heart can take a man who neglects the redemptive provision of Calvary. He can best reign where the outward conduct seems pleasing to the natural man.  He seeks to imitate all the fruits of the Spirit.  How loving a man of the world, with no profession of the new birth, can appear!  How abandoned to delight can be the votary of this world!  How placid and seemingly well-poised can the successful man or woman of nominal Christian belief appear, almost aping the peace which God can give!
But imitation it will always be if devoid of the Spirit.  Man in his great ingenuity can now fashion a human form so perfectly that it is frightening.  But he cannot impart life.  Man can create glass or plastic flowers to such perfection that they fool the casual observer, but he cannot breathe life into them and cause them to reproduce.  Is it any wonder that the devil should seek to imitate in these last days the unity of the Spirit by an ecumenicalism which is purely man-made?  It might be a clever imitation of the true, but the Spirit has not breathed His life into the thing, and so it is defective.
Because the Holy Spirit is the third Person of the Trinity, His touch upon anything is unique.  It is something far beyond the accomplishment of man to produce.  It has the stamp upon it of divinity, but like all other spiritual creations it has a quality of mystery to it that does not reveal itself to the carnal man.  The Cherubim and a flaming sword still guard the gate to the tree of life, and those who have been thoroughly convinced of their own nothingness and so have committed themselves unreservedly to God are alone permitted entrance.  God has not been foiled.  He has a true Church that leaps all bounds of denominational ties, race or color.  It is the unity of the Spirit that produces such a wonder.  The Spirit has baptized these members into one body, attaching them to a living Head.  From that Head they receive their impulses and move in concert with other hidden, obscure members to perform the counsels and purposes of God.
One finds them in every kind of communion.  Deep calleth unto deep.  The understanding between such members leaps all barriers of prejudice, and in a few minutes more understanding is achieved than with friends in denominational or family relationships of years’ standing.  The same Holy Spirit is teaching them; the same Head is issuing orders; the same oneness is existing between them as did between the Father and His Christ Incarnate.
The Ecumenicals have stolen verses of Scripture to cover their man-made efforts at unification.  And how good it sounds when an eloquent speaker points out all the divisions of Christendom!  But this dispensation is the dispensation of the Holy Spirit, and therefore one of the marks of the age is its invisibility.  The treasure is hid in the field.  We are hid with Christ in God.  The sons of God are not as yet made manifest to a waiting world.  They are hidden as were the 7,000 who had not bowed the knee to Baal in the time of Elijah, but were operating in Israel as a potent force for God, and God knew them everyone.
The seen verses the unseen!  The Antichrist must needs offer us the visible, for man judges after outward appearance.  The size of buildings, impressive lists of statistics as to membership, large rallies and similar efforts appeal to the carnal mind.  This is one thing Satan can build his church upon—outward and visible uniformity.  God is content meantime, while He is testing the loyalty of all true subjects, to wait for a time when the present age shall pass, and He shall present His true Church, gathered out of every tribe and nation.  They have been trained by the same Leader for this grand day of showing forth.
In the United States there was a Choir leader who went to various large cities and trained groups of chosen singers who were later to join in one united effort.  When they finally met together it was with perfect precision that they sang the same songs, accelerated at the same place, reached a crescendo exactly together.  Why?  They had been trained in various parts of the States, but by the same conductor.
The Holy Spirit has been diligent in training the members of God’s true Church.  They are scattered over the world, but the same Leader is instructing them for that final revealing of God’s Church.  The unity is superb because not man-made.  It is the unity of one Spirit.  Over the years He has been faithfully using various members of the body—pastors, teachers, apostles—to bring these people to a single eye and oneness of mind.  How faithfully He has Himself wrought, often on individuals in the stillness of the night, to correct misconceptions due to church traditions, so that they might be of one mind, that they might speak the same thing!  And they will.  Glory be to God!  How He has allowed frustrations and disillusionments with one’s own conceptions, perhaps built up over the years by Church traditions and not according to Scripture!  They  are being trained by this great Leader, and one day there will be a massive get-together, not called together by man.  They will not be whipped to a white heat of enthusiasm by a fleshly leader who employs carnal methods.  They will not be ordered by man to all raise their hands at the same time, in similar fashion, or to throw their arms around the one next to them to imitate “love.” They will be moved from within, but will use varied forms of expression, as does all God’s creation, to express a unity that defies anything seen as yet on earth.
Who are these members?  We cannot give them names for the most part, but we know they are those who have seen their own depravity, gone to their own funeral, and repudiated their own rights and citizenship in the first Adam.  They have vacated the throne of their hearts and yielded the control to “One Spirit.”  And that one Spirit is fully in accord with Christ, the Son, and God, the Father.  “That they may be one, as we are” (John 17:11).—Mrs. E. F. Harvey.

