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Text Sermons : ~Other Speakers M-R : Old Paths Magazine - Issue 15 : The Devil And Religion by Lewis Williams

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The Devil Does Not Care

THE DEVIL DOES NOT CARE how religious you are. You can act as pious and look as sanctimonious as a monk of a hundred years ago, and he does not care at all. You can join the church or denomination of your choice, or join all of them, for aught he cares; in fact, it would not surprise us to learn that it rather pleases his satanic majesty to have folks join church on certain conditions. You can be baptized with water, and have it anyway you want it, and as often and as much as you wish, and he will make no serious objections to the entire program. You can worship God the Father, and attend strictly to your church duties, and he will not object.

The Devil Will Not Lose Sleep

You can pour out your money to erect costly buildings, and equip and furnish them with all that money can purchase, and the devil will not lose any sleep over it. You can be a strict disciplinarian, and punctually close up your business on Saturday night, and not think of your business again until Monday morning; nor will it make the devil mad to have you remain away from the Sunday baseball and Sunday theater, or refuse to ride on Sunday trains, or refuse to allow Sunday newspapers delivered at your door; he will not get mad, and tear around, or go roaring up and down the earth, if you refrain from all these things. But there is one vital point that he is anxious about these last days, and that is that you leave alone the divinity of Jesus Christ, and the power of His blood to cleanse you from all sin. Do that, and the devil will be satisfied with you.

That is the one point that is giving the powers of Hell more concern these days than anything else. It is not the erecting of the fine and costly church edifices up and down this land; it is not the big, popular, sign-the-card, join-the-church, meet-your-mother-in-the-sky, so-called revivals, that put great crowds of unregenerate men and women into the churches all under the cloak of God's salvation, that causes the devil to worry; it is not the steady decline of spirituality in the churches and their steady drift to worldliness and formality, their constant drift to Universalism and Unitarianism, that sets Hell in an uproar. No, indeed, but it is the upholding of the divinity of Christ and His all-atoning blood that washes and makes the heart clean, that causes consternation in Hell.

In God We Trust

We put on our coin "In God We Trust," and when it was removed there was a great howl and a cry until it was placed back on the coin again. Do you think the devil cared much about that racket that was made because it was taken off? Not so long as we put a Unitarian in the Presidential chair, who by his belief denies the divinity of the Son of God; not so long as we have our Senate opened with prayer by a man who by his belief makes Jesus Christ, the Son of God, an illegitimate child; and we have no doubt that many who made such a fuss about the coin, helped to put an office-seeker, a wine-bibber and a clog-dancer in for President. Now, how much concern do you suppose the prayer of such persons causes the devil? Do you suppose he lays awake at night to contrive some plan whereby he can defeat the good such folks can do for the kingdom of Heaven? No, my friends; the devil does not care how religious you are, just so you leave alone the divinity of the Son of God and His precious blood that makes our hearts clean in His sight.

Jesus And The Blood

And just as he has led off many churches and gotten their eyes and minds off of Jesus and the Blood, he has done likewise to many individuals, even among those professing a high state of grace. He has some of them seeking after something else beside the Blood, seeking a third blessing of fire and gifts and tongues, and once the mind is turned away from the Blood, it is not far to where the wreck occurs. Oh, he is a devil of a devil, and if he cannot keep a soul from the Blood, then he will try to push that soul on over the precipice and plunge it into darkness.

It was not so far back but we remember an individual who had been used of God to save and bless many souls. He turned from the Blood to a third blessing, a baptism of fire, and went up and down the land promulgating his doctrine. Once off the main line, the end is not far away. It was not long until his fire was found to be the effects of something akin to the red man's fire-water and after being found intoxicated several times, he soon disappeared from the field of action.

Getting Our Eyes Off Jesus And The Blood

As we pen these lines, there come to our mind others who, rich in experience and grace, were wonderfully and marvelously used of God to the salvation of many, and they have spiritual sons and daughters up and down the land; but they got their eyes off of Jesus and the Blood onto something else, and mark the result. No longer do they draw the crowds to hear them tell the old, old story; no longer do large audiences hang upon their words; no longer are their altars lined with weeping, penitent souls seeking salvation, and unless they get their eyes back on Jesus and His blood, their days of usefulness are over.

