The World Movements Of Today In The Light Of The Bible

Address at the Second World Conference on Christian Fundamentals, Chicago, May 20, 1920.

“And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs come out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet. For they are the spirits of devils, working miracles, which go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty.” —Revelation 16:13–14

“But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.” —Acts 1:8

Our message will come, for the most part, out of these two Scriptures. The verse in Revelation gives us three great world movements that have been in progress from the time of Christ (if not before) until the present day,—the dragon movement, the beast or the antichrist movement, and the false prophet movements. The “spirits like frogs” came out of the mouth of the dragon, the beast (which is evidently the antichrist of John) and the false prophet, and under the power of these demoniacal spirits the kings of the earth were drawn together to the battle of Armageddon.

These three great movements, the dragon, the antichrist, and the false prophet headed up in one great personality after the church of Christ had been caught away,—the “man of sin,” “the son of perdition,” “the lawless one,” and he seems to have been generalissimo over the false prophet and the dragon. Christ came down with the saints from heaven and conquered these assembled armies.

Now let us look a moment at the nature of these movements, and then see if we can classify the movements of today in the light of them, under the head of the dragon, the antichrist, and the false prophet.

The Dragon Movement

We of course know who the dragon is, that old serpent called the devil. We do not think of him as Gustave Doré painted him, and as I saw him carved in marble in Crystal Palace, with horns and hoofs, forked tail and bat’s wings. A thing like that could not tempt anybody except to run. If I were to see him coming, I would get out of the way. A thing like that could not have any wiles, any blandishments. The dragon of this age, the apostle Paul tells us, is transformed as a messenger of light. He is an up-to-date, educated, winsome personality, and his mission, let us not forget, is to give light. He is still Lucifer, the light-bearer, and his supreme purpose is to so fill the world with light as to satisfy them without the light, Christ Jesus. He is giving scientific light, philosophical light, historical light, religious light, and he wants to make our universities and colleges and seminaries and public schools and pulpits and press great blazing centers of light. If he can satisfy you with scientific light or historic light or religious light without the Light, Christ Jesus, he will take you to hell just as certainly as if he were to drag you through the slime and the mud of sin.

The dragon wants all his ministers to be ministers of righteousness, Paul tells us again, with high standards of morality, teaching the people how to do good and to be good. In my judgment, the devil’s pet in any community is an ethical preacher, a man who holds before the multitude the highest possible standard of ethics, and tells them to do good, to do right and to be good, without any reference to the atoning blood of Christ. It is a light movement.

There is a great battle between light and darkness, between the powers of God and the powers of evil, but a greater battle than that is the battle between light and light,—light on the side of God and light marshaled on the side of the devil. The purpose of Satan in tempting Christ in the wilderness was to deflect Him from the cross. He tried to do it by seeking to induce our Lord to do right on the wrong side. Christ was hungry, and there is no harm in being hungry; it is a sign of health. There is no harm in satisfying hunger, but Satan wanted Him to do that proper thing under his command. He wanted to marshal the Lord Jesus on his side. It was perfectly right for the Lord Jesus to trust the promise that God would bear Him up, lest He dash His foot against a stone, but Satan wanted Him to do right on his side. If the devil can induce us to be upright, truthful, purse, winsome, educated, and cultured on his side, he has made us strong soldiers for him. The great battle, I repeat, is between light on the side of God and light in this age marshaled on the side of Satan, and if he can induce us to accept all the light that comes from every quarter, and satisfy us without the Light, Christ Jesus, he has accomplished his purpose.

The Antichrist Movement

The next great movement is the antichrist movement. You will find the word antichrist used, I think, five times by the apostle John, and it was evidently a movement and not a personality at that time, for there were many antichrists, and it was a movement that came out of the church,—“they went out from us because they were not of us.” I would like to say it loud enough to be heard by everyone inside the church who has become antichristian, that THE SOONER YOU GET OUT, THE BETTER.

