PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVE: “ETERNAL LIFE: FROM GRACE TO GLORY”- The message of the First Epistle of John

By:  Ron Woodrum

　　　　 “Suppose we hear an unknown man spoken of by many men. Suppose we were puzzled to hear that some men said he was too tall and some too short; some objected to his fatness, some lamented his leanness; some thought him too dark, and some too fair. One explanation . . . would be that he might be an odd shape. But there is another explanation. He might be the right shape. . . . Perhaps (in short) this extraordinary thing is really the ordinary thing; at least the normal thing, the centre”. (G. K. CHESTERTON).　 Such is the dilemma of trying to discover the real Jesus.　 One of my favorite writers, Philip Yancey, in his book The Jesus I Never Knew, shares what he discovered when he began to investigate the question-who is the real Jesus.　 He writes,

　　　　　”I first got acquainted with Jesus when I was a child, singing ‘Jesus Loves Me’ in Sunday school, addressing bedtime prayers to ‘Dear Lord Jesus,’ watching Bible Club teachers move cutout figures across a flannel graph board. I associated Jesus with Kool-Aid and sugar cookies and gold stars for good attendance. I remember especially one image from Sunday school, an oil painting that hung on the concrete block wall. Jesus had long, flowing hair, unlike that of any man I knew. His face was thin and handsome, his skin waxen and milky white. He wore a robe of scarlet, and the artist had taken pains to show the play of light on its folds. In his arms, Jesus cradled a small sleeping lamb. I imagined myself as that lamb, blessed beyond all telling”. (Philip Yancey The Jesus I Never Knew).　 “Later, while attending a Bible college, I encountered a different image. A painting popular in those days depicted Jesus, hands outstretched, suspended in a Dali-like pose over the United Nations building in New York City. Here was the cosmic Christ, the One in whom all things adhere, the still point of the turning world. This world figure had come a long way from the lamb-toting shepherd of my childhood.　 Still, students spoke of the cosmic Jesus with a shocking intimacy. The faculty urged us to develop a ‘personal relationship with Jesus Christ,’ and in chapel services we hymned our love for him in most familiar terms. One song told about walking beside him in a garden with dew still on the roses. A little later, the decade of the 1960s (which actually reached me, along with most of the church, in the early 1970s) called everything into question. Jesus freaks—the very term would have been an oxymoron in the tranquil 1950s—suddenly appeared on the scene, as if deposited there by extraterrestrials. No longer were Jesus’ followers well-scrubbed representatives of the middle class; some were unkempt, disheveled radicals. Liberation theologians began enshrining Jesus on posters in a troika along with Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. It dawned on me that virtually all portrayals of Jesus, including the Good Shepherd of my Sunday school and the United Nations Jesus of my Bible College showed him wearing a mustache and beard, both of which were strictly banned from the Bible College. Questions now loomed that had never occurred to me in childhood. For example, how would telling people to be nice to one another get a man crucified? What government would execute Mister Rogers or Captain Kangaroo? In physical appearance, Jesus favored those who would have been kicked out of Bible College and rejected by most churches. Among his contemporaries he somehow gained a reputation as ‘a wine-bibber and a glutton.’ Those in authority, whether religious or political, regarded him as a troublemaker, a disturber of the peace. He spoke and acted like a revolutionary, scorning fame, family, property, and other traditional measures of success. Today, people even use Jesus’ name to curse by. How strange it would sound if, when a businessman missed a golf putt, he yelled, ‘Thomas Jefferson!’ or if a plumber screamed ‘Mahatma Gandhi!’ when his pipe wrench mashed a finger. We cannot get away from this man Jesus”.

“More than 1900 years later,” said H. G. Wells, “a historian like myself, who doesn’t even call himself a Christian, finds the picture centering irresistibly around the life and character of this most significant man. . . .The historian’s test of an individual’s greatness is ‘What did he leave to grow?’ Did he start men to thinking along fresh lines with a vigor that persisted after him? By this test Jesus stands first.” You can gauge the size of a ship that has passed out of sight by the huge wake it leaves behind.　 Jesus left a very big wake! Yet we view Jesus from our own context and perspective.　 William Blake brought this out in his poem.　 ‘The vision of Christ that thou dost see is my vision’s greatest enemy: Thine has a great hook nose like thine, mine has a snub nose like to mine. . . . Both read the Bible day and night, But thou read’st black where I read white’ (WILLIAM BLAKE).

