"For to this end Christ died and rose and lived again, that He might be LORD of both the dead and the living." (Romans 14:9)
"Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both LORD and CHRIST." (Acts 2:36)
How solemn are the words of the Lord to Jeremiah and to the people of God: "Thus saith the Lord of hosts, Hearken not unto the words of the prophets that prophesy unto you; they make you vain; they speak a vision of their own heart, and not out of the mouth of the Lord . . . The prophet that hath a dream, let him tell a dream; and he that hath My Word, let him speak My Word faithfully . . . And the burden of the Lord shall ye mention no more for every man's word shall be his burden; for ye have perverted the words of the living God, of the Lord of hosts our God." (Jeremiah 23:16, 28, 36).
In these strange days the servants of the Lord must be careful to preach the true Gospel. Before the Gospel can be preached clearly, it must be apprehended clearly. The Christian worker must prayerfully and carefully study the great words of the Gospel, and the presentation of that blessed message as found in the Book.
Paul, the greatest of all preachers, exhorts young Timothy, "Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the Word of truth." The word, "rightly dividing" could be translated "handling aright," or as the modern Greek version says, "teaching accurately" the Word of truth. The Greek word Orthotomeo, which is used here, is a metaphorical word. In present-day Greece it is used also in describing a carpenter drawing a straight line to divide a piece of wood. He does not draw a zig-zag line, but cuts straight, and is accurate in his work. He handles the tools aright in following the blueprint, and is thus a workman that needs not to be ashamed.
What is needed, therefore, is not only a mental knowledge of the Scriptures, but a strict adherence to its doctrine, and the way in which its truths are presented. It was Chrysostom who gave the faithful warning, "He who swerves ever so little from the pure faith, soon proceeds from this to graver errors and becomes entirely corrupted." Only by an assiduous care in the accurate use of the words of Scripture, can we be Gospel workmen that need not be afraid of the coming Bema.
We must firmly hold the blessed evangel, and let neither earth nor hell, men or demons, turn us one hair's breadth from its truth.
Once again, we take this opportunity of thanking our kind friends around the world who continue to spread our messages. We ask prayer for these messages as they appear in magazines in different languages.
May God continue to bless you mightily in your ministry.
Yours in our wonderful Lord,
James A. Stewart,
Odense, Denmark, 1955.
"The evangel bears all the dynamic and dignity of the Throne of God. Its demands cause the sinner to bow in humble submission, worship and reverence before the exalted One Who fills Heaven with His glory."
"The paramount theme of the Gospel preacher is therefore the death, resurrection, ascension, and the returning of our Lord Jesus Christ. Also, he must never forget the divine objective to be realized through His redemptive work. This can be nothing less than the proclamation of His Sovereignty in relation to the redemption of men." -- Reginald Wallace
During the past thirty years we have noticed a gradual, subtle shift in the emphasis of the "Gospel of the glory of Christ," which amounts to a complete perversion of the blessed evangel. The emphasis in our modern day evangelism has shifted from that of the Lordship of Christ to an easy "believism." This shifting of the emphasis has led to an adulterated Gospel and changed the message and the ministry of the Church.
Both movements and men have so often given the impression that the acceptance of the Lordship of Christ is a second experience of grace, or a sort of optional addendum to the Christian life. Peter declared in his apostolic message, "Him hath God exalted with his right hand to be a Prince and a Saviour, for to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins." (Acts 5:31). Christian workers today have reversed this Scriptural order and set forth Christ as Saviour first before His office as Prince. This teaching is nothing less than a complete sell-out to the world, Modernism and Satan. So great has been the perversion that many congregations are astounded when they hear the true Gospel of the Lordship of Christ. They believe that we are preaching a new gospel. We know of a certain faithful evangelist who is preaching the same old Gospel which was taught him in his denominational seminary twenty-five years ago. Today, that same evangelist, with his message, is rejected by the evangelical churches of that denomination. And for what reason? They accuse him of preaching a "new gospel" which is but the old Gospel of the Lordship of Christ.