Who is the antichrist? Whoever denies that Christ is come in the flesh,—that is, the deity of Christ,—whoever neglects or fails to confess that Christ is come in the flesh, and whoever denies the Father and the Son,—everyone who denies the deity of Christ is in this antichristian movement, and everyone who fails or refuses to confess the deity of Christ, that Christ is come in the flesh, is in the antichristian movement as well.

Now do not comfort yourself that you are not an atheist, that you are not a blaspheming infidel. If you confess not, IF YOU CONFESS NOT that Christ is come in the flesh, you are of antichrist, and all who fail to confess Him as their divine redeemer belong to the great antichrist movement.

The False Prophet Movement

As to the false prophet, a false prophet is not necessarily an antichrist. Dr. Torrey told us very clearly what a prophet means,—one that speaks forth, and one that speaks forth for God. The false prophet is one who pretends to speak forth and speak forth for God without any authority. He is a pretender, he stands out before the world as a spokesman of God by tongue or pen, and he speaks falsely.

Now let us look at some of the world movements in the light of these definitions. Of course, the Muhammadan [Muslim] movement is a false prophet movement with much of antichrist in it,—one god and Muhammad is his prophet.

The papacy is a great false prophet movement, not antichristian. The papacy with all of its rubbish, has underneath that rubbish a better theology than the destructive Higher Criticism, and if I had my choice between my child becoming a Roman Catholic or a New Theologian Higher Critic, I would accept the former.

There came to Boston, while I was pastor, a group of Paulist fathers. The Paulist father is a cult in Rome made up of those who have perverted from the Protestant faith. When a Protestant turns Catholic they send him to Rome for training, and he comes back and enters the Paulist Father fraternity, and they have been carrying on great evangelistic campaigns (they call them), using Moody and Sankey hymns. They carried on a five weeks meeting in Boston, centering at the cathedral, and no Roman Catholic was allowed to attend who did not bring a Protestant with him. The cathedral was packed for the most part, to the utmost capacity.

The first four sermons they preached, Dr. Torrey could have preached, or Spurgeon or Moody. The first was on “God as Revealed in the Bible and in Nature.” The second was on “The Deity of Christ,” and had no uncertain sound. The third, was on “The Inspiration of the Bible,” and Sir Robert Anderson could have preached that, an advocacy of literal verbal inspiration. The next was on “the Atoning Blood,” and Jonathan Edwards could have preached it. The businessmen of Boston came to some of their pastors and said, “See here, You have been telling us that Rome keeps the Bible away from the people, and these Roman Catholic priests have come and reasserted the faith of our childhood in God and the Bible, in Christ and the atoning blood. What does this mean? They have brought back what you have taken away.”

Four other sermons followed, all of them published in the papers. “All we have said about God is true,” said the fifth sermon, “but who represents Him on Earth? The pope. All we have said about the deity of Christ is true, but who is His vicegerent? All we have said about the verbal inspiration of the Bible is true, but who interprets it? It must be done on the authority of the [Roman Catholic] church. All we have said about the atoning blood is true, but how is it applied? Through the sacraments, under the authority of the pope and the [Roman Catholic] church.”

As a result of that meeting for five weeks they claimed 17,000 additions to the Catholic Churches of Boston and vicinity—10,000 women, 7,000 men. A Methodist pastor who investigated, said it was approximately correct. I think it was exaggeration, but I am quite sure that this modern Higher Critical movement played into the hands of Rome. You discredit the Bible and you will turn the people to some other source of authority, and there is no greater helper to the false prophet than the antichrist that denies the deity of our Lord or refuses to confess Him as personal Saviour.

An intelligent workman turned up in an after-meeting in the Metropolitan Tabernacle, and he said to me very bluntly, “I am going to join the Roman Catholic Church.” “Well, why?” I asked. “I have been attending the Sunday afternoon lectures, and our vicar has been telling us that the bible is a bunch of fables, and that Jesus, if He lived now would be wiser than to say some things He did. I have heard,” he said, “that they do not talk like that in Rome, and I am going to join it.”

