January, 1945
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They walked the streets until nearly morning. He suggested they go to a hotel and procure separate rooms. With misplaced trust in her compan ion, exhausted, and having no other place to turn, the girl consented— only to discover after she retired that the rooms were connected by a door between. The story of this girl’s humiliation was heart-breaking. Her greatest con demnation was directed against the sleepy, indifferent Christians who failed to welcome her at the church when she was homesick and hungry for God. Between repentant sobs she turned to me with tearful, pleading eyes and said, “I’m in jail, for—for the first time. It will kill my mother. No one else cares. I wish I could die. I had to get in jail to find the first person that would speak to me about my soul.” The records of our department are black with the evidence of Christians’ lost opportunities. Failures may be definitely attributed to the lack of ap prehension of the spiritual needs of others. The saving of souls is becom ing a lost art. Even while the closing words are being added to this article, the evi dence multiplies. An eighteen-year- old lad who regularly ushers at church will be missing next Sunday. He is to be taken to court for break ing and entering in the night. I invite you to listen to a confer ence over my desk in relation to this young man’s downfall. It is the same story: Christians have been asleep. Oh, yes, they have prayed, but too many prayer meetings have been held too. late, after the loved one is in jail. There should have been prayer and love and earnestness displayed all along. What Is Needed I speak as an officer of the law. You say, “What do law enforcement offi cers know about God’s program for the ages?” You have a right to ask. And I must confess frankly, “They do not know as much as they should!” They certainly know a lot about the devil’s side of the program. They are on duty in the devil’s garden twenty- four hours a day. They see the scourge of sin in all its phases. They never are free from listening to the troubles of those who face a payday for sin. The police department is a clearing house for trouble, a clearing house which records the deed but provides no cure. No human agency can reach sin in the hearts of men. “What about the church?” you ask. The church, likewise, never saved any one. Salvation comes only through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ—by His touch upon the individual life. It was faith in the personal touch of Jesus
. . . Christians As leep?
It is easy to go to sleep when one is out of touch with God. The devil knows this fact, as well as he knows man’s weakness for sleep. He knows that no one can do more for God than pray, until he has prayed. He invited sleep to the disciples in the garden of Gethsemane while Jesus went aside to pray. The artful de ceiver, he invents ways by which to keep us out of touch with God, for he does not care how many pretending Christians there are, as long as he can induce them to walk in their sleep. What Happened While Christians Slept I will give you some facts from my own experience to show that Christians have the bad habit of dozing when they should be alert. You may draw your oWn conclusions. Even as I write, the evidence gathers. A police report on my desk relates the circumstances of Dorothy, a young woman who came from another state six months ago. She had been reared in a Christian home, had attended Sunday school, and had kept a church contact until she left a good job in her home town to procure work in a defense plant. The parting words of her mother were: “Remember, Doro-' thy, if you keep in touch with God, He will permit nothing to happen that isn’t for the best.” When Dorothy arrived in her new location, she immediately began look ing for a church home that had the same heart-warming hospitality that she had known in her own state. She met, instead, innumerable Christians in an atmosphere of cold storage. A few bowed, spoke, and passed* on; others were too much engrossed with their own affairs to notice the new comer. She went from church to church, only to meet with this same indifference. No one was interested in her spiritual welfare. All were too sleepy to heed the fact that somebody’s girl was turning from the church to court, the way of hell, because nobody cared. Homesick and discouraged, she per mitted Satan to invite her into a so cial atmosphere where she could for get her troubles. Her former church' connections were forgotten. The ad monition of her mother was far in the back of her mind. The devil’s disci ples, wide awake to the situation, readily found the sort of amusement that momentarily permitted the girl to forget the pain in her heart •
Three weeks ago, Dorothy met a soldier who showed a kindly interest in her. He discouraged her when she drank, advocated a higher standard of morals than she was exhibiting, and condemned other companions with whom she associated. Her heart was hungry for even this veiled demon stration of sympathy. ' The night before they were to be married they quarreled over the type of ceremony that would pronounce them man and wife. She left him, went to a beer garden and drank six glasses of wine. An old woman in the next booth listened to the story of the girl’s misfortune in life. She, tbo, was sympathetic and produced a~ barbital tablet to help her forget. The next morning Dorothy awoke in a hospital. Her mind was blank to the ordeal of the previous evening. The soldier, thinking she had been drugged for ulterior purposes, demanded a po lice investigation. The interview took place and it revealed this: What Doro thy needed 'was spiritual advice, rather than police protection. With! tears of repentance in her eyes she confessed her. sin .of forgetting God. “I did not expect to meet a man like you here,” she told me. “I need a good bawling out, but—but I—I don’t believe I could stand that. You—you talked to me about God. I tried to go to church, but nobody cared.” I prayed with that girl, and gave her God’s promise from His Word. A young pastor and his wife called upon her that same afternoon to help her renew the broken contact. Dorothy’s suffer ing was directly traceable to sleeping Christians. Consider another case similar to Dorothy’s. Three weeks ago, Alice, a girl in her teens, came here from an other state. She came for the same purpose that Dorothy did. The girl’s church background at home had been similar. Unable to produce a birth certificate for war work, Alice was forced to seek employment in a res taurant. Faithful to her mother’s in struction, she attended church for a time when she first arrived, but the Christians that she met were asleep to the fact that God had placed a val ue upon her soul. Alice could not un derstand the lukewarm indifference embodied in their social formalism. She, too, forgot God and drifted into the social functions of the world. The climax came when she was enticed to a neighboring city-by a male escort who purposely missed the last bus.
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