　　　　 But the more I studied Jesus the more of an enigma He became.　 Jesus, I found, bore little resemblance to the Mister Rogers figure I had met in Sunday school, and was remarkably unlike the person I had studied in Bible College. For one thing, he was far less tame. In my prior image, I realized, Jesus’ personality matched that of a Star Trek Vulcan: he remained calm, cool, and collected as he strode like a robot among excitable human beings on spaceship earth. That is not what I found portrayed in the Gospels. Other people affected Jesus deeply: obstinacy frustrated him, self-righteousness infuriated him, simple faith thrilled him. Indeed, he seemed more emotional and spontaneous than the average person, not less. More passionate, not less.

The more I studied Jesus, the more difficult it became to pigeonhole him. He said little about the Roman occupation, the main topic of conversation among his countrymen, and yet he took up a whip to drive petty profiteers from the Jewish temple. He urged obedience to the Mosaic Law while acquiring the reputation as a lawbreaker. He could be stabbed by sympathy for a stranger, yet turn on his best friend with the flinty rebuke, “Get behind me, Satan!” He had uncompromising views on rich men and loose women, yet both types enjoyed his company.

One day miracles seemed to flow out of Jesus; the next day his power was blocked by people’s lack of faith. One day he talked in detail of the Second Coming; another, he knew neither the day nor hour. He fled from arrest at one point and marched inexorably toward it at another. He spoke eloquently about peacemaking, then told his disciples to procure swords. His extravagant claims about himself kept him at the center of controversy, but when he did something truly miraculous he tended to hush it up. As Walter Wink has said,’ if Jesus had never lived, we would not have been able to invent him’.

Two words one could never think of applying to the Jesus of the Gospels: boring and predictable. How is it, then, that the church has tamed such a character—has, in Dorothy Sayers’ words, “The people who hanged Christ never, to do them justice, accused him of being a bore – on the contrary, they thought him too dynamic to be safe. It has been left for later generations to muffle up that shattering personality and surround him with an atmosphere of tedium. We have very efficiently pared the claws of the Lion of Judah, certified him ‘meek and mile,’ and recommended him as a fitting household pet for pale curates and pious old ladies.”

　　　　 John wrote his gospel to show that Jesus was the Son of God that people might believe in Him and have eternal life as a result of their faith. (See John 20:30-31).　 John wrote his first epistle to those who had already believed in Jesus, and had eternal life (See I John 5:13).　 John was writing to define that eternal life.　 It would be seen as a shared life, (koinonia) where Jesus incarnates His life into the believer, transforming him from grace to glory, manifesting itself in life, in contrast to death, liberty, in contrast to bondage, light in contrast to darkness and error, and finally love, in contrast to hate. John, in his Gospel, speaks of Jesus “becoming flesh and dwelling among us, and we beheld Glory, that of the only begotten of the Father, full of Grace and Truth” (John 1:14).　 Then he begins his epistle telling those who believe in Jesus that his joy would not be full until he is confident that all of them are experiencing the eternal life, that will manifest itself by displaying the life, light, liberty, and love of the life of Christ, in our lives, for all the world to see!　 One of the key verses in I John is I John 4:13 which says, “As He is, so are we, in the world!” False teachers of the day, Gnostics, were teaching versions of Jesus, and of God the Father, and of Salvation that was error!　 John called it the “spirit of Antichrist”.　 In his letter he defines the nature of the “real Jesus”.　 This real Jesus was a manifestation of His Father, the true, real, and living God.　 A “real Christian” is one who fleshes out the “eternal life” residing in him by the indwelling Christ.　 During the next several weeks we are going to see what that really means during our series of message from I John.

