CHAPTER NINE
Wanted—
Prophets for a Day of Doom!

Paul’s head is already halfway into the lion’s mouth. What of it? Before Agrippa this daring, dauntless disciple Paul has neither nerves nor reserves! He can be no ‘‘tongue-in-cheek’’ preacher anytime, or anywhere. Physical courage will make a man brave one way; and moral courage, which despises men’s opinions whosoever they be, will make a man brave another way. Both these types of courage made Paul a Christian Daniel in a Roman ‘‘den of lions.’’ Men may try to destroy a prophet’s body, but they can not destroy the prophet.

The clock creeps up to midnight as I write, and a peep through the window reveals a sky of velvet blackness. Transfer this into the realm of politics and it is a sky without a guiding star. Put that midnight sky in the realm of morals and you must multiply it to gross darkness. Come now to the realm of religion; count your T.V. audiences for top-line evangelists; tell me how many ‘‘big tops’’ are operating in evangelism at the moment; quote me the ‘‘converts’’ of all last year’s Gospel efforts; and when you are done, I shall shout, with the roar of a tornado, ‘‘The moon of revival has not yet risen on this hell-bound, Christ-rejecting, speeding-to-judgment generation.’’ We don’t ‘‘sit at ease’’ in Zion anymore. We have gone past that; we just sleep. In the church, pillars have given place to pillows.

As I began to say, Paul, as he stands before Agrippa, has his head half into the lion’s mouth. With an awareness that the feet of pallbearers are not far away, he now ‘‘turns on the heat’’ until that wretched immoral King Agrippa stammers, ‘‘Thou almost persuadest me to be a Christian.’’ Then Festus, a mere guest, forgets his manners and barges in with ‘‘Paul, thou art beside thyself; much learning doth make thee mad.’’ Paul parries, ‘‘I am not mad, noble Festus.’’ (I think the tone of his voice infers that the listening sinners are mad.)

But tell me, today when we preach the everlasting gospel, does anybody think that we are ‘‘raving’’ (as Rotherham translates mad) or going ‘‘insane’’ (as Weymouth translates it)? On the contrary, we have our love-offering in view, our big name to defend, our crowds to consider, and our extent of days to think over, don’t we?

The Methodists in England have just finished their ‘‘Yearly Corporation of the People Called Methodists,’’ a thing that John Wesley formed in 1784. It was held in Newcastle, England (1958). In spite of the colossal efforts of mass evangelism in the past two years and the boasted ‘‘lasting value of much follow-up work,’’ it was acknowledged almost with tears that ‘‘the evangelistic candle’’ is almost guttered out. There are men among them large of mind, large of heart, and large of vision. Peep into the debating hall. Yes, there on his feet is Edwin Sangster—scholar, theologian, author, and now head of Methodism’s Home Missions. He is not refuting the charge that Methodism is sick and (some add) nigh unto death. The man is moved and moving. Listen to him. I quote: ‘‘We are combatting something deep in the soul of the nation. For this deep malady, we need some deep X-ray therapy that we have not found.’’ He adds, ‘‘I think, with passion, that agnosticism is flourishing in Britain in place of the great religious revival for which Methodists so fervently hoped. Last year church members in Methodism fell lower than for 13 years, and no less than 100,000 children ceased to attend Sunday schools.’’ (I chip in here, Could TV be a real factor in this declension?) ‘‘Every year for the last twelve years the number of ministers has declined; it fell by 276 in the past year.’’ (Dr. Sangster wrote some twenty years ago, Can Methodism be Reborn, knowing even then there was some canker at the heart.) Let Edwin Sangster finish his tormenting lament: ‘‘We thought that, even if our numbers were smaller, we could count on the total conviction of the people who came. But even those in the pews are having their battle for faith.’’

And Methodists in England are not alone in their perplexed plight. Tell me, Australians, Is the position like that with you? And what of the Church in South Africa? Any declension? In America we have an all-time high in church attendance; but that goes for Jews, Catholics, Jehovah’s Witnesses, too; and do not forget the jails are full to overflowing, and the divorce mills are jammed to standing room only.

Men—benign, but bad and bloody—rule in many of the high places of the earth. ‘‘Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.’’ The cry of the slaughtered dead must be ‘‘Dost Thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?’’ The cry of ‘‘the living’’ (I mean those really alive with God-indwelt life) must be, ‘‘Avenge me of mine adversary. And shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry to him day and night?’’ Surely the hour is approaching when grace is impossible, when vengeance is inevitable.

