From Creeds To Christ
From Creeds To Christ FROM CREEDS TO CHRIST
By R. R. BROOKS “If any man willeth to do his will, he shall know of the teaching” (John 7:17).
Mr President, members of the faculty, students, and visiting brethren, ladies and gentlemenI appreciate the honor conferred on me by the president of A. 0. C. in that he asked me to appear before you for a lecture. It is an inspiration to be here, to see this splendid student body, to meet and hear the brethren that have spoken and the ones that shall follow me. The subject that I have selected—“From Creeds to Christ”—gives me an opportunity to bring before you the experience of a soul laden with sin, but seeking to find the Christ, the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world. In speaking to you of my conversion and how I became a Christian only I trust to be able to get you to see some facts, at the same time trying to create in you an interest, and sympathy, not so much for myself, as for the other souls that are now traveling the same road over which I came with sighs, moans, pains, and suffering of heart. I am now happy as a Christian only with the church of Christ at Lubbock as her minister, but I will never forget what I have come through to reach and enjoy the Christ that I now know. My experience is past, but many are the souls that are struggling with the same doubts, fears, and haunted dreams that made m,y life miserable for years.
I Was Bom and Raised in Tennessee
I cannot remember when I first began to long for sal-vation. But being raised in a home where the parents were only passively interested in religion, and what they knew about the plan of salvation, had been learned from their religious leaders, the Baptists, travelled in the way (as they thought) of life. You can readily see how slim my chance of learning the truth was. So, as a natural thing I grew to young mnnhod before I ever became identified with any church. But in 1911, as the result of a few young people’s interest and efforts in a personal way, I began to attend a Baptist meeting. In one of the sermons the preacher caught my attention and it seemed that he preached directly at me. He made a powerful appeal for folk to come forward; I did not go, but stood shaking and filled with fear. After that the preacher preached on the “Spirit Leaving Sinners” that had once been brought face to face with the question “What Will You Do With Jesus”? and had been made to quake and tremble like a leaf in the wind, but turned down the invitation. He led me to see that when that was done, our doom was sealed. In a sermon later, he used a magnet to draw nails to himself, to illustrate the way the Spirit draws one to Christ. When the magnet was taken away the nail was helpless to move itself. So was a sinner he said, if not drawn by the Holy Spirit. To listen to preaching like that filled me with fear, dread and haunted my dreams, if I ever succeeded in getting off to sleep, which I only could do by counting from one to one hundred over, and over until my poor tired mind would no longer function, and I would drop into a semiconsciousness to see visions of hell and lost souls, with mine in the midst. Listeners, it was terrible.
' With my soul filled with fear, and a dread in my heart for what the future held for me, I sought peace but found misery, until I could stand it no longer. So I told my mother that if I were lost it would be for something that I had already done, and not for something that I would do in the future, for I was going to do all I could to be saved. With that in mind, I went back to the Baptist meeting. When the invitation was given there followed me to the front, six or eight young men and women, He asked me if I believed that God, for Christ’s sake, had forgiven my sins, and then had me to tell the congregation what I had told him, and then asked them what they would do with me. It was moved and seconded that I be received as a candidate for baptism, after that into the full fellowship of the church. I was baptized" the following Sunday night.
I Become a Baptist Preacher
Things went along, but not without fears and doubts for me. But I was very active in the Church, President of my Sunday School Class, led in prayer, made talks in the B. Y. P. U. and did anything I was called on to do. Toward the close of the year the news reached the pastor of the church that I was going away to school. So he called on me, and after hearing what I had to say concluded that I was called to preach, and urged me to so do. He carried the news from my sick bed, back to his church that I had been called to preach, and when I recovered enough would preach my first sermon to the congregation before leaving for College. This I did on the last (Sunday night of December 1911 in the First Baptist church of Newport, Tennessee. The next Sunday the church took up my case and licensed me to jireaeh. I left the following Thursday for Carson-Newman College, Jefferson City, Tennessee, to study for the ministry, to be a preacher of the doctrine, to uphold the traditions, to support, and defend the faith of the Baptist denomination.
College Days. In the spring of 1912, when the books of Carson-Newman College opened for registration, I appeared before the president with fear and trembling, as all first term College students understand. But as the days passed, I was soon in the current of student activity and down to work.
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You would think that surely there are no doubts and haunting fears now, since I had become a ministerial student, but if you will permit me to relate two or three incidents of my College days, you will see that things were just as they were before I had been licensed to preach.
