Things Not Shaken

It is a long way from Boston to Chicago, especially in hot weather. There is nothing in the world that would bring me this long distance and three nights on a sleeper except a conference of such importance as this,—not even the Republican Convention. This is infinitely more important than that.

The Kaiser’s throne is being sold for old junk, and he sits on a sawbuck. Was there ever such a sudden, rapid, startling, marvelous, unbelievable transformation as that? If half a dozen years ago any man had ventured to prophesy that this would be the fact today, his sanity would have immediately been questioned. But that is only a sample, or rather a type of all the conditions in our world at the present day. Society, everything seems to be shaken from center to circumference, and some of us have even wondered whether this old planet was going to be able to keep to its pathway through the universe of God.

In the last half dozen years, cities have been shaken into ruins, cathedrals have been shaken into ashes, notorious institutions shaken into wreckage, fields and orchards have been shaken into cemeteries, rivers have been shaken into crimson, homes into hospitals, uncounted millions of men have been rushed into an untimely death, uncounted millions more have been returned into a life of crippled condition, uncounted millions more of children and women and girls have been rushed into conditions worse than death or being crippled. Disaster has swept the whole world like a tidal wave, and millions have been swept into the grave by pestilence.

It seems as if this world of ours had been all at once shaken by a combination of earthquake, conflagration, cyclone, tidal wave, and typhoon all in one. The maps of the world have been changing, thrones have been tottering and falling, crowns have been kicked about like rubbish, and the end is not yet.

An Eternal Throne

The social conditions and other conditions in our life make a man pause and think and wonder about the future. But in the midst of all this shaken condition in the world, there are some things that have not been shaken. Thank God for that. “Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever.” The throne of God has not been shaken.

You have printed tonight on your program my name. The first name you have spelled wrong, and the last name you have spelled wrong, and you have given me a middle letter, and I never had a middle letter, and I do not know whether this is I or not. Somehow or other, I have a consciousness of feeling that I am I nevertheless, that I still retain my personality and my individuality, and that I am here.

Some men have been treating the name of God very lightly in these years. They have been writing it as they ought not to have written it, they have been speaking it without reverence; they have even been printing it in small letters, but they have not changed the personality of the great good God. He is still the same, yesterday, today, and forever. He holds the throne of this universe, and in His mighty right arm still swings the scepter over all nations and all men. God still lives.

That is a great inspiration when a man gets under a cloud that hangs low and is heavy with thunder and lurid with lightning. The storm may be on and the future uncertain, but it is a great moment in a man’s life when he can look up even to the clouds and see right through them, and see the face of His God and remember that God still lives among all these changing world conditions. God’s program still remains unchanged, and His throne has not moved a hair’s breadth. Other thrones have toppled and tumbled and fallen; kings, princes, rulers are gone, their scepters broken; everything in the world of government almost completely revolutionized, and the unbelievable and the unimaginable has taken place; but God’s throne has not budge a hair’s breadth in all these recent years. He still lives, and I like to remember that God’s throne is absolutely secure.

God Forgotten

Now, that is the thing for the nations of this world to understand first of all. We had a dream that took possession of us, that when this World War was finished, when man had done his worst, then He was coming at last (by some strange sort of thing that was not explained by anybody, and certainly not between the covers of the Bible) to some strange condition by which the world would be finally transformed and be a world of peace without another drop of blood being shed on another battlefield—no more war; these representatives of the greater nations, the Big Four leading the way, would form a treaty of peace so munificent that all hatred and differences would be put away. The world dreamed of that dawning day, bright and beautiful, when there would be no more war, and we would have universal peace.