I tried to convince him there were some who did not talk like that in Protestantism, but he persisted—an illustration of the fact that discrediting the Bible is doing more to build up Rome in America than any other force; and we need to wake up to that fact.

There are other false prophet movements mixed with antichristian. Christian Science is a great false prophet movement, full of antichrist. Spiritualism is a false prophet movement linked also with antichrist. I have never heard of a single spiritist medium who has confessed the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior and God, and I have advertised from every pulpit I have served that if there is anybody leading in the movement of spiritualism or a member of it, who will confess that Jesus Christ died for our sins, and will bow the knee to Him in worship, I will advertise it from the pulpit.

One young woman in London, about three years ago, a member of the spiritist cult, attended a seance in a dark room, where there was a large number of people. The medium announced that the spirit of Charles H. Spurgeon was present, and that made them sit up and take notice. They were now going to have a speech from the spirit of Spurgeon. What do you think Spurgeon said? “Every word I preached from the Metropolitan Tabernacle pulpit was false, and I would like to have the privilege of coming back to life and undoing the harm that I did.” That young woman rose and went out, and as she went, she said, “That is a lie.” She came over and joined the Tabernacle Church, and I had the pleasure of baptizing her. She became a brave, good witness for Christ against what she called “the demoniacal cult.”

I have read Sir Conan Doyles’ book, “The New Revelation,” and I do not hesitate to mention it, for you will see in it the heart of this spiritist movement—opposition to Christ, opposition to the blood. He gave an echo of it in the press in London, just a few months ago, when he said, “We want it to be understood that spiritualism is out to drive from the world so far as possible, what Christians mean by ‘Redemption through the blood.’” An antichrist movement through and through, claiming at the same time the spirit of prophecy.

We have had in this country lately a scientist from England, Sir Oliver Lodge, a man who has opposed the supernatural in Christianity for forty years, and has never confessed Jesus as Christ and God. Now he comes with a testimony in favor of immortality, which he says he got from the spirits. He could have gotten it from the Bible forty years ago much more clearly revealed.

I think we ought to remember that Sir Oliver has lived in the world of ether and atoms. Most of his life his specialty has been ether, and ether—nobody knows what it is, no one has ever seen it or heard it or felt it or smelled it. It is an imaginary substance which the scientists have told us permeates all the universe and transmits light. Now the majority of scientists are telling us that there is no such thing. That light really has weight and can attract a planet as it passes by, and this ethereal theory is a figment of the imagination.

Sir Oliver lectured recently (at $2.50 a head) on the structure of an atom. Nobody ever saw an atom, a large enough microscope to show it has never been revealed; they have never seen it or felt it or touched it, or smelled it or tasted it. It lives in the world of imagination. A young university student told me the atomic theory is now ready for the scientific morgue. If you ever go to Paris do not fail to visit the scientific morgue. It is an interesting, gruesome place where the scientific theories of the last two hundred years are laid out dead for inspection, and nobody comes there to claim them—not a single relative in the world. Most of them are under 25 years of age—died in their blooming youth. A sad, sad place it is, but I want to tell you the Bible is not in the scientific morgue, it is scientifically up-to-date, and I believe that the first and second chapters of Genesis ought to be made the basis and the center of our university training and of our colleges, seminaries and public schools. Other things have changed but this impregnable rock forever remains.

Sir Oliver has lived in that ethereal realm, the atomic realm, until in his mental make-up he has become a trifle ethereal and atomic, and it has been easy for him to float out from this imaginary realm into the regions of spookdom. Yet he calls himself a scientists and brings us a message from his son on the other side that they are drinking highballs and cocktails over there, suggesting that it might be a good place for the wets to migrate. What I wish to say is this, that this whole spiritist movement, including whatever science and literature there may be in it is of antichrist and not of God.

