March 1928
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FOURTH— THE FUTURE OF EVANGELISM . I f thé Church cannot be aroused to her spiritual obliga tions to the lost souls, and if she cannot train her men to be evangelists, and if she cannot make her Church officers perform their duty as personal evangelists, then the future o f evangelism is dark. If the Church, if the individual Christian, if the church officer— elder, deacon, deaconness, Sunday-school teacher and worker in any and every department, can be made to see that his supreme business in life is finding a lost soul and leading him to Christ, then evangelism will return to the glorious position that it occu pied in the first century, and God will add to the Church daily those He is saving. Remember, revivals are not pumped up, they arc prayed down. You can’t have a revival unless you have a praying church. Call the Church to prayer. Let her demand prayer in every home, the erection o f the family altar, and the gathering of her members in prayer groups every week, and the opening o f every church building every day in every week for prayer and meditation, and then the revival will be here. which was revised by Royal authority in the last year of King Edward’s reign. “ It is difficult, and almost impossible, in our limited space [states the biographer], to give the .chief _points o f Mr. Hartley’s millenarian creed; but the following are some of them: 1. That Christ will come a second time, and will set up a kingdom, and visibly reign on the earth for a thousand years. 2. That during this reign His Saints will be raised and restored to the perfection o f the first man, Adam ; and earth all over will be made a copy o f the primeval paradise. 3. That during this millenarian theocracy the saints will flourish, and sinners be in abso lute subjection; hostility and discord will cease, and all things harmonize in unity and peace. 4. That some of the saints will be crowned and sit on thrones; some be set over ten cities, and some over five; some will sit at the table with Christ, and others serve; some follow Him whithersoever He goes, and others come periodically to worship in His presence. “ There are other topics on which Mr. Hartley claims the right to hold a private opinion, but he does not at tempt decisively to prove.” The biographer then enum erates some of these points, which are those still the sub ject of divergent views at the present day, and then he goes on: “ These are a few o f the salient points o f Mr. Hartley’s learned and able book. Why are they enumer ated here? Because, in substance, they were held by Wes ley. Wesley read the book, and read it with approba tion. He writes to the author: ,‘Your book on the Mil lennium was lately put into my hands. I cannot but thank you for your strong and seasonable confirmation o f that comfortable doctrine, of which I cannot entertain the least doubt as long as I believe in the Bible.’ ” B eliev er I n S econd A dvent With such a statement, in reference to such a book, there can be no doubt that Wesley, .like his father before
The preachers have put evangelism out of the con science o f the Church because they seem to be incompetent, or they have lost the fire, the spirit, the fervor necessary, or they are too lazy to carry on the campaign. The average preacher spends too much time at home washing the dishes when he ought to be washing the feet of the sinner, or he spends too much time at golf and in the world’s attrac tions. The average preacher is guilty o f busy idleness. No wonder the record o f the Church shows that he hasn’t received people on profession o f faith! He has neglected his duty as an evangelist. I f he is not an evangelist he has no place in a pulpit. The Holy Ghost plan is to preach the Gospel, draw the net; yet there are preachers all over the country who receive members on communion days only. The devil never created a more diabolical scheme to destroy the evangelical spirit than that scheme. There is but one God-decreed kind o f evangelism, namely, per sonal evangelism, in season and out o f season, without recess, never permitting a lapse, always at the business of finding a lost soul and bringing him to Christ.
Éè Éé Êê John Wesley and Our Lord’s Second Coming R ev . J oseph W . K em p In “ The Reaper’’ R. D INSDALE T. YOUNG ’S statement that
||[C®|jb John Wesley held the doctrine of the Second fw p M Advent and the veteran preacher’s earnest wish, j g l l y p “ Would that all his followers did the same!” Mmm r has aroused considerable interest, and led to a research as to what were John Wesley’s exact views on this great subject. The result has been some what startling. There have been some six biographies of the great ■founder of Methodism published, and one o f the best and most comprehensive is Tyerman’s “ L ife and Times of John Wesley,” published about 1871. In the sec ond volume the biographer describes Mr. Wesley’s corre spondence with a Reverend Thomas Hartley, M.A., rec tor of Winwick, in Northamptonshire, who in 1764 had published a volume o f 476 pages entitled “ Paradise Re stored ; or, a Testimony to the Doctrine o f the Blessed Millennium. With Some Considerations on Its Approach ing Advent from the Signs o f the Times,” “ which,” states Mr. Tyerman, “ is by far the most sober, sensible, Scrip tural and learned work on the Millennium that it has been our lot to read. He professes to show the great impor tance o f the doctrine of Christ’s glorious reign on earth with His saints, and maintains that it is typified in many of the Levitical institutes; was foretold and described in numberless places by the inspired prophets; and made the subject of many precious promises in the Gospels; was delineated in the Revelation of St. John; and was received as an apostolic doctrine by the primitive Chris tians, according to the testimony o f several o f the ancient fathers, as St. Barnabas, St. Hermas, Justin Martyr, Ire- naeus, Tertullian, Origen, and Lactantius. He further argues that the doctrine received the sanction of the Coun cil o f Nice, called by Constantine the Great and composed of bishops from all parts o f the Christian world; and that it is embodied in the Catechism o f King Edward VI.,
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