THE MOCK MILLENNIUM

By A. J. Gordon

Antichrist and Antichurch—these two reigning together have brought on an anti-millennium, the dazzling caricature of that which is promised to appear at the second coming of Christ and the marriage of the Lamb.
“The age to come” has its unmistakable characteristics as set forth in Scripture:  it will be ushered in by the visible appearing of the Lord from Heaven (Matt. 13:39); it will be Christ’s millennium during which Satan shall be bound and shut up so that he can tempt the nations no more (Rev. 20:1-5).
The present age—spanning the entire distance from the first to the second advent, has also its distinctive characteristics.  It is called the “present evil age” (Gal. 1:4); Christians are exhorted to “live soberly, righteously and godly in this present age” (Titus 2:12), to “be not conformed to this age” (Rom. 12:2), and they are admonished that Christ “gave Himself for our sins, that He might deliver us from this present evil age” (Gal. 1:4).  So far from Christ being Lord of this age, as He should be were it His millennium, we are distinctly told that Satan is the “god of this age” (2 Cor. 4:4).
Till this dispensation ends, therefore, and the sway of its god is broken, there can be no millennium of universal righteousness in which Christ shall reign with His saints upon the earth.  Multitudes will be taken out of this age to form the Ecclesia, the called out, the Bride of Christ, to be presented to Him at His coming; but the Church will never so transform the dispensation as to turn it into a blissful millennium.
The clock of the ages runs true to the eternal order, and however impatient the Church may be for the consummation of all things, she cannot move forward the hands of that clock a single hour to bring in the Sabbatic rest before the fullness of time be come.  But this was really what was attempted by the Church after her elevation to an earthly throne under Constantine.  She grasped for her glory in the time appointed for her humiliation, and vainly thought to reign in the earth while her King is still absent in Heaven.
Mr. Pember says, “When the Christians were relieved from persecution by the policy of Constantine, and came into honor after having been so long reckoned as the filth of the world and the off-scouring of all things, the cry was straightway raised that the kingdom had come.  But the result of this vain ‘Lo here!’ was the introduction of two pernicious doctrines, that the kingdom is possible without the personal presence of the King, and that the Church can become mistress of the world during her widowhood and while Satan is still reigning prince.
“Further mischief followed, for there being nothing to support such views in the New Testament, those who entertained them were compelled to have recourse to the Old, and to cite from thence the prophecies of Israel’s future glory, in order that by a false application of them to the Church they might justify the prosperity which had accrued to her through her alliance with the pagan world.” (1)
Satan, who is the god of this age, is an anti-god, and as such he is the greatest caricaturist of all holy persons and things, that he may the more effectually delude and destroy.  And having seen the counter Christ and the counter Church which he created for leading men astray, we shall now consider how through these two he brought in a counter millennium, an astounding parody of the true Sabbatic era and the real kingdom of God on earth which are promised in connection with Christ’s second advent.
Everything which belongs to that blessed age has been, and is still, claimed by the apostate Church as already here.  Was not Christ to usher in the millennium by His personal coming?  An adoring bishop to the pope at the fifth Lateran council said, “On thee, most blessed Leo, we have fixed our hopes as the Savior that was to come.” (2)  In his sovereign vicar, Christ has already appeared and is already ruling, says Rome.  “In the person of Pius IX, Jesus reigns on earth,” exclaims Cardinal Manning, “and He must reign till He hath put all enemies under His feet.” (3)
But was it not appointed to the Church to suffer with Christ during this dispensation, that she might reign with Him in the age to come?  “Nay, but now is come salvation and the kingdom of our God,” replies the harlot bride.  Hear the Bishop of Medrusium at the fifth Lateran council again:  “But weep not, daughter of Zion, for God hath raised up a Savior for thee; the Lion of the tribe of Judah (alluding to Pope Leo), the root of David hath come, and shall save thee from all thy enemies.”
A “little flock” waiting for “the Chief Shepherd” to appear; an espoused bride looking for the Bridegroom’s return—such we had supposed to be the character of the Church in this present time.  But the unfaithful spouse has found her Chief Shepherd and Bridegroom in the pope.  Marcellus, in behalf of the Church, speaks thus to Leo X:
“I come to thee as my true Lord and Husband, beseeching thee to look to it that thy bride may be renewed in her beauty; and see to it that the flock committed to thee be nourished with the best and spiritual aliment, the fold united in one which is now divided, and the sickness healed which has afflicted the whole world:  for thou art our Shepherd, our Physician, our Governor, in fine, a second God on the earth.” (4)
Christ foretold the condition of His true Church—“the children of the bride-chamber”—during His absence thus:  “But the days will come when the Bridegroom shall be taken from them, and then shall they fast.”  The Church of this false kingdom, this pseudo-millennium, is thus pictured in the Apocalypse:  “For she saith in her heart, I sit as queen and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow” (Rev. 18:7).  How literally was this prediction translated into history when the infatuated Eusebius, glorying over the triumphs of Christianity in his day, exclaimed:
“Whereas the Church was widowed and desolate, her children have now to exclaim to her:  ‘Make room!  Enlarge thy border!  The place is too strait for us.’  The promise is fulfilling in her:  ‘In righteousness shalt thou be established; all thy children shall be taught of God, and great shall be the peace of thy children.’”
Nay, more:  so far from fasting and waiting the time when they should sit down with the Lord at His table in His kingdom, this historian rejoices that after the enthronement of Christianity under Constantine, when “the bishops sat down at the emperor’s table and the rest all around him, it looked like the image of the very kingdom of God.” (5)
Though “a name above every name” is given to Immanuel, He still waits for every knee to bow to Him; He still waits for His promised throne, “the throne of His father, David.”  He still waits for His royal title, “King of kings and Lord of lords,” which title, as the Scripture shows, belongs only to the day of His glorious coming.  But not so with Antichrist.
“There is but one name in the world,” he declares, “and that is the pope; he only can use the ornaments of empire; all princes ought to kiss his feet; he alone can nominate and displace bishops, and assemble and dissolve councils.  Nobody can judge him; his mere election constitutes him a saint; he has never erred, and never shall err in time to come; he can depose princes, and relieve subjects from their oaths of fidelity.” (6)
What wonder that with such assumptions all the sublime promises of the millennial glory should have been counted as now fulfilled!  So it was; and we read of the ambassadors of the Portuguese king bowing down to Pope Leo, and after addressing him as “Supreme Lord of all,” blasphemously adapting to him the words of prophecy:  “Thou shalt rule from sea to sea, and from the river Tiber to the ends of the earth; the kings of Arabia and Saba shall bring gifts to thee; yea, all princes shall worship thee, all nations shall serve thee.”
At no point has the Messianic glory been more brilliantly mimicked than here.  The profusion of offerings which have poured in upon the royal priest of Rome from the kings of the earth is astonishing to recount.  No monarch that ever reigned has been the recipient of such sumptuous gifts from the princes of this world.
The soft adulation toward Rome, which many Protestant clergymen have learned to cultivate, is now being matched by a renewed subserviency on the part of kings.  Bishop Cox, one of the compilers of the Liturgy of the Anglican Church, writing from England to friends on the Continent in 1559, while Elizabeth was reigning, said:  “We are thundering forth in our pulpits, and especially before our Queen Elizabeth, that the Roman Pontiff is truly Antichrist.”  Such thunder has so far subsided among those employing this liturgy that now a great company of priests are laboring to bring about organic union with Rome.
Luther, after his eyes, long holden of superstition, were opened to discern the Scriptures, looked at prophecy and then at the papacy and exclaimed:  “It is most manifest, and without any doubt true, that the Roman Pontiff, with his whole order and kingdom, is the very Antichrist.”
So the masquerade goes on before the eyes of men and angels, that the unwary may still longer be deceived, and made to believe that this is He of whom the Psalmist wrote, “The kings of Tarshish and of the isles shall bring presents; . . . yea, all kings shall fall down before Him; all nations shall serve Him.”  Only those can unmask these pretensions who read the Scriptures diligently, and find that He of Whom this is written has this honor, which the pope has never known:  “For He shall deliver the needy when he crieth; the poor also, and him that hath no helper.  He shall spare the poor and the needy and shall save the souls of the needy; He shall redeem their souls from deceit and violence, and precious shall their blood be in His sight” (Psa. 72:12-14).
Not merely the millennial reign, but the millennial splendors, have been snatched by the faithless bride.  Sober dress becomes the widowhood of the Church; gaudy attire and jeweled fingers convict her of wantoning with earthly lovers; majestic cathedrals, hoarding boundless wealth and adorned with costly furniture, imply that she has forgotten that here she has no continuing city, but that her citizenship is in Heaven from whence she looks for her Lord.
Cardinal Newman, in defending these lavish splendors of the papacy, declares that their presence “as little proves that the Church is Antichrist as that any king’s court is Antichrist,” and then cites the following passages in their justification:  “I will lay thy stones with fair colors, and thy foundations with sapphires, and I will make thy windows of agates, and thy gates of carbuncles, and all thy borders of precious stones.”
But this is only a piracy of Messianic prophecies, all these texts being descriptive of the age of glory yet to come.  To quote them in this connection is simply to justify our charge that the apostasy has ravished the Church millennial to get building materials for the Church militant. . . . The harlot must needs seize the paving-stones of the Holy city to beautify the streets of “that great city” which is spiritually called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified.  (Rev. 11:8).
But see what the Church was left to do so soon as she began to glorify herself and live deliciously, and to commit fornication with the kings of the earth.  She snatched both the throne and the scepter of God, and began to deal out condemnation to His saints.  The centuries of Antichrist’s career have constituted one long judgment day, in which justice has been outraged as never before in the history of the ages; one prolonged assize, in which popes, and cardinals, and bishops have sat in the bench with Chief Justice Apollyon, and administered sentence according to the statues of the Prince of Darkness.  (7)
How visibly can the form of this black magistrate be seen behind the mock tribunal, how almost audibly does the chuckle of his infernal laughter break forth over this monstrous parody of the court of God which he has seduced the apostate Church to set up!
For some inscrutable reason, the Lord has permitted a demonstration to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places of the worst which His arch-enemy can do.  Wait a little and the Lord shall descend from Heaven to usher in the real millennium, the true Sabbatic consummation for which the ages have sighed, and for which the whole creation, until now, is groaning and travailing in pain; then our Immanuel will show us the best He can do.
It is regretted that our Protestant Christianity, in its separation from Rome, never passed entirely out of the baleful shadow of this pseudo-millennium.  For many to this day confound the Church with the kingdom, and apply the promises of the glory of the age to come to the present triumphs of the Gospel.
The present is the dispensation of election; the declared purpose of preaching the Gospel to the Gentiles in this age is, “to take out of them a people for His name” (Acts 15:14), and it is a premature grasping of the kingdom to apply to this period those glorious predictions of universal righteousness in the age to come, with which Scripture abounds.  If it be said that this conception of preaching the Gospel “for a witness,” and “to gather out” is a narrow and disheartening one, we reply that it is in harmony with the universal testimony of Scripture; and we shall be far safer and more successful to work according to God’s schedule of the ages than according to man’s time-table.  Indeed, if we would be intelligent laborers for Christ, we must not fail to discriminate rigidly between the sphere of the militant Church and the sphere of the millennial Church.
There is an ancient saying of great significance:  “Distinguish the periods and the Scriptures will harmonize.”  Failure at this point has worked vast misconception. . . . The result is, prophecy without perspective; dispensations without distance intervening; the divine vision of things to come blended with the present scene.
Cross-bearing, patient endurance, diligent service—this is our present calling, while we ever pray our absent Lord “that it may please Thee shortly to accomplish the number of Thine elect and to hasten Thy kingdom.”  Meanwhile we are “to live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present age,” if by any means we may be “counted worthy to obtain that age and the resurrection from the dead.”

