When the Flame Goes Out

This is a message for my preacher brethren that will hopefully encourage you in the Lord. There is a story about George Whitefield that was told to me by the historian of the First Presbyterian Old South Church where Whitefield's mortal remains lie buried beneath the pulpit in Newburyport, Massachusetts. Whitefield died in the home of Jonathan Parsons, who was then the pastor and good friend of Whitefield, and that same house can be seen today as it stands three houses down from the church.

The story goes that a half-dead Whitefield had just returned from Exeter, New Hampshire, where he had preached in a field to four thousand hearers, and he rode on his horse accompanied by Parsons to the home in Newburyport to rest and have dinner before retiring for the night. Whitefield eats little and speaks even less, and it is his desire to go to bed, but as he makes his way toward the staircase a crowd appears at the front door, begging him to give them a final message before he retires. He greets them with these words, Bring me a candle, and this will be my bargain with you.

I will agree to preach the gospel of Christ until this flame burns out. When the light from this candle goes out, I go to my bed, and you go to your homes. Whitefield preached his last, standing on a broad landing of the staircase, until the flame flickered down and the candle finally went out.

He died the next morning at six a.m. The flame can go out like Whitefield at the end of a useful life lived unto God, or it can go out much earlier in one's ministry through discouragement, disappointment, and unfulfilled ambition. I've known pastors who, when they first got into ministry, they were all full of vim and vigor and fire, as they believed they could go out and tackle the world and do great things for God. But reality set in after a while, and after some years, the dreams turned into the mundane of a settled pastorate that had become more of a tether that held them down than a rocket that propelled them to the moon.

Some were run out of their pulpits by wicked deacons, but the disappointments in ministry can be many, and gradually for some they became too heavy, as the flame went lower and lower, as the demands of ministry drained away their enthusiasm and expectations of greater things. In Isaiah 40, 31 we read, But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings as eagles, they shall run and not be weary, and they shall walk and not faint. The eagle is a long-lived bird, who, when she is nearly a hundred years old, casts all her feathers at molting time, and fresh ones come, so that those become young again.

I believe a risen Lord can take away any disappointment. If we give it to Him, He can transform our situation from inside out through personal revival, whereby His Spirit fans the embers on the altar of our hearts, so that we can soar like eagles once more, as the Creator refeathers us for deeper usefulness, for the good of His people, and for His glory. How better it would be to burn out like a Whitfield, with a candle glowing in our hand, and the gospel on our lips, than rust out in an ash heap of self-pity and complaints.

Like the old poem states, As I lay dying, how good it shall be, if the lamp of my life has been burned out for thee!