J ighb nei or. rock in pieces? Therefore, behold, I am against the prophets, saith the Lord, that steal nvp words every one from his (Jer. 23:29-30) S not my W ord like as a fire? saith the Lord; and like a hammer that breaketh the
Woe unto tkem that call evil good and good evil; that put darkness for light and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. (Isa. 5:20)
F E B R U A R Y , 1920
Bible Institute ofLosAngeles ( IN C O R P O R A T E D ) LO S A N G E L E S , C A L IFO R N IA , U . S. A .
Free Training School for Christian Workers
D I R E C T O R S
Lyman Stewart, president J. M. Irvine, secretary
R* A. Torrey, vice-president Leon V. Shaw, treasurer
T. C. Horton, superintendent
H. A. Getz
Nathan Newby
J. O. Smith
S T A T E M E N T Church as expressed in the Common Creed The Necessity of the New Birth. The Maintenance of Good Works. The Second Coming of Christ. The Everlasting Existence of the Spirit. The Resurrection of the Body. The Life Everlasting of Believers. The Endless Punishment of the Impenitent. The Reality and Personality of Satan.
D O C T R I N A L We hold to the Historic Faith of the of Evangelical Christendom and including: The Trinity of the Godhead. The Deity of the Christ. The Personality of the Holy Ghost. ^ The Supernatural and Plenary authority of the Holy Scriptures. The Unity in Diversity of the Church, the Body and Bride of Christ. The Substitutionary Atonement.
S C O P E O F T H E W O R K TDTTT?-DnQT7. The Institute trains, free of cost, accredited men and women, in the r U K r U o J i . knowledge and use of the Bible. D E P A R T M E N T S * ip The Institute Classes held daily except on Saturdays and (2) Extension work. Classes and conferences held in neighboring cities and towns. (3) Evangelistic. Meetings conducted by our evangelists.^ (4) Spanish Work. Personal work among Spanish speaking people. (5) Shop Work. Regular services in shops and factories. (6) Jewish Evangelism. Personal work among the Hebrews and mission for Jews. (7) Bible Women. House-to-house visitation ^and neighborhood classes. (8) Oil Fields. A mission to men on the oil fields. (9) Books and Tracts. Sale and distribution of selected books and tracts. (10) Harbor Work. For seamen at San Francisco harbor. (11) The Biola Hall. Daily noon meetings for men in the down-town district, with free reading-room privileges. Evangelistic service every evening. (12) Print Shop. For printing Testaments, books, tracts, etc. A complete establish ment, profits going to free distribution of religious literature.
TH E K IN G ’S BU S IN ESS MOTTO: 'T, the Lord, do keep it, I wilt water it every moment, lest any hurt it, / will keep it night and day. = = = — = Isa. 27:3 — — ■ — : P U B L I S H E D M O N T H L Y B Y T H E B IB L E I N S T I T U T E O F L O S A N G E L E S Rev. T . C . H O R T O N , Editor.in Chief Rev. KEITH L. B R O O K S, Managing Editor 4 Entered as Second-Class Matter November 17, 1910, at the Post Office at Los Angeles, California under the A ct o f March 3, 1879 sl Acceptance for mailing at special rate o f postage provided for in Section 1103, A ct of October 3, 1917 fln authorized October 1, 1918. Volume X I February, 1920. Number 2 Editorials: Making the School an Infidel Factory (139) Burning the Mortgage (139) The Ecclesiastical H. C. L. (141) A Red- Blooded Evangelical Pastor (141). A Doctor of “ Divinity” (143) The Bible .Up to Date (144) Some Methodists "Who Dare (145) Monkeys and Parrots (147) Skin Deep Re ligion (148). Sentence Sermons for busy readers (150) What Shall We Do About It? Rev. G. W. McPherson (151) Jesus Christ, the Altogether Lovely— Dr. A. C. Dixon (156) The Christian Fundamentals League (161) Bible Institute Happenings (163) Evangelistic Stories from experience (166) Fundamental Studies— Doctrine of God (173) Homiletical Helps (175) Thoughts for the Unsaved (177) Notes on the Jews and Palestine (179) International Sunday School Lessons (181) Devotional Home Readings— Dr. F. W. Farr (218) Personal Work Tools (225) Lure of Spiritualism— Kate Drew (227) Book Review (230) • PLEASE When sending subscriptions, address correspondence to Office of The King s Business, Bible Institute of Los Angeles South Hope Street Checks may be made payable to BIbll Institute of Los Angeles. Do not make checks or money orders to individuals connected with the Bible Institute. PRINCIPAL CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE
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BURNING THE MORTGAGE While the Treasurer, Mr. J. M. Irvine, held the document certifying to the fact that the bonded indebtedness of the Bible Institute of Los Angeled had been fully paid, the President, Mr. Lyman Stewart, struck the match and, in the presence of nearly three thousand persons, the paper was burned.