Well, the treaty was made and sent to England, and they had to have an election. Lloyd George had to be re-elected, and he had to make a lot of promises. He made them without number, and they were based on that Treaty of Peace, and the work done at Versailles. France had an election, and had to have her man elected, and put in the right man. By and by it was sent across to America, and we have been kicking it around like a football from that day to this. Ninety percent of our relation to that damnable treaty has been political and is simply covered with rotten politics. If that treaty had gone through, it would not have been worth the paper it was written on. It never will be, it never can be; but, if it had gone through, I sometimes wonder if my abundant, never-failing faith would not have questioned, at least temporarily, the good God’s relation to this old world after all. For, if there ever was an infidel document made in this world, that Treaty of Versailles was that infidel document. The name of God was not mentioned in it; prayer was not offered over it; heathen men had to do with the making of it; atheists had to do with the making of it; nominal Christian men did not stand for their Christian principles, and God was absolutely ignored. His name is not in it; not a prayer was offered over it, and it had to go to pieces and be an ultimate farce, and it is. My faith in God is strengthened because the treaty of peace is absolutely not good.

If men forget God, they have to pay the penalty. If men ignore God, they must suffer defeat, for God has revealed on every page of human history His constant, vital, and eternal relation to this world. He is on the program, and He cannot and will not be ignored, and infidel documents must go to pieces.

The thing that churches need to remember today is that God’s throne still stands. We have been dealing too much recently with figures. I do not put much stock in figures. I do not know whether you do or not. When I went to school, I was good at figures, and they fixed me up perfectly for a millionaire. I did not know anything about grammar and never have since. I have written some books and made some sermons, and I question whether there is a real grammatical sentence in them; but I did know arithmetic. Now I do not know whether two and two make four or not. I am not absolutely sure of it. If you confess that you are ignorant on this point, then you are in my class, for I am ignorant too. I do not know whether two and two make four and I am in good company when I say that, because I am in your company and in the company of some good philosophers. Camp said two and two did not make four. I have not much confidence in figures.

There was an insurance trial on in Great Britain, and if anyone in the world and manipulate figures, insurance companies can do it. They are past masters in that business. They can put a sheet of paper down in front of a minister and get that minister to write for $100,000,000 insurance, and make him believe he is getting it by paying only $100 a year. Figures lie. No, figures do not lie, but the people who manipulate them do. This insurance trial was on, and the lawyer on the other side, when the insurance lawyer was getting off this list of figures, interrupted him and said, “Your honor, I do not know what is the use of business if two and two do not make four any more. Let’s quit.” The judge said, “I will have to agree with the attorney on the other side. Two and two do not always make four. Two matches and two tons of coal do not make four.” There has to be unity and conformity and some other things when we commence to talk about figures and about two and two making four.

I knew of an old Grand Army man who used to love to tell about what he had done, about his wonderful career, especially to the young people. He had it written in a diary. Eight battles, four wounds, seven children—total nineteen. Now we will get tremendously mixed up on figures and business in the churches.

As a census-taker went around taking the census, he found an Irish woman in the back yard over a washtub. The woman stepped back and dried her hands on her apron. “How many children have you?” the census taker asked. “There’s Mary and Mamie, Bridget, Samuel, Charles, Tom, Henry, John—” “Oh,” he said, “madam never mind their names. Give us the number.” “We have got names enough yet. There is no use numbering them,” she replied.

The truth I want to have understood tonight is this. We have been in a tremendous danger just now in these churches of ours, in these religious denominations of ours. We have been going at this business according to the world’s program, talking figures and great big figures. “If we only had $100,000,000 we could take the world for God inside of the next year or so,” we hear. All we have asked for is money, money, money. We have had too many figures and too little faith. Believe me, we have had too many figures and too little faith; too much man, too much machinery and too little God, too little of His Christ and the Holy Spirit, and that is the trouble with the church.

Away with your figures, away with them where they belong as secondary, not in the primary place. I received a paper from the denomination I represent. There were four pages in that paper with four columns to the page, one of the documents sent out to raise $100,000,000. I sent word to the head office not to send any more literature to my office because it annoyed me. I did not have any use for it. In the entire paper, God was not mentioned once, Jesus was not mentioned, the Holy Ghost was ignored. The name of one secretary was mentioned seven times. That is the program by which they are planning to take this world for Jesus Christ. We are as far away from God’s program as heaven is from hell. We are talking figures when God wants us to talk in the language of the Spirit, the dynamic of the kingdom of God, and wait for the baptism of the Holy Ghost.

