Finger Posts
TO be even a finger post, and a finger post to show the way to the cross of Christ, what a privilege! Dear reader, have — you ever thought of it, that our gracious Father in heaven will use even me — you — to point others to the Saviour, if we will humbly ask Him? A delightful letter we had from the Front in July gave testimony of this. An Army Scripture Reader writes: “How often men come along and thank me for ‘Messages’ given them probably days before, and others write and thank me and I did not know a word until after they had left, so what can I say to these things? Thank God, surely it is good for us to be here as finger posts, pointing men to Christ.”
Now, what is the way to Christ, who says Himself, “I am the way, the truth, and the life”? First, we must find out we are sinners and need saving. Second, we must look to the Saviour, Christ Jesus, and believe that He has died for them instead of us.
I heard a beautiful fact about the doctor who discovered chloroform. Someone asked him what he considered was the greatest discovery he had ever made. After silently thinking awhile, he answered, “My greatest discovery has been that I am a sinner, and that Jesus Christ is my Saviour.” Now, dear reader, if you too have made this discovery, this true, true record of yourself and the blessed Saviour, make use of the time that is left you, daily, hourly to be a finger post to point others to find out this wonderful discovery of being a sinner — and a sinner saved.
Emily P. Leakey
Incidents of the War
A worker for God says: “Today the world lies open to the army of God! The breaches in the devil’s fortresses are practicable! The bugles of God unceasingly sound the advance!” —C.T.S.
SO we must go on day by day for God. The forces of evil are all around us. The devil has “dug himself in,” and he and his lost hosts are warring against God and His Christ. And from Eden to Calvary, and from Calvary to this present day, the powers of darkness have been arrayed against the living God. The sword of the Spirit is the Word of God. The Word of God must be sent to every soldier and to every sailor. It will be an everlasting answer for these dear, brave fellows for all the shameful doctrine that is preached to them today. A worker at the Front writes to me: —
“At every opportunity we try in simple language to show God’s plan of salvation, and it is awful to think how much has to be cleared away before many can understand it. False props, false securities — but oh! so little teal faith. The latest now is a don’t care sort of spirit, because God being in everything, and we are God’s, therefore we can never die, because we are part and parcel of Himself.... Oh! what lies the devil invents to keep men from God.”
Listen now to what is preached to dying men at the Front today. Listen to what this preacher says: —
“He did not think it possible for anyone to go through the awful things which happened at the Front without feeling that, somehow or another, God could not stop them; that if He could, He would; but that in was so rife in the world, things were so wrong with the world, that God somehow or other could not stop it. So they believed and taught that. God could not stop these, things unless men came and ranked themselves with Him to do the work.”
These words, horrible in their blasphemy, are preached at the Front by accredited men to soldiers going forth, many of them, to certain death. Better to deny God than to preach a false God. Better for a man to die in infancy than to grow up, and facing men with immortal souls, dare to arraign the omnipotent God before the bar of his thoughts. But worse is to follow. He says: —
“He believed most sincerely that those who had thus sacrificed their lives at once became the inheritors of the glories of a new world. There was another conflict in progress — a great spiritual war. God could not win this war by Himself. If the forces of evil proved the stronger they must prevail.”
If this false teacher had ever stood before the cross of Christ at Calvary, and had realized what the power of omnipotent love could do to save a soul, he would never have uttered these words. If he had ever known what it was to stand a lost sinner before the holiness of God, he would have realized that the stupendous work of man’s redemption was settled between God and Christ alone. If he had been a truly converted man he would have known that it was the Creator-God who became the Redeemer-God, and that the same power that brought worlds into existence by a word had to be exercised in all its fullness of grace to save a soul from hell.