CHAPTER SEVEN
Is Soul-Hot Preaching a Lost Art?

Centuries have passed since the Swiss Reformer Oecolam-padius forged the phrase, ‘‘How much more would a few good and fervent men affect the ministry than a multitude of lukewarm ones!’’ The passing of time has not taken the sting from this statement. We need more ‘‘good and fervent preachers.’’ Isaiah was one such, with his ‘‘woe’’ of confes-sion—‘‘ Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips.’’ And Paul was another such, with his ‘‘woe’’ of commis-sion—‘‘ Woe is unto me, if I preach not the gospel!’’ But neither of these ordained men had a larger concept of the magnitude of his task than had Richard Baxter of Kidderminster, England. Listen to him in answer to the taunts that he was idle: ‘‘The worst I wish you is that you had my ease instead of your labor. I have reason to take myself for the least of all saints, and yet I fear not to tell the accuser that I take the labor of most tradesmen in the town to be a pleasure to the body in comparison to mine, though I would not exchange it with the greatest prince.

‘‘Their labor preserveth health, and mine consumeth it. They work in ease, and I in continual pain. They have hours and days of recreation; I have scarce time to eat and drink. Nobody molesteth them for their labor, but the more I do, the more hatred and trouble I draw upon me.’’

There is something of New Testament soul-culture about that attitude to preaching. This is the Baxter who ever sought to preach as ‘‘a dying man to dying men.’’ A generation of preachers of his soul-caliber would rescue this generation of sinners from the greedy mouth of a yawning hell.

We may have an all-time high in church attendance with a corresponding all-time low in spirituality. It may have been that in the past liberalism was rightly cursed by many as the seducer of the people. Now T.V. is the scapegoat, getting the anathema of the preachers. Yet having said all this, and knowing that both indictments carry truth, may I ask us preachers a question: Have we to confess with one of old, ‘‘The fault, dear Brutus, is within ourselves’’? To sharpen my scalpel and plunge it further into the quivering flesh of the pulpiteers: Has great preaching died? is soul-hot preaching a lost art? have we conceded to the impatient modern’s snack-bar sermons (spiced with humor!) the task of edging men’s jaded spiritual appetites? do we endeavor to bring ‘‘the powers of the world to come’’ into every meeting?

Consider Paul. With a powerful anointing of the Holy Spirit upon him, he went out to ransack Asia Minor, mauling its markets, stirring its synagogues, penetrating its palaces.

Out he went, with the war cry of the Gospel in his heart and on his lips. Lenin is credited with coining the phrase, ‘‘Facts are stubborn things.’’ See how right such a phrase is by looking at the achievements of this man Paul; then sicken at the compromise of our generation of Christians! Paul was not merely a citywide preacher but a citywide shaker, and yet he had time to knock on the doors along the street and to pray for lost souls in the street.

The playboys of yesterday are the payboys of evangelism. A top-line evangelist of my knowledge refused a contract of five hundred dollars a week for a four-weeks’ preaching campaign. No wonder a modernist has declared that these men will weep for souls—if the price is right—aye, like Judas, they will be weeping when it is too late! May weakness in the pew be caused by wickedness in the pulpit?

I am increasingly convinced that tears are an integral part of revival preaching. Preacher brethren, this is the time to blush that we have no shame, the time to weep for our lack of tears, the time to bend low that we have lost the humble touch of servants, the time to groan that we have no burden, the time to be angry with ourselves that we have no anger over the devil’s monopoly in this ‘‘end time’’ hour, the time to chastise ourselves that the world can so easily get along with us and not attempt to chastise us.

Pentecost meant pain, yet we have so much pleasure. Pentecost meant burden, yet we love ease. Pentecost meant prison, yet most of us would do anything rather than, for Christ’s dear sake, get into prison. Perhaps Pentecost relived would get many of us into jail—Pentecost, I say, not Pentecostalism— and I am throwing no stones.

Imagine Pentecost in your church this Sunday: You are endued as was Peter, and under your word, brother Ananias is slain and his wife soon stiff beside him! Would the moderns stand for that? Again, here is a Paul, smiting Elymas with blindness. In these days that would bring a court case against any preacher. And even prostration, which has accompanied almost all revival preaching, would ‘‘get us a bad name.’’ Is not that more than our tender hearts could take?

I am appealing again, as at the beginning of this article, for majestic preaching. The devil wants us to major on minors. Many of us in the ‘‘Deeper Life’’ bracket are hunting mice—while lions devour the land! What happened to Paul while in Arabia I have never been able to find out. No one knows. Did he get a glimpse of the new heaven and the new earth and see the exalted Lord reigning over all? I still do not know; but this much is sure, that he altered Asia, jaundiced the Jews, riled the Romans, taught the teachers, and pitied prison jailors. This man Paul, and another preacher called Silas, dynamited the prison walls—with prayer—and cost the taxpayers a load in order that they might get about the Master’s business.

Paul the bond-slave, Paul the love-slave, having settled that he was the hardest soul God would ever have to deal with, strode out to shake regions for God. On his day he brought ‘‘the powers of the world to come,’’ stayed Satan, and outsuffered, outloved, and outprayed us all. Brethren, to our knees again, to rediscover apostolic piety and apostolic power. Away with sickly sermonizing!