All ministerial students were given their tuition, but they had to convince a committee that they had been called to preach. So, as the day drew near for the ex-amination, we boys that had to come up for the trial, looked forward to it with feelings of uneasiness and doubtful expressions. What must be told as proof of our call to the ministry? The day finally rolled around in spite of our desire that it never come. The Committee that was to examine all young would-be preachers has arrived, we were told one morning in chapel. Therefore, we were respectively asked to meet those men in the college parlor that day. We did. What will the hoys say? Some I knew to he far from what I thought a preacher in making, ought to be. But I listened. This one had seen visions, that one had dreamed dreams and others had heard voices. With all (but myself) it was a mystical power thad had operated on them to show them that if they did not preach woe be unto them. My turn came after a while, but instead of telling dreams and spooky feelings and of visions I had never had, I merely told my intense desire to preach or do anything to bring souls to Christ. Strange to say, T was accepted as a divinely called being to preach the gospel. But, still had my doubts about being saved. You see, I had been taught that we are saved because we believe we are, and if we doubt, we are not saved. All depended on that exper- ince of Grace which I knew that I had never had in that supernatural, soul filling, light giving, doubt removing, convincing way. My doubts were still with me, and once in a while, even then, I would have to count myself to sleep. Others were just like myself, which .the following incident will show. The College Church had called a man for a protracted meeting and all students were expected to attend the meeting. One night my room mate was so terrified in the church, he stood up and cried out for the prayers of all, and said “I go now to seek peace with my God,” and he walked out of the meeting house. The church had prayed for him as he went his way in the darkness of a misty night, to seek the God that could give, and had given to others, as he thought, that peace of soul which he and I longed for. It was most day when he came to our room all covered with red mud, as the result of having spent hours in the lonely fields and gulley-washed ml hills, prostrate before God in prayer. Are you prone to smile as you think of this poor boy ? Do not do it, pity him. He was living through what I had felt for many long months. This young man was a Texan, a ministerial student, in College to learn how to convert others, and he himself doubted that he had been saved.
Having been taught that we know we are saved by the experience we have had, I was at all times full of doubts. And when the Drawing Power of the Holy Spirit was preached on, many stories would be told of poor Spirit left souls, agonizing before God in prayer, but we were told that there was no salvation for all such, and my old haunting, fear giving, soul terrifying thoughts, and visions, would return for I thought that the Spirit had left me for good. But, in our College Boys Sunday School class the teacher, who was a professor in the College, told us “when you have real genuine doubts about being a Christian your doubts become the best evidence that you can possibly have, that you are a Christian.” If he told the truth, I was a super-Christian, for the name of my Lord, whose name I wore. Who will wave the wand, or give the magic touch and bring two contradictory teachings to agree? I was taught; we are saved if we believe we are, and here, if we doubt, it is fine evidence that we are saved! Poor souls, in the realm of doubt and error! Who will try to’ bring people of my experience to a knowledge of the truth? Years rolled by and I clung on to, or my doubts clung on to me? but how was I to get relief or find peace of soul?
I Became a Methodist Preacher
I left College in 1915, and located in Chattanooga, Tennessee. By contact and association, in the home, with Methodist folk, I was drawn to the Methodist Sunday School and Church. By teaching a class in the Sunday School, I came in close touch, in a personal way, with the Pastor, and he learned that I was a licensed Baptist preacher, So, the day that he married me he asked me to become a member of the Methodist Church, and in the regular way, become a Methodist preacher, which I did in a rapid way, as you will see.
I was married one Sunday, became a Methodist the next by saying that I would be subject to the Discipline of the Church and support its institutions. The next Thursday night after asking me to retire from the meet-ing, I was discussed pro and con, but was called back in a short time to be advised that I had been unanimously recommended for license to preach in the M. E. Church South. The next thing was to meet the committee that had examined applicants for license to preach at the District Conference. As part of the preparation for the examination I was handed the Discipline and told to read it. When I came before the Presiding Elder and his committee of the Chattanooga District I felt that the cords of Creeddom were being wrapped around me, but that I would be true to the Bible and preach that folks ought to be immersed for baptism, even if I did become a Methodist preacher. Several things happened in that examination that I would like to pass on to Truth Seek-ers, but only have time for one incident. In the course of examination, one question was “Where did the Articles of Religion (found in the Methodist Discipline) come from?” I did not know, but I was sure that they should hare come from the Bible, so I said— “from the Bible.” But, imagine my great surprise when I was informed that I was mistaken, that they did not come from the Bible but from the Church of England. It not only surprised me, but it made an impression on my mind and caused me to think some later. If the very faith that I was to preach, had for its foundation the faulty material found in the Church of England, which had been received from the Roman Catholics, I was even then beginning to feel that I was not only in the wrong pew but in the wrong church as well. I passed the examination, was given license to preach and recommended to the Annual Conference for admittance on trial. However, I did not go to Conference that year, but was represented by the Presiding Elder and my Pastor in such a splendid way, I was given, by Bishop Waterhouse, one of the Suburban Churches of Chattanooga. This happened in 1916.
