Baxtor F. McLendon

(continued from Jan 2003)

II.   Lovers of pleasures More Than Lovers of God
Here is another class that will be weighed and found wanting: the people who love social gatherings but stay away from the prayer meetings. "Lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God" (II Tim. 3:4).

You never saw a dancing, cardplaying, theatergoing, pleasure loving church member who amounted to the snap of your finger. It is not the liar, the thief or the cutthroat who is hurting the church and demoralizing our homes; it is this tide of worldliness that is sweeping over this country. You can crowd your churches with entertainments, festivals, dramatic performances, lectures, concerts and the folderol of the world, but the church that has these frivolities is Godless and Christless. If I had my way with such a bunch, I would dynamite the church and torpedo them. I would not allow the church of God to be degenerated into a third-rate amusement bureau. It is a shame to desecrate God's house and commercialize it with worldly things.

You cannot save humanity with the Devil's tools. People, you can crowd your church with worldly things, but when you try to get it filled for prayer meeting, Sunday school or evangelistc service, you will find that the majority of the people have asthma or gout or cold or locomotor ataxia or creeping paralysis and all the other diseases, afflictions and infirmities that are known to humanity. The question of their heatlth is of such peculiar importance that they cannot come out at night!

But you let some old society dame or bellwether of the Devil give some kind of an entertainment or blowout, and you can bet your life that they will all be on the job with dresses too short at the top and too high at the bottom and so much paint and powder on their mugs that if you were to kiss them, you would have painters' colic!

My friends, this country is not only commercially mad, but we are pleasure mad. One thing the world seems always able to make is a God. Today we have a card-playing, god and a theatergoing god, a show going god, a dancing god and a Sabbath breaking god. We have forgotten and passed up the true God.

Some of you people here in Bennettsville have taken the Christ of the Bible and whittled Him down to suit your own world-loving whims. You have made a Christ like yourselves, instead of asking to be made like Him. Every misconception of God introduces a false god.

We have our leaders today, leaders in society, leaders in theater-attending, leaders in show going, leaders in cardplaying, leaders in dancing, leaders in clubs and leaders in worldly amusements; but where are our leaders in Bible religion and vital godliness? It is time we stop playing with religion and start living it. We have been leaders in everything that Hell could suggest and the Devil could concoct, but trailers in religion.

Gentlmen of the ministry, the greatest menace that the real church of God Almighty has to go up against today is the powdered-faced, paintedlipped, pencil-browed, spit-curled, lightheaded, frizzle-topped, society gadding, theater going, dancing cardplaying, fudge-eating sissy who knows more about Bridge Whist and Auction, Bridge Whist and Auction Bridge than she does about attending to babbies, washing dishes and turning flapjacks. You can always recognize one of them; they talk like they have bunions on their tongues.

I never see one of these posum - faced, rabbit-headed monstrosities-the kind that wears breeches and grows whiskers-slinking around at some old society dame's card party but what I feel sad; I fear he is the missing link.

III.   Found Wanting With a Form of Godliness but No Power
Another class that will be weighed and found wanting are those who have a form of godliness but deny the power there of. Our churches today are crowded with people who never claimed religion and no one ever accused them of having it, yet they are turning wheels in wheels, busy in church affairs, and have all kinds of religious paraphernalia attached to them. Their activities are beautiful, but you would have to turn Yerkes’ telescope on them to see any difference between them and the average nonmember of the church. There is no God, no spirit, no unction, no fire, no zeal, no enthusiasm about him; and he is the same old mechanical, perfunctory, stereotyped routine from one end of the year to the other.

The chief danger that confronts the present century will be religion without the Holy Ghost, Christianity without Christ, forgiveness without repentance, salvation without regeneration, the letter without the spirit, politics without God, and Heaven without Hell.

The infidelity that is hurting the church in this twentieth century is not theological infidelity. The infidelity that is demoralizing our churches and ruining our homes and paralyzing vital godliness is the practical infidelity among our church members.

Here is a fellow who believes the Bible from Genesis to Revelation and won’t do one thing. Now you have a fool and a rascal mixed in one compound. It is the most awful mixture that Jesus Christ ever tackled while on earth. This fellow believes in prayer meeting, but he never gets out for it except about once in a quarter; he believes in family prayer, but you can’t prove it by his wife and children; he believes in the missionary cause, but it is like pulling teeth to get him to come across. He goes on the principle that he that believeth not shall be damned, and he believes everything. If that kind were auctioned off and I had to purchase them, they wouldn’t bring five cents per dozen in any market on earth or in Heaven or Hell.