The God of the Bible recognizes two realms of spirits, the angels and the demons, the good and the bad, and He commanded that we should not become familiar with either. Anyone in the Old Testament becoming familiar with a spirit or seeking to, was guilty of treason against the theocracy; and anyone who consulted the one familiar with spirits. The angels minister to us without our becoming familiar with them, and if we try to become familiar with the good spirits it gives the demons an opportunity to get in and deceive us. That is what spiritism is, to a large extent, the deception of devils through men and women who are disobeying God’s command by trying to be familiar with the spirit world. The only Spirit that you need to become familiar with is the Holy Spirit, the revealer of Christ and the writer of the Book and the opener of your understanding and heart to its deeper meaning.

Civilization

We might classify nearly all of these modern movements under several heads. Civilization? That is to be the millennium, we are told—the advancement of science, the making of railroads, and telephones, and wireless and all sorts of inventions—and yet we find that men swear by wireless and they tell lies by telephone, and the devil has largely captured the whold business. Christians can use it, of course, but the devil uses it as well.

During this past war, the great advancement of science was turned into an engine of destruction. Men used their scientific knowledge for the slaying of their fellows, making the innocent to suffer with the guilty.

Another word expresses a movement—democratization. This is a big word, but in the estimation of most people it is a big thing—democratizing the world, making it safe for democracy and making democracy safe for it. “We can bring it about,” the world says, “by a great peace covenant” (with God left out and Christ left out). So far as I know, every democratic movement that has spread over the world has left Jesus Christ out. I read that little document, the platform of the Republican party looking for the name of God or for a reference to Christ, but it is painfully absent; and I do not know a nation on Earth that officially recognizes Jesus Christ. Tell me one if you can. When our president sends out his proclamation, he recognizes God, but the Jews and the Muhammadans can come under that statement just as well as the Christian. When King George V sends out his manifesto, he may recognize God. When he meets with the others in St. Paul’s Cathedral or Westminster Abbey, he worships Christ and names the name, but not officially. If the second Psalm is true the time is coming when God shall set His Christ upon His holy hill, and all the kings and the democracies and the nations of earth shall acknowledge Him; but they are not doing it now.

I do not believe that your peace covenant will prevent war—not a bit. It was a league of nations that produced the great Civil War in this country. Abraham Lincoln fought to preserve the union, the League of States or of nations fought—not to retain slavery, Jeff Davis said, but for self-determination for the states, for state rights. It was a League of Nations that brought on this last world war. But for a league with Belgium, Great Britain would not have come in when she did; and when one party to a league looks upon it as a “scrap of paper” the war will come the sooner. If war ever ought to come, it should come then.

My trouble about the League of Nations is that, first of all, they have left out God, and they have made no reference to Christ, the Prince of Peace, and there is nobody on this Earth big enough to be at the head of the thing. I am sure King George V does not think he is big enough; and I am just as certain that President Wilson, sick or well, is not big enough to be at the head of the world. The only personality in all this universe that is big enough to be at the head of this world is the Lord Jesus Christ. That is the reason I pray, “Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly. Thou only art equal to this great undertaking.”

Democratization without the recognition of Him whom the people heard gladly, and who came to die for the people, will never succeed in the establishment of peace or anything else good that may be permanent.

Reformation

There is another movement of reformation, of reform, built up and helped by social service. “Bring the world under the banner of prohibition and we will have the millennium,” reformers have said. I once thought that we would, and I thank God that the saloon has been driven from under our flag, and I would to God it might be driven from the face of the earth; but as I have come back to this country and gone from ocean to ocean, I do not see any signs of the millennium. Bless your life, the churches in places seem to me to be lying down on the soft pillow of prohibition victory and gone sound asleep. Pastor and people seem to be satisfied with the fact that this great reform has taken place, and think they do not need to do much else in the way of saving souls.

