August 1924
T H E K I N G ’ S B U S I N E S S
480
So many are the allusions to the coming of Christ that were one to delete from the New Testament all such passages, it would be so filled with lacunae as to be almost unintelli gible. Moreover, the doctrine of the coming of Christ affords the only reasonable solution of the problem of evil and the sorrows of humanity. The hope that the world, through the power of forces now resident in it, is going to come slowly to perfection, has been practically abandoned by science and theology alike.' But the hope that Christ will come again is a star which shines on undimmed. He will come again to ‘judge the quick and the dead,’ overthrow the evil and diadem the right, and establish everywhere and forever the Kingdom of God. This is the faith every Christian confesses when he receives the Lord’s Supper and hears the words, ‘As oft as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do show forth the Lord’s death, till He come.’ So runs the line of cleavage through the churches, show ing mat upon every great proposition of the Christian reli gion, the Evangelicals and the Modernists are hopelessly divided. On one side are the believers and on the other side are the doubters. Among all those who believe, there exists a true unity of fellowship which unites in one great body Christian men out of all the churches. Today, as never before, men are conscious of that grand unity of a common faith, and in the great conflict which is shaking the Protestant Church, these believers, of all races, and all countries, and all denominations, are stretching forth the hands of brotherhood and encouragement. In a world where our Lord is by the many still rejected, and by the few enthroned, the worshippers of Christ chant together the magnificent defiance of the Apostle: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” To foes without the Church, and to doubters within the Church, they declare with one voice, in those great lines of Meyer’s “ St. Paul” : “Whoso hath felt the Spirit of the Highest, Cannot confound, nor doubt Him, nor deny; Tea, with one voice, O world, though thou deniest, Stand thou on that side, for on this am I.”
God in one body by the cross.’ These are not just frag mentary sayings, but the great themes which Paul dis cussed, and the key to his whole teaching. (5) The Resurrection of Jesus The Modernist says that a physical resurrection, real or alleged, means nothing to him, that what he is interested in is the ‘continued life’ of Jesus. His faith, he boasts, does not rest on any physical fact. But the faith of the first Christians did rest on such a fact, the fact that the same body which they had seen taken down from the cross and laid away in the Arimathean’s rock-hewn tomb, came out of that tomb, and that Jefeus appeared to them, talked with them, walked with them, ate with them. Whatever theory is adopted by the Modernists, be it that of a vision, a ghost, a continued life, or that Christ never died, or that His disciples stole His body, they have no explanation of the belief in the resurrection of Christ. That belief was founded on an empty tomb. The empty tomb was the cradle of the Christian Church. The evan gelical can never be at peace with the man who says he believes in the resurrection of Christ, but not that he rose again with the same body with which He suffered. To do so would be to deny the New Testament and the Lord that bought us. He believes, with St. Paul, that if Christ be not risen, then is our faith vain. (6) The Last Fact Every thoughtful Christian, faithful though he may be to the duties of the present, has his moments of wonder and surmise about the future. What is to be the end, the outcome, the final consummation? Man cannot help think ing about the end. ‘Then cometh the end’ is just as logical and inevitable as ‘In the beginning.’ The Bible tells us not only of the beginning, but it tells us of the ending of things. That end is to come to pass when Christ comes again. The echo of that promise is heard in every sermon that the apostles preached. There are men whose backs are to the world and whose faces are toward the coming of the Lord. Because He is coming, they gladly endure persecution, affliction, death.
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The Positive Product of Prayer Address delivered in Bible Institute Auditorium by Dr. Howard Taylor
Dr. Taylor is the son of J. Hudson Taylor, the founder of the China Inland Mission. He has been for many years a faithful follower in his father’s footsteps and, together with his wife (the daughter of the late H. Grattan Guinness) recently made a three years’ tour of China, visiting all the stations of the C. I. M. This message is intensely inspiring, proving as it does, the present potency of prayer.
tles it. But it may be that among us there are one or two or three, just a few, who are in uncertainty about these things. There is a great deal in our day to unsettle faith, and there are men and women and young people today who in all honesty do not know whether these things are so or not. I hope that by the blessing of God I may be able to say something this afternoon that will satisfy you that the Word of God can be utterly relied upon, that what we read in this grand old Book is absolutely true; far more enduring than the eternal hills, the Word of God which liveth and abideth forever. When the doubters and disbelievers are passed away from the scene, this great and glorious Book will be unchanged by their doubting, un- dimned by all they have to say against it, as sure as the existence of God in heaven. Now our Lord says to you and to me, “ If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it.” There is implied in that promise a condition, it is essentially “ in my name.”
AY we read together three of the promises of God from our Lord’s last recorded address in the 14th, 15th and 16th chapters of John. The first of the three promises is in John 14:13, 14: “Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may he glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it.” That’s the word of our Lord Jesus Christ to you and to me, and for our encouragement in our own personal spirit ual life. Let us read it again with that thought in view,— that our Lord Jesus Christ says that to each one of us. “Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it.” Now, I have no doubt whatever that the great majority of this congregation are men and women who know and love the Lord Jesus Christ, and to whom His word is final. Back of it there is no controversy— if He said so that set
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