The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1889-04-26

me. GOD saw their works. that they
turned from their evil ways, and GOD re-
pented Of the evil that He had said He
would do unto them, and He did it metz
God is a Father, and some of Us know what
that means, and some time when we have
promised chastisement and the child
deserved it, the little darling has put her
arms around our neck and expresses such
sorrow and such promises of doing better,
that her tears landed on the lips Of our
kiss, and we held her a half hour after on
our knee, ami would as soon think or
slapPing an angel in the face as Of even
striking her with the weight of our little
finger. God is a Father. and while He
has promised His world scourgings, though
they were to be for a thousand years or
five thousand years, He would, if the
world repented, substitute benedictiOn
and Divine caress.
God changed His mind about SOdom six
times. He had determined on its destruc-
ton. Abraham asked Him if He would
not spare it If fifty righteous people were
found there; and, narrowing down the
number. il forty-fve were found there;
if forty people; if thirty people; if twenty
people; if ten people were found there.
And each of the six times the Lord an
swered yes. Oh, why didn't Abraham go
on just two steps further and say if five
be found there and if one be found there,
for then for the sake of Lot, its one good
citizen, think SOdom would have been
spared. Eight times does the Bible say
that God repented when He had promised
punishments and withheld the stroke.
Was it a slip of Paul's pen when
he spoke of Gods cutting short
the work in righteousness +? No,
Paul's pen never slipped. There is
nothing in the way Of prophesy to hinder
the crusade have proposed for the last
decade of the ninpte enth century. The
whole trouble is that we put off the COM
pletion of the worlds redemption to such
long and indefinite distances. The old
proverb that 'what is every body's bust
ness is nobody's business" lRight be
to say " hat is the gospel business of all
the ages is the gospel business of no age.
We are so constituted we can not get up
much enthusiasm about something five
hundred years from now or one thousand
years from now. We are fighting at too
long range. That gun called the Swamp
Angel" was a nuisance. 1t shot six miles,
but it hardly ever hit any thing. 1t did
its chief destructive work when it burst
and killed those who were setting it of.
Short range is the effective kind of work,
whether it be for worldly or religious pur-
pose.
Some man with his eyes half shut
drones out to me the Bible quotation: "a
thousand years are as one days" that is,
ten centuries are not long for the Lord.
But why do you not quote the previous
sentence, which says that one day is with
the Lord as a thousand years? That is,
He could do the work OF ten centuries in
twenty-fOur hours. The mightiest OBJ
stacle to Christian work is the impress
sion that the worlds evangelization is
away off. And we take the telescope and
look on and on through centuries until
we see two objects near each other and
we strain our vision and guess what they
are, and We call great conventions to
guess what they are, and we get down
our heaviest theological works and bal
ance our telescope on the lid and look and
look, and finally conclude that they are
two beasts that we see, and the one has
hair aud the other has wool, and we guess
it must be the lion and the lamb lyin e
down together. In that great cradle of
pOstpOnement and sOmnOIence we rock
the Church as though it were an i'm
patient child, and say: "Hush, my dear,
don't be impatient! DON'T get excited by
revivals! Don't cry! Your Fathers
coming! Don't get uneasy! He will be
here in two or three or ten or twenty
thousand years" And we act as though
we thought that when Macaulay's fam Gus
New Zealander in the far distance is seat
ed on a broken arch of London bridge
sketching the ruins of St. Paul's his
grand child might break in and jolt his
pencil by asking him if he thought the
millennium ever would appear. Men and
women of the eternal God! Sons and
daughters Of the Lord Almighty! We
may have it start in the decade that is
soon to commence, and it will be done if
we can persuade the people between now
and then to get ready for the work.
What makes me think it can be done?
First, because God is ready. He needs
no long persuasion to do His work, for if
He is not willing that any should perish,
He is not willing that any of the people of
the next decade shall perish; and the
whole Bible is a chime of bells, ringing
out, "Come, come, come" and you need
not go round the earth to find out how
much He wants the world to come, but
just to walk around one stripped and bare
and leahess tree with two branches, not
arched, but horizontal. But He is waiting
as He said He would, for the CO. operation
of the Church. When we are ready God is
ready. And He certainly has all
the weapOnry ready to capture
this world for the truth, all
the weapons of kindness or devastation
On the other hand the Gospel, and sun
shine, and power to Orchardize and gar
in rainbow, and Chatsworthian verdure,
and aromas poured out of the walls of
Heaven, while on the other hand He has
the weaponry of devastation, thunderbOlt
and cOnfiagration, and forces planetary,
solar, lunar, stellar or meteoric, that with
loose rein thrown on the neck for a second
would leave consultations and galaxies
so many split and shiveFed wheels on the
boulevards of Heaven. And that God is
I y-sT al = Il,
His glorious name Blessed was the hour
when through Jesus Christ my sinful soul
made peace with Him!
If you continue to ask me why I think
the world can be saved in the final decade
of the ninete nth century, Ireply because
it is not a great undertaking, considering
the number OF workers that will go at it, if
once persuaded that it can be done. We
have sifted the five hundred million work
ers to four hundred million, and three
hundred million, and two hundred mill
ion, aud one hundred million and fifty
million. I went to work to cipher out
how many souls that number could
bring to God in ten years if each
brought one soul every year, and if each
soul so brought SHOULD bring another
each succeeding year. 1 found out
aided by a professor in mathemat-
/ les, that we aid not need any
any thing like that number of workers en-
listed. You see it is simply question of
/ mathematics and in geometrioaI progress
/ sion. Then ] gave to the learned profess
/ sor this problem; How many persons
| would it require to start with if each one
! brought a soul into the Kingdom each year
| for ten years and each one brought an
/ other each succeeding year, in order to
/ have one billion -four hundred million
people saved, or the population of the
/ earth at present? His answer was two
million seven hundred and fifty four thou
\ sand three hundred and seventy five
workers. So you see that when 1 sisted
/ the FIVE hundred miIioI nominal Chris