I have been trying to find somebody who was brought to Jesus by prohibition, just by the passing of the prohibitory law, who became so thankful for it that he turned to the Lord, some saloonkeeper who was thrown out of business, and through that fact, became a Christian, some drunkard, who, as soon as he found prohibition had come was so grateful that he accepted the Lord Jesus as his Saviour. Now I believe it is good to make it hard to do wrong and easy to do right, and in every fiber of my being, I am against the liquor traffic, but I am trying to find somebody who has been brought into right relation with God through the victory of this great reform.

When I went to the pastorate of a church in Boston with a great endowment, I felt to be sure, “We will win the people to Christ. We will pay their rent, we will furnish them food when they are hungry and clothes when they are naked, and we will just get hold of them and win them to Jesus.” After the Lord had fed the multitude they wanted to make Him King, and the disciples were swept into the current, and He had to constrain them to get in the boat and go to the other side to get them out of it, and He went up into the mountain to pray. If you will feed the multitude they will make you King, they would like to crown you in the little realm of fish and bread. If the Lord had accepted that crown He would not have been equal to stilling the tempest on the lake the next day. One of the tricks of Satan is to sidetrack us into the realm of fish and bread to just doing civil service without Jesus Christ.

A man came into our meeting in Boston and said, “I am at the head of a settlement work, and we never mention the name of Christ. We would fail to reach the Jews if we did, so we just leave Him out. We never speak of the fatherhood of God, because those ragged boys and girls would think of the brute that came home the other night and blackened mother’s eye. We have got to live down there among them for ten or twelve years and define by our lives, what fatherhood means, and then we will talk to them about the fatherhood of God.”

That looks nice, but I never shall forget what a brother said, as he rose, and point to the settlement worker, said, “My brother, you go down there and speak for twenty minutes to those ragged boys and girls on the text, ‘He that hath seen me, hath seen the father.’ Just preach to them twenty minutes about Jesus and they will know more of the fatherhood of God than they will by looking at you twenty years.” And he spoke the truth. Of course we ought to help the poor, feed the hungry, educate the ignorant, build up everybody in every way we can, but you need not depend on that to save them, and if you leave Christ out of it you are a member of the antichrist movement, if you neglect to bring in Christ you are classed with those who deny His deity.

I found that our philanthropic work made ten waves against our church to one in favor of it. We had a man, who is here now on the platform, employed to find work for men out of a job and a good salary. We had a woman employed to find work for women, at a good salary, and these men and women were finding employment every year for hundreds, and if it ever brought a soul to Christ, I could not find one. I did find, however, that when we got a group of girls into a hotel as maids and cooks or what not, if they ever stole anything, we go the credit for it, and if they ever told a lie, the church was blamed. I said to one of our deacons, a worker in Chickering’s piano works, why don’t you ask the fellows to come down to the church? About eight hundred men are working there.” He said, “Pastor, I do ask them, but they refuse. They say, ‘I’m no pauper. If I go down there you will think I am coming with my little basket to get something, and I have more self-respect.’”

We had to live down the reputation we had for helping the poor before we could reach the self-respecting working man, the very one for whom the money had been given. The report got out that we paid people to join the church. One woman came to me and asked me how much I would give her to join the church. She said she had heard that one party got two dollars and a half, and she was willing to strike a bargain for even a lesser sum. So far as I could see, we did as much to lower the tone of that community by our civil service work as anything else did. It was the testimony of our wise worker that if a pastor in the suburbs or in a neighboring town found a family of ne’er-do-wells he did not know how to manage, he was perfectly willing to send somebody over and rent a house or a room near that church, and pay their traveling expenses, that we might have them near at hand. The community built up to a large extent with that sort of material, and when folks follow just for the loaves and the fishes, that is all they are going to get, all they are going to receive.