　　　　　The great writer, Fyodor Dostoevsky found Jesus as his Savior, while in a prison camp in Russia.　 He fell deeply in love with Jesus.　 In the following quotes he talks of how Jesus was the answer to his search for how to become a “real man”, and shares how he would love Jesus come what may.　 　　　　　“To study the meaning of man and of life — I am making significant progress here. I have faith in myself. Man is a mystery: if you spend your entire life trying to puzzle it out, then do not say that you have wasted your time. I occupy myself with this mystery, because I want to be a man”. (Personal correspondence (1839), as quoted in Dostoevsky: His Life and Work (1971) by Konstantin Mochulski, as translated by Michael A. Minihan, p. 17)　 “I want to say to you, about myself, that I am a child of this age, a child of unfaith and skepticism, and probably (indeed I know it) shall remain so to the end of my life. How dreadfully has it tormented me (and torments me even now) this longing for faith, which is all the stronger for the proofs I have against it. And yet God gives me sometimes moments of perfect peace; in such moments I love and believe that I am loved; in such moments I have formulated my creed, wherein all is clear and holy to me. This creed is extremely simple; here it is: I believe that there is nothing lovelier, deeper, more sympathetic, more rational, more manly, and more perfect than the Savior; I say to myself with jealous love that not only is there no one else like Him, but that there could be no one. I would even say more: If anyone could prove to me that Christ is outside the truth, and if the truth really did exclude Christ, I should prefer to stay with Christ and not with truth”. (Letter To Mme. N. D. Fonvisin (1854), as published in Letters of Fyodor Michailovitch Dostoevsky to his Family and Friends (1914), translated by Ethel Golburn Mayne, Letter XXI, p. 71).　 If we could come to that kind of resolve at the end of these series of messages-as John told his Church members-“my joy would be full!”　 Amen!

PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVE:  “The only One to Escape the Grip of Death”

By: Ron Woodrum

     Edgar Allen Poe, in 1845, wrote a masterful allegorical story titled The Masque of the Red Death.  In the book he focused on the futile attempt of mankind, in spite of status, wealth, location, or avoidance-to evade the ever prevailing hand of death.  In the context of the story there is an entire country face the plague of the Red Death, (Bubonic Plague).  The Powerful Prince of the land invites a select group to safety behind the locked gates of his Castle.  After several months he throws a masquerade ball in celebration of heir avoidance of the plague-so far!  For the celebration he decorated the main seven rooms of the castle in single colors.  There are rooms decorated in blue, purple, green, orange, white, violet, and the final one decorated in black, with red stained glass windows.  The rooms run from east to west, the direction of the rise and setting of the sun.  Poe means for the rooms to show the progression of life from birth, blue room, to death, the black room,  The black room also includes an ebony clock that rings hourly.  Most of the rooms are locations of guests partying, dreaming, swirling with revelers,  Everyone avoids the black ominous room!  At midnight a new guest appears in very ghoulishly styled clothes.  He is pale and has a face like a corpse, with red spots revealing him as a victim of the red death.  The Prince Prospero confronts this guest in the black and red room.  After the confrontation the Prince dies.  The other guests come into the room to attack the cloaked stanger.  They find no one in the room under the cloaked costume.  Everyone then dies, and the Red Death has invaded the Castle.  Darkness, Decay, and Red Death have at last triumphed!  Poe uses his story to show the unfairness of the feudal system in allowing the aristocracy to abuse the peasantry.  His major point is that all classes will fail in their futile attempt to evade and escape the pursuit of ever-present death, symbolized in the Red Death.  A look at the mortality statistics seem to indicate that the truth is still one of one humans die!  It cannot be evaded or escaped.

One individual earned fame and fortune with his continued escape from the grip of death-Harry Houdini. Throughout his career Harry Houdini cheated death with several close calls.  In 1911, while in Boston, ten prominent business men challenged Houdini to escape from the belly of a whale.  He had to be shackled in handcuffs and leg irons sewn up in a whale’s belly.  After 15 minutes he emerged, smiling, though he nearly suffocated on arsenic fumes that had been used to embalm the whale.  A close escape from the hand of death.  One of his best known tricks was the milk can.  He would be handcuffed and locked inside an oversized milk can filled with water.  He always escaped.  He later added the milk can being locked inside a padlocked wooden chest to add to the danger.  Another dangerous act was to be shackled in a packing crate, with the lid nailed down, and the crate submerged in the New York’s East River, weighed down with two hundred pounds of lead.  He escaped in 53 seconds, without cuffs, and when the crate was pulled out the lid was still nailed down, and the discarded shackles of Houdini’s were still on the inside!   He often escaped from a straight-jacket while dangling from a building, or a crane.  He made his escapes in full view of his audience crowded on the street below.  Quite a death-defying feat!  One of his most famous escapes was the Chinese Water Torture Cell.  Shackled hand and foot he was lowered upside down into a tank filled with water.  If he could not escape in two minutes he would drown.  His assistants were instructed to break the glass of the tank if two minutes passed.  The time never lapsed…he always emerged.  The Buried Alive stunt nearly killed him.  Houdini was buried under six feet of dirt without a casket.  He struggled to dig to the surface and panicked when he was overcome with exhaustioin.  He had to be pulled unconscious from the grave!  He later performed the buried alive trick in a coffin.  One submerged in water, while in a sealed coffin.  He made it out in one and a half hours.  Another time he was straight-jacketed in a sealed coffin and buried in a large tank filled with sand.  He escaped!  With all these daring escapes many thought he would never die.

