171
March 1927
T h e
K i n g ’ s
B u s i n e s s
Alone at Athens “Left at Athens alone.”—1 Thess. 3:1. (R. V.—“Left behind alone") pA U L loved the fellowship of believers. The social instinct in him was strong. He had great affection for his colleagues and converts. Athens—what an unhallowed place, with its pagan culture, licentious art, schools of religious speculation, god less worship. ’Twas said one could more easily find a god than a man in Athens. Imagine Paul’s solitariness—-a man with such a message amongst all these philos ophers. A man’s Athens. may be his place of business,: his appointed field. And there God expects him to live and labor as to recommend his faith to those about him. Discouraging it may seem, yet here is the test of courage. Can you stand alone? Do you live in such communion with Him that you can be one in a crowd with con flicting opinions about God and Christ and salvation ? Wait! The book of Acts (17:34) in forms us that “certain men clave unto him.” There was fruit from his lonely sojourn. It is bound to be so. God will not leave you without a like recompense if you are true and faithful and courageous. How to Like Folks William Law, in his “Serious Call to a Devout Life” says.: “There is nothing that makes us like a man so much as praying for him. When you can do this sincerely for any man, you have fitted your soul for everything that is kindly and civil towards him. This will fill your heart with generosity and kindness better than what is called good breeding. Pray for others, and you will find all little ill- natured passions die away, your heart grow great and generous, delighting in the happiness of others as once you de lighted in your own.” Fatherhood of God “He hath made of one blood all na tions of men.”—Acts 17:26. The apostle was here pulling up by the roots the Athenian conceit that they were superior stock. Their conception was that mankind was divided into two classes— Athenians and barbarians. The Scripture teaches the unity of the origin of the races. Verse 29 refers to the human race as “the offspring of God.” There is no difference whatever in the blood of the races, although animal blood does differ from human blood. There is no “blue blood” in God’s sight. All men were created equal. Now, the strange thing is that some have taken these words of Paul as to the creatorship of God and are using them in the sense of universal Fatherhood, a doc trine which the whole context is against. We are the children of God only by faith in Christ Jesus (Gal. 3 :26). In Acts 17 Paul is simply rebuking the idea that “the Godhead is like unto gold” (v. 29). He does not here or elsewhere refer to God as the Father of all men—but only as the Creator of all men. Therefore, he argues, God must be more than the stone image which they made Him. Sonship is a re lationship based only on the new birth (Jn. 1:12-13).
The Story of “ One Step Ahead” AN evangelist with whom I was working one evening told a / j . story illustrating God’s leading in the midst of dark and trying experiences. A teriffic storm had come up, as night drew on, and a farmer and his little boy had been caught in the pasture a long distance from the farm house. It was necessary to go through a dense wood, and as it was pitch dark, the father went into a shed near by, procured an old lantern and lighted it to help them on the journey home. The little lad, although he held tightly to his father’s hand, could not understand how so small a light could ever show them the path home. Then the father explained that the lantern shed its light just "one step ahead," and each step they took, its light was cast a little farther on, until at last they should raech their own doorstep. A a time when greatly depressed by heavy clouds of circumstances, this story came back to me, and I remembered the Psalmist’s words: “Thou wilt show me the path of life’&o»« step ahead. So I wrote the words and music of the song which appears below. —Keith L. Brooks.
17
One Step Ahead.
K. L. B.
K eith L. Brooks.
Copyright, 1920, by Keith L. Brooke,
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