The Old Bloodstained Cross

When I was a little boy in the 1950s, you could walk into just about any Bible-believing church in this country and hear a preacher tell the old, old story of a blood-stained cross on which the Prince of Glory died for sinners. Those old preachers knew how to preach the gospel of the Son of God, and they held nothing back because they cared for the souls of men. They preached a God-centered gospel, in its proper order, and thundered the law around the ears of their congregations until they saw Sinai all together on a smoke.

Sinners back then felt their need of a savior from sin because these faithful preachers called sin black and hell hot, and they preached Christ crucified for sinful man. They warned their hearers about a future judgment that awaited all mankind. And at the center of the gospel these old boys preached was a blood-stained cross, and they preached man's duty of repentance, and that if you wanted to be saved you must get under the blood and be born from above, which was a supernatural work of God's Spirit.

That the way to heaven was a less-traveled way, which was narrow, and you had to strive to get into that straight gate, and few there be that find it. Churches back then still sang hymns about the blood. There is power, power, a wonder-working power in the blood of the Lamb.

And they sang, what can wash away my sins? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. And they sang, there is a fountain filled with blood, and sinners plunge beneath that flood, lose all their guilty sins. Back in those days, in the 1950s, there was still a sense of shame in society, and a fear of God in the land.

It was not uncommon to see the power of God in a meeting back then, and the teenagers could not wait to get back to church to experience God. There was such a thing as modesty in those days, and women wore their skirts down to their ankles, and men wore suits to church on Sundays. Sin was a scandal to be avoided in those days, not gloried in like it is today.

The Apostle Paul preached a gospel that had at its center a blood-stained cross, for in Colossians chapter 1 and verses 13 and 14 we read, Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son, in whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins. And in verse 20, the same chapter, it reads, and having made peace through the blood of the cross. Yes, friends, how I long to hear that old, old story about a blood-stained cross and a crucified Savior, who is the remedy for sin, because I know I am a sinner and I need a substitute for sin in the person of Jesus Christ.

Oh, tell me that old, old story. Tell it to me slowly. There is hope for an old sinner like me in that blood-stained cross.

I want to hear about it. Please tell me the old, old story again about how Jesus died for my sins. I want to hear about the one who made peace through the blood of his cross.

I pray for those days to come back again, so folks will know what it's like to come into a truth-saving knowledge of the Son of God, who died so we can go to heaven by that cross and his blood. Oh, let us pray for those days again. Maybe God just might send a mighty move of his Spirit in our churches once again, to where we feel his presence, where we feel humbled beneath the holy solemnity of an Almighty God.

I pray young people can know that feeling again, know the God of their fathers again, of their great-grandfathers again. Oh, I pray for those days where men and pulpits tell that old, old story about that blood-stained cross. Let us pray.