What does it mean? It means that after twelve years of faithful min istry in the training of men and women, and the giving of the Gospel to thousands of people in this land, and other thousands in the regions beyond, —our Lord has manifested His good pleasure in freeing us from the $500,000.00 encumbrance made necessary in the construction of the great buildings which were erected and have been used entirely for His glory. He has given to us the property, now worth two millions of dollars, that we may go on unhindered to larger and better things for Himself. To Mr. Lyman Stewart, his brother, Mr. Milton Stewart, and to hun dreds of people scattered through this and other lands, whom the Lord has used to make this event possible, we give unstinted thanks and lift our hearts in prayer in their behalf. In connection with the dedicatory exercises at which Mr. Nathan Newby, of the Board of Directors, presided,—Dr. O. P. Gifford made an ad dress on the subject of “ Applied Christianity;” the Superintendent gave a brief story of the work, and Dr. R. A. Torrey, Dean of the School, offered the dedicatory prayer.
140 T HE K I N G ’ S B U S I N E S S On the Sunday preceding, three addresses of unusual interest were made to great gatherings of interested friends. The morning address was by Dr. R. A. Torrey on “ Is the Bible the Book of Books?” In the afternoon Dr. French E. Oliver spoke on “ Solving World Problems,” and in the evening Dr. A. C. Dixon took for his theme “ Fishing For Men.” A pic torial souvenir issued and presented to friends at this time, was bound in with the January number of The King’s Business, and tells, in brief, the story of “ What God Hath Wrought.” There is not, and never has been, any disposition to exalt the Bible Institute. God must have agencies, and in grace He has chosen us—given us a vision—and in spite of many mistakes which we have no doubt made, has stamped His seal of approval upon our efforts to fulfill His command to give the Gospel, and has given wisdom by which we have been able to conduct the many departments of the work in a manner commendable to practical business men, and to give assurance to our friends throughout the land that funds committed to us for our Lord’s work will be treated as a sacred trust and used in such a manner that they will bring adequate returns in spiritual results. It is a great satisfaction to us to have given to us the privilege of using this equipment for our Lord in these days,—days so strangely significant, when the universal unrest of the world .manifests as néver before the great need of the only remedy for human ills—the Gospel of God’s redeeming love as presented by Him who of all men that have ever lived was the only one who could say “ Come unto Me, and I will give you rest.” To the giving of this Gospel, pure and simple, we dedicate ourselves anew, and covet your daily prayers in our behalf that with increasing loyalty to the whole Word of God, with unfeigned faith, untiring zeal, un hindered devotion to our Lord Jesus Christ, and a passion born of the Holy Spirit for the saving of the lost, we may go on in our labor of love “ until He come.” There was never greater need than now for Bible-trained men and women. If our land is to be saved from the wreckage which threatens the nations, it can only be accomplished through the God-given source—His holy Word.—T. C. H. jÉI jgü j ü M A K I N G Tk e Sunday School an Infidel Factory) The Pilgrim Press in preparing the Sunday School teachers for class work, gives some remarkable instructions. The lesson is on Jonah, and under the caption, “ Loyalty to Jesus Christ will conquer sin,” the writer says: “ It will repay us to study Jesus’ method of saving prodigals and Magdalenos when He lived in Palestine. We shall discover that He saved them by challenging the best that was in them, and then getting them to dare to share His cross. It takes more than one cross to make Calvary. Redemption is a mutual matter. We are saved by Christ’s sacrifice, plus our own. We are saved by faith in Christ, plus His faith in us. We are saved by Christ’s love, plus ours for Him. And we are saved in a mutual service. From this suggestion, work out what our part in this wonderful work of redemption is, and see how the moral energy comes into our lives from Christ, as we complete the circuit of mutual interchange of motives.” And then the writer tells them how not to believe the story of Jonah, to which our Lord set His seal in Matt. 12:40 :
T HE K I N G ’ S B U S I N E S S 141 “ A minor point of gfe gfe A R ED -B LO O D ED Evangelistic Pastor Every once in a while the Lord puts- something into your hands that comforts your heart and encourages you in your purpose to fight the battle 142 T HE K I N G ’ S B U S I N E S S in defense of the truth, and we want to pass on to ouf readers extracts from a sermon preached by one of God’s strong'Bible men, which has greatly encouraged us. Dr. W. B. Hinson is pastor of the East Side Baptist Church of Port land, Oregon, and in a sermon recently given his people on the Lord’s com ing, with the theme “ His Appearing and His 'Kingdom,” speaking in reference to the Anti-Christ, he said : “ Have you heard anything of a falling away among professing Christians? In this house I am informed a preacher said, ‘The Second Coming is all rot.’ Have you heard of a falling away yet? I am going to speak tonight about professors in a Chicago University who say that the Godhead of Christ is nothing but a myth, and, the sentence in the Scripture, ‘Without shedding of blood is no remission’ is foolish and futile. “ “And the man of sin shall be revealed, even the son of perdition.’ Would you like to hear another word about him? “ ‘Know this, in thé last times grievous times will come, for men shall he lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, haughty, railers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without true affection, implacable, slanderers, without self- control, fierce, not lovers of good, full of distrust, headstrong, puffed up, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— holding a form of Godliness, but denying the power thereof.’ 