The most pitiable man who walks the earth is a preacher who is blind in one eye and deaf in one ear, and short in one leg. And I don’t mean physical blindness or physical deafness, or physical deformity. But some preachers are so blind they can’t see that God’s remedy for the unsaved of earth is the new birth, and God’s remedy for His believing children is the baptism with the Holy Ghost and fire that cleans up the believer and puts an eternal “go through” in him until men and devils and difficulties will have no effect on his life’s work.
Some preachers are so deaf that they cannot hear the heart cry of the hungry and starving world around them, and have no time for the deeper and richer experiences that God has provided for His children. In most cases these same men have one short leg, and it seems to be next to impossible for them to get out among the needy and the poor, to pray for them and to encourage them in the battles of life. And even if some of these needy ones get to church, often the “doctor” has nothing to offer them.
The devil is at work to break up homes and to break hearts and to destroy the lives of the people of our day. The slaughter is something fierce! What will God require at the hand of a preacher with one blind eye and one deaf ear and one short leg at the great judgment bar of God? Preachers, we must wake up and fly for our lives! In the days in which we are living, a preacher ought to have his eyes open to the great needs of the people around about him, and he ought to keep his ears open to the heart-cry of the multitude. He ought to be ready to go and pray and love and sympathize with the hungry hearts, day or night, anywhere in the city.
I sat in a five hundred thousand dollar church and listened to a preacher take the most of his time explaining what a great German scientist had discovered in a single grain of sand. The crowd went to sleep and left him to discourse on the sand. The poor people did not get anything that was worth their time. They were going to church where their hungry hearts were not fed, and where they did not get one encouragement to help them in the battles of life.
I have known preachers to get an opportunity of almost a lifetime to preach a great sermon on doctrine, and instead they beat and peeled and scaled and blistered. The crowd would leave sad and really disgusted. The preacher would then make his boast that he knew he would never have another chance at that bunch of backsliders and hypocrites. And sure enough, that was his last opportunity. He lost it forever. Isn’t it strange that a preacher of the gospel will get himself into that kind of a condition mentally and spiritually, until he feels that he is especially called to “take the hide off,” as he calls it, and then as the fine crowd of people walk away sad and disappointed, the preacher feels that he has really fixed the situation? And I judge he has.
A preacher must beware of being “hot,” or “sour,” or “conceited.” These are about the most poisonous diseases he can take into his system. As a rule, when a preacher tells you that he wants something “hot,” the poor fellow has been warming by some other fellow’s fire for at least ten years. Because he is sour, he thinks he is hot, and when he tells you he wants something hot and at the same time something radical, usually he has been rabid for years, and he thinks he is radical. He is under a delusion, for sour and rabid do not mean radical and hot.
What a difference! A man is better off spiritually if he is cold in his heart and sweet in his life, than he is if he is hot in his heart and sour in his life. If he is cold, it takes very little grace to warm him up, but if he is hot and sour, it will take a cyclone of grace to keep him out of the scrap pile. One of the most beautiful things about our Nazarene boys up and down the land is that they are so busy following the Lamb, that they have no time to ride the goat. While they are not lodge fighters, thank the Lord, they are not goat riders!
Years and years ago I got my eyes opened. No preacher shall ever ride a goat with my saddle. The preacher who rides the goat will have to ride bareback as far as I am concerned. When a preacher is too big to be little, then he is too little to be big, and his next station is the scrap pile. My, my, but the junk that I have seen up and down these United States in the past fifty years. What a pity! When a preacher has wisdom enough to be wise and humility enough to be humble and grace enough to be a saint, that will make him a hero, and, if need be, a martyr, too.
When a preacher or a professor robs himself of a divine Creator and thus robs himself of a divine creation, making himself only an evolved animal, he is almost as intelligent as the gentleman who went to town to go into the dairy business and the only live stock he had was a team of mules. You will see at a glance that this herd of animals has never registered very high with any of the creamery associations of this country, from the fact that a mule is not built in the order to produce cream.
A worldly preacher preaches on evolution on Sunday and his worldly members go to the dog show on Monday. The members are trying to keep up with their pastor, and they are showing him that they believe that blood runs thicker than water.
I was in a city a few years ago, where a famous preacher outlined his Sunday night sermons for six weeks in advance, and placed the subjects on the church bulletin board at the door, so the passers-by might see what they had to enjoy in the future.
Here were the subjects as they appeared:
- The Great Benefits to Be Derived from the Carnegie Library.
- Will the Future Woman Marry?
- Hoofs and Horns.
- Five Cents Worth of Beef Liver.
- Love, Courtship and Marriage.
- One Feather from the Tail of the Dog that Flew at the Tramp.
At the end of the year I found that the above church was so dead that the famous preacher preached the funeral from the subject, “We Were so Well-born Once that We Don’t Need to Be Born Again.” And then the preacher went to his next appointment. It took a faithful pastor two years to resurrect that church and to keep it from going to the scrap pile
Robinson, Reuben A. (Bud). The Collected Works of 'Uncle Bud' Robinson (Kindle Locations 4570-4617). Jawbone Digital. Kindle Edition.