Pastor in Charge.
As the new pastor I soon made my appearance, to look over the charge, and to be looked over by the charge, allotted to me. Tilings moved along well, for I had tanen my bride of a few weeks to our first home, and we were busy, not only in arranging our own home, but I had to get acquainted with my flock and to learn how to be a Methodist preacher. In spite of my inexperience we had a good year, and I went to the Conference in 1917 with a fine report that called forth words of praise from the Bishop of the Conference. The Annual Conference in Pulaski, Virginia, 1917.
It was a great day when the preachers of the Chattanooga District met at the Terminal Station to entrain for the annual Conference. We picked up preachers all along the way, until we reached Knoxville, Tennessee, and then we had special cars assigned us. When we ar-rived in the Conference City, it was my lot to lodge ’.n the home of a Dunkard. Things that happened in that Conference are too numerous to mention, but I will pass to you a few things that made me want to turn from Creeds to something, I did not know what.
If you have ever attended a Methodist Conference, and been permitted to know something of the inside workings, you will appreciate what I say, when I tell you that it is a political machine from the ground up. It did not take me long to see enough to cause me to remark to one of the preachers that I was then attending my last Conference. And it was. However, all the preachers did not look at it as I did. One it pleased to the extent that he said to me, “I would rather be a Methodist preacher than an angel.”
Just to point out how the so-called work of the Holy Spirit, in selecting and calling men to preach, will be set at naught, I will tell you what happened in the Com-mittee Room where all the Young preachers, that had come *up for admittance into the Conference on trial, were examined. There was there one young man that had convinced his home church and District Conference, that had licensed him, that the Holy Spirit had called him to preach. But, when he faced the Committee at Conference, the law of the church had to be enforced regardless of the work of the Spirit. So, because he did not have a High School education, or its equivalent, he was turned down, and could not get into the Conference. I thought: "The Holy Spirit should be more careful in his selections, or else force the church, that I was then a preacher in, to recognize his work and use the men that He had called, regardless of their education or lack of education.” Others had to sware that they would leave off the use of tobacco, or stay out of the Conference. The Conference came to a close by reading the answer to Question 4 in the Discipline, which was: Where are the preachers stationed for the ensuing year ? I was returned to the same charge. But, on my way home from Conference I was asking myself: What shall I do ? To go hack to the Baptist, I cannot. To go to the Presbyterians, I will not. To join another denominational Church, it seemed to me would he just as had as staying-where I was. I repeated the question? “What shall I do?”
