A Soul Vision Of Christ

Annual missionary sermon delivered at The Moody Church, Sunday morning, April 26, 1925 by the Rev. Charles E. Hurlburt, General Director of the Africa Inland Mission.

Has a peace filled your heart in answer to the prayer of thousands of God’s dear children—those who have spiritual hearing? Have you caught the sound of the stately steppings of the Master Himself moving about the earth? The measure of the blessing that shall come to The Moody Church, to Chicago, to Africa, to China, to India, and to every part of the earth depends upon the vision that you and I shall receive as individual members of the body of Christ, and how far we let that vision transform our lives.

Will you listen to the word of one who caught a vision that you and I must see if we shall help and not hinder this mighty working of God which is already beginning?

“I was in the spirit on the Lord’s day and I heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet, saying, I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last. And I turned to see the voice that spake with me, and being turned I saw seven golden candlesticks.”

Oh, dear children of God, are you in the Spirit this morning? If not—if these earlier services, the songs that have been sung, the prayers that have been offered, the Word that has been read, has not led you away from self, away from the flesh, from the world, come to Him now. Be in the Spirit and you shall hear, and as you hear, oh, turn to Him.

A Vision Glorious

“I turned to see the voice that spake with me. And being turned I saw seven golden candlesticks.”

Oh, how we talk about the churches these days. I believe as a great organization it is near or past the day when God has spued it out of His mouth. And yet where we gather together in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, we are His bride—golden candlesticks. Let not our eyes be held with the tarnishing—the evil, the blunders, the failures of ourselves and one another. Do you see the church, do you see one another this morning as precious, golden candlesticks?

“And in the midst of the seven candlesticks one like unto the son of man.”

Oh, dear fellow believers, many of us have found our eyes holden with the candlesticks and we have not seen Him who dwells in the midst. I plead with you this morning, pray for that divine anointing, not chiefly of one another’s eyes, but of our own eyes. May God anoint us all afresh this morning that we may see not only the church, not only the golden candlesticks, but Him who is in the midst, “one like unto the son of man, clothed with a garment down to the root.”

How many of us stop there and we say, “We cannot see Him”? But I tell you this morning in the words of Him who spake as never man spake that though the world may not see Him, ye see Him. “In a little while the world seeth me no more, but ye see me.” And a little later, “I will manifest myself unto you.” Have you seen Him? Are you beholding Him in the beauty of holiness this morning? Have you caught the vision not only of the church but of the Christ who dwells in the midst of it and is here in our midst this morning?

“Girt about the paps with a golden girdle.”

Infinite fullness, the El Shaddai, the [Almighty] God, the God who is all-in-all forever, our every need and every burden to bear!

“His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow.”

The eternal God, infinitely perfect, infinitely pure, infinitely holy.

Sin—A Barrier To Blessing

“And His eyes were like a flame of fire.”

They consume the sin and the wrong of all that stands within the light. How our hearts have been told in this conference of the great blessing God is desiring to pour out, and sin is all that stands in the way. Will you bow yourself before the eyes of Him who looks down into your heart as a flame of living fire and say to Him: “Dear Lord Jesus, burn me out. Burn out the dross. Burn out the imperfection.”

You and I know what sorrow has come to the world through sin—your sin and mine. What failure has come!

“Someone has failed Him! Lord, is it I?”

Shall we ask Him that this morning? A generation has passed away without hearing the Gospel. A generation has passed without any great revolution in Chicago. Someone has failed Him. Shall we find out who this morning, so far as we are concerned in our own inner life? Shall we ask that His eyes may be upon us?

Perpetual Cleansing

There is no condemnation even though He walks in the midst of the church. There is no condemnation to the bride that walks with Him and beholds Him in the beauty of holiness; but a constantly consuming fire that burns away the sin. “For if we walk in the light as He is the light,” we not only have fellowship with Him, but “the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.” It is the eternal, present cleansing for our lives.

“And he had in his right hand seven stars.”