Some preachers are so deaf that they cannot hear the heart cry of the hungry and starving world around them, and have no time for the deeper and richer experiences that God has provided for His children. In most cases these same men have one short leg, and it seems to be next to impossible for them to get out among the needy and the poor, to pray for them and to encourage them in the battles of life. And even if some of these needy ones get to church, often the “doctor” has nothing to offer them.
The devil is at work to break up homes and to break hearts and to destroy the lives of the people of our day. The slaughter is something fierce! What will God require at the hand of a preacher with one blind eye and one deaf ear and one short leg at the great judgment bar of God? Preachers, we must wake up and fly for our lives! In the days in which we are living, a preacher ought to have his eyes open to the great needs of the people around about him, and he ought to keep his ears open to the heart-cry of the multitude. He ought to be ready to go and pray and love and sympathize with the hungry hearts, day or night, anywhere in the city.
I sat in a five hundred thousand dollar church and listened to a preacher take the most of his time explaining what a great German scientist had discovered in a single grain of sand. The crowd went to sleep and left him to discourse on the sand. The poor people did not get anything that was worth their time. They were going to church where their hungry hearts were not fed, and where they did not get one encouragement to help them in the battles of life.
I have known preachers to get an opportunity of almost a lifetime to preach a great sermon on doctrine, and instead they beat and peeled and scaled and blistered. The crowd would leave sad and really disgusted. The preacher would then make his boast that he knew he would never have another chance at that bunch of backsliders and hypocrites. And sure enough, that was his last opportunity. He lost it forever. Isn’t it strange that a preacher of the gospel will get himself into that kind of a condition mentally and spiritually, until he feels that he is especially called to “take the hide off,” as he calls it, and then as the fine crowd of people walk away sad and disappointed, the preacher feels that he has really fixed the situation? And I judge he has.
A preacher must beware of being “hot,” or “sour,” or “conceited.” These are about the most poisonous diseases he can take into his system. As a rule, when a preacher tells you that he wants something “hot,” the poor fellow has been warming by some other fellow’s fire for at least ten years. Because he is sour, he thinks he is hot, and when he tells you he wants something hot and at the same time something radical, usually he has been rabid for years, and he thinks he is radical. He is under a delusion, for sour and rabid do not mean radical and hot.
What a difference! A man is better off spiritually if he is cold in his heart and sweet in his life, than he is if he is hot in his heart and sour in his life. If he is cold, it takes very little grace to warm him up, but if he is hot and sour, it will take a cyclone of grace to keep him out of the scrap pile. One of the most beautiful things about our Nazarene boys up and down the land is that they are so busy following the Lamb, that they have no time to ride the goat. While they are not lodge fighters, thank the Lord, they are not goat riders!
Years and years ago I got my eyes opened. No preacher shall ever ride a goat with my saddle. The preacher who rides the goat will have to ride bareback as far as I am concerned. When a preacher is too big to be little, then he is too little to be big, and his next station is the scrap pile. My, my, but the junk that I have seen up and down these United States in the past fifty years. What a pity! When a preacher has wisdom enough to be wise and humility enough to be humble and grace enough to be a saint, that will make him a hero, and, if need be, a martyr, too.
When a preacher or a professor robs himself of a divine Creator and thus robs himself of a divine creation, making himself only an evolved animal, he is almost as intelligent as the gentleman who went to town to go into the dairy business and the only live stock he had was a team of mules. You will see at a glance that this herd of animals has never registered very high with any of the creamery associations of this country, from the fact that a mule is not built in the order to produce cream.
A worldly preacher preaches on evolution on Sunday and his worldly members go to the dog show on Monday. The members are trying to keep up with their pastor, and they are showing him that they believe that blood runs thicker than water.
I was in a city a few years ago, where a famous preacher outlined his Sunday night sermons for six weeks in advance, and placed the subjects on the church bulletin board at the door, so the passers-by might see what they had to enjoy in the future.
Here were the subjects as they appeared:
- The Great Benefits to Be Derived from the Carnegie Library.
- Will the Future Woman Marry?
- Hoofs and Horns.
- Five Cents Worth of Beef Liver.
- Love, Courtship and Marriage.
- One Feather from the Tail of the Dog that Flew at the Tramp.
At the end of the year I found that the above church was so dead that the famous preacher preached the funeral from the subject, “We Were so Well-born Once that We Don’t Need to Be Born Again.” And then the preacher went to his next appointment. It took a faithful pastor two years to resurrect that church and to keep it from going to the scrap pile
Robinson, Reuben A. (Bud). The Collected Works of 'Uncle Bud' Robinson (Kindle Locations 4570-4617). Jawbone Digital. Kindle Edition.
RSS Feed