(1)   Antichrist Babylon, and the coming Kingdom.  p. 145.
(2)   Harduin, 1651.
(3)   See closing pages of Vatican Council, by Henry Edward, Archbishop of Westminster, 1871.  It is an exaltation of the pope as “the supreme judge and infallible teacher of men,” ending with a warning to his enemies that “whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken, but on whomsoever it shall fall it will grind him to powder.”  It is an amazing exhibition of eloquent blasphemy.

(4)   Harduin 1687.
(5)   V.C. 3,15.
(6)   Diet. Papae. Greg 7.
(7)    The Inquisition.

MAN-MADE EFFORT

1. J. Gordon wrote his article, “The Mock Millennium” toward the end of the nineteenth century.  Already the tide of opinion and practice was setting the stage for the landslide we see today of a man-made effort toward ecumenicalism.  Is not the Mock Millennium of Ecumenicalism, with its charismatic claims, threatening a complete domination over the consciences and lives of church members as did that of a thousand years ago?

The following two reports of a recent Charismatic Conference appeared in an American periodical, Convention Herald.  Can we believe our eyes and ears, as we witness the delusion of thousands of “Evangelicals” not to say the mass of Protestants being blinded on such a scale?  Let all truly born-again and sanctified believers pray mightily for grace, courage and vision to be faithful in such times as these.—Editor.

Charismatics Keep Unity in Kansas City

It was the largest convention ever, announced Kansas City newspapers when between 40,000 and 50,000 registrants arrived for “The 1977 Conference on Charismatic Renewal in the Christian Churches.”
Almost half of the participants were Roman Catholics.  The others came from a variety of denominational backgrounds.
Speakers included General Secretary Vinson Synan of the Pentecostal Holiness Church, Episcopal rector Dennis Bennett of Seattle, Catholic lay reader Keving Ranaghan of South Bend, Indiana, inner-healing advocate Ruth Caxter Stapleton of Fayetteville, North Carolina and others.
Bennett said he sees three streams of Christianity beginning to flow together.  The Catholic stream with its emphasis on history and continuity of the faith, the evangelical stream, with its emphasis on loyalty to Scripture and the importance of personal commitment to Christ, and the Pentecostal stream with its emphasis on the immediate experience of God by the power of the Spirit. . . .
A new group was formed by about fifty conference participants who came from Wesleyan-Holiness background.  They include the Church of the Nazarene, the Wesleyan Church, the Free Methodist Church and the Church of God (Anderson, Indiana).  The Christian and Missionary Alliance was also represented.
Ex-Nazarene clergyman, Warren Black of Kansas City, said inclusion of the Church of the Nazarene members in the fellowship was significant in the light of recent history. He alleged that the denomination has expelled about fifty of its members who had undergone the charismatic experience.
As for the degree of unity exhibited at Kansas City, Vinson Synan remarked to a reporter:  “Of all things God has done in this century, nothing has surprised me more than this.”