God still lives. His throne still stands. The scepter is in the hands of the omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, infinite, eternal El Shaddai, the God who is enough.

I had a friend who had a son whom he loved better than he did his own soul, and that son was called into the United States service. He went into the air service in Europe. He left his college days and every prospect for the future was full of promise. He came back from Europe alive and well. Then some small specimen of official life in the United States Navy sent him to fly over my city of Boston for the Liberty Loan campaign, and ordered him back the same night when a northwester was blowing in at 50 or 100 miles an hour. It was impossible for any airship to live the gale. The captain knew they could not live in such a storm. He flew out over the Atlantic and back to the cape and was never heard of again. My friend found the boy’s coat after searching for days on the sand of the cape. In the coat was a Bible his mother had given him and a watch he had given him, and the sweet testimony, in a diary, of his affection for them, which nearly broke the father’s heart. The father there, on the sands of the cape, with his faith in God, wrote one of the most beautiful hymns I ever read in my life. It is Tennysonian in its poetical beauty. It is an expression of his faith in God even though stricken to the limit by the death of that noble son. When that son stepped off the ship onto the wharf in New York, the father was there to meet him. They threw their arms around each other’s neck and kissed and hugged. After a while the father said, “John, what was the most wonderful experience you had while across?” “Dad, I had a good many of them, but the one that stayed the longest in my memory is this one.”

“One day when I was out over the Atlantic, I was up about 2,000 feet, when suddenly there came toward me a tornado kind of storm as black as ink. It was coming on with fearful speed toward me. I knew I could not reach the land before it reached me. No aircraft could stand that storm. I did not know what to do, so I pushed the nose of my machine straight up and went up 3,000 feet, 4,000 feet, 5,000 feet, 6,000 feet, and then, and then out into the sunlight and under the starry glory of God’s blue sky my ship floated. I looked down on the storm, and never was such glory in the world as I saw that day above the storm under God’s blue sky. In the heavens above the storm, with one hand I pulled my bible out of my pocket, and I read from the Word of God, and I worshipped Him above the storm.” That is the wonderful part of faith. It rises above the storm.

The Enduring Word

There is another thing that has not been shaken. Listen, “The Word of the Lord endureth forever.” The throne of God has not been shaken, and the Word has not been shaken.

One of the missionaries that my church supports, and it supports a good many, is Dr. Ostrom in the Congo. Dr. Ostrom brought to me as a souvenir, a huge knife, a savage looking piece of machinery with a blade three or four inches long. It was made by the natives, the knife belonged to an African chief, and he gave it to Ostrom. That knife is all covered with old red, black dried blood, for this chief had cut off many heads with that knife. I did not like the looks of it much in my office, so I called in one of my assistants and told him to hang it up on his wall. I thought I had to keep it somewhere, and I did not want it.

What is the old African chief doing tonight? I have his knife. He has no more use for it. He was converted, miraculously converted, and he has a Bible now. While I have his knife, he is going down through the jungles preaching the Gospel of the Son of God.

That is what the Bible can do. Nothing can change its mighty power. “The Word of the Lord endureth forever,” it is God’s Book. You talk about doing things! We had a program sent us showing ministers how to “put it over.” There is one minister they cannot show how to “put it over,” thank God for that! I do not like their ways. I like the Holy Ghost’s way, the Pentecost way of “putting it over.”

When you are baptized by the Holy Ghost, you do not need to go and get a friendly minister or an old retired minister and everybody outside of the church in order to raise money. Barnabas and the rest all brought their money and laid it down at the apostles’ feet, and when you are filled with the Holy Ghost, you can get all the money you want.

I have been the pastor of my church for eleven years. We have multiplied our missionary contributions every single year for eleven years, and just now we have doubled it, and, with the constant increase of expenditures, we have always had from $1,000 to $10,000 ahead. We do not beg and we do not urge very hard. When the Holy Ghost gets to moving through the church of Jesus Christ, and when men and women are being saved, and this old Book is honored, you will have all the money you want. That is the Pentecost way.