Paul said in his letter to Timothy that this would be a condition in the last days. The past two decades have surely seen the fulfillment of this prophecy. Even in pronounced fundamental churches we have campaigns for members; people are urged to join the church, and cards are signed. With these propagandas we are corralling into the church today thousands of people; but the rugged old doctrines of repentance, witness of the Spirit, new birth, depravity, sin, Hell, judgment play little or not part in our modern revivals. In other words, the soft pedal is put on.

Lots of the big evangelistic campaigns carry little more convictions with them than a Chautauqua program. In every church are found choice spirits who seek the old paths, but they are often in a minority. Many have a form of godliness without the power.

IV.   Found Wanting Because Heart Turned Away From Truth
A fourth class that will be weighed in the balances and found wanting is those who turn away their ears from the truth. Paul, in writing to Timothy, exhorted him to:

“Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long suffering and doctrine.”

“For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having iching ears;

“And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.” (II Tim. 4:2-4. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own pleasure of lusts they shall help to themselves Mrs. Winslow’s soothing Syrup preachers who will be smooth and who will rub them on their heads and pat them on their backs, tickle their chins and give them essays on art and travel, psychological messages and stereopticon views.

They want their pastor to say touching and tender things about “Little Willie who has gone to Heaven,” “Moon, shine on your mother’s grave”, and “Tell Aunt Maria I’ll be there.” They do not want a preacher to pull the veneer off their rottenness and deviltry, making sin to appear as sin and holding them up before the blazing light and scorching presence of God Almighty’s purity. They do not want to hear sermons that deal personally, pointedly and piercingly with their hypocrisy and deviltry.

They seem to relish and say they greatly delight in nice little talks on Emerson, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Cato and Aristotle. But sermons that describe the state of the heart, character of life, perils of the soul, the claims of Jesus Christ and the story of the cross, grate on their super-ultra, hypersensitive, refined natures; and they roll their eyes like a dying calf and look like they have a hair shirt on. They say, "His preaching may reach some, but it cannot help me."

God said, "I hewed them by the prophets." Now a hewer's ax is not made to daub on salve or to spread a poultice. God said, "I cut them; I lacerated them with My preachers." A preacher ought to be a cross between a billy goat and a mule - butt at one end and kick at the other. Some are afraid they will stir up strife. Better have some strife than all go to Hell together in a rocking chair palmetto -fan brigade.

I very seldom go to a town and open up an evangelistic campaign but that some good old brother or sister will call me to one side and say, "Mac, we are a very peculiar people around here, and everything has been very quiet in this community". (So is everything very quiet in a graveyard!) "If you don't watch the language, It will cause agitation."

I'll tell you, we need some agitation in these mildewed, ossified, fossilized corroded, coldstorage, North-Pole, Arctic-region, embalming-fluid, blackhearse, tombstone churches. You will find about as much inspiration in them as you would find in a morgue.

I want to say this: If you are a Godcalled preacher and have compromised your message, you are reckless of consequences, or else you have lost your commission.

Peter Cartright, the eccentric old backwoods methodist preacher, was invited by the sky pilot of one of our great boulevard churches to preach for him on a certain Sunday night. Just as Cartright was taking his text, he felt the doctor of divinity pulling the tail of his shad-bellied coat. He turned around and asked him what he wanted. The preacher said, "Mr. Cartright, you must be very careful tonight; President Andrew Jackson is in the congregation. Be very considerate of your language, because you might offend him."

Peter Cartright turned around so quickly that his old coat popped like the tail of a fox squirrel up a tree, and he cried, "Who is President Jackson? if he doesn't repent and come to God through the atoning blood of Jesus Christ, we will be damned just as quick as a chicken-stealing thief."

The learned doctor said, "Yes, President Jackson will settle with you after the sermon."

And old Peter roared out, 'Yes and two of us can settle."

After Peter Cartright had preached a great sermon, President Jackson walked down to the front and said, "Mr. Cartright I wish I had an army made up of your kind." And they became fast friends.