Charismatics Revisited in Kansas City

Dr. Vinson Synan, General Secretary of the Pentecostal Holiness Church, introduced the sharing time each night.  He said that the literal fulfillment of Joel 2 was taking place there and now.
This was the culmination of nearly two years of work by the fourteen-member ecumenical Planning Committee and the beginning of a four-day conference that one speaker proudly hailed as “the largest and most inclusive ecumenical assembly in the history of American Christianity.”  Throughout the evenings a constant stream of people walked back and forth from the concession stands with soft drinks, popcorn and other snacks.  It was fascinating to see how quickly a person with hands raised “in the Spirit” got out of the Spirit when a friend tapped him on the shoulder to give him the Coke he had ordered.
The dominating spirit of the entire Conference was the absolute obsession with unity without regard for any Scriptural basis.
There were some fifty people in wheelchairs placed strategically on the field to enjoy this time of “Wholeness.”  The irony of this is that at the conclusion of the message, the priest who stated that he had compassion and concern for the bodies of men, made no move to go and heal these fifty afflicted.  Neither did any of the other leaders on the platform.  In fact, when the evening concluded, the white-robed MacNutt walked briskly past these afflicted without even a noticeable greeting.  Why?  The question didn’t seem to bother the crowd.  Rev. Larry Christenson, a Lutheran charismatic pastor and author, warned “where the ecumenical influence is restricted, the charismatic movement shrivels up.”  There it was, pure, and simple, from one on the inside.  The ecumenical movement and the charismatic movement are intertwined and interdependent.  The blindness and the boldness with which this is proclaimed in word and printed page is astounding.  Modernism and New Evangelicalism have brought us to this day.  Modernism has robbed people of sound doctrine.  New Evangelicalism, Billy Graham’s ecumenical evangelism in particular, has robbed people of Scriptural discernment.
Friday night was more of the ecstasy but emptiness.  Cardinal Suenans, a key figure in Vatican Council II and the Catholic’s Charismatic circles, wooed the crowd.  Presiding Bishop J. O. Patterson of the Church of God in Christ and the Rev. Bob Mumford, an itinerant independent charismatic Bible teacher, wowed them.  The theme of the lengthy session was “Holiness” but the same marks of unholiness continued afterwards—cigarettes, rock music, immodest dress, and unscriptural alliances.  Most would not even realize that they had watered the seeds of the coming United Church of Antichrist.
Arrowhead Stadium was silent and empty, but as I recalled with heavy heart the scene of thousands standing there with hands upraised, one passage of Scripture kept haunting me.  “Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name?  and in thy name have cast out devils?  and in thy name done many wonderful works?  And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you:  depart from me, ye that work iniquity” (Matt. 7:22-23).
Bus Bierman, alumni director for Bob Jones University, was FAITH for the Family’s correspondent at the conference.

THE MARVEL OF REGENERATION

Regeneration is a conscious experience.  They who are regenerated KNOW IT.  If we are not assured of our regeneration, no one knows it to be a fact, not even God Himself.  If we are not fully aware that we are born from above, it is not a fact, and a preacher’s saying so will not make it true.  The witness of the Holy Spirit will let us know it, when we are really regenerated; and so satisfactory is this “witness” to him who receives it that he would not thank a committee from the upper skies to appear and confirm it. . . .
Thousands say that they have taken Christ by faith, but that they have never had a clear witness of the Spirit to their pardon.  What a farce!  Much of our teaching about taking it “by faith” and “holding on by faith,” etcetera, is responsible for this deplorable state of affairs.  Beloved, faith has a bit of evidence in it, and real, genuine faith gets an answer.  Faith is the means by which we get all our blessings and, when genuine, is always honored by the witness of the Spirit.
This is an age of compromise, and the baneful results are seen in the nature of the converts produced.  An ease-loving, pleasure-seeking, time-serving, compromising church does not, and cannot, turn out healthy converts.  A good start is valuable in anything; and it is eminently true in Christianity.—Seth C. Rees.

A PAGE FOR YOUNG CHRISTIANS

A word to young people such as appears on these pages is overdue.  We have had young people say to us, “No one ever warned us.  No adult Christian ever counseled us on these subjects.”  Even in religious circles great familiarities are practiced in courting until there is little difference between worldly young people and Christians.
The letter from an enquiring teenager, “Is Petting the Same Sin as Dancing?”, appeared in a religious periodical some years ago. The article below entitled, “Kissing and Roadside Courting” was written by a holiness evangelist, Harry Black.

“Dear Brother,

“I have just finished reading your booklet entitled, ‘What’s Wrong with the Dance?’ and am troubled, and have been for some time, on something very similar.
“Several of us …… Grammar School students have attended the …… Bible Camp near ……, ……, and have come back to do our best to help others meet their Savior.  A young people’s prayer meeting was organized and weekly we come in Christian fellowship for perhaps an hour or so.  We have had one school night set aside as ‘church night’ and no school activity is to take place on that night.  We have acquired the name of ‘Church Gang’ among the other boys and girls.
“Most of us girls room in town and have no place to entertain guests.  A few of us go with boys from a nearby town who are also Christians and as we would like to talk awhile, we are forced to sit in the cars or go home without discussing the happenings of the week.  We have chosen to sit out in the cars.  Naturally the boys put their arms around us.  I have a feeling that this is wrong.  A feeling comes over me that I don’t think I should have.  All of the girls allow this and seem to think nothing of it.  When I say anything to them about it, they look at me as though they thought I was getting rather stiff, although a few agree with me but, like myself, can’t seem to break away from it.  Do you think that I’m being just a prude or have I honestly interpreted what is right, but for fear of losing friends, cling to what is really wrong?
“Recently an argument arose between us and those who go to dances, etc.  During the course of conversation they said that they’d rather dance than sit out in cars necking.  There wasn’t much we could say—I believe we were guilty.
“In your article you said that the dance was the mother of lusts.  Are not our ‘conversations’ just as bad?  Isn’t necking as bad as the dance or have I misunderstood the meaning of the word?  When I was in the seventh and eighth grade I attended a few dances at which I never experienced any excitement, but perhaps that was because I was too young.
“I don’t regret giving up the dance.  I have no desire to go to any now, but at times our points against it are lost when we do practically the same thing with a different background.  We want to do what is right and it seems we are practically losing souls for Christ instead of gaining them.
“Should we refuse to do these things even if it means we will have only girl companions, or shall we go ahead, disregarding the future?  Most likely within a year we will go with different boys.  Will others respect us less because we allow such things, or will they have the same record, even Christians?  When in years to come we meet someone we really care for, will the fact that we have let other boys put their arms around us make any difference in his care for us?  It seems to me it would; am I too stiff?  Does a boy respect and care for a girl more when she won’t do these things?
“Please write if you have time, giving your opinion of the matter and send the names of any helpful articles that I could get.

“Yours in Christ,
(Miss) ……

“P.S. Upon finishing this letter I believe I know what I should do, but won’t you please send your opinion anyway.  We would appreciate your prayers for us that we may have strength, courage and will power to do His will.”
We do not have the editor’s answer to the above letter but we give here an article by a Christian Evangelist which helps to answer the question.

KISSING AND ROADSIDE COURTING

By Evang. Harry Black

“Keep thyself pure” (1 Tim. 5:22).