'Have you seen anything like that? “ ‘The time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine.’ I heard a man say the other day that there were more church members in the moving picture shows on Sunday than in the churches of Portland. ‘The time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but having itching ears, will turn aside unto fables.’ “ And then in 1 Timothy you will hear him mention those fables again as ‘old wives’ fables.’ Turned from the sound doctrine to old wives’ fables! Kate Ting- ley, for instance, an old wife; Mary Eddy, a decidedly old wife! They shall turn away from the truth, and what shall they turn to? Old wives’ fables! “ I tell you, people, you have the signs of His. coming all about you. And that mold of which I told you last Wednesday night,.—the mold of prophecy— is hav ing history poured into it very fast, and His appearing and His kingdom are the imminent things now. And my solemn word to you is this: I cannot but state that I think the time has come when there must be lines of discrimination between those who love the truth and those who are hostile to it. I f the Godhead of Jesus Christ is a myth, the man who holds that must stand on that side, and I on this: For I have no communion with him, and he can have none with me. I f the Scriptural assertion, ‘Without shedding of blood there is no remission’ is futile and foolish to some who are in the church, then they must go north and I will go south. And I think God is sounding today, clear as with a bugle call, ‘Com® out from among them and he ye separate, saith the lo rd .’ I won’t give my money to send to the heathen a missionary who denies the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, and the Ascension of Jesus, whether they be Baptist, Presbyterian, or anything else. And I will not have fellowship with people who deny Christ is God, and that the Bible is inspired, and that the Lord Jesus arose and ascended into heaven, and is coming again. And I am calling you people to take your stand, and state your conviction, and express your loyalty to Jesus Christ. And I have been feeling during these last days something as Elijah felt, I suppose, when he said, ‘If God be God, serve Him; if Baal, serve him.’ “ They still keep saying that because this thing is preached here this church, will go down. My brethren, there are far more serious things than this church going down. It would be far more serious to me if my faith went down, and if your faith went down. And I want it to be clearly understood, and I speak now for those without rather than for those within,—we are going to stand four square against anything or anybody who repudiates the deity of Christ; and that holy men of old spake as they were borne along by the Holy Ghost; and that Christ is the Coming King. We have no fear., for we have nothing to lose, and we have nothing to gain. We said two years ago, by the help of God we would try to be a ' New Testament church. We have tried, and I believe I voice the conviction of every member of the 'church listening to me at this moment, we THE K I N G ’ S B U S I N E S S 143 shall persist in trying it. We shall continue it. And if the issue has to come, _ and we have to stand out separate in our faith in the Bible, and our allegiance to Jesus Christ, we care no more than we care for the Wind that blew yesterday. But are we living up to this high standard? That is the thing for us to determine. “ They tell us we are to federate, and we are tor stahd with people who affirm the One who bought us with His blood is only a man, and to stand with people who say the Book is inspired just as Browning or Longfellow is inspired; to stand with people who say in open hostility to the Word of Jesus Christ that He is never coming back again; and we are to stand with people who say the Bible has no'supernatural element at all; and we must be numbered with people who slander the church, the Bible and Jesus Christ Himself. “ But I will not stand there, neither will you. But by the help of the Lord Jesus Christ there shall be one building in this city, and one church in this city, -that will dare stand four-square'for all the truth, and against the entire lie.” We like the ring of this message. We love and pray for the man who delivered it, and we ask you to pray that God will raise up a host of preachers who will have the courage of their convictions and honor their Lord and His precious, unchangeable Word by preaching fearlessly, and by daring to stand in their place, if they have to stand alone. Don’t fail to put emphasis upon the necessity of warning people to refrain from' the giving of funds to colleges, or to missionary enterprises that are not true to the Old Book. Let our funds go to institutions, mis sionary organizations, and individuals that are loyal to a whole Bible, —so that we shall not be among those who will be ashamed at His coming. We expect to have Dr. Hinson’s permission to print his sermon in tract |form for distribution.