I have lived in this world a good many years, I have been in the ministry for thirty-five years, and I have lived through various periods. I began my ministry just previous to the outspoken wave of infidelity which swept over America, when men of national and international fame preached to vast amounts of money. Their names are almost forgotten today by the world. Then one man taught what was going to happen, he literally took this old Book and tore it into shreds and said more copies of the Bible would be issued. There are more Bibles printed today than ever before, more calls for the Bible than ever before, and the Bible is more widely scattered throughout the world while his book and his name have long ago passed into oblivion.

Then came the period of evolution when Darwin wrote his book on The Origin of Species. You cannot find that book now anywhere except in some old shop where you can buy it for about five cents.

Out of that grew a sort of system that ran into a theological sore. I have had strong men stand in front of me saying, “The thing is all going to pieces, and I do not know what is going to happen. They are taking out the heart of the Gospel. It is evolution instead of Adam.” That has all been forgotten and disappeared.

Then came the period which we talk about a great deal, the period of higher criticism, when men took the Bible and put this part where it belonged and cut out this part and cut out that part and the other part, and they kept at the business of cutting up the Book until we only had the covers left.

Out of that came the period in which we are still living, called the rationalistic period. It originated in Germany and then spread to Great Britain, then over here, and its poison and rottenness have had their effect on our people and ministers. We call it theology. It is German rationalism, the most poisonous subtle and dangerous of them all. Out of this has come the rationalism that is simply enveloping and covering the whole American people today. We breathe a materialistic atmosphere, and out of that come all the vagaries of today; Christian Science, Rationalism, Spiritualism, and I do not know how many more. All kinds of devilment has grown out of this. We are now living in that kind of a period, and it is our business to counteract it to the limit of our ability.

God’s Word still lives after passing through all these fires and is more dear to the human heart than ever before in human history. I have seen the Ganges River run eighty miles out into the Indian Ocean and still retain its own identity, plowing its mighty way eighty miles out through that deep ocean. It seemed as if it were to retain its identity always; but then I saw it disappear, and it was forever gone into the depths of the mighty sea. All the vagaries, as tributaries to the stream of our modern rationalistic theology, will disappear in the great ocean of God’s everlasting truth. They are bound to disappear.

We are going to deal with this, I believe, just about as we have dealt with the American saloon, the abomination in the moral world. We have swept it off this American continent, back into the hell from whence it came where it overtook us.

The world is going to have the same blessing someday.

I saw a piece of poetry the other day. I do not know whether Longfellow wrote it or not:

“Old Father Hubbard went to the Cupboard
To get himself, the poor soul, a drink;
But when he drew nigh, the country went dry,
And he got him a drink in the sink.”

We are going to deal with all these theological professors and heretics that are located here in Chicago or elsewhere, and all the preachers of their type and drive them out of our religious world the same as the saloon has been driven out of our moral world.

The throne of God still stands, the Book of God still stands absolutely as the revelation of God to men, and the mighty power used by the Holy Ghost to redeem the old world.

I have always been interested in that famous Scotch preacher, Robert Murray M’Cheyne. He died, I think at the age of 29 years, yet he had done a marvelous piece of work in the kingdom of God. He had a magnetic personality. Wherever he appeared there was a change in the atmosphere. Everybody universally was drawn toward him. Wherever M’Cheyne stepped his foot, Scotland seemed to tremble. He moved the world by his mighty power, born of the Holy Ghost. A traveler went to M’Cheyne’s old home. He went around to the Scotch Kirke and asked the old sexton if he would not show him where M’Cheyne had preached. The old sexton, proud of his office, piloted the traveler into the back door and into a little room behind the pulpit. In this little room was a chair in front of a table. He told the traveler to sit down in the chair. On the table in front of him was an open Bible. The old sexton said, “Now, drop your face right into the Bible and weep and weep and weep, for that is the way our minister always did before he began to preach. Now,” he said, “come this way,” and he took him out of the room and up the steps into the Scotch pulpit where there was an open Bible on the pulpit. “Now, stand behind the pulpit and put your elbows down like this and put your head in your hands and let the hot tears drop on the Bible, for that’s the way our minister always preached.”

