CHAPTER NINETEEN
As the Church Goes,
So Goes the World

For this midnight hour, incandescent men are needed. On the day of Pentecost, the flame of the living God became the flame of the human heart to that glorious company. The Church began with these men in the ‘‘upper room’’ agonizing— and today is ending with men in the supper room organizing. The Church began in revival; we are ending in ritual. We started virile; we are ending sterile. Charter members of the Church were men of heat and no degrees; today many hold degrees, but have no heat! Ah, brethren, flame-hearted men are the crying need of the hour!

Men need to be a pillar of fire—God-guided men to lead a misguided people; passionate Pauls to stir timid Timothys; men of flame to outshine and outburn men of name! We need knights of prayer to lead nights of prayer. We need true prophets to warn of false profits, ‘‘for what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?’’ (Mark 8:36).

In this end time the rockaby-baby attitude of many conference preachers is a tragedy. The cry should be ‘‘Blow the trumpet in Zion, sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly . . . ; let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep!’’ (Joel 2:15– 17).

Compared to a heart that has known the fire of the Lord and allowed that fire to go out, the ice-clad peaks of the Alps are warm. Metal is molten only while the fire burns; remove the fire and the metal is solid. Even so, a human heart without the heat of heaven is an iceberg.

If the Spirit is absent, the preacher’s study becomes a laboratory for dissecting doctrine and developing lifeless dogma. Teaching needs anointing; truth must be trenchant; and comfort must kindle.

Inspired men are desperately needed! Believers with Spirit-generated souls are indispensable to this degenerate generation. The gale of end-time iniquity will blow out a mere human flame and as a dry reed cracks in a storm, will snap fleshly sectarianism’s feeble candle. At the moment a rushing mighty wind of false religion and lukewarm Christianity is lashing the world. Warned of false fire by reless men, we too often settle for no fire at all!

Unable to detect what is flesh and what is Spirit, the religionists of the hour are heralding with banner headlines a new boom in spirituality. The good has again become the enemy of the best. (The wise will understand.) Be alarmed! The conflict gets stiffer! This is the night of blight and plight. God help the nations, ruined with man-made religion, cursed with man-made cults, and doomed with man-made doctrine! Was there ever such an evil hour? Reiterated effort is the price we have to pay for progress.

As the Church goes, so goes the world! If the watchmen sleep, the enemy takes the city! The preacher should give at least one day a week to prepare his sermons and yet another day to prepare the preacher to preach the prepared ser- mons. Inspiration is as mysterious as life, for both are God-given. Life begets life by its very nature. By the same token, inspired men inspire.

We need Joshuas to lead the Lord’s people into the Promised Land of Spirit-empowered living. Like Israel, we have escaped Egypt and Pharaoh (which in our experience means the world and Satan), but failed at Kadesh-Barnea. What should be a stepping stone can become a stumbling block. What should be a gateway can become a goal. What could be a thoroughfare can become a terminal.

‘‘Blind unbelief is sure to err and scan God’s works in vain.’’ Have we come out of the poverty of the world, but not yet entered into the Canaan of His riches?

Think of it! For forty years these chosen people had no miracles and no answers to prayer—nothing but deaths, droughts and darkness. And all because of unbelief. ‘‘The giants are too great for us!’’ was their cry (Num. 13:17–33). Today this is our cry. ‘‘Look at the might of this; measure, if you can, the strength of that!’’ Our reply should be, ‘‘Lord, I pray thee, open . . . eyes!’’ (II Kings 6:17). ‘‘Is the Lord’s arm shortened that He cannot save’’ (Isa. 59:1)? Shall we but consider Him as the God of the past, the God of prophecy, but not the God of the present?

Peter’s Pentecost sermon was as scorching as it was searching. Truth became alive. ‘‘This is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel!’’ (Acts 2:16). The inspired writer soon found that ‘‘this sword of the Lord’’ had a new edge so that the listeners were cut to the heart.

Men are ever saying that in these trying days people need comfort. Agreed—many do need comfort. The sick, the sad, and the suffering are in this bracket. However, let none fail to realize that to keep silent while a house is burning is criminal. He is no comforter who lets his neighbor sleep as he watches a criminal move to the door with a gun. (In this hour this is not overdrawing the picture of the peril.)

Before the men of straw of our day, who decry our blood-honoring, incarnation-believing, hell-fire evangelism, shall we wilt? To do this would reveal us as sawdust-Caesars. The legions of hell are great; but the legions of heaven are greater. The devil is mighty; God is Almighty. The stakes are high. The price and prize are great!

Some declare that in America Patrick Henry did more to pave the way for freedom and liberty than any other man in its history. Hear him, fired with passionate devotion for his people, as he speaks at the Virginia Convention, March 23, 1775: ‘‘Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take. But as for me, give me liberty—or give me death!’’ Could Cato or Demosthenes surpass that oratorical gem? Can we translate it?

The fearful bondage and slavery that exists in the world today and threatens the rest of mankind is no fairy story! Though Communism may conquer the world (terrible and unimaginable as that might be), to the true child of God there is a greater horror—eternity for the unrepentant in an endless hell!

Perhaps we should get near Patrick Henry’s language this way: ‘‘Is life’s span so dear and are home comforts so engrossing as to be purchased with my unfaithfulness and dry-eyed prayerlessness? At the final bar of God, shall the perishing millions accuse me of materialism coated with a few Scripture verses?

‘‘Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, GIVE ME REVIVAL in my soul and in my church and in my nation—or GIVE ME DEATH!’’