Only recently we conducted a series of meetings in a certain town where there was a man who had spent much of his former life in that community living in sin, but he had found God and had gone back to tell the story. He came in the meeting, but was not used as much as he thought he should have been. In a few days he began to find fault and criticize, and soon, with his eyes off the Lord, who had done so much for him, he began sitting around with the unsaved, saying unkind things and finally misrepresenting and impugning the efforts that were being put forth. Just now there lies before me a letter which came in the last mail and it states that the brother in question is now a common horsetrader.

These are not simply isolated cases, but we could fill many pages with recitals of like nature. The Blood alone can wash away our sin; the Blood alone can make us every whit clean. The devil does not care what we do, nor what we profess, not how religious we are, if we only neglect Jesus Christ and His blood. Men may go on erecting magnificent edifices, putting up and endowing great schools of learning, and talk loudly and boast much of the great and glorious country we live in, and the increasing numbers of churches, and mark their advancement by the many additions to them and the amount of money that is raised for religious purposes; but so long as those same churches either deny the divinity of the Son of God and the efficacy of His blood, or are silent regarding the subject, the devil simply smiles and remains undisturbed. The old Book says, "The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin," and until that is an accomplished fact, no man possesses that holiness without which no man shall see the Lord.

Great God, Help Us!

Great God, help us! Oh, ye professing Church of Christ, arise and hurry! Don't you see Him? There He stands. Watch Him point to the nail prints; see, He lifts the folds of His robe and points to that open, gaping wound! Hear Him cry, "Oh, ye are so slow, why do ye linger when a world is living, suffering, dying without God?" But the preachers write off their little sermonettes, and with studied and measured time and modulated voice, as calmly as though there was no one dying, perishing or going under, read off their little essays to a poor, frozen, starved, worldly crowd, who sit motionless and lifeless in the pen, while the poor, down trodden, helpless, hopeless masses, crying, "Help! Hurry!" are drawn beneath the tide. And the few men of God here and there, with hearts on fire and souls aflame, with burning zeal and with might and main, putting their every Isaac upon the altar, doing their best to stem the tide or grasp one here and there from the awful monster of sin, are looked upon as fanatics and fools.

The Devil Loves To Create Division

The devil likes to create divisions, and if he can do so and get one set of folks to lambasting, cartooning, criticizing, finding fault with or impugning the actions and motives of another set, or a few persons to doing so against a few others, he will be in his element. Know this, that the devil never tries to save men from sin; neither does he lead folks to weep and cry to God to save others from sin. We personally know of instances where persons making a high profession, have gone into a meeting in which honest effort was being made to get souls to God, and have taken steps to interfere and bring discord into that meeting, and, so far as we could observe, were firm in their belief that they were right in so doing.

Weeping Over Souls From The Devil

Again, we know instances where men and women were on their faces crying to God and weeping over lost souls, when others would speak of their efforts or of the meeting as "being of the devil," and, so far as we could see, those persons thought they were right. We say unto you, the devil wants no better job than that sort of thing. Such persons may think themselves to be right, and go on and die, but unless they turn from such a course, repent, and get back to God, they will wake up to find they have made an awful mistake. All these things can be and are being done under the name of religion.
Millions of saints have suffered martyrdom at the hands of those who professed and believed in religion; and, on down through the ages until the present day, men and women have done despite to the children of God. They thought and died firm in the belief that they were right, but they will wake up in Hell. Oh, my precious brother, sister, there is a vast difference between having religion and experiencing the salvation that Jesus brought to this world. A religion that does not make you a meek, humble imitator of Jesus Christ, is not of God; is not godly nor heavenly; it is hellish and of the devil. It may be religion, but it is not salvation.
?Lewis Williams - We have heard some of these sermons preached with an impressiveness which few spoken messages can ever equal, while thousands listened spellbound -A. M. Hills.





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