But on the afternoon of October 22, 1926, two McGill University students visited Houdini’s dressing room. According to reports, Houdini was looking through his mail, when one of the students, J. Gordon Whitehead, asked Harry if he could indeed withstand any blow to the abdomen, as the magician had previously proclaimed. Harry responded that he could, if given time to brace himself, at which point Whitehead hit Houdini four times in the abdomen, under the impression that Houdini had indeed braced himself for the blows. Throughout the evening, Houdini performed in great pain. He was unable to sleep and remained in constant pain for the next two days, though he did not seek medical help. When he finally saw a doctor, Harry was found to have a fever of 102 degrees and acute appendicitis. He was advised to go to the hospital for immediate surgery. However, Harry decided to complete his show as planned that night. By the time Harry arrived on stage, his fever had risen to 104 degrees. He was tired and in pain and his assistants often had to step in and offer help. Audience members reported that Harry missed his cues and seemed in a hurry. By the middle of the third act, Houdini asked his assistant to lower the curtain as he could not go on. When the curtain closed, Harry collapsed where he was standing and had to be carried back to his dressing room. He continued to refuse medical care until the next morning when Bess insisted he go to the hospital. Harry relented and had his appendix removed, however it had already ruptured and doctors did not have much hope for his survival. On October 31, 1926 surrounded by his wife and brother, Harry Houdini died.

Harry had planned for that day.  He intended to be the first to escape the grip of death and come back from the dead by communicating with his wife Beatrice, (Bess).  He made a pact with her that after he died she was to hold a seance, on the anniversary of his death for ten years.  He promised to come back from the dead and contact her with some code words they often used in his acts.  That is how she would know it was him.  During the first year after his death she would retire to the privacy of hear room every Sunday between noon and 2 pm.  She would sit there in front of his photograph with a candle she kept burning for ten years.  For the next ten years Bess held an annual seance for this contact from her husband.  None came! On the tenth year, at the Knickerbocker Hotel in Beverly Hills, California she held what would be the final seance.  Nothing happened for the last time.  At the end of the seance, Bess Houdini said that it was her personal and positive belief “that spirit communication is not possible in any form.  …The Houdini Shrine has burned for ten years.  I now, reverently, turn out the light, it is finished.  Good night Harry!”  The world’s most famous escape artist could not evade or escape the grip of death.  The only one to do that, as He promised was Jesus Christ.  After three days, like he promised, he rolled the stone away, and walked back into this world alive for evermore…for everyone to see, and for history to record!  It was affirmed not by scientific proof, but by eyewitness testimony.  It still stands or falls on the individual’s faith in this testimony.  It is still a matter of faith.

One of my favorite writers, Frederick Buechner points out this important truth about the resurrection.  “Now the truth is the first Christian sermon was not  delivered by a man. The first Christian sermon was delivered by a woman. The sermon was delivered by a former prostitute named Mary Magdalene and it was five words: I have seen the Lord. Let her tell them the truth and the truth is, the dangerous truth is: I have seen the Lord. Ever since that sermon … the one five word sermon … the world has never been the same. It is perhaps the most historic and dangerous oration ever delivered. But the truth is every Easter is historic … Easter brings with it this preposterous idea that a man of flesh and blood … crucified before a hostile crowd … dead three days in a tomb … this man has been raised. The tomb is empty … and he is roaming around. He is with us until the close of the age. If we were to take the time to unpack this … it would be at the very least unsettling. Many of you remember the movie several years ago, starring Tom Hanks, called Cast Away. It’s about a man, Chuck Noland, who works for FedEx – charged with making sure things run on time. He’s on his way to making plans to be married to his sweetheart Kelly, but on Christmas Eve he is called to fix a problem halfway around the world. He travels by cargo plane across the Pacific, but the pilot gets hopelessly off track and ends up crashing far off course and Chuck is the lone survivor and ends up on a deserted island – without hope of anyone finding him. He survives there for four years. Finally, he makes a homemade raft and sets out onto the ocean and is finally discovered by an ocean liner. Now the most compelling moment in the movie for me … is what happens to his fiancée Kelly when he returns. For four years she had lived with the knowledge her Chuck was dead. For four years she had struggled to “move on”. For four years she tried to rebuild her life without him in it. She had married and had children. She had adjusted. But now the “dead man” had appeared. Now he was in the same room with her. Now he was talking to her. Now he was touching her. And now her whole world had been turned upside down … because a dead man had come to life. The truth can be a dangerous thing.That’s what resurrection will do to you. It is an unsettling – and for some, a dangerous idea”.  On another occasion he wrote on the resurrection these words-