Satan has employed every seductive and deceptive force at his command to cause God's messengers to bypass, or omit altogether, the lordship of the Redeemer. The reasons for this change of emphasis are not difficult to understand. May we mention some:
First, they want to preach a popular gospel of "easy believism" in order to attract the world to God's message. They set forth the joy of belonging to Christ, while deliberately omitting the dark background of man's total depravity. The inference is thus: "That which our fathers taught is old-fashioned. They had a narrow view of the Gospel. It isn't necessary to give up the pleasures of the world and sin. Just believe and be saved."
Second, many honest and sincere Christian workers are so anxious to rescue lost men and women from eternal damnation that they seek to meet the sinner halfway. "Yes, it is true," they say, "that Christ is king of kings and lord of lords, but don't let that upset you. You need not receive Christ as Lord now; just receive Him as Saviour and all will be well." How many times have we been severely pained when some eager evangelist or personal worker has cried out, "Do you believe that? Then you are saved!" Such a parody of truth must not go unchallenged. A sinner can "believe that" and go to hell. A sinner can believe John 3:16 and other Gospel passages and still go to hell.
Third, in our feverish haste to multiply results by mass production, we lower the standard of the Gospel proclamation. This is a great day of religious machinery, and the machinery must show huge, immediate results for its propaganda and organization. As never before, the Christian press is panting after sensational news of great results from our evangelistic endeavors. Unlike our Master, many workers fail to warn their audiences to count the cost. (Luke 14:25-33). A preacher's success is judged today mainly by the size of the crowds he draws. In John, chapter six, the Saviour preached His crowd away! "Many therefore . . . when they had heard . . . said, This is a hard saying; who can hear it? From that time many . . . went back, and walked no more with him." (John 6:60-66).
Fourth, as a sop to Modernism, we have compromised. There is a definite diabolocal master-plan to wed evangelical Christianity to Liberalism. In order to do this, there must be a ground of union, and so the doctrine of the Lordship of Christ is thrown overboard. These Modernists deny the fundamentals of the Christian faith. Like the Communist in the use of the word democracy, these denyers of the Faith have coined evangelical phrases. They have now their own evangelists conducting their own evangelistic campaigns. They will unite with Fundamentalists in union campaigns with popular evangelists, but we soon discover that "Their rock is not our Rock." (Deut. 32:31). It soon becomes evident that what they believe concerning the inspiration of the Scriptures, and the death of Christ, and the contents of the blessed Gospel, is not the same as our evangelical Faith.
On every hand we are told by evangelicals in this God-dishonoring compromise that we must be charitable and not judge the belief of others. "After all, doctrine is not so important: the salvation of souls is the all-important aim." One evil leads to another. When you deny the Lordship of Christ in this compromise, then other evils are allowed in. For example, we know of an outstanding evangelist who declared that although he personally believed in the virgin birth of Christ, it was not an essential belief in salvation. Others are taking part in evangelistic efforts with evangelicals who do not believe in the first five books of Moses as the inspired Word of God. Others do not believe in the atoning, penal death of Christ.
The obvious effect of this unholy wedlock is the lowering of the standard of the experience of regeneration. Another well-known evangelist heatedly insisted that some of the sexiest Hollywood film stars were born-again Christians! What blasphemy! How the angels must weep!
The conclusion to this situation is quite logical. If we can compromise with these Philistines for a month or six weeks in an evangelistic effort, and it is well pleasing to God, then surely we can continue to compromise with them for a lifetime. Why not be charitable and invite them to become principals of our seminaries and Bible schools, serve on our foreign mission boards, and preach at our Keswick and holiness conventions?
