King's Business - 1930-02

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T h e

K i n g ’ s

B u s i n e s s

February 1930

are dying.; preachers who are too busy seeking lost souls to chase elusive golf balls; preachers who love to preach and who really prepare to preach, who prepare and preach real sermons. Knowing how to preach and preparing to preach are the supreme needs of the preachers. The Church has too long been cursed with sermonette-recit- ing, brass-sounding, bell-ringing pulpiteers. Such men have emptied the pews and filled the streets with hungry men and women. M odernistic P reaching a M enace to the W orld They have sent the young of the Church unindoctri­ nated into the world of temptation and folly. They have recited books, put on pious vaudeville performances, pic­ ture shows, concerts and other such performances to the detriment of the whole cause. The congregations went to their churches and asked for the Bread of Life but they were given the stones of Modernism. Their congre­ gations returned and begged for the Water of Life, but were given the Unitarian Cain juice of a bloodless sacri­ fice ; consequently the people of America have fallen into a life of sin, crime and murder. Ever since Cain offered the first bloodless sacrifice, the so-called advanced theorists have occupied the place of soda-fountain attendants and served to the public, Cain juice instead of the pure wine of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

The Cain juice servers occupying the pulpits of the country are responsible to a large extent for the crime wave, the deterioration of standards, and the prevalence of immorality. In this world o f sin, sorrow, suffering and death the modernistic preacher, with his bloodless mod­ ernistic Gospel, is a menace to the world and a travesty on truth. The Church’s supreme need is the preacher who can preach and who will open his mouth and fearlessly, power­ fully, doctrinally preach the full Gospel of salvation o f­ fered to the world by Jesus Christ in His vicarious death. The Church needs preachers—powerful preachers, Gos­ pel preachers who preach nothing but the Gospel, who are not ashamed of the Gospel and who are able, capable and willing to present the Gospel to a lost world. The Church needs preachers who can command the respect, attention and thought of a godless, pagan, atheistic, sin-cursed and hell-bent world. There are too many unburied dead men leaning on the pulpits of the country. When you put live, Gospel-filled, Holy-Spirit-controlled men, capable of dis­ cussing the great doctrines of God’s infallible Word, in the pulpits of the country, the people will rush back to the pews to listen to real sermons and real discussions of the powerful doctrines of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Preachers—real preachers—Holy-Ghost-filled, power­ ful Gospel preachers who will prepare and preach Gospel sermons are the Church’s supreme need. To the Syro-Phenician woman Jesus said, “ It is not meet to take the children’s bread and cast it to dogs.” Em­ ploying terms in common use, He divided the human race into two groups; those within the family and those, with­ out. He addressed this Gentile woman as a stranger who had no right to a child’s portion. The woman humbly accepted the position of a Gentile “ dog” and asked and received such mercy as an alien might justly claim. With the Samaritan woman, a follower of a religion much akin to the Jewish, He made no compromise. He said to her, “ Ye worship ye know not what . . . salvation is o f the Jews.” Could He have drawn a sharper line of demarcation between the two religions? He pronounced the religion of the Samaritans faulty because they did not know what or whom they worshiped. Salvation, which is the purpose of all religions, He found in Israel’s re­ ligion alone. But it should be noted that while He drew His lines sharply in dealing with both Gentiles and Samar­ itans, He did not do so in a way that was calculated to repel, but rather to win them. The leaders of the two Jewish sects, the Sadducees and the Pharisees, were constantly rebuked by Jesus; the one group, because of wrong doctrine, and the other because of wrong conduct. To the Sadducees He said, “ Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power o f God.” In such language there was no toning down and no con­ ciliation, but a plain expose o f the fundamental errors at the bottom of their religion. They did not know Scrip­ ture, in which alone the true religion can be found, nor

m M The Christian Attitude Toward Njon-Çhristian Religions B y R ev . H. V . A ndrews f ESUS summed up the whole law in two command­ ments, “ Thou shalt love the Lord thy Gbd with all thy heart,” and “ Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” In these words' He declared that in a cor­ rect heart attitude toward God and toward man is comprehended the whole of religion. In seeking a proper relation toward men it is therefore most important that we find and maintain a right attitude toward them in their religious life. reveal His state of mind concerning the ossified Judaism of His day. By the examination of this testimony we may discover what Jesus thought and felt.

Christian thinkers are divided in opinion as to what constitutes a correct attitude toward other religions.Some insist strenuously upon an attitude of tolerance, while others call for uncompromising rejection. The one class, seeing good in all religions, advocate friendship because of that good, and look upon all men of all religions as brothers. The other class, while admitting some good in all religions (otherwise they could not be called religions at all), yet see so much that is evil and false mixed with the good and the true that they believe themselves justified in declaring the whole mixture false, God-dishonoring, hateful to God, and deserving no consideration from the followers of Christ. W hat was the A ttitude of the L ord J esus ? The Christian attitude, to be worthy of the name Christian, must necessarily be in harmony with the teach­ ing and practice of the Lord Jesus. Since His mission when upon earth was only to His brethren according to the flesh, there is not much on record concerning His atti­ tude toward other faiths than that of Israel. There are, however, a few instances of His dealings with Gentiles and Samaritans, and many incidents and statements which

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