Do you know the source of cleansing, the source of power, the source of guidance? Have you seen the vision?

“And out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword; and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength.”

Have you caught the vision? Is God shining upon your life? We are not dealing with theories or philosophies. The greatest fact of this morning hour and the greatest fact of your life and mine as we are gathered in the house of God, as we go back to our home, and as we go out into the community tomorrow morning, is that our Hope is with us. God is in the midst of the church, and if you have not seen Him and walked in the light of His power and found the grace and glory of His divine cleansing, the fault isn’t with Him.

“Someone has failed Him! Lord, is it I?”

I want to press this thought home on your heart this morning that the great need in this crisis is for men and women in the church of the Lord Jesus Christ to get the vision of Christ Himself. Now we talk about the Holy Spirit of God and we talk about the divine anointing and the gifts of the Spirit, but we sometimes forget and sometimes even deceive ourselves that we worship one God, the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, that Jesus said, “He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father,” and the man who dared to lie to the Holy Ghost lied not unto man but unto God.

An Age-Old Fact

Away back in the olden time in the message that we had from that thirty-third chapter of Exodus this morning, we found a man seeking great blessing, great grace, great glory, and he was walking in the midst of a company of people who had not caught the vision and who were not obedient to the vision. God came to Moses and said, “Well, Moses, they are a hard people. They are stiff-necked and rebellious. They won’t let me have my way with them. I will let you lead them out, Moses, and I will send an angel to go with you—a divine messenger. He shall lead you. He shall go with you. I will drive out the Canaanites from the land. But I cannot walk with a people like this.”

Oh, God save you the agony and the sorrow of entering into a great movement if you have to go forth without the actual presence of God because you are a stiff-necked and rebellious people. God save us from it, dear fellow-believers in the Lord Jesus Christ.

God’s Requirement

Moses felt that need and he said from his heart: “If Thou go not with us, send us not up hence.” Do you know what that meant? It simply meant that it was better to die in the desert than to go into a godless Canaan. It was better to go into the bondage of Egypt and be slain by the Egyptian task-masters than to go forth without the living presence of God. I ask you, beloved, to realize that it is God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit who is standing knocking at our hearts and saying, “I want to bless you; I want to call enough missionaries to go to Africa to evangelize the land; I want to open every walled city of China with a messenger Spirit-filled; I want to carry the Gospel to all the highlands and lowlands of India. But I must have men and women who behold the King in the beauty of holiness and are changed into His likeness.”

And I say to you this morning that if you and I—any man of us or any woman of us—fail to discern the presence of the Lord of hosts with us as the mightiest Factor of our lives and let Him change us into His likeness and His glory, we will stand in the way of the salvation of souls.

Years ago in Chester, Pennsylvania, I heard Professor Sweeney singing an old hymn and I have heard it, too, as I have tramped through the highlands of Africa:

“I must have the Saviour with me,
For I dare not walk alone;
I must feel His presence near me,
And His arm about me thrown.
Then my soul shall fear no ill,
Let Him lead me where He will,
I will go without a murmur,
And His footsteps follow still.”

Divine Impelling

I bring you an old, old message, and I bring it to you that your hearts may be reassured this morning and that you may face the truth squarely, that every child of God may behold the King in the beauty of holiness. And somehow—there must come that divinely inspired “must.” I must see the King. I must have the Saviour with me. I must be about my Father’s business. The Son of God living in the midst of our daily life and experience is the one answer that stops all unbelief, all incredulity, all doubt and all the denial of this Word of God, of the deity of Jesus Christ, and of His miraculous power. That is the one answer to it all.

The arguments that we give and the books we are writing—how greatly they are needed. But more needful still are lives that behold the King in the beauty of His holiness and are being changed from day to day into his likeness from glory unto glory and from grace to grace.

Let me repeat again, the Master is here. As He said, we may behold His face. “The world seeth me no more, but ye see me.” He dwells in the midst of the church. He is as really here as you are, my brother. You touch the man next to you and you say, “I know he is here.” You adjust your glasses and look at him and say, “I know he is here.” You hold your hand to your ear and hear his greeting and you say, “I know he is here; I heard him speak.” Not one whit less surely is the presence of God, and not one whit less certain may be your heart.

