Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 241, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 October 1916 — Ready to Preach the Gospel [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Ready to Preach the Gospel

By REV. W. W. KETCHUM

Director of the Practical Work Courw, Moody Bible Institute, Chicago

TEXT-80 as much as tn ms is I am ready to preach the Gospel to you that ire at Rome also.—Rom. 1:15. , The Greek term which the word ready translates, does not have in it

so much the idea of preparedness as it does eagerness. It gives us a picture of the apostle standing as it were on tiptoe facing the imperial city, his countenance ~ expressing the passion of his heart to preach the Gospel to the people of that city. I can Imagine as the apostle stands like a hound at leash.

eager to be off, someone tugging at his cloak and saying, “Don’t go to Rome, Paul, to preach the Gospel of the cross. They will laugh your story to scorn. Rome, remember, was the home -of Cicero, and his orations are still studied there, and Seneca is discoursing in the streets. Go to them, Paul, with a little sociology, religious pathology and ethical culture, but not with the word of the cross.” And Paul answers back: “I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, for it ts the power of God unto salvation to everyone that belleveth, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.” There are people today who tell us that the Gospel of the cross doesn’t meet the modern mind. Well, I may know little of the modern mind, but I do know a great deal about the modern heart, and one thing is this, that it is still “deceitful above all things and desperately wicked,” and, thank God, I know what can meet its needs and that is the cross of Christ The trouble, friends, is not with our heads but with our hearts; let them be cleansed by the blood of Christ and the modern mind has no difficulty in understanding the story of the cross. Problems there may be, but the heart that knows the cleansing power of the blood clings in simple faith to the Cross of Christ.

Then there are those who say that the Cross of Christ does not meet the problem of today. What problems are there today that were not the problems of yesterday? What about the moral corruption of the times? Is it any worse than it was in Paul’s day? When the apostle was eager to go to Rome, lecherous, reprobate Nero, who had sunk almost to the nethermost hell, was on the throne. Yet Paul was not desirous of going to Rome with a moral mud scow, but with the Gospel of Christ He knew what some moderns do not know, that reformation follows regeneration, and so he was eager to preach in that corrupt city the Gospel of the cross. What a lesson to some would-be preachers of today who, not knowing the power of the Gospel to regenerate society, are trying with their pujpr scoops to cleanse the cesspools of Iniquity, when they have at their command the dynamite of God. We might just as well try to batter down a fortress with a popgun and toy pistol as to attempt to overcome the forces of evil in the

world by any moral reformation which leaves out the cross of Christ But what about a world immersed in pleasure? Will the Gospel reach such a world? As Paul stood facing Rome, mad with pleasure, he said, “I am ready to preach the Gospel to you that are at Rome also.” And yet the city was almost altogether given over to pleasure. During the reign of Claudius, who preceded Nero on the throne, the gladiatorial games became almost an Insane frenzy and in Nero’s time, as we know', it was no better. Paul, however, was eager to go there with the Gospel. It is a great challenge that the pleasure-loving world gives the preachers of today. How shall they meet it? Shall they, in extremity, try something else besides the Gospel, or is the Gospel still the power of God unto salvation, even unto a pleasure-loving world? One of the saddest sights to behold is a ministry that has abandoned the Gospel and substituted in the place a sociological shovel and a pathological plaster. If hell ever laughs It laughs at such a substitution, for it knows that makeshifts will never meet the world’s need and defeat hell. Come on, preachers, the world challenges us, let us meet the challenge 'with Paul’s “I am ready to preach the Gospel.” What Gospel? Why, the Gospel of the cross, of course, for there is none “other. And with Paul let us say, no matter what the world may say, we are not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ Why not ashamed? “Because it is the dynamite of God.” That means it has in itself the power to do business for God. No wonder Paul,' facing intellectual, corrupt, pleasure-loving Rome, said, “I am ready, I am not ashamed to preach the