Isn’t the above text a beautiful admonition?  After reading this talk, some may say, “Why write so plainly?”  My answer is because these things are so widely practiced.  Kissing among young people has become a common thing and is considered a legitimate and harmless practice by many, when in fact it is one of the most dangerous things that young people can do.  Thousands of boys and girls can mark their downfall to their first kiss.  Perhaps it was at a party, in an automobile or just before saying good night.  How subtle the devil is.  Some girls and boys seem to feel they are not up to date with others in high school and college if they have not had experience in what they term:  “Kissing and necking.”  Even in many churches, young women think it is all right to let their boy friends kiss them!  Nonsense!
Let me make a plain statement here, and I feel I have Heaven’s approbation upon me when I say it:  No young person can indulge in this devilish kissing business and keep the witness of the Spirit in his heart.  How do you feel, young people, when you get up to testify in a public service before those who know what you have done in the dark?  The chances are you do not testify very much at all.  The reason is obvious.
Listen, Christian young people:  God wants you to so live in the dark as well as in the light, that other young folk will have absolute confidence in you when you arise to testify for your Lord.  And when an altar service is in progress, the Lord wants you to live so clean and pure always that if you were to kneel by a seeking soul to pray for his salvation, he would not feel like shrinking away from you because of what he or she knows you have done in the past.  It will be against you throughout all your life even though you have really prayed through and have come clean for God.  Those who know you will have mental pictures of what has transpired in the past.  That would, or should, at least mar your peace of mind when you think about it.  How much better to live pure and holy and, like Daniel and the three Hebrew children, refuse to be contaminated with such things.
We need more young people like the following young lady who had high ideals and standards and lived up to them.  A young man made her acquaintance and after a while attempted to kiss her.  What do you suppose happened?  Quick as a flash she slapped his mouth and told him to keep his place.  I imagine that young fellow was very careful about whom he tried to kiss after that experience.
And I guarantee that the man who married that girl got one that had not been befouled by every Tom, Dick and Harry.
Say, young people, don’t you know there is glory and triumph and high honor in being able to say you have never been kissed?  All honor to those fine young folk in this age who maintain their integrity and keep themselves pure, untouched by sin of any kind.  Young man, you ought to live as clean and pure as you want the girl to, whom you choose for a wife.
The automobile can be a blessing or a curse, and it is both.  It is a curse of the worst sort when it is used by young folk for roadside spooning.  No young person with proper ideals and high moral standards would stoop to such a thing.  When one sees girls and boys crowded into an auto, jammed up together and sitting on one another’s laps, you wonder what kind of parents they have and why they should ever permit them to carry on in such a manner.  Then you reason that they have been permitted to grow up uncontrolled, so now they simply do as they please.  God have mercy on such parents!  They will surely have to face such neglect at the judgment or do a lot of praying and repenting between now and that time.  And God have mercy on the young person who spurns father’s and mother’s training, prayers and tears!
If you have been guilty of any of the above, perhaps you were not impressed at the time with the dangers attached thereto.  Perhaps it never impressed you as being very wrong.  But now that you have had the light, pledge yourself and promise God that you will never indulge in this kissing again.  Humbly repent and confess your heart out alone with God.  It would be a good thing for you girls to tell mother everything.  Never keep anything hidden from mother, girls.  Remember, she is your best friend and will keep your secrets.  Boys, have a good talk with father; it will do you good and help you to walk the straight and narrow way.  Or, if you haven’t a mother or father with whom to confide, boys, talk to your pastor, and girls seek advice from the pastor’s wife and from your lady Sunday School teacher.  Above all, talk to God.
“Who then, is willing to consecrate himself this day unto the Lord?”  is the challenge our Lord offers you, young reader.  Will you not surrender right now before you do anything else by falling on your knees before the Lord and promising God you will walk the lone path of obedience whether others do or not.  I seem to hear you saying, “By the grace of God, I will.”

            ***                  ***                  ***                  ***                  ***

The following is the personal testimony of how the writer of the foregoing article entered into a deep experience of God.  Doubtless this crisis enabled him to be the fearless and outspoken advocate of pure and consistent practice in all things.

MY EXPERIENCE

Soon after meeting the Free Methodists God gave me the light on holiness as a second work of grace, and I began to seek the experience.  Like many others, I was a long time getting through to the blessing.  At times I thought I was sanctified and other times I was in doubt.  This continued about three years until I went to preach at the little school house at Chapel Hill.  During my stay at this place, I was a constant seeker for the blessing.
Near the close of this pastorate I attended a camp meeting twenty miles away at Solomon, Kansas.  I pitched my tent down at the end of the row near the timber, and made a vow that I would never give up seeking until I knew I was sanctified.  Soon after my arrival at the camp ground, another young minister informed me of a godly man on the encampment who had preached several times and each time his subject was “Holiness.”  I had heard of this good man before and the Spirit whispered:  “Go and unburden your heart to him and he will help you to pray through.”  I watched for my opportunity. One day while alone in my tent I heard two men passing by.  They were taking the path that led to the woods.  Looking out I saw that one of them was the man I wanted to see.  I knew they were going into the woods to pray and the Lord said:  “Now is your opportunity.”
Just then a Salvation Army brother came in whom I had invited to share my tent.  Satan said:  “You must stay and entertain him for he may think you do not want him.”  But the Lord said:  “Excuse yourself and say that you will return in a little while.”  This I did and the brother very graciously granted my request.
As I proceeded into the woods, God began breaking up the great deep of my heart and tears filled my eyes.  The Holy Spirit was beginning already to bless me as I walked in the pathway of duty.  When I reached the two men, they were engaged in prayer, kneeling under a tree.  I unburdened my heart to them and asked for special prayer that I might be sanctified.
Thank God they did not try to soothe me by saying:  “Now, Brother Black, you are all right; your life is one of holiness and consecration and we have confidence in your experience.  We feel you are just having a time of testing and you will soon be out of this cloud.”  Oh, no, they did not say that!  Nor did they give me a series of compromising instructions, such as “All you need is to lay your gift on the altar, for the altar sanctifies the gift, you know.  Just take it by faith and you will have the blessing.”  No, no!  They did very little talking and soon suggested going to prayer.
I began to pray and this godly brother and his friend prayed with me.  Over and over again he would say:  “Oh, God, put Thy seal on this boy!”  Finally God did put His seal on me and I knew He gave me “that perfect love that casteth out fear.”  I felt so pure and clean that it seemed like I were living in a different atmosphere.
Returning to my appointment I noticed a difference in my preaching and the people did, too.  There was a new power in my preaching that I had not felt before.  Is this not what Jesus said would come to pass?  “Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you.”  Power to preach, power to pray, power to overcome the devil, power to win souls into His kingdom.  Praise the Lord!
Dear reader, do not be satisfied with anything short of a genuine experience that crucifies “the old man” of sin.  You cannot get this experience through consecration alone, not merely through trying to believe into it.  There must be a death—a crucifixion and then there will be a glorious resurrection!—From The Story of My Life, From Newsboy to Preacher, by Harry Black.

