![]() He took eleven thousand dollars out of here, but a circus comes here and takes out that amount in one day and leaves nothing. If it was proposed now to bring Billy Sunday to this town, and if we knew as much about the results of his work in advance as we do now, and if the churches would not raise the necessary funds to bring him, I could raise the money in half a day from men who never go to church. "I never attend but I'll tell you one thing. "I am not a member of any church," he said. "I talked to the merchants," Bruce Barton writes, "and they told me that during the meetings and afterward people walked up to the counter and paid bills which were so old that they had long since been written off the books." He went to visit the president of the chamber of commerce of a town that Billy Sunday had visited three years before. Bruce Barton tells how the first important journalistic assignment that fell to him was to write a series of articles designed to expose Billy Sunday, the evangelist. ![]() That happens to be capable of factual demonstration. Seneca called Rome "a cesspool of iniquity." Juvenal spoke of her "as the filthy sewer into which flowed the abominable dregs of every Syrian and Achaean stream." Wherever Christianity comes it brings purification. So then the coming of Christ was a purification of life. The messenger was to cleanse and purify the worship of the temple before the Anointed One of God emerged upon the earth. The offerings were blemished and shoddy second-bests the service of the temple was a weariness to them. In Malachi's day the priests were failing in their duty. I send my messenger before you and he will prepare your road for you. The prophetic quotation which Mark uses is suggestive. ![]() The goal will never be reached unless there are those who labour to make it possible. Or make a song for someone else to sing." To plant a tree for someone else to water, I set no little trees along the roadside,īecause I knew their growth would take so long.īut now from wisdom that the years have brought me, "In youth, because I could not be a singer, Life would be very different if, instead of yearning for some distant and at present unattainable goal, we did all that we could to bring that goal nearer. In one sense it is as great an honour to help in some great process as it is a privilege to see the ultimate goal. (ii) We are within that process, and because of that we can either help or hinder it. History is not a random kaleidoscope of disconnected events it is a process directed by the God who sees the end in the beginning. God is characteristically a God who is working his purposes out. (i) It has been said that "the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts," and so are the thoughts of God. ![]() All things flow from heaven." There are things we may well learn here. "The things of God," said Marcus Aurelius, "are fun of foresight. The Stoics were strong believers in the ordered plan of God. It did not begin with Jesus' birth it did not even begin with John the Baptizer in the wilderness it began with the dreams of the prophets long ago that is to say, it began long, long ago in the mind of God. Mark starts the story of Jesus a long way back. Make straight the path by which he will come'." This came true when John the Baptizer emerged in the wilderness, announcing a baptism which was the sign of a repentance through which a man might find forgiveness for his sins. He will be like a voice crying in the wilderness, 'Get ready the road of the Lord. There is a passage in Isaiah the prophet like this-"Lo! I send my messenger before you and he will prepare your road for you. THE BEGINNING OF THE STORY ( Mark 1:1-4 )ġ:1-4 This is the beginning of the story of how Jesus Christ, the Son of God, brought the good news to men.
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