I asked Dr. Judson’s assistant in New York as to how many people, during his twelves years of work (having the purse-strings of John D. Rockefeller), how many they had won to Christ by direct humanitarian effort. He replied without a moment’s hesitation, “Dr. Judson and I were talking it over the other day, and we have not been able to find a single individual that was won to Christ by helping him, no one who remained true when the pabulum was taken away.”

I believe there are other churches that can show a better record than that, but I am sure of this, that you can reach the bodies of men through their souls better than you can their souls through their bodies. Time was, when I met a drunkard, I thought about getting him a new suit and a bath, and putting him in a home to straighten up before I preached the Gospel to him; but I found frequently, the suit I got into the pawn shop before tomorrow night, and all the good I did to him seemed to be turned into evil. That time is past. Now when I meet a drunkard, though he be drunk, I want to get them right down in touch with Jesus Christ. If he will clean up his heart, his body will take care of itself. Give him a new heart and there will come new environment. You may clean up his body as much as you please and leave the old sinful heart; and the sow will go plunging for the wallow just as soon as she gets a chance. Civil service, humanitarian work, philanthropic agencies, without the atoning blood of Christ, are on the side of antichrist.

Federation

There is another word, “federation.” “The millennium will come through federation. Just get together, that is all you need,” we are told. In the vision of Ezekiel, he saw those creatures with wings and human hands under each wing. The wing in the prophetical portions of the bible stands for the divine—“Under the shadow of Thy wing,” and the hand stands for the human. There was a large wing and a little hand, and the wing moved the hand rather than the hand moving the wing. Those creature were united in their wings, not in their hands.

We try to get together simply for handwork, to do something, and if there is no union in Jesus Christ, it is worse than nothing. When people get together who are antichristian in heart, you cannot work with them, you have to work on them, and the moment you begin to work on them they flinch and get mad.

A committee came to see me in Boston, and said, “We have the most wonderful union meeting New England ever saw. The Baptists are in, the Methodists, the Presbyterians, the Episcopalians, the Congregationalists, the Unitarians, the Christian Scientists, and we think perhaps the Catholics will come in before we get through.”

“Well,” I said, “man, in the name of sense, how can I work with a Unitarian without working on him, and how can I work with a Christian Scientists without working on him? And the minute you begin to work on him you have been discourteous and unfriendly.” There seems to be a sort of thought that if we can get together somehow the millennium will come. This Interchurch movement, so far as I have seen any pronouncement of its principles, has never acknowledged Jesus Christ as the atoning Saviour. It has no creed, no statement of doctrine, it tells us that it wants everybody to get together, but in every pronouncement that I have seen, the atoning blood is not there.

One of the leaders came out to St. Paul while I was in Minneapolis, a man who used to be one of the greatest preachers in the world, preaching some of the greatest Gospel sermons, with thousands of men confessing Christ under his ministry. He was there under the auspices of the Interchurch World Movement, and said, “Time was when we tried to save drunkards one at a time. We have done with that. We are now saving society that will not produce a drunkard.” Then he went on to say, “The other day I was looking over my sermons that I used to preach and think were so great (and they were great, those of you who heard him would agree). As I read them over, I said, ‘They are all canned goods, every one of them. I would like to sell them for $1.50.’” He made a laugh at the expense of his Gospel sermons, and wants to save society without the Gospel. If that is not an antichrist, tell me what it is,—excluding the blood and putting the glorious Gospel of salvation by grace aside as “canned goods” without any spiritual life.

Education

Another great movement might be labeled, “Education.” That is worldwide. “The public school, the high school, the college, the university, the school of specialism, that is what we need to lift the world into millennial glory,” is the world’s statement. Can you tell me a public educator, a leader along this line who is willing to recognize the Lord Jesus as atoning Saviour and confess it before an assembly of teachers? Here and there you may find an individual, but the great movement fails to acknowledge Christ.

