It is autumn in the world today. The harvest is past, the summer ended and men are not saved. God is taking out a people for His Name but there are more heathen than ever. They are all around us. One does not have to go to South America to see the equivalent of Auca Indians. We are in the midst of them. They are just as blind, just as lost and just as indifferent to God . . . and they wear just as few clothes! They appear gay but when the effect of the cocktails wears off and they scrape off their paint, they are as miserable a lot as ever trod this vale of tears. It is autumn in this world. The amazing thing about God’s calendar is that two seasons run concurrently. Jesus said that as the budding of the fig-tree meant that summer was nigh, “ so likewise ye, when ye see these things come to pass, know ye that the kingdom of God is nigh at hand.” He also said, “And when these things [signs in the sky, distress of nations, per plexity, men’s hearts failing them for fear] begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.” With the Christian the season is exactly the reverse of this world. When it is autumn in the world, it is springtime for the church. When it is night for the world, it is day for the Christian. We do not read that “ the day is far spent, the night is at hand” but that “ the night is far spent, the day is at hand.” Our Lord says our redemption draws nigh and Paul declares that our salvation is nearer than when we believed. The watchman on the wall said, “ The morning cometh and also the night.” What is a sad day for the world is a glad day for the believer. Headlines mean one thing to the sin ner, another to the saint. The Christian does not rejoice over bad news because it is bad but because it means that the situation has become so hopeless that only the Lord’s return can solve the riddle. If it is springtime on God’s calendar for the Christian when it is autumn for the world, the season should prevail in our hearts. The Song of Solomon sets forth in application the love of Christ and His church. There is a springtime passage: “My beloved spake, and said unto me, Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away, For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; The flowers appear on the earth ; the time of the sing ing of birds is come, and the voice o f the turtle is heard in our land; The fig tree putteth forth her
green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair-one, and come away” (2:10-13). Christmas Evans, the great Welsh preacher, was riding along on horseback on his way to preach when God convicted him of a cold heart. He teth ered his horse, went into the woods and prayed for four hours until he felt as if his spirit were “ rising up from the grave of a hard winter.” Today is a day o f air-conditioning but there is no push-button gadget that will change the heart from winter to spring. Evangelical Christianity needs nothing to day more than a change of seasons in its soul. We need to break up our fallow ground. Revival changes the season in the heart and in the church, Ephesus in Revelation was orthodox and busy but winter was in its heart. Christians have no business living in spiritual winter. The righteous man is not season al ; he is perennial: “His leaf also shall not wither.” We do not change ourselves by going South in the winter. We need to get alone like Christmas Evans and wait on God until there is a breaking up with in and springtime comes to the heart. Of all people, the sinner needs most to read God’s calendar: “ The harvest is past, the summer is ended and we are not saved.” I can remember a country preacher of my boyhood days who held forth in the little country church on the closing night of his meetings with this sad and ominous text. I still recall his earnestness for he sensed an emergency and it gave him urgency such as one does not often see today. I have wished that I might recover more of the impelling sense o f crisis that set him beside himself as he warned the impeni tent. I have longed that this blase modem gen eration might wake up to the shortness of time and the vastness of eternity. It seems a light thing today not to be saved. Hell has been smiled away and judgment made a myth. In its place there grows a frivolous notion that God will take care of us all anyway whether we repent or not. Our Lord had no such light view of the doom of the ungodly and died to spare us the horrors of eter nity without God. Some of us feel that He may now be gathering in one last crop o f souls before He rings down the curtain. How good that it is still the day of salvation but how alarmingly im portant that we turn to the Saviour before the last page turns in the calendar of God! Q¥|
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JULY, 1967
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