—T. G. H. A D O C T O R o f “ Divinity” What’s in a name? Nothing particularly in this name, that is, it is a meaningless name. Dr. Shirley Jackson Case, D.D., connected with the Chicago University “ divinity” School, tells us that the only reference to a world cataclysm in the Bible is found in the Book of Revelation. “ Dispel this bogey)” he says. “ Fear of the end df the world in the last 2000 years has been a palsy on the human spirit. It has made millions of human beings exist in a sort of ‘what’s the use’ frame of mind,'and has been of no good to Christianity or anything else.” Now the good doctor is not a doctor of “ divinity” at all, because he denies the Divine book, which he does not read. If he were a student of the Bible in any of our Bible schools for a limited period, he would know that the seventh chapter of Daniel gives some suggestions of a cataclysm, and that our Lord Jesus in the 24th of Matthew states pretty plainly what isi to come to pass, and that the Old Testament prophecy, and the certificate, of our Lord, and the testimony of John, the beloved, all agree. And then when he says it has done no good to Christianity he says what is false, for it has accomplished God’s purpose in the lives of tens of thousands of Chris tians, and taught them that “ denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously and godly in this present world (age, or dispensation); looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ.” And the men and women of the true church who are being honored of God in the saving and sanctifying 144 THE K I N G ’ S B U S I N E S S of souls today, are the men and women who are not disturbed by a “ bogey,” but who are sad a t ’heart that men are willing to wear the title of Doctor of Divinity” when they deny the proper Deity of our Lord, and our Lord’s own words in the Book of Revelation (Chap. 1:10, 11, 17, 18) : ' “ I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day, and heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet, saying, I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last; and, What thou seest, write in a book, and send it unto the seven churches which are^ in Asia; unto Ephesus, and unto Smyrna, and unto Pergamos, and unto Thyatira, and unto Sardis, and unto Philadelphia, and unto Laodicea. * * * “ And when I saw Him, I fell at His feet as dead. And He laid His right hand upon me, saying unto me, Fear not: I am the first and the last. “ I am he that liveth and was dead; and, behold, I am alive forever more, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death.” . If Dr. Case would do as John did, perhaps the Lord would make him a teacher of Divimtyjf-T. C. H. T H E Bible Up T o Date The Bible is not only up-to-date, but always a little ahead of date. The December 6th issue of The Literary Digest has a remarkable article con cerning “ A Dead Sea Power Plant” : “ The Dead Sea is nearly 1400 feet below its neighbor, the Mediterranean, and a tunnel only 37 miles long will carry the water of the latter into the former. It is natural that, despite the enormous cost of such an engineering work, the possibility of using these conditions for great development of power should be dis cussed. Plenty of water and a good fall are the desiderata for any hydraulic enterprise of this nature. The ocean would seem to be a reasonably good storage reservoir in this case, and a fall of over a quarter of a mile vertically is not^ to be despised. More than half of this would be required to overcome the friction of the transit through the long tunnel; but enough would be left to develop great power, and the water added to the Dead Sea would be disposed of by evaporation after a comparatively slight increase in its area. A definite project to utilize this fall is described by a writer in the ’Evening Post’ (New York).” A splendid project and no doubt but that it is feasible and would be profitable, but the Lord has something bigger than that for the Dead Sea and for Jerusalem, and we are going to send to Mr. Albert H'jorth, the Norwegian civil engineer who has proposed the plan, a copy of this issue of The King’s Business so that he may have the satisfaction of knowing that the -Lord has decided on an engineering feat of greater dimensions, and pro poses to carry it out without expense to any corporation or government. The plan of the Lord is in connection with His return to the^ earth, which return a good many preachers who are short on Bible information are making light of. ; When the Lord left this earth for the glory, His feet had rested on the Mount of Olives (Acts 1:9-12), and the two witnesses in white testified that “ He should so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven.” And Zechariah gives a further detail, for He tells us in Zech, 14:4 and 8 that “ And his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east, and the mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof toward the east, and toward the west, and there shall be a very great valley; and half of the mountain shall remove toward the north, and half of it toward the south. “ And it shall be in that day, that living waters shall go out from Jerusalem; half of them toward the former sea, and half of them toward the hinder sea; in summer and in winter it shall be.” T HE K I N G ’ S B U S I N E S S 145 and Isaiah tells us that this shall be accomplished by means of an earth quake, (Isa. 29:6) : “ Thou shalt be visited of the Lord of hosts with thunder, and with earth quake, and great noise, with storm and tempest, and the flame of devouring fire.” If you will read the fourteenth chapter of Zechariah, you will get the full details of the time and condition. Is Jerusalem to be a seaport, and the Dead Sea a great harbor for the commerce of the world? The Lord is a great engineer and He has great things in store for the Land and the People. A little more- Bible reading will help us all, and we commend it to civil engineers, college professors and preachers.