197
June, 1944
tellectually at least, and had accepted it. But the- truth Was not a vital force: in my life, because I had never wished it to be.- A Spiritual Crisis One night John Harper preached from a great text: “Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures." - For the first time in my life I saw how great was the price Christ had paid for my salvation; saw the im mensity and perfection of the plan,of God as revealed in the Scriptures'. . - What a revelation this was to me! When the invitation was given I went forward, and on my knees cried out to God. ■ “O Lord,” I prayed, “ I thank Thee for dying for me!. I want to live for Thee. If I’ve never before trusted Thee in saving faith, I do so now.” - Then the words of the preacher’s oft-repeated text came to me, and I said them back to the Lord, slowly, in believing faith: “I am crucified with ■ Christ: nevertheless I .live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life, which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of ,the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.” That night I qpnsciously t u r n e d about so that my bgck was upon the old life of self-satisfaction, and my face was toward . . the wondrous cross On which the Prince of Glory died.” This was a beginning of days to me. I can point to 'it as the occasion when I became sure of'having passed out of darkness into His marvelous light. It was when His Spirit witnessed with' my spirit that I was a child of God. Some day, “when the b o o k 's are opened,” and we stand in the Lord’s presence, we shall know some details of His redeeming work in us, which now may be obscure, but of the fact o f the finished work there need never be any doubt. I rose from my knees, satisfied. To right and left of the organ loft were wall texts in large letters that I had seen many times before. Now they had new meaning for me, for they spoke of Christ who was in all things to have the pre-eminence. I read: “Who gave himself for us,” and “His name alone is exalted.” There it was again —accent on the Son of God—-the secret of every blessing. People around me were singing,
and often slender John Harper him self Would rise to lead it; ’ “ All hail the power of Jesus’ Name, Let angels prostrate 'fall.” How Christ Was magnified! How *His power, His righteousness, His worthi ness were set forth! Through every service, one text, Galatians 2:20, ran like a s c a r l e t thread. God led His servant to give searching messages on confession and cleansing in the blood of Christ, on the reckoning of oneself dead to sin and possessed of resurrection life in Christ. As the days progressed, another old song echoed t h r o ug h/ the Moody Church, and this one likewise was cen tered in the Son of God: • “When I survey the wondrous cross On which the Prince of Glory died, My richest gain I count but loss And pour contempt on all my pride.’’ |"' We sang all five of those glorious stanzas. Right through the Christmas season, interest in the meetings continued un abated. At year’s end, God was search ing. my heart very deeply, I had thought I was a Christian. I had said so, quite believingly, on the applica tion blank which had been sent to the Moody Bible Institute. Back in Aus tralia, I had answered the questions of a zealous, soul-winning pastor, and on the strength of those replies, had been invited to unite with the church. The plan- of salvation I understood, in
his voice in prayer. One thought of John Knox while hearing Harper plead with God. And when he prayed, the heavens opened. The Moody Church, whose audito rium was shared by the Moody Bible Institute, was pastorless at the time, and John Hajper had been asked to leave London, where he was minister of the Walworth Road Baptist Church, to fill the Moody Church pulpit on the November Siindays, that year. He had come prepared to work on a book he was writing,.Reeling that this leisurely month could thus be profitably em ployed, V The book inever was'completed, for from the first hour, Harper’s preach ing stirred hearts ana he was in de mand as a ileader. By the beginning of the second week, evangelistic ser vices were being held nightly, with prayer meetings each morning from six to s e v e n -o ’clock, and at noon. Often the preacher spoke as many as five times a day. Though none of us realized it then, he was pleading with men from the threshold to Glory, for only a few months later, in April of 1912, while en route to Chicago for a return evan gelistic engagement, he went Home to Christ from the icy decks of the S. S. Titanic. . To hear him speak, I would be in the meeting every night. Both the music and the messages held me, as they did scores of others. In those first weeks, one hymn predominated,
“ Love so amazing, so divine, Shall have my soul, my life, my all*,’
I sang with them, my heart echoing “ amen.” That week end, the little church in Brainerd welcomed a “new” pastor—one who, at the cross, had be come “a new creature in Christ Jesus.” (To be continued)
Made with FlippingBook HTML5