Oh, my fellow men in the ministry, if you and I only knew how to get ready to preach like that, we would shake the world with our tread, and thousands would come flocking through the gates into the kingdom. If we only loved this old Book as we ought to love it, and if we only could preach with M’Cheyne preparation, with the power of the Holy Ghost and with tears, we would have the same results, because God’s Word still lives and the throne of God stands.

The Church Of God

There is another thing that stands, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. The church of God still stands. I do not know just what Jesus meant by that expression. I do not think anybody else hardly does; but I know this, He used the strongest expression possible to make us understand that there could never anything in this world shake the foundations of His church. He had built it and it was to stand. I do not mean your special church. I mean His church, all the blessed people who really belong to Him, the church of the Living God that still stands. The different parts of it belong to it if they are with Him. Christian Science is no church, for it is not standing on the foundation of the church. Jesus put the blocks underneath His church, His own deity, he was the Son of God. On this truth the church was built. Christian Science has nothing of that kind to rest on. It is only a world organization, and will soon go out of business. Thank God, it is disintegrating, and it is going out. I came from its source and fountain head,—and the thing is literally dying out.

Unitarianism is no church, for it does not stand upon the foundation upon which God built His church. It is only a little handful, only about 80,000 members, a little handful in comparison with the great Christian body, and it is fast dying out. Eleven Unitarian churches went out of existence in my city in the last ten years, and they are nearly all dead that remain. Thank God for that.

The Deity Of Christ

There are four granite blocks on which the church is built, and they make it permanent and secure. One of these corners was quarried out of the rocks of Bethlehem. The deity of Jesus Christ, His virgin birth, God Almighty coming down into this human life through that marvelous channel, God in human flesh. That is the cornerstone on which the church of Jesus Christ must stand.

The Atonement Of Christ

Another corner on which it rests was quarried out of the rocks of Calvary’s hill, the atonement of Christ, the sinless Son of God stretched on Calvary’s cross, dying for this human race, and without which death there could be no salvation for mortal man—the atonement of Christ. He died for our sins.

The Resurrection Of Christ

He arose. Another corner stone on which the church must rest and remain absolutely secure is the granite block quarried out of the rocks of Joseph’s garden, the bodily resurrection of Christ. He arose from the dead and became the first-fruits of them that slept, afterwards they that are His at His coming. Glory to God, I shall live because He lives, the living, risen Christ.

And the other cornerstone on which the church of God must rest and without which there can be no Christian church—now, I believe there are some things which are matters of opinion and can be classed as such, and I must respect my fellow man’s opinion; but they must always be on secondary questions, not on fundamentals and essentials. There are three or four things about which there can be no opinion, against which a question mark can never be placed. You cut the heart of the Gospel of the Son of God when you take any one of these three or four things away. Now, in the detail matters of your church and my church, it may be all right for us to differ, but every man who is a child of God by faith in Jesus Christ must have three or four things on which he stands or he might just as well be a Buddhist or a Mohammedan. I just as “lief” and a little rather than to be some things that we have in this land of ours that are nominally and not really Christian.

The Coming Of Christ

As I was saying, we have one other cornerstone, and that is the Second Coming of Christ. He is coming back. Without that, I have no hope, and I would close this Book forever and never attempt to preach again if I did not believe that the Son of God is to keep His last promise to His disciples. He is coming back again, and I am waiting for His coming.

A professor of Chicago University issued a pamphlet and sent it out by the ton all over this land. A man put one into my hand last week, and in the pages of that rotten piece of literature he says, “Any man who believes in the premillennial coming of Christ is an I.W.W.” Than I am an I.W.W., but I tell you he is the I.W.W. I am in mighty good company too. Yes, sir, I am in the best company I know in this world. I am in the company of all the apostles, of all their immediate successors, of all the great missionaries in the world, of all the great evangelistic preachers, and all the men of today who are doing things in the kingdom of God believe in the premillennial coming of Jesus Christ.

We take this Book as God’s authority, and we take it for what it says, just what it says and believe it as it says it and try to live up to it.