V.  The Lukewarm Crowd Is Weighed and Wanting
A fifth class that will be weighed in the balances and found wanting is the lukewarm.

John had been banished to the isle of Patmos, rolling sea on one side and towering mountains on the other. God looked down on that bleak, barren island and said to His lonely servant, "Write." John picked up his pen and wrote to the Laodicean church:

"I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot.
"So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth."- Rev. 3:15,16

These Laodiceans were a type of thousands of Christians we have in this country. They were the Tweedledee, Tweedledum, good- Lord, good-Devil, "you tickle-me -I'll-tickle -you" set of straddlers that we see in every church of this land.

No man can be neutral in regard to Christianity. You must be for Him or against Him, confess Him or deny Him, accept Him or reject Him, let into your heart or shut Him out. God does not want any four-flushers or false alarms. The Christian Faith is the most intense thing on earth today.

Henry Ward Beecher was in a certain community, and a man brought him a horse and buggy to take a drive. Beecher asked him if the horse was gentle. The fellow said, 'Yes he's not afraid of anything and will work anywhere".

Beecher said, "My, my, I would like to have one church member just like him-one who is not afraid of anything and will work anywhere.

I read not long ago of a fine bay horse that wouldn't work anywhere except hitched to a little red-striped buggy. Every pastor has a lot of the little red striped buggy kind to contend withthe Sunday morning, eleven o'clock, kid-glove, dress-parade crowd. Try to hitch one of them to a Sunday evening service, and he will run away. Try to hook him into a midweek prayer service, and he will kick clear out of harness. Try to get him to pay God a tenth of what he makes, and he balks. O you namby-pamby, stripedbuggy, kid-glove, Sunday morning comedians with whom every pastor has to contend!

You never saw a fellow acknowledge that he was lukewarm. You can go to him and say, "Brother, you have grown cold and indifferent and half hearted in your attitude toward Jesus Christ. You are negative and non committal."

And you will see him swell up, put on an inflated, pompous air, stand back on his hind legs and say, 'Oh no; I am a conservative man." And he delights to talk about conservatism in religious matters. People who cool off and let up and let down and dry up are said to be conservative.

Think of the Apostle Paul saying that he was running a race and that he had laid aside every weight and sin which hindered him in his going and that he had started in this race at Damascus and never intended to let up until the gates clicked on his heels as he entered the perarly portals. He said he was not like the man who was beating the air, but he had burned every bridge behind him; his soul was on the stretch for God, and he was getting somewhere.

He said that he was not looking at the mistakes of yesterday nor the day before; he wasn't looking at the folks nor himself but he was looking unto Jesus and reaching forth and pressing forward to the mark of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

Compare Paul's intensity and enthusiasm with the cold, lackadaisical attitude of the average Christian of today. Oh, this self sufficiency that we find in every community! It seems that the majority of church members are satisfied with their religious attainments. They are marking time and building their campfires at the same spot day after day and month after month. There is no crossing over and moving up and seeking higher ground. My friend, if you are the right kind of Christian, you are better today than you were yesterday. You advance or you retrograde, decrease or increase, progress or retrogress.

We have a lot of brickbat Christians who are no larger today than they were yesterday. They have the same old religion without any warmth or fire about it. The less you go to church, the less you want to go. The less you read your Bible, the less you want to. The less you attend prayer meeting, the less you will want to. The less you pray, the less you will want to pray. The better fellowship with Christ you have, the more you will want.

My friends, are you satisfied with this cold , frosty, chilly, lukewarm, milk and cider, chalk affair that you call religion? The real question is, Is the great God satisfied?

It is remarkable how little religion will satisfy some people, and then it is just as remarkable how much it takes to satisfy God.

Alexander the Great conquered worlds; so did Napoleon. Poor Alexander the Great died a conquered wretch; poor Napoleon died a banished, conquered wretch on the island of St. Helena. Napoleon, while on that midocean island, walked out from his apartment. His body was emaciated by disease, and death was staring him in the face. He looked up at the blue canopy of the sky, studded with the stars of Heaven, and said, "Alexander the Great, Charlemagne and I conquered by force and founded our kingdom by force, and our kingdoms have melted away; but Jesus Christ founded His kingdom on love, and millions of men would fall at His feet and die for Him if it were necessary.”