^T. O. H. sfe afe S O M E Metkodists W k o Dare , A prominent Methodist minister of Los Angeles, being embarrassed for want of a text from which to preach, recently chose the “ Bible Institute of Los-Angeles” as the theme for a morning sermon. At the root of his dislike for Bible Institutes, it developed that the teaching of the second coming of Christ was a particularly sore spot. Said he, “ Any man or group of people who take advantage of an era like this to foist an enthus iastic and extreme doctrine of the second coming of Christ upon ill-taught people, Who are cultivating the expectation that Jesus is coming back in physical presence to sit on a throne for a thousand years, while the devil is chained and the wicked dead lie in their graves, such people,.I- say, are natural enemies to men who are committed to a long-distance program of human betterment.” Among the “ ill-taught” men who believe in the second coming of Christ are the'following Methodist scholars: Dr. L. W. Munhall, the greatest evangelist the Methodist church has had in America, says: “ I have known personally every prominent evangelist in America and Great Britain and Ireland in the last fifty years, and every man of them with possibly a single exception, was an ardent premillennialist. There is no such incentive to evangelism as an intelligent Scriptural belief in the personal premillennial advent of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.” Dr. Bartholomew of the First Methodist Church, Mt. Vernon, N. Y., who has the largest men’s Bible class in the country, says: “ The great truth regarding the second coming came to me and I began to preach it. I was just enough, of a theorist to say, ‘The proof of a thing is what it does.’ I preached it. A new spirit came into the church. I began to teach it to men— began with ten men in a Bible class. Today I have fourteen hundred men in the largest Bible class in this country. I began to teach ft to women. We started with twenty. We now have seven hundred women studying the Scriptures. Talk as you please, Jesus as the pre-eminent Lord, as the eternal, in carnate, perfect Man and very God shall come and reign.” Dr. W. E. Blackstone, .Methodist preacher and author, says: “ Christ’s return will be premillennial. The time ,of it is uncertain and im minent (Mt. 24:42). The blessed hope begets a purifying separating power in the heart, winning men unto holiness, love and service. If the Holy Ghost deemed it so important, is it not worthy of our attention?” Dr. Lincoln A. Ferris, pastor First Methodist Church, San Diego, Cal., and noted lecturer, says: “ I believe in a pre-existent Jesus, a divine Jesus, a humiliated Jesus, a cruci fied Jesus, an exalted Jesus, a resurrected Jesus, a Jesus who shall come again in His glory with all His holy angels, and sit on the throne of His glory.” T HE K I N G ’ S B U S I N E S S 146 Dr. H. D. Mitchell, pastor of the Metropolitan Methodist Church, Wash ington, D. C., says':- ' “ I protest against the persistent misrepresentation of those who believe and teach the premillennial coming of Jesus. It is, in my estimation, a distinct loss to the church not to see the plain Scriptural setting of this truth. It is the how which spans the darkened heavens during this stormy period in history. It is the abiding hope of the believer. If it pleased God in the fullness of time to manifest Himself in the flesh, as He did two thousand years ago, when Jesus was born in Bethlehem, who will dare to deny Him the right to send the same Jesus again, when the fullness of the Gentiles be come in, to establish the long delayed King dom? How dare we put our opinions against the revealed purposes of God?” Bishop Stephen Merrill says: “ I believe in the bodily and visible appearing of the Lord Jesus a second time without sin unto salvation.” Bishop Wilson T. Hogue says: - “ According to the Scripture the dawning of the age so long foretold hy prophecy and so long and ardently hoped for by devout men in all the ^world, awaits the return of Jesus Christ to our world to consummate redemption s pur pose and to gather in the final harvest of His redeeming work. Hence the Chris tians of the apostolic age and of the early centuries of Christian history, made much of the doctrine of the Lord’s return and the hope of His epiphany was to them a constant motive to all sobriety, diligence, watchfulness, zeal, patience, heroism and also to purity of life, and was likewise a source of deepest consola tion in times of darkness and sorrow and of abounding peace and triumphant joy under all the adverse conditions of their career.” Dr. J. Forest Silver, preacher and author of Pittsburgh, says : “ I took up the study of second coming truth With a very firm belief that the wotld would become better and that the preaching of the Gospel would bring the millennium before the return of Christ. The idea of a premillennial return^ of Christ was regarded as a dream of fancy, a foolish heresy. But after reading what historians have to say about the faith of the early church during the first three centuries of the Christian era, and especially after examining the original evidence contained in the ancient manuscripts, it seemed irreverent to scoff at that which our fathers proclaimed as the teaching delivered unto them by Christ and the apostles. Laying aside all prejudice, a sober exhaustive study was begun. It led to a conviction of mind and heart that our Redeemer will appear before the millennium.” Dr. C. F. Wimberly, B.A., Methodist preacher and author, says: “ These days can be none other than the ‘perilous times’ that try men’s souls — the last days. Thank God, we believe with an unfaltering trust in the early 147 T HE K I N G ’ S B U S I N E S S approach of the Son of Righteousness. We are looking for that blessed hope, the glorious appearing of the Savior. Like a sunburst some ten years ago, this great truth came to me and since ttyen my sky line has moved out and beyond— the horizon fades away into the eternities.” ' . Dr. Henry E. Ostrom, a Methodist evangelist of note, and formerly a strong postmillennialist, has changed his position, reversing the teachings in books that he wrote a number of years ago, and has been teaching the premillennial and imminent coming of the Lord at many Bible conferences throughout the country. He was led to see thisi truth because of its power in the lives of the most successful evangelists and missionaries of the world. Dr. D. T. Young, one of the most prominent Methodist ministers of