The desperate need of the hour is for another Charles Haddon Spurgeon to sound the alarm, and raise the banner of God, and fight the foes of the Gospel. The Samsons do not like it revealed that it was Spurgeon's battle with the religious Philistines that broke his heart and sent him to an early grave. It was the failure of evangelical leaders to stand with him in stemming the awful tide of false doctrine in evangelical circles that caused him to pass through great conflicts with Satan which few have experienced.
The grand design of the blessed Gospel is the glorifying of God and the exalting of His beloved Son. When William C. Burns was leaving Scotland for China, a man said to him, "I suppose you are going to convert the Chinese." "No," Mr. Burns replied, "I am going to China to glorify God." Yes, this is the grand design of all Gospel preaching.
We invite the reader to carefully ponder over the following words of A. W. Pink, on their knees before God. They are startling but true:
"If the evangelist fails to make the glory of God his paramount and constant aim, he is certain to go wrong, and all his efforts will be more or less a beating of the air. When he makes an end of any motive to be less than that, he is sure to fall into error, for he no longer gives God His proper place. Once we fix on ends of our own we are ready to adopt means of our own. It was at this very point that evangelism failed two or three generations ago, and from that point it has further and further departed. Evangelism made the winning of souls its goal, its summum bonum, and everything else was made to serve and pay tribute to the same. Though the glory of God was not actually denied, yet it was lost sight of, crowded out, made secondary.
"To say nothing here about those cheap-jack evangelists who aim no higher than the rushing of people into making a formal profession of faith in order that the membership of the churches may be swelled, let us consider those who are inspired by a genuine compassion and deep concern for the perishing, who earnestly long and zealously endeavor to deliver souls from the wrath to come; unless they be much on their guard, they too will inevitably err. Unless they steadily view conversion from the way God does--the way in which He is to be glorified--they will quickly begin to compromise in the means which they employ. Bent on attaining a desired object, the energy of the flesh has been given a free rein; and supposing that the object was right, evangelists have concluded that nothing could be wrong which contributed unto the securing of that end; and since their efforts appear to be eminently successful, only too many churches silently have acquiesced telling themselves that the end justifies the means. Instead of examining the plans proposed and the methods adopted in the light of Scripture, they tacitly accept them on the ground of expediency. The evangelist is esteemed, not for the soundness of his message, but for the visible results he secures. He is valued, not according to how far his preaching honours God, but according to how many souls are supposedly converted under him.
"Once a man makes the conversion of sinners his primary design and all-consuming end, he is exceedingly apt to adopt a wrong course. Instead of striving to preach the Truth in all its purity he will tone it down in order to make it more palatable to the unregenerate. Impelled by a single force moving in one fixed direction, his object is to make conversion easy, and therefore, favourite passages are dwelt upon incessantly, while others are ignored or pared away.
"In twentieth-century evangelism there has been a woeful ignoring of the solemn truth of the total depravity of man. There has been a complete underrating of the desperate case and condition of the sinner. Very few indeed have faced the unpalatable fact that every man is thoroughly corrupt by nature, that he is completely unaware of his own wretchedness, that he is blind, and helpless, and dead in trespasses and sins. Because such is his case; because his heart is filled with enmity against God, it follows that no man can be saved without the special and immediate intervention of God. According to our view here, so it will be elsewhere; to qualify and modify the truth of man's total depravity will inevitably lead to the diluting of collateral truth. The teaching of Holy Writ on this point is unmistakable. Man's plight is such that his salvation is impossible unless God puts forth His mighty power. No stirring of the emotions by anecdotes, no regaling of the senses by music, no oratory of the preacher, no persuasive appeals, are of the slightest avail."
Of course, the Word of God is not bound, nor is the Spirit necessarily circumscribed by the limitation of the message or the messenger. Indeed, such a ministry has often been blessed to the salvation of souls. God, in His sovereign grace, will hear the prayers of His believing people and bless His Word. The light of the Gospel may shine into a darkened soul through a single sentence or through a single verse. We have known the case of a modernistic preacher in the south of Scotland who greatly opposed evangelistic meetings, but who was the means of the conversion of one of his members through the reading of the Scripture lesson from the pulpit!