BREAKTHROUGH TO REALITY

By E. F. Harvey

The nurse in the Indian Hospital leaned forward to catch the last whisper from the moving lips of the young missionary.  He was dying at the age of twenty-five.  The message was, “I have the Holy Ghost and He is a reality.”  The writer was then young and is now old but that testimony, which thrilled his heart when he heard about those dying words, still brings an upsurge of gratitude to this day.
I first met Howard B. Bitzer when we were both nine years of age.  Our respective parents were members of a Christian community and we were in frequent contact during the teenage years.  However, we grew apart.  Howard, a few months my senior in years, had a very advanced mind and was a keen student.  He early became a school teacher.  Impeccably religious, he developed a cold and superior attitude toward his inferiors in age or in intellect.  I did not like him because he hurt my pride.  He tended to make close friends with lads older than himself.  He became a part of the religious mold of the younger section of the Christian community.
Meantime I was becoming increasingly bored with the religious set-up and thought of leaving it all.  And then it happened!  A Spirit-filled Evangelist came on the scene—a man who hated sin and lukewarm religion.  He began to preach his heart out, weeping into the night over the desperately hopeless situation.  Revival struck and things began to happen!  The writer, in his late teens, became angry, being offended with the preaching which he felt reflected on his parents and other relatives.  He was tempted to run away from it all, and then to his wondering eyes there came the sight of a very much humbled Howard going forward to pray over his own spiritual condition.  This was startling but it was nothing compared with what was to follow.
One Sunday afternoon, the service was electrified by the sudden invasion of a Howard Bitzer I had never before seen nor ever imagined I would see.  He came rushing into the service already convened, and literally ran to the platform, turned to face the audience and with beaming face and tear-filled eyes, fairly shouted out to us all that he was finished with “dead religion,” that after a night of praying, God had come to him.  The Holy Spirit now overflowed his heart.  He cried out, “I’ve got the Holy Ghost and fire!”  I do not think anyone there doubted it.  At least I had no question about it.
Sitting among the bandsmen of our Church Brass Band, the writer’s eighteen-year-old heart thumped fast, as the cry went through his whole being.  Sitting there he prayed inwardly, “Oh I want that kind of religion; I must have it.”  And no one so encouraged him in that purpose as Howard, who prayed for him and with him at every opportunity.  “Oh, Lord,” he would cry, “give Edwin the reality of holiness that comes from Heaven.  Give him the assurance of that reality in his heart so that he will know it and everyone else will know it.”  However, it is Howard’s reality that is the subject of this article.  And what a transformation there was both inside and outside!
God was a reality.  God was his environment, his very home, his food, his theme, his occupation.  God was the topic of his conversation.  And oh how he needed so real a God, for he encountered much opposition!  We cannot maintain that he and the rest of us were always wise.  Often our youthful spirits colored our piety.  But the reality and earnest desire to be all the Lord’s was there.  Often Howard had to be counseled by the minister in charge who had been so used in that revival.  And there came a time when he and two other young men were ensnared by an also very real devil.  They fell into spiritual pride, when they refused the counsel of mature Christians.  This caused a very serious struggle and it became evident that Satan had pushed in and led these young men astray.  But Howard was the first of them to see what had happened.
It was some months before he regained his equilibrium but he came out stronger, wiser and more aware of Satan’s devices.  And God, Who was shaping him for service overseas and also for service in the ages to come, restored him and he became even more of a blessing, being able to use his unfortunate experience at this time, in guiding and counseling others.  Howard’s experience at that time can show the earnest young convert the cleverness of our enemy.  He attempts to deceive the keenest young Christian by pretending that his voice is the voice of God.
Prayer was real.  Over and over again have I knocked at his door to have him come out of the little room which was literally his prayer closet.  Was it opposition, and there was plenty, Howard would pray.  Backslidden professors of religion opposed him, called him names, told stories, brought him down in the presence of others.  What did this young Christian warrior do?  He prayed!  He prayed with me.  He prayed with anybody who would join him in talking to God.  He came from long seasons of private intercession to be the challenge of the Prayer Meeting.  When things pulled hard, he prayed.  When his motives were questioned, he prayed.  When he was shunned, he prayed.  Prayer was a glorious occupation, a mighty weapon, a precious source of comfort.  It was more—it was his very life.
The Bible was real.  “I so like John Wesley,” he would say, “because he always brings me back to the Bible.”  Truths from the minor Prophets or elsewhere in God’s Word, often flood through my mind and stand me in good stead, just as they did when my young friend first passed them on to me.  All past beliefs had to be measured now by God’s Word.  Also standards of living, or of service, must tally with Bible precepts.  The Bible was now his food to eat, his lamp to guide, his occupation in every available hour.
Preaching God’s message was real.  From a self-conscious, proper young man, he became a searching prophet to the unrepentant and a messenger of glad tidings to hungry souls.  A prolific reader, he could no longer depend on human knowledge.  His message must be God’s Word for the hour.
I had the privilege of spending one summer in Evangelistic work with Howard Bitzer, just two years before he went to India.  What a time it was!  Older people who had become a bit staid, misunderstood the zeal of the young pair.  But souls were convicted and pardon sought in that tent mission.
Howard was especially burdened also for his students.  He preached to them, studied the Scripture with them, exhorted them and above all endeavored to set them an example.
The value of souls was real.  It superseded everything else in his scale of priorities.  He was a born musician but when the Holy Spirit came, music became very subordinated.  During the lapse, referred to earlier in this sketch, he had gone back to classical and other music.  But there leaped out from the sacred page this warning, “If I build again the things which I destroyed, I become a transgressor.”
Once I was discouraged because of opposition.  Older people had become critical; I was very down-hearted and wondered what we should do.  “Do?” queried Howard.  “Why, there is only one thing to do—and that is to go forward!”
Howard sacrificed further education because of his vision of the value of immortal souls.  He went to India and died there because of his love for those souls.  During the passing years, I have often asked when in difficulty, “What would Howard have done in this circumstance?”  And the answer has come, “Only one thing to do!  Go forward.”
His motives were real and true.  His outward relationships and actions were always the real index of what he thought and intended.  Like his wonderful God, “there was no  variableness neither shadow of turning.”  Deviousness was no longer a part of his nature.  His conversation was in Christ, “yea, yea and nay, nay.”  One quotation from the minor prophets was a favorite of his, “I will search Jerusalem with candles.”
His sanctification was real.  In many quarters today we find enmity and skepticism concerning the message and experience of holiness.  Such reality, as that possessed by Mr. Bitzer, is, next to the declaration in God’s Word, the strongest bulwark against such enmity.
Sometimes people ask, “How can one tell whether a soul has been filled with the Holy Spirit?  does he not require some outward manifestation, particularly a speaking with tongues or something similar?”  I answer, “I have seen in Howard Bitzer more evidence of the incoming of the Holy Spirit to abide, than if he had exhibited any of those outward manifestations for they could have been counterfeited.”  God and His presence were self-evident.  When a man has been selfish, proud, ambitious, calloused to the feelings of others, aloof, sarcastic, powerless, etc., etc., and then upon him comes a spirit of love, fervor, power to reach people with the Gospel, a presence of God that is constant day and night, summer and winter, in evil report or good report, in acceptance, or in  rejection, in success or seeming failure, then I know without doubt that nothing but the Holy Spirit has produced that in a Child of Adam.
The Holy Ghost is a reality.  Just think of this man’s brief stay in this world—only twenty-five years.  But in the last seven of those years, there poured from him one continuous stream of blessing and godly influence.  He was real with God.  He was real for God.  God was real to him.  Only reality could endure his presence.  Unreality would skulk from his kindly but penetrating gaze.  O God, give us more people who break through to reality!