One thing I have left in the background, or untold, is, that I had married a Christian girl. And it grieved the folk that I was then serving as preacher because my wife would not come into the church with me. My stewards took it up with the Presiding elder and told him that something had to he done with my wife. But, they did not understand that I was the one that needed something instead of my wife. It also grieved me because I was not able to get my wife to join the church, to play the Piano, and she would not join the Ladies Missionary Society. Now I was very conscientious, and I came to think that if my wife would he a hindrance to me all the days of my ministerial life, and would keep me from exercising my divine calling, as she had a good home, I would let her return to it, and I would pursue my course as a Methodist preacher. But the Lord came to our aid, and instead of having to give np my wife to please Him, I came to see that the Greed, which separated ns, was the thing that I could give up. Therefore, I unburdened my soul to her, I called her attention to the fact that I was out of the Army because I was a Methodist preacher, but I was going to quit, give up the faith, if they sent me to France. I said: “What shall I do? Where can I go? I don’t know a church in the world that I can conscien-tiously cast my lot with. I am sick and tired of what I have.” Then she said: “I wish you could hear some of our preachers.” My trouble was not that I did not be-lieve the Bible, but I did not think that any of the churches I knew preached it, and tried to live according to it. They had, it seemed to me, left the Bible and were going their own ways. What I longed for was a church that had a Scriptural name, and took the Bible just as it is, that has no Creed but it. Being in the frame of mind mentioned above, I was ready to listen and would receive, with gratitude, light from any one. To help me to see, that the people that I had taken my wife from among, really stood for the Bi-ble in its ancient simplicity, and taught sinners to come to him as it is outlined in the New Testament; Brother Charles Holder of Bridgeport, Alabama, passed on to me a sermon delivered by your honored President Emeritus Jesse P. Sewell, at some point in Texas on the subject “The Way That is Right and Cannot Be Wrong.” Brother Moody’s book, Eunice Lloyd, came to my assistance. S. H. Hall was in Chattanooga holding a meeting so I preached in the M. E. church in the morning, got one of my stewards to hold services in the evening and I went to hear Brother Hall. He preached that night on “Seeing Things Alike.” By his sermon, and what I had read, I made up my mind that 1 could live and work with a church that taught the unsaved the Lord’s way to life, that took the Bible and preached it just as it is. So when the invitation was given I was glad to take Brother Hall’s hand, accepting the Christ of the Bible as my Lord, to obey Him instead of men. In fact, I turned from Creeds to Christ, making my decision known then and there. That night was a season of great rejoicing, not only on my part, but the churches in Chattanooga were glad. I took my stand with Christ and his people on Sunday night to be a Christian only, so Monday morning I found my Presiding elder and resigned as one of his preachers in the Chattanooga district of the M. B. Church South. But, before I leave Methodism for good I want to give you just a glimpse of what happened, how I was treated by the Presiding elder, and my ex-pastor. We’came together in the Y. M. C. A. building, there I told them my reasons for leaving the Methodist church. I asked the presiding elder to reason with me, and if I was wrong I would accept his correction. He told me if I tore up the church I had been preacher of, I would have to face the judgment for so doing. I told him that I was willing to face God in what I had done and was doing. That led him to say: ‘‘If you think God will go baek on John Wesley, you are certainly mistaken.” When I urged both of them to show me, from the Bible, my error, they did as the accusers of the woman of old, began with the greater and hastily left.
So, in the same building where I was made a Methodist preacher, I unmade one, for I had turned from Creeds to Christ. On Monday night following, I stood in the door of a liquid tomb, in the presence of a vast throng and with my mouth confessed him before men. Then, I was buried in the cold watery grave, raised from its chilly embrace, believing “He that belicveth and is baptized shall be saved” (Mart 16:16). Having been raised to a new life, I had new feelings, new joys and a satisfied heart. My soul was at ease, and I had peace with God. There had come from Him to me “seasons of refreshing” (Acts 3:19). Since that day, I have never been haunted by my thoughts, my dreams are not dreams of terror. I know what the Lord meant when he said “ Tou shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32) and, “If therefore the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed” (John 8:36). It is a great thing to be a Christian only. The great change in my life brought changes i£ my work and a move became necessary. We were using Methodist furniture in our home. We gave that up and I went to work with my hands to earn our bread.
I shall never forget nor cease to appreciate the love, kindness, and helping hands extended us by the congregations in Chattanooga. I had given up my income along with the Creed, without a promise of a place to preach, much less of financial remuneration. I was not laboring for and had no promise of the food that perisheth, but if I had not been promised a pulpit, I was only one week without a place to preach. I gave up the Methodist faith and pulpit one Sunday and preached in the Church of Christ the next.
Brother E, H. Hoover and the central congregation with which he has labored now for ten years had not yet
met me. I was unknown, by face to them, only they had heard said that one that had been preaching a different doctrine was now preaching the faith, and they sent unto our needs, not in promise, but in a temporal, substantial way.
It will be nine years this fall since I turned from Creeds to Christ, and every year has made my joy deeper and iny faith has constantly grown stronger. Therefore, I never had a remote desire to turn again to the doctrines, traditions, and Creeds of men.
What I have experienced, in this lecture related, is conclusive proof of the truthfulness of the text found at the beginning of this lecture “If any man willeth to do his will, he shall know of the teaching” (John 7:17).
Let me beg you to think in a sympathetic way of the thousands that today are traveling the way that 1 have come, battling with the same waves of doubt that I fought against. They are just as honest as any of us. They need to be loved, taught and led to know the truth that they too may turn from CREEDS TO CHRIST,