Neither is it suggested for a moment that every aspect of Gospel truth can be incorporated into one single sermon. Such would be well nigh an impossibility. But it is essential that we do not omit the proclamation of the sovereignty of the risen Lord, which is the dominating principle forming the background of every true, evangelistic appeal.
What then is the true emphasis in the message of the evangel? The very appellations of the Gospel clearly convey its message; viz. the lordship of Christ. Here are some of them:
"THE GOSPEL OF GOD...concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord...declared (designated) to be the Son of God with power...by the resurrection from the dead." (Rom. 1:1-4).
"THE GOSPEL OF THE GLORY OF CHRIST." (II Cor. 4:4. R.V.).
"THE GOSPEL OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST." (II Thes. 1: 8).
It is striking to notice that the lordship of Christ is never divorced from His Saviourhood. Wherever He is presented to us in the pages of the New Testament as our precious Saviour, He is also mentioned as God's anointed One.
"GOD my SAVIOUR." (Luke 1:47).
"A PRINCE and a SAVIOUR." (Acts 5: 31).
"GOD our SAVIOUR." (Tit. 1: 3).
"The LORD JESUS CHRIST our SAVIOUR." (Tit. 1: 4)
"The SAVIOUR, the LORD JESUS CHRIST." (Phil. 3:20).
The angelic declaration sums up the person of our Redeemer: "A SAVIOUR, which is CHRIST THE LORD." (Luke 2: 11).
In the New Testament the word Saviour occurs twenty-four times, eight of which refer to God the Father as our Saviour. The word Lord occurs five hundred and twenty-two times; Lord Jesus thirty times; and the Lord Jesus Christ eighty-one times. In the book of The Acts our precious Redeemer is called "Saviour" only twice: "Him hath God exalted . . . to be a Prince and a Saviour." (Acts 5:31); and, "Of this man's seed hath God according to his promise raised unto Israel a Saviour." (Acts 13:23). On the other hand, it is amazing to notice that the title, "Lord" is mentioned ninety-two times; "Lord Jesus" thirteen times; and the "Lord Jesus Christ" six times, in the same book.
Throughout the Acts of the Apostles we find that Jesus is presented as the risen, glorified Christ at the Father's right hand:
"This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we are all witnesses. Therefore being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath shed forth this, which ye now see and hear. For David is not ascended into the heavens: but he saith himself, The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, Until I make thy foes thy footstool. Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made that same Jesus whom ye have crucified both Lord and Christ." (Acts 2:32-36).
Nowhere do we have such an insight into the contents of the Gospel message as in the apostolic sermons in this book. Here we see the titles of our blessed Redeemer used with the Spirit's guidance and discretion. Here is the Gospel clear and plain. As we study carefully, sentence by sentence, we discover that they preached Jesus Christ as Lord.
"For what we preach is not ourselves, but JESUS CHRIST AS LORD, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake" (II Cor. 4:5, R.V.). The Revised Version is more correct: "We preach . . . Jesus Christ as Lord."
We note that the emphasis is not so much on the death of Christ as on His resurrection; not so much on His saviourhood as on His Lordship. The Apostles' message was a three-fold message: The resurrection, the ascension, and consequently, the lordship of Christ. Although it is true that Christ said, "Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again" -- nevertheless, the early evangelists stressed that it was God the Father Who raised His beloved Son from the tomb.
"Whom God hath raised up" (Acts 2:24).
"This Jesus hath God raised up" (Acts 2:32).
"Whom God hath raised from the dead" (Acts 3:15) .
"God . . . having raised up his Son Jesus" (Acts 3:26).
"Jesus Christ of Nazareth . . . whom God raised from the dead" (Acts 4:10).
"The God of our Fathers raised up Jesus" (Acts 5:30).
"Him God raised up the third day" (Acts 10:40).
"God . . . raised him from the dead" (Acts 17:31).