ABLAZE FOR GOD

The sign of a Christian Church is not a crucifix, but fire . . . the token of the Divine presence is the fire of the Holy Ghost.  When we pray for a baptism of the Holy Ghost, we are praying that God will send through our nature this searching, scorching flame, that it may burn up in heart and life whatever is earthly and sinful.—Samuel Chadwick.

I saw a human life ablaze for God,
I felt a power divine:
As through a human vessel of frail clay
I saw God’s glory shine.
Then woke I from a dream and cried aloud,
“My Father, give it me;
The blessing of a life consumed by God.
That I may live for Thee.”

EXCAVATION BEFORE ERECTION

By G. D. Watson

The great prerequisite of perfect love is the thorough emptying of the heart of every principle and disposition contrary to love.  No one can love God with all the heart, while original sin remains, for the carnal mind resides in the heart, and it is evident that if a part of the heart or moral nature is taken up with evil, the entire heart cannot, at the same time, be in conformity to God’s will.
This seems a very simple and self-evident proposition, yet it is so difficult to convince the most of professing Christians of this truth when it comes to actual experience.  I have observed the following things to be true:

1. That a great many will agree to the doctrine of loving God with all the heart, and many profess to be doing it who are utterly averse to the doctrine of heart purity, and repudiate the idea of being sanctified.  If such persons understood the true Scriptural meaning of loving God with all the heart they would know that such language implied the thorough purification of the heart from the carnal mind.  There is so much loose and disjointed religious thinking abroad in the church, that hardly one in a hundred seems to have any definite Scriptural view of actual and original sin, of regeneration, or heart purity, and kindred subjects.  The whole of Bible doctrines seems thrown together in a sort of a theological hash, and it is common to hear people announcing and denying the same truth in the same breath, affirming that they want to be whole-hearted Christians (which really means holiness-hearted) and in the next breath denying the very condition of purification by which wholeheartedness is reached.  If a glass of water contains one grain of sand, it cannot be filled with water, for to be filled with water it must contain no other substance.
2. I have observed that some teach the receiving of the full baptism of the Spirit, while at the same time, strongly denying the destruction of inward sin.  But, according to the Word of God, the two things are utterly contrary to each other, and I have never in all my travels found or heard of a person actually receiving the baptism of the Spirit under such teaching.
3. That the depth and perpetuity of religious experience is in proportion to the depth of heart excavation.  The higher the edifice, the deeper and broader must the foundation be.  This principle is true everywhere in nature, mind and morals.  If the great work of heart sanctification were a mere blessing, which so many think it to be, it would not require such a deep foundation.  Many think the work of holiness is like a traveler’s tent, which can be readily pitched without a foundation, whereas it is a great palace of inward life built to last through the ages, and must needs have a foundation broad and deep in the very bed-rock of our nature.  I have heard that when the great Corn Exchange of New York was built, the expenditure upon the foundation was so immense that the contractor reckoned the building about half done when the basement story was finished.  The greatest part of the work of full salvation is digging away the hindrance to God’s grace out of our being.  It is very easy for grace to fill a clean vessel.
4. To be filled with the positive graces of the Spirit, is always a popular thought among religious people; but to be crucified, emptied, cleansed in order to be so filled is exceedingly unpopular.  If a reporter should go through the Christian churches reporting all the prayers offered, nearly all of them would be prayers to be filled and rarely would there be one offered for complete cleansing from inward sin.  Mr. Wesley found that the people readily accepted his preaching on being filled with faith, resignation, hope, love, gentleness, good works and such; but when he expounded the necessity of being entirely cleansed from all sin in both root and branch, there was much outcry against his teaching.  So it is now, and so it will ever be.  Old Adam, the fallen nature, clings tenaciously for a little space in our being.

The story is told of an old Scotch lady, who thought that grieving over heart depravity was the highest possible state of grace, and is reported to have said, “If you take away my original sin, you take away all my religion.”  As odd and contradictory as this may seem, yet multitudes of professing Christians seem to view it in that light.  When we read the lives of eminent saints whose graces and toils and triumphs made them the chandeliers in the visible church, who seemed more like celestial visitants than the plodding mortals of our world, we crave to be flooded with the warm fervor of their hearts, the bold heroism of their testimony, the fervency and faith of their prayers, and the luster of their dying triumphs.  But are we willing to pay the price they paid, to go through such crucifixions, to endure the self-denials, the heart emptyings, the fastings and wrestlings in prayer, which laid the foundations of their loveliness and were the stepping-stones to their heavenly greatness?
If we want Pentecostal power we must pay Pentecostal prices.  To be filled with converting grace we must pay the price of giving up all our actual sins.  To be filled with pure love, we must pay the “upper room” price, of giving up our whole being, life and destiny to the will of God.  The deeper we die the deeper we live.  The lower we excavate the higher we build.—From the book, Spiritual Power.

Ready for Thy Fire

O God, Who answerest by fire,
Make this to be my chief desire;
To see Thy fire fall.
For Baal is there, his prophets too,
Oh, Lord, see how they’re mocking You.
Thou answerest not at all.

But God replies, “I’m waiting still.
There are conditions to fulfill
Before I send the fire.
The Promise of the Holy Ghost
Came to a waiting, praying host,
United by desire.

“Mount Carmel, it is cold and bare.
My people are not gathered there
Upon the appointed ground.
Where is the altar?  Is it made?
And has the sacrifice been laid,
The trench been dug around?

“Where is Elijah?  Where is he?
A prophet in sincerity,
I see him not at all.
Then not until I hear his cry,
Yes, not till then, mark ye, shall I
Permit My fire to fall.”

Oh God, Thy voice has spoken.  See,
I hasten in obeying Thee.
I must not, shall not tire.
See now my heart, an altar made.
See there a sacrifice is laid.
I’m ready for Thy fire.

And then, from out the leaden sky
The fire comes down, Oh who am I
That such a gift be given!
The people cry, The Lord is God.
How else could just a human clod
Be filled with fire from Heaven?
—Trudy Tait.

PURITY OF HEART

“Blessed are the pure in heart” (Matt. 5:8).