To whom much has been given much will be demanded. Millions walk in darkness because they have no light; but the democracies are great offenders in that they have had light, but snuffed it out with the ‘‘bushel of business’’ or the ‘‘bed of idleness.’’ Surely this Sodom-like sin must merit Sodom-like judgment. ‘‘This was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom,’’ says Ezekiel 16:49—‘‘pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness.’’ We need prophets for this day of doom—holy men of God—to speak ‘‘as they are moved by the Holy Ghost.’’ If He does not still move preachers, then we had better close down. But He does move them.

Neither Gideon nor anyone else gets into trouble because of his visions. It is actions that bring down the wrath of the offended powers. Let a Gideon slip out at midnight and cut down the groves of Baal; then hell releases its fury. Let John the Baptist call the priests ‘‘vipers’’ and rail at Herod’s adultery, and he has signed his own death warrant. Certainly we need prophets for this day of doom, for look at the mounting interest in the false cults. Newsweek, Aug. 4th, 1958, says that Homer Knorr, president of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, will take the Yankee Baseball Stadium this week, for 150,000 Witnesses will gather for a convention (their biggest ever—a sign of their growth). This eight-day conference will end with the baptism of 4,600 fanatical ministers, who are unpaid and would compass sea and land with their Christ-denying, man-concocted, Bible-twisting religion, to make another convert sevenfold more the child of hell. This makes you think—particularly after the above quotation of the all-time low in England of men for the ministry.

Can this organized but paralyzed system called Christianity cumber the earth much longer? Is Sangster right when he says we have not found an answer for the deep malady affecting the nation? (Would it not be more correct to say that we have scorned the old-time method of proclaiming repentance and regeneration and sanctification?) Tucked away in my heart is a stirring consolation; I share it with you. When God-given, heaven-sent revival does come, it will undo in weeks the damage that blasphemous Modernism has taken years to build. By the gale of the Spirit, the deceptive doctors of divinity will see swept away ‘‘the house which they built upon the sand’’ of human interpretations of the Bible. The head of humanity is sick and the heart faint. In the scheme of men, we are at the end of the line. Everything is ‘‘laid on’’ now for the superblast of the ages that will slice the earth in atomic destruction. Hell enlarges her mouth for the spoil which the filthy modernists have prepared as they have bartered the blood of Christ for ‘‘a mess of pottage’’ (‘‘higher criticism’’—so-called). With swollen heads and shrunken hearts, they will look at their folly.

Arm of the Lord, awake! put on strength! This is the hour for revival. This is the hour of doom. Where are the men of God? Prophets may have miracles, but they must have a message. In their own way, the bewildered worldlings are saying, Is there any word from the Lord? They know there is no intelligent word from any other source. Because God cannot lie, therefore Joel 2 and Malachi 3 will be fulfilled. ‘‘The Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come to His temple.’’ What comfort there! This moment drought; the next, deliverance. Ten minutes before John the Baptist arrived—no one knew that he was there. As it was, so I am sure it will be. God will get some man’s ear and heart and will. Men, hidden in secret at this very moment, will utter soon, in the Spirit’s might, the burning truths that this people must hear. Their words will burn as molten metal. With long patience, God awaits.

But when He arises, ‘‘Who may abide the day of his coming?’’ At the operation of the Spirit, men at this moment ‘‘drawing iniquity with a cart rope,’’ will bend as corn before the wind. The Kremlin will tremble at the news of a supernatural operation in China. May God precipitate revival in China, Russia, Germany, etc.—lands scorched with the fire of militant Communism. For one reason, they need it so greatly; for another, our free nations need to be provoked, as Jonah was with Nineveh. Pharaoh finally wilted—under the assault of the ten plagues; and under Moses the prophet, the Israelites were led to victory. Today we have ten other new plagues—more sinister and effective and mighty than those (because worldwide and not confined just to Egypt); yet even these new plagues have not melted the heart of modern man but made it militantly wicked.

Have we no modern Moses? Can we suffer this generation to perish in the slave camp of moral bondage—and sit idly by, doing nothing about it? Are we to be mesmerized spectators, while Lucifer, with millions chained to his infernal chariot, sweeps many souls down the ‘‘broad way’’ to everlasting darkness? We need to rediscover the secret of those blessed men of whom the Word says, ‘‘They subdued kingdoms, [and] stopped the mouths of lions’’—(that ‘‘lion’’ who goeth about today ‘‘seeking whom he may devour’’). For this day of doom our pale, pathetic, paralyzed protestantism needs God-filled and God-guided men. Wanted—prophets of God!