“I have no idea what happened except, as I say, what really matters is not so much what happened there as what happens now — what happens in your life and my life, what happens in the world, what happens the next five days, five years of human history. Is God making himself known in some powerful and saving way among people, even [people] who don’t give a hoot about God? Is this still a reality which is part of the madness and self-destructiveness and darkness of the world? That’s what really matters…

The essential message is that nothing, no horror can happen that can permanently, irrevocably quench the presence of holiness that is always there “underneath the everlasting arms.” No matter what dreadful things take place, that remains the heart of reality. There is that wonderful thing from the British saint, Julian of Norwich: “All shall be well, and all manner of things will be well.” That somehow remains true no matter what. That’s, I think, the message of Easter. Yes, this hideous death of Jesus, a good man abandoned, as it would seem, by God. Yet the best has come out of it, which is this nourishing current of hope and new life that still flows in spite of everything. There must be a God. How else could it happen? Why else would it happen?

Martin Luther said once, “If I were God, I’d kick the world to pieces.” But Martin Luther wasn’t God. God is God, and God has never kicked the world to pieces. He keeps reentering the world, keeps offering himself to the world — by grace, keeps somehow blessing the world, making possible a kind of life which we all, in our deepest being, hunger for.”

We must focus on the life-changing power of the reality of the resurrection.  The entire Christian faith stands or falls on whether it is historical fact.  On one occasion Auguste Compte, the French Philosopher was talking to the Scottish essayist Thomas Carlyle.  Compte declared his intention of starting a new religion, based on reason alone, for this new age of reason.  He said that it would completely supplant the religion of Christ.  He said it would have no mysteries and would be as plain as the multiplication tables, It’s name would be positivism.  “Very good, Mr. Compte”, Carlyle replied.  “very good.  All you will need to do is to speak as never a man spake, live as never a man lived; be crucified and rise again on the third day, and get the world to believe that you were still alive.  Then your religion will have a chance to get on”.  That is why Christianity is still vital and relevant today 2,000 years later!

“THE CROSS OF CHRIST STILL TOWERS OVER THE WRECKS OF TIME!”

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Mar 132016

PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVE:　 “THE CROSS OF CHRIST STILL TOWERS OVER THE WRECKS OF TIME!”

By: Ron Woodrum

The year was 1970, the tail end of the wild ’60’s in American history. Dr. E. Stanley Jones, the famous Methodist missionary/author/evangelist was asked to name the number one problem of the Church. He replied quickly, without hesitation-“the number one problem of the Church today is irrelevance!”  He went on to say that most of the oppositioin to the Church today stems from disappointment. We promise to make men different-but somehow leave them indifferent! The promise goes largely unfulfilled.  Dr. Jones went on to tell the story of a millionaire who said, “If Brother Stanley cannot convert me, I will sue him!” half in jest, and half seriously. Dr. Jones explained, “what the world is saying is that if the Church cannot deliver on the message it preaches, we will sue you for breach of promise. You promised this, now deliver. Show us you can convert us, there is no other hope any other direction”. A fairly recent Gallup poll reports that 77% of those surveyed feel that the Church is losing its influence in America.　 George Barna puts it very bluntly: “Let’s cut to the chase. After two decades of studying the Church in America, I am convinced that the typical Church as we know it has a rapidly expiring shelf-life!” In 1998 he predicted that the Church would experience a massive revival or major ruin!　　 Nearly twenty years later you be the judge! Have we seen a massive revival? Or a melt-down of ruin? Have we seen penetration or petrification?　 Explosion or Implosion? The Church in America has lost its influence. As the world has grown darker we have neglected to fan the flame, and reflect the Light of our Glorious Lord into that darkness. G. Campbell Morgan remarked, “The Church did the most for the world when it was least like the world”.