Purity of heart is all blessings in one, and the vision of God is all the privileges in one.  This announcement is partly a summary of what has already been said, and partly the statement of the highest possible good to which it can conduct the believer.
The thought of purity is in every sentence spoken, although the word has not occurred until now.  The poor in spirit is purified from pride of spirit, the meek from anger of spirit, the mournful from frivolousness of spirit, the yearning from unholy desire of spirit, the merciful from harshness of spirit.  And now that we may not let the word slip, all these sayings are compressed into one word—purity.
And similarly the conditions said to belong to each of these are summarized in the one word, God.  The kingdom of the poor in spirit is His gift, the inheritance of the earth by the meek is another way of seeing Him; the comforting of the mournful is the touch of His hand; the satisfaction of the yearning is His fulness brought in; the gift of mercy to the merciful is His bestowment.  Purity!
The thing to be observed in this great saying is that the term purity is an intensely ceremonial term in the Old Testament, while here it is lifted up entirely out of all such associations that it may stand quite alone.  There were seventy specific cases of uncleanness described by Jewish writers, every one of which was purely ceremonial.  The inward disposition came to be overlooked, and all concern was lavished upon the external and relative.  The symbol took the place of the thing symbolized, and resting in carnal things, men became carnal.
Now here all the symbolic is dropped, and the primal idea is presented.  Purity means not vessels that have been cleansed, or feet, or hands, or garments that have been pronounced clean.
It means the freedom of the affections from the contamination of passion, selfishness, injustice, insincerity and every form and hue of evil.  This conception is not offered as a criticism upon the ceremonial purity.  It assures a far loftier function than that.  It is easy to detect a flaw in a ceremonial religion, it is not so easy to present the perfect ideal to man in such language as they can understand.  Yet that is what is done in this passage.  Man’s inadequacy is not, in the first place, to provide means of atonement for sin; it is to understand the true nature of sin as a defilement.  It is precisely upon that ground that the great battle has to be fought.  Sin is not the contamination of the hand, the foot, the garment, or the vessel.  It cannot therefore be reached by any ceremonial system that concerns itself about these things.
It is moral defilement that has to be considered and only by moral provisions can it be effectually met and effaced.  This it is that gives to Christ’s ministry its peculiar and distinguishing charm.  He always regards sin as an inward and moral mischief, holiness an inward and moral effacement of that mischief.  Clearly these words admit of no interpretation of ours thrust upon them.  They carry their own interpretation.  They tell us unmistakably that purity is inward, personal, primary, and not outward, relative, secondary, except as a resultant from the first.
We are asked, first of all, to accept Christ’s conception of sin, and then His idea of purity.  We cannot take the second until we have taken the first.  Sin is moral disruption and chaos.  Purity is moral order and sweetness, the music of the perfect movement, the white robes and white wings of the celestials, the Divine life in men.—Rev. John Stuttart.

REFINED OR REMOVED?

By Dr. A. W. Tozer

We Christians must look sharp that our Christianity does not simply refine our sins without removing them.
The work of Christ as Savior is twofold:  to “save his people from their sins” and reunite them forever with the God from Whom sin has alienated them.
For God’s holy character requires that He refuse to admit sin into His fellowship.  Through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus mercy may pardon the returning sinner and place him judicially beyond the reach of the broken law; but not the boundless grace nor the infinite kindness of God can make it morally congruous for a pure being to have communion with an impure one.  It is necessary to the moral health of the universe that God divide the light from the darkness and that He say at last to every sinner, “Depart from me, ye that work iniquity.”
This certainly is no new thought.  Christian theologians have all recognized the necessity for an adequate purgation of the inner springs of moral conduct and the impartation of a renewed nature to the believer before he is ready for the fellowship of God.  Our hymnists also have seen and wrestled with this great problem—and, thanks be to God, have found the answer, too.
Binney felt the weight of this problem and stated it along with the solution in a little known but deeply spiritual hymn:

Eternal Light!  Eternal Light!
How pure that soul must be
When, placed within Thy searching sight,
It shrinks not, but with calm delight
Can live, and look on Thee.

O how shall I, whose native sphere
Is dark, whose mind is dim,
Before the Ineffable appear,
And on my naked spirit bear
That uncreated beam?

There is a way for man to rise
To that sublime abode:
An offering and a sacrifice,
A Holy Spirit’s energies,
An Advocate with God.

The offering and the sacrifice and the sanctifying energies of the Holy Spirit are indeed sufficient to prepare the soul for communion with God.  This the Bible declares and this ten thousand times ten thousand witnesses confirm.  The big danger is that we assume that we have been delivered from our sins when we have in reality only exchanged one kind of sin for another.  This is the peril that lies in wait for everyone.  It need not discourage us nor turn us back, but it should make us watchful.
We must, for instance, be careful that our repentance is not simply a change of location.  Whereas we once sinned in the far country and among the swineherds, we are now chumming with religious persons, considerably cleaner and much more respectable in appearance, to be sure, but no nearer to true heart purity than we were before.
Again, pride may by religious influence be refined to a quiet self-esteem, skillfully dissembled by a near use of Bible words that meant everything to those who first used them but which may only serve to disguise a deep self-love which is to God a hateful and intolerable thing.  The real trouble is thus not cleared up, but only driven underground.
The gossip and troublemaker sometimes at conversion turns into a “spiritual counselor,” but often a closer look will reveal the same restless, inquisitive spirit at work that made her a nuisance before her conversion.  The whole thing has been refined and given a religious appearance, but actually nothing radically has happened.  She is still running the same stand, only on the other side of the street.  There has been a certain refinement of the sin, but definitely not a removal of it.  This is Satan’s most successful way of getting into the Church to cause weakness, backsliding and division.
Many a business transaction which among worldly men we would brand as sharp practice when carried on by a Christian after he has prayed over it is hailed as a remarkable answer to prayer and a proof that God is a “partner” in the affair.
These are illustrations only, intended to show how sin may alter its appearance without changing its nature, and are not to be taken to mean that I am opposed to Christian counselors or businessmen who pray over their affairs.  The contrary is true.  That church is blessed indeed which has in it a few persons with the gift of discernment to whom weak and troubled Christians may come for help in times of crisis.  And blessed is the businessman today who has learned to pray his way through red tape and taxes.  Without the help of God I do not see how businessmen stay sane in this frightful rat race we call civilization.
The temptation to spare the best of the sheep and the cattle is very strong in all of us.  Like Saul before us we are willing enough to slay the scrubby sheep and the old sway-back steers, but Adam and the devil join to try to persuade us to keep the fattest beasts alive.  And many of us fall for the old trick.  We make pets of the cattle we should have destroyed and their bleatings and bellowings are heard throughout all Christendom.
The will of God is that sin should be removed, not merely refined.  Let’s walk in His will.—The Alliance Weekly.

BY PURENESS

The Greek word—like the cognate form, “holiness”—seems to come from a root denoting reverence.  It suggests the thought of the awe with which nature herself regards the presence of purity.  All kinds of purity carry an awe with them.  Whether it be the purity of aim and motive in all things—the singleness, disinterestedness, unselfishness, which we see rarely but certainly manifested in social, political, ecclesiastical life—that high and noble principle which carries a man straight to the mark of truth and duty, without one side-look to the convenient, the remunerative, or the popular; or whether it be—and probably this is the thing more directly in view—that chastity of the heart and of the soul, which alone can see God, and alone move unscathed and unscathing on an earth rife with temptation—in either case we have here the primary condition of a blameless ministry, lay or clerical; in either case we have here the quality which wins reverence—which makes men feel, and the more closely they approach it that here is a Divine presence—that here, in this man of like passions as they are, there is, moving and working, a Spirit not of man but of God—a Spirit which has a further message for them, whether they will hear it or whether they will forbear. —Dean Vaughan.