“I saw Jehovah high and lifted up and his train filled the temple.” Will you pray Him that the mist may be swept from your vision and that you may behold Him in the beauty of holiness, that you may be changed into His likeness?

A Sad Reality

Dear children of God, it is possible for us to know a great deal about God and never see Him. On the seventeenth of last June it was unusual privilege to go all through Buckingham Palace in London. I had ridden by those great walls many times. The old housekeeper and the man who has been the superintendent of His Majesty’s wardrobe for years took me through and I saw millions of dollars’ worth of treasure until I exclaimed, “The half was never told!” I never can describe those two or three hours that I spent wandering through those rooms. I saw the king’s jewels and decorations, heavy with diamonds and rubies and emeralds and endless precious stones. Yet I came out from that palace bearing only a little card with the king’s crest on. I did not see the king!

I had an invitation from him in which he said he was sorry he was not there at the time of my visit and he made an appointment for me to see him privately. But in the palace I did not see the king. I did not get a jewel. I did not get a single old painting. I could not carry away one tapestry.

It is possible for us to come into the Lord’s house and know something about the King’s glory but never to see His face. I want to press it home to your hearts. It isn’t any use to come to church and go out and say, “I have to walk alone this week; I have not seen the King.” Oh, there is a price to pay, and I give it to you in the closing verse that I want God to burn into your hearts from the twenty-ninth chapter of Jeremiah, the thirteenth verse:

“An ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.”

The Price Of Power

If Moses had not said, “I would rather die in the wilderness, I would rather be a slave in Egypt, than to go hence without God,” God would not have gone with them. Just the angel would have gone. The angel would have driven out the people, but there would not have been power and there would not have been blessing. And there will not be blessing in your life unless you behold the King Himself, talk with Him and dwell with Him.

And so I come to you and in the words of the twelfth of Romans: “I beseech you that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable, unto God which is your reasonable service.” And then I want to give you the opening words of that next verse: “Be not...but be. Be not conformed to the world.”

I say you may go out from this place this morning without any blessing because you are not willing to present yourselves and your substance and all that you have to Him. Rags of self-righteousness may shut out the glory of the King. One round dollar which you hold may hide all the glory. One little sin in your life that you are not going to put away at any cost may shut out the power and the glory of God. It is going to rob not only you but your home, your community, your nation.

I say to you, dear children of God, you must come stripped of self. You who are God’s stewards, open your bank book and ask God what He would have you do. You do not have to talk to anybody else about it. Do not put down any less than He asks. You who are mothers and fathers who have children whom you cannot give, think of the fact that if you don’t want them and yourself to be stripped of all blessing, you must strip yourselves of these and say: “My father, my mother, my children, my all is Thine. My business is Thine; my heart is Thine.”

A Passionate Plea

I plead in the name of Jesus Christ, in the name of the millions in Africa waiting for the Gospel today, in the name of millions of China and of India, in the name of Chicago and its needy millions who are drifting away from God because they see no evidence of God’s presence among His people—I plead with you for the sake of Him who loved you and gave Himself for you that He might redeem you and write your name in the Lamb’s book of life, strip yourself and say: “My Father, take all that Thou wilt!”

How glad I am that we are accountable only to God. Will you bow your hearts before Him and say: “Lord God of hosts, I must have the Saviour with me. I must behold Him in the beauty of holiness. It were better that I should die in bondage, unless Thou make me what Thou wilt.”

I was once seated under the bamboos on the east coast of Africa with a humble man of God, a missionary. We were taking a little time to rest there and we felt we must pray. And there in the shade of those bamboos a prayer went up from the lips of my friend, something like this: “O Lord God, if Thou wilt not come down upon me in mighty power, take me out of life. I can’t bear to go forward without Thee.”

Will you ask Him to help you to say that?