Mark Matthew on the Pacific Coast has the largest church in America, and he preaches the Gospel of this old Book from cover to cover and believes in the premillennial coming of Christ.

Paul Rader preaches it, and has the largest congregation in the center of America, and he believes in the premillennial coming of Christ and preaches it.

Down on the Atlantic Coast, I preach it and believe in the Second Coming of Christ, and I am in mighty good company when I am with Mark Matthew and Paul Rader, and we are going to do our best to hold up all ends of the American continent for the great truths of this old Book and for the coming again of Christ our Lord, for He is coming back, and I wish He would come now. I would like to meet my wife and son in the air. I do not want to ride two nights on the railroad train. I had rather go in the air.

That is a great verse you have over here, “Every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure.” That is a great text. It is absolutely essential to optimism in these days of shaken things and dark conditions. No man can be an optimist who does not believe in the victorious Christ and His coming back, and that the greatest event in all human history is yet to take place.

One time the devil held a council in hell and called his minions around him and asked each one to tell how best to destroy this church of Jesus Christ on Earth. One said, “Get them to give up evangelistic preaching services and have conferences on social questions and other things. If that does not work, give them music and moving pictures and things of that kind.” The devil smiled and nodded his head and said, “Pretty good.”

Another said, “Do not do that. Get them to give up the weeknight prayer meeting which used to be the powerhouse, the mighty moving factor in the church of Jesus Christ in past years. Have them give up the prayer meeting and forget how to pray. That will fix the church.” The devil smiled and said, “That’s a good one too.”

Another said, “Sidetrack them. Get them to give up the Book and emphasize morality and put man on the throne and you will fix it.” The devil smiled, nodded his head and said, “That’s all right too.”

Another one said, “I can tell you something better than that scheme, something so subtle they will never discover it. Get the professors in the colleges and theological seminaries and that students to ignore God and then you will have it.” The devil nodded his head and said, “That’s the sharpest of all. They are all good, but this one is best of all. Teach the children to forget God and Christ and to ignore the Holy Spirit and the thing is done.”

When we forget the great essentials and the great dominating and moving power of God through this old world, we have lost out. That is all there is about it. The curtain drops and there is awful failure.

But listen, shh! When every church and every religious organization gets behind the blood-stained banner of the cross which covers our sins, then we shall be on the way to everlasting victory and not until then.

They had a convention down south some years ago in one of the southern cities, the only time that the North and the South had met together. The Grand Army of the North and the South met together in this convention. They had some days together and few enthusiastic.

In the last session, suddenly in the midst of the program, there was quiet. Then up the middle aisle walked a southern girl covered with the colors of the Confederacy and bearing the flag of her state above her head. She walked right straight down the middle aisle and straight up onto the platform, and the band began to play “Dixie Land.” They played “Dixie” until they almost lifted the roof, and everybody began to cheer on the southern side. Then there marched up the aisle another girl with the flag of her state and took her place on the platform, and still the band played “Dixie.”

The fellows from the North began to be disturbed and said, “We have been brought down here to be insulted.” Some even got up and went out. They could not stand the band playing “Dixie” and the display of the flags of the southern states.

Another girl came up the aisle, and another, and still another, until all the southern states were represented by the girls and the flags, and the band kept playing “Dixie.” But suddenly from the ceiling there was unfurled one of the largest American flags ever made. It quietly dropped right down in front of that platform and covered them all up, and the band began to play “The Star-Spangled Banner.” They almost shook the building with their shouts and cheers as they sang and played “The Star-Spangled Banner.” They were all hidden behind the Stars and Stripes.

Listen, shh! When that blood-marked banner of the cross which has dropped from God’s skies, by God’s mercy, and love covers all our rebellion, and all our wrong thinking, and all our wrong planning,—covers all our sin and weakness, then we will be united, then the kingdoms of this world will become the kingdoms of our Lord and His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever, for His throne stands and His Book stands, and His church stands. Glory to God, Hallelujah!

 

An address at the Second World Conference on Christian Fundamentals, The Moody Church, Chicago.