When I was in Chicago as pastor, the Supreme Court of Illinois confirmed a decision of a lower court claiming that the Bible ought not to be taught in the public schools because it is a sectarian book. Has that been repealed? The Word of God denounced as a sectarian book by the highest authority. But I do love those words of Jesus, “on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” What is “the gates of hell”? Not a marching army. The gate of a city was the place of authority, where the mayor sat, where the city council sat. It was the legislature, the parliament, it was where laws were made and executed in ancient times; and the greatest enemy of the church is authority. A man becomes eminent in science, a high authority in science, and then he comes out with some antichristian heresy and the people rally to him because he has made himself a name of authority; but the promise of the Lord Jesus is that all the authorities of Earth shall not prevail against His church in its regular, legitimate mission, and that is the calling out and the saving out of His people, preparing them for the return of the King. All the authorities that may come from the highest places of Earth will never prevent the church from carrying out that mission.

I have just read a book entitled, “A Guide to the Study of the Christian Religion,” sent out from the Chicago University. I wish someone would write a companion volume and entitle it, “A Color Blind Guide to the Study of the Christian Religion,” for those eminent gentlemen are blind to three things. They are blind to the purple; they see no royalty in Jesus Christ. He is to them an evolution from things before Him. He did not come down from heaven, as He said He did, but He came up from the mud with the rest.

They are blind to the red—there is no acknowledgment of the atoning blood from beginning to end. They are blind to the white light of revelation. The Bible is talked about in the book as tradition, and its testimony is rejected at will, and even the testimony of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself.

If that represents our higher education it is antichrist through and through. The first chapter draws the battle line. The author says, “Evolution is accepted by nearly every college profession in the north and denounced by nearly every evangelist.” That is the battle line. Our churches were founded and organized by evangelists. They have been kept up by evangelists and evangelistic pastors, and these college professors that teach evolution have to get an orthodox evangelist to come in occasionally to keep the thing from burial day.

That brings me to say this, that the authors of this voluminous production, within my memory, were evangelical preachers, every one of them. They preached in churches the salvation by the cross through the blood, and every one of them is an evangelical wreck. Character has not been wrecked yet. Why? Because it was formed in an evangelical atmosphere and under evangelical teaching. As young men they took in the truth and it made character and has kept it winsome, we are told, in its personality. But what about the young men to whom they are teaching this poison, and what is the drift of our universities in the land?

I heard a Chicago doctor the other day say he had visited a university with 6,000 students, and although in former days there were many ministerial students, there is not a single one among the 6,000. Two entered as ministerial students, and give it up before the close of the first session. Every preacher's son (and there were several) in that university was a practical infidel, never attending church of any kind, or taking part in any Christian work. That university consumes 50,000 cigarettes a day, and 300 of the young women are inveterate smokers. He said that the social position (and I do not want you to laugh at this—it is too solemn for laughter) of every man and woman in that university did not depend upon character or record in the classroom, but upon the brand of cigarettes he or she smoked.

What effect is this having upon our rising generation? It is bringing them down to the dust and mud.

God’s Program

I have taken so much time looking at these world movements that I haven’t time now for what my heart is most set on, but I will just let you take it and work it out—God’s program for the world. Look at all the world movements in the light of it, if you please.

In the Acts of the Apostles, 1:8, we read, “But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.” Not “by democratizing,” not “by civilization,” not “by education,” not “by federation,” but by testimony to Jesus His great purpose for the world is to be carried out. Although we may help in every good work so far as duty demands, our great burning mission is to be a witness unto Jesus to the uttermost parts of the earth.

But that is only half the program: “And when he had spoken these things, while they beheld, he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight. And while they looked stedfastly toward heaven as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel; which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven,”—and the program is complete.

Your mission and mine is to preach the Christ that died and the Christ that rose again, and the Christ who, as in His program, is coming back with the reserves from heaven to finish the conquest of this world, which we, in His power, have begun. God help us to do our part under the power of the Holy Spirit, and expect Him to do His, in His own good time.