Ephesians is the N.T. parallel of the O.T. book of Joshua. In Joshua, as he began to lead the People of God, into the darkness of the Idolatry of the Land of Canaan, God told him, “Every place your foot shall tread on that land have I given you, as I told Moses” (Joshua 1:3). Joshua and the people of God, in the Old Testament were commanded to Walk in the land and every step would be a conquering step by the power of God, dispelling the darkness of the Land with the Glorious presence of the LORD. Today as Paul tells Christians to Walk in Life, in Liberty, in Light, and in Love that is more than verbage and imagery. It is the power of God, sending us out into the kingdom of darkness. Each step replaces death with life; each step replaces defeat with liberty; each step replaces darkness with light; each step replaces despair with love! In Philippians Paul told the Philippians to rejoice because all of his seemingly adverse circumstances had “fallen out unto the furtherence of the Gospel!” (Phil. 1:12). The word “furtherence”　 is the word-prokope-which means “advance forward”.

Insteading of retreating in our influence, God wants us to have a walk that will take us forward into the world. One that is annointed with His power.　 One that will conquer with each step! We can see this happen as a slow but saturating sunrise, or a slow but systematic shining. David told his son Solomon that God can penetrate darkness in the way he does it every twenty four hours! In Proverbs 4:18 David said, “The steps of the righteous are like the rising sunlight, which shines a little, and a little more, until the day dawns, and the full day arises and shines in its fulness!” Or we can do what Jesus said, “Let your light so shine among men that they will see your good works, and glorify your Father in heaven” (Matt. 5:16). Or what Paul wrote in Philippians 2:15-16 “be harmless and blameless Children of God…shining as lights in a crooked and perverse world, holding forth the Word of Life”.　

At one of the darkest times in his life, one filled with anxiety, depression, and drugs, Hank Williams captured this truth in his familiar Gospel Song-” I wandered so aimless, life filled with sin; I wouldn’t let my dear Savior in; Then Jesus came like a stranger in the night; Praise the Lord-I saw the Light!” That same light, emanating from our Glorious Savior, reflecting off the faces of His dear children, who make up His Church, still has the power to light up the darkness! Don’t ever doubt that. C.S. Lewis said, “I believe in Christianity like I believe in the Sun. Not just because I see it, but by it I see clearly everything else!” God’s light has a way of doing that still today.

When Robert Louis Stevenson was a young child he was sick alot. He couldn’t go out and play with the other children much. He spent alot of time watching at the window. One evening he sat there while the sun was going down, and darkness was setting on the town. He watched as a man, the lamplighter came down the street lighting the gas lamps. His nurse came upon him and asked what he was watching. He said, “I am watching the man punch holes in the darkness!” It must have seemed like that. Each newly lit lamp dispelled the area darkness until soon the entire town was aglow with the warm light of the lamps. Our nation, our state, our city,our neighborhoods could use a little “punching of holes in the darkness”. We can do it one step at a time, while we wait for the sunrise! Amen?

On the south coast of China, on a hill overlooking the harbor of Macao, Portuguese settlers once built a massive cathedral. But a typhoon proved stronger than the work of man’s hands, and some centuries ago the building fell in ruins, except for the front wall. High upon that jutting wall, challenging the elements down through the years, is a great bronze cross. In 1825 Sir John Bowring was shipwrecked near there. Clinging to the wreckage of his ship, at long last he caught sight of that great cross, it showed him the path of deliverance, safety, and salvation. After his dramatic rescue he was moved to write those familiar words, that later became his hymn that has blessed millions:

“In the cross of Christ I glory,

Towering over the wrecks of time;

All the light of the sacred story,

Gathers round its head sublime”.

That is why the Apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians-“I am determined not know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him Crucified” (I Cor. 2;2). Helmut Thielicke wrote about the secret of the greatest preacher the world has ever seen-Charles Haddon Spurgeon.　 He wrote, “In the midst of the theologically discredited nineteenth century there was a preacher who had at least six thousand people in his congregation every Sunday, whose sermons for many years were cabled to New York every Monday, and reprinted in the leading newspapers of the country, and who occupied the same pulpit for almost forty years with any diminishment in the flowing abundance of his preaching and without ever repeating himself or preaching himself dry. The fire he thus kindled, and turned into a beacon that shone across the seas and down through the generations, was no mere brush fire of sensationalism, but an inexhaustible blaze that glowed and burned on solid hearths…fed by the eternal Word. Here was the miracle of a bush that burned with fire and yet was not consumed”. When asked the key to his powerful preaching Spurgeon said, “I announce my text…and make a bee-line for the cross!”　 THAT CROSS STILL TOWERS OVER THE WRECKS OF TIME-AND BRINGS RESCUE AND RESTORATION TO THE VICTIMS OF THOSE WRECKS! LIFT IT UP HIGH…THE WAY OF THE CROSS LEADS HOME!