England, who preaches in Wesleyan Hall and Westminster Abbey to large audiences, is out and out for the premillennial coming of the Lord. He was formerly president of the Wesleyan conference of England:—K. L. B. M O N K E Y S and Parrots Both monkeys and parrots attract attention because they are parodies on the real. Children (and some others) will follow the hand organ man for hours to watch the monkey, or hover about.the monkey cage in the park to watch their antics. People of weightier pursuits in life watch only for a few minutes and pass on. The parrot also attracts because it mimics the human speech and intelligence. There is a monkey and a parrot imitation in the field of religion. There are those who merely play with words such as “ good” ;: “ God” , “ Spirit” , “ mind” , etc., at the same time going through all the motions of religion. The parrot cults are ever saying nice things with absolutely no knowledge of the reap thing. It is the mere gibberish of a parrot saying “ All is good” , “ Good is all” , “ Good is mind” , “ Mind is all” , etc., and no one is any-more impressed by the phrases than as if a parrot had uttered them. Think of intelligent people basing their faith on such nonsense as the following.: “ Let each earnest, seeking soul provide its own rosary and study its phrases until they are part of its thought. ■‘ I am peace, I am security, I am happiness. Life holds nothing but good for me. I am realiz ing all my heart’s desires.’ Are you worried about health or fortune? Add these beads and say: ‘ I am health, energy, vitality. I am prosperity and plenty. Opulence is mine.’, Is love dying? Proclaim love as your own. Assert that you love and are loved.” If all this thinking is practical, why not all of us sit down and parrot like repeat over and over again what we want in this life, and we would all have it. But most of us know that hard work brings most of these things to us. But above and beyond all our efforts is being right with God, which brings all spiritual and temporal blessings. If I am all of these things, why do I need a Saviour or why do I need to ask God for anything? These religious parrots have forgotten that Col-. 2:3, 9; 1:14 reads: “ In whom (Christ) are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge—for in Him (Christ) dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily-^in whom (Christ) we have redemption through His blood, even the forgiveness of sins. ’ ’ , “ Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which accord ing to His abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a living hope, ’ ’ not a dead formality of words but born through God’s mercy in redemption to 148 T HE K I N G ' S B U S I N E S S a living hope. “ Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust, ’L—a new 'life given to each individual who trusts Jesus Christ as his sin bearer and Lord. Isn’t it refreshing to turn away from these monkey and parrot systems to the real person, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who said, “ I am the way, the truth, and the life ; no man cometh unto the Father but by me?” “ I am the Good Shepherd; the Good Shepherd giveth His life for the sheep.” —W. H. P. SKIN -DEEP Religion ✓ The Japanese people wanted to know, so they sent a special mission to this country to study and report upon the influence of Christianity on the lives of the American people. They came; and gave our religion the same sort of careful investigation that they have applied to industrial develop ment, education and everything else. And what did they find out about us? The gist of a statement made, by Bishop Tucker of Kyoto is that there is little evidence that the Christian religion is regarded as important by most of the people. In other words, their impartial opinion is that it is just a genteel embellishment—nothing vital. That little report should make some of us think. We have been spend ing millions to remove the mote from the heathen’s eye, and are not con sidering the beam that is in our own eye. It is getting so the heathen don’t believe in us. - Does God believe in us? Is it going to be necessary for Japan, China and Africa to send missionaries over here in order that our people may hear the pure Gospel and be made new creatures? How much of this condition is due to the fact that the higher criticism, and some other things that are a good deal worse, take the place of the old Gospel that used to be proclaimed from the pulpits ? We have church buildings by the thousands. We hire thousands of cultured men to preach for us. We raise giddy millions for missionary work of one kind and another. We pour millions into some seminaries that are mere religious pest houses. Such colossal religious movements were never before known in our history. Yet a Japanese mission comes over here and reports, after careful investigation, that we have education, commerce, industry, yes, but religion—not much. To make a long story short— “ a form of godliness without the power thereof. ’’ The modernized Christianity is only skin deep. It is not the old Holy Ghost religion. It has no time to bother with those vital teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ. The sermon on the mount—why even some of our prominent Bible teachers tell us there is nothing in it for the church. No wonder the Japanese say that our Christianity is merely a decorative adjunct of our civilization—simply a desirable background like art or music, but not a vital, palpitating necessity. Hasn’t the time come when the Church of God needs to go to God for itself, before it tries to go to God for a lost world? The church of the New 149 THE K I N G ’ S B U S I N E S S Testament that lost its vision was a WORKING church, nevertheless, said Christ, “ I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thyKrst love.( Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and REPENT and do THY FIRST WORKS.” The first work of the church is to cleanse the in side of the cup, rather than to try to make white the outside of the cup. We must enter anew the power house of confession, repentance and prayer We must cease the toleration of unholy alliances, of undisciplined membership, of Sabbath breaking, of worldly pleasure seeking, of ecclesias tical wire-pulling, of secret society domination, of the unequal yoke with unbelievers, of the teaching of damnable heresies. Oh, that Jehovah might mightily move upon His people, stirring them to prayer for a true revival in the Body of Christ itself!—K. L. B. devoted himself to the study, has pre pared his conclusions, which will shortly he published by the museum as the last word on the subject to date. He finds that the lachrymal bone, around the eye socket, persisting through the ages, con firms the descent of man from a fish.” The greatest sorrow is not to be ap preciated by men. The greatest mis fortune is not to appreciate Christ. THE BIBLE T H E P O O R F I S H Friends, they are going to give the baboon a rest. Our forefathers were fishes— this is absolutely the “ last word” on the subject, so say the scientists. ‘ ‘New York. Oct. 28.-—Various theo ries advanced by scientists tracing the origin of man to a fish have been the subject of comparative analysis for several years in the Museum of Natural History. William K. Gregory, who has Take up this Book, 0 friend. Do not read it with a hurried glance. Let thine eyes rest a while upon some single- word, and if thou art patient, it will hud and blossom and bloom and grow unto thee as a tree of life; and the leaves shall he as medicine for the healing of thy hurt. Take it into thy mouth and learn a lesson from the meadow kine who chew the tender grasses, and turn them ever, and chew them again, till they have extracted sweetness and life therefrom. Chew the words of this Book over and over again (it is impossible to do so with any other hook), meditate upon their meaning—upon their direct and cognate meanings; let the thoughts they suggest find full and free reaction in thy soul, and from some simple word or phrase thou shalt draw'the sweetness of divine love, and more and more the consciousness that th;ou hast received into thine innermost being very spirit and very life. 1 , Read it on bended knee. Take up the words and breathe on them with the warm breath of sincere desire to know their intent, and music, will come forth as from the fabled horn of old —music that shall have in it all the hallelujahs and hosannas of the heavenly host.—I. M. Haldeman. S E R M O N S S E N T E N C E R E M A R K A B L E R E M A R K S G A T H E R E D F O R B U S T R E A D E R S God’s best gifts to us are not things but opportunities. Be thrifty so that you may be gen erous. Some church members are like the old farmer’s pump— dried up in the summer and frozeq. in the winder. No matter how well equipped he may be the man who possesses a guilty con science fights to disadvantage. Many a man counted a fool by finan ciers has laid up in heaven a fortune they would envy. There is no thought that more trans forms a man’s life than the thought that he can tie his life up to the doing of the will of God. Man takes account of our failure but God of our striving. God chastens us with many instru ments but with one hand. There is no step of saintliness that is impossible to you if you have placed yourself in earnest under the discipline of Christ. Our responsibility never can cease so long as we have a life to live for Christ and a whole world still waiting for the Gospel. Humility is the acceptance of the place appointed by God, whether it be in the front or the rear. It is the emptiness of self which God fills. The central fact in the history of man is .Christ; the central fact in the life of men is God. Nothing is great without God. Noth ing is small with God. Faith in God makes all things possi ble. Hope in God makes all things en durable. Love to God makes all things enjoyable. Vice has many names, but it is every where the same departure from God. Where prayer focuses power falls. Some people have heaven on their ton gue’s end but the world on their finger’s end. Hyprocrites are the greatest dupes the devil has. They serve him better than any other but receive no wages. He is the best teacher who follows his own instruction. Many have fallen by the edge of the sword but not so many as have fallen by the edge of the tongue. A mere profession of Christianity is like the plumes upon the hearse which bears men to their graves. Unhappiness is the hunger to get. True happiness is the hunger to give. To live the resurrection life in Christ is to lead many to believe in Christ as the Resurrection and the Life. The error of religion has been that it undertakes, to explain the Word when its work is to interpret it. If we lived nearer heaven we should have earlier notices of God’s purposes. In warm moments make your good resolution and in cold moments make your resolution good. Only God can prevent the intrusion of the evil past into the experience of the present. Ignorance combined with indifference may be disastrous^ enough, but heaven defend us from ignorance combined with zeal. No man is such a conqueror as the man who has defeated himself. Our business, is to do God’s will and God will take care of the business. The way to fill a large space is to glorify a small one. No man is so wise as he who realizes what a fool he is. A smooth sea can never make a skill ful mariner. What Shall We Do About It? A Chapter from a Recent Book, “ T h e Crisis in Church and College,” in which the Plain Duty o f True Christiansis Emphasized r e v . g . w . M c P h e r s o n N ew York City b y inent members” in certain localities are being bribed to inaction by a cunning intriguing policy on the part of certain' financial powers. Even in our great training camps where our young officers receive their equipment