King's Business - 1921-06

T H E K I N G ’ S B U S I N E S S remedy—the prayers of God’s true peo­ ple. “P ray ye the Lord of the harvest that He will send forth laborers.” We have been getting away from God’s order. Every Christian ought to pray this prayer every day. P ray especially for those who manifest a fitness for Christian service, that, if it be God’s will, they might be sent out in the power of th e Holy Spirit. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in his lec­ tures on Spiritualism, is challenging us. He asks “what attitude th e Church is going to take in regard to the advance­ ment of Spiritualism. If it goes on talk­ ing about th e nonsense of ‘diabolism,’ Spiritualism will become a separate religion at the expense of the or­ thodox church; but if, on the other hand, the Church will understand and adm it that, the dead do return, and that they bring back with them the most re­ ligious and holy messages, then he thinks the Spiritualist Churches will be drawn into the orthodox Churches and there will not be th e great schism which ho sees coming upon Christianity.” L et’s see—if orthodox churches will ju st adopt Spiritism, th e Spiritists will all come and join us. But what would we do then with the Eddyites, the Rus- sellites, and the O therites? There seems to be but one factor in th e matter that makes Mr. Doyle’s proposition unwork­ able, and th a t is the Word of God. Neither the Spiritists, Eddyites or any of the rest, have yet been able to remove th a t obstacle to unity of forces w ith them. Dr. Griffith Thomas, in an address at Moody Institute, spoke of conditions as he recently found them in China. He said: “There are Christian institutions where fifty per cent of the teaching staff are non-Christians. That is risky. Shang­ hai is the center of all the relig­ ious societies and th e headquarters of all the, organizations; there are 284 missionaries resident in Shanghai and only four of them doing evangelistic work. In Canton there are 100 mis­ sionaries, not one of them doing evan­ gelistic work. I found in China two parties of m issionaries decidedly and definitely divided—the conservative, and thé higher critical or modernistic. .Last summer there was spontaneously organ­ ized by m issionaries holding the conser­ vative view of the Bible, the Bible Union of China, which now has a membership above 500, with a program of prayer, circulation .of the Bible and Christian literature, and evangelism.

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Let the Christians be awake to these conditions. If you stand for the old faith, invest none of the Lord’s money without much prayer and consideration as to the avenue through which it shall pass. Dr. Munhall points out th a t “Five anti- prem illennial books are published by the Methodist Book concern. These are being widely and urgently advertised by the official papers; and yet four of them were w ritten by men who do not believe the Bible is the Word of God, nor in pre­ dictive prophecy*. They are believers in and advocates of th e infidel, faith­ wrecking, God dishonoring Graf-Well- hausen higher criticism, th a t is destined to wreck Methodism, if tolerated. Their opinions are not worth much. What say the Scriptures? It is “To the law and to the testimony; if they speak not according to this Word, it is because there is no light in them .” Baltimore (Md.) March 31.—“The rain ­ bow after the deluge, described, in the book of Genesis, IX, 13, was not a rainbow after all, but a collection of great flybrushes of the ancient oriental gods,” de­ clares Prof. Paul Haupt, of Johns Hop­ kins University. “The word for ‘bow’ could very easily be mistaken for ‘fly­ brush’,” he said. “These huge feather brushes were in vogue among the old rulers in Assyria and Egypt and were regarded as ancient symbols of sover­ eignty in the orient.” We don’t ju st get the idea of God having set His “flybrushes in the cloud” for a token of a covenant be­ tween Himself and the earth, th a t when clouds came over the earth the “flybrushes m ight be seen upon the cloud” and so re­ mind men of His covenant (Gen. 9:13-17). These professors are deep thinkers, so it is evidently all right to substitute a feather duster for a rainbow. THE BEST END OF IT The benevolent have the advantage of th e envious, even in th is present life; for th e envious is torm ented not only by all th e ill th a t befalls himself, but by all th e good th a t happens to ano ther: whereas th e benevolent man is th e bet­ te r prepared to bear his own calam ities unruffled, from th e complacency and serenity he has secured from contem­ p lating th e prosperity of all around him. — Colton.

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