for battle, spies have become entrenched ahd are busy destroying the morale of the army of the Lord. There should be small room for the indifferent when the churches ought to be engaged in one of the most mo mentous struggles in history for the God-given right to preach and defend the Gospel of Jesus. God is calling His people today with a mighty call. It is a call to the open arena, to the battle fields of spiritual conflict, for each to do his part, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, in the very light of God. That there is a conflict over the Bible, should be evident to the most careless observer in the churches; nevertheless, many persons are not quite certain as to what this general unrest is all about. Of course it is. rather indefinite to say that it is over the Bible. What is there in the Bible to which Modernism objects? To be specific it should he stated that the following statements cover the ground completely, though not all of these will receive attention in this volume. The Crux o f the Battle 1— ERHAPS to many thought ful perhaps, living the life of quiet simple faith, it may seem strange that there should he a conflict over so good a book as the Bible, the doctrines of which are holy, precepts binding, histories true. Nevertheless such is the fact; a great struggle is on in America—more in evidence than in any period of our his tory. The conflict has been forced upon us by the school of critics, by that class of men who are battling against the very existence of the' Evangelical Churches of Jesus Christ. With few noble exceptions, here and there, men in both pulpit and pew have- closed their eyes to our religious peril. Indeed, in the silence of the orthodox pulpit is found one of the most serious aspects of the situation. If the clergy had only spoken out and informed the people the churches would be fully competent to deal with the problem, without the need of any outside help from such hooks as this. But the rank and file are kept in comparative ignor ance of the growing menace to the cause of Jesus Christ. Many of the Shepherds are not wisely protecting and instructing the sheep. Our flanks are exposed everywhere. Not a few of the churches are very much like an army whose scouts and officers are having some secret dealings with the enemy, while at the same time the lat ter are attacking on every hand. It would seem that some of the “ prom The trustworthiness of the Old Testament as History. 2- —The Supernatural element in the Bible. 152 3— —The Miraculous element in the Bible. 4— -The inspiration of the Bible. 5— -The doctrines of the Bible. 6— the Bible. 7.— The method of interpretation of the Bible. 8— God in flesh. 104-The atonement of Jesus Christ for sin and guilt. 11 —■The Resurrection of Jesus Christ. 12— ^The Personal Coming of Jesus Christ. 13— The purpose, authority, and or dinances of the Gospel. 14— —1The official inauguration and governmental manifestation of the Kingdom of God on earth. 15— The Resurrection of the body in likeness to Christ’s Body. 16— The fact of Hell, and the result of sin as seen in the loss of the soul. 17— The fact of the Fall of man and the need of a Divine Saviour. 18— The personality of Satan. It is seen that the above covers the whole Bible,-, and that in this conflict the very existence of the Christian Church is at stake, that is, as an evan gelical and Divinely-appointed soul winning institution. The True Church W ill Triumph Let it be here stated with a tremen dous emphasis that we have no concern as to the ultimate triumph of the Church. Our concern, rather, is for the teaching, the ministry of service of the Church in the world today, for the lost and perishing that are dependent upon the Church for salvation, and for the sheep that have no true shepherds. The Bible w'ill live; but we are concerned that it shall not be emasculated and prevented from having untrammeled ex-j The authority and infallibility of The eternal Sonship and Deity of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9— The Incarnation of the Son of T HE K I N G ’ S B U S I N E S S pression. The critics may succeed in luring men and women away from the Bible as the voice and comfort of God to human hearts, but they can no more destroy the Bible as a Divine Revela tion than they could banish the stars or break up the; rock-ribbed framework of our planet. What we demand is that these men shall be prevented from oc cupying prominent positions wherein they carry on their work of destroying the faith of men in the Bible as the Word of God. We Demand that the Sacred Word shall be permitted to do its own appointed work. The New The ology teachers have tried to chain up and strangle the Bible, or to make it speak, if at all, in an unknown tongue; but we insist that they shall set the Bible free, that the Christian people Shall put an end to the array of in sidious falsehoods in modern teaching that have been launched against the in spiration of the Bible. The time has come when these men should be pre vented from masquerading around un der the guise of a pretended scholar ship and the cloak of religion. Thera is something far more important than that the critics should draw generous salaries from funds furnished by ortho dox believers in the Bible as the Word of God; and that something is the faith of two million students who comprise the flower and hope of American Chris tianity. We demand that the false teacher of Modernism shall be un frocked. And listen, my friends: If God spares the writer he fully expects to see the day when a New Theology teach er will not be found occupying a chair in any evangelical institution through out this broad land, for the hour of his exit is at hand! The Church has the ability and is fully competent to adequately deal with the problem of modern criticism. The Church does not quite understand her
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