Aggressive Christianity
Often the Holy Spirit leads me to something that really enlightens, challenges, and encourages me greatly. This one I feel compelled to share. This is an excerpt from a longer message by Catherine Booth. She and her husband William founded the Salvation Army. They were heroes of the faith. After reading this message I thought, “Well, no wonder every one of her 8 children became missionaries and every one of her 48 grandchildren became missionaries.”
Aggressive Christianity
By Catherine Booth
I have been reading the New Testament lately with special reference to the aggressive spirit of original Christianity. And as far as I can see, we come infinitely short by comparison. “Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to all creation.” Look at what is implied in this commission. I believe that no generation since that first century has yet fathomed the meaning of this divine commission. Look at it!
Would it ever occur to you that it really meant, “Go and build chapels and churches, and invite the people to come in, but if they won’t – leave them alone”? “GO!” To whom? “To all creation.” Where am I to get at them? WHERE THEY ARE. “All creation.” This is the extent of your commission. Seek them out, run after them, wherever you can get at them. “All creation” – wherever you find a creature that has a soul – there go and preach My Gospel to him. If I understand it, that is the meaning and spirit of this commission.
In another commission to Paul, God says “…I am sending you to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the dominion of Satan to God.” (Acts 26:17-18) They are asleep – go and wake them up. They do not see their danger. If they did, there would be no need for you to run after them. They are preoccupied. Open their eyes, and turn them around by your desperate earnestness, intense persuasion, and moral force. Oh! It makes me tremble when I think of how much one man can do for another! ‘”Turn from darkness to light, and from the dominion of Satan to God.”
How did Paul understand this? He says, “We persuade men.”(II Cor.5:11) Do not be content with just putting it before them, giving them gentle invitations, and then leaving them alone. Paul ran after the poor souls, and pulled them out of the fire. Do the same! Take the blindfold off their eyes which Satan has bound them with; knock and hammer and burn your words into their poor, hardened, darkened hearts with the fire of the Holy Ghost, until they begin to realize that they are IN DANGER! Go after them. If I understand it, that is the spirit of the apostles and of the early Christians.
Sure it’s okay to build churches and chapels; we should invite the people to them. But do you think it is consistent with these commissions to rest only in this, when three-fourths of the population utterly ignore our invitations and take no notice whatsoever of our buildings and of our services? They will not come to us. That is an established fact. Jesus Christ says, “Go after them.” He says, “Go out into the highways and along the hedges, and compel them to come in, that My house may be filled.” (Luke 14:23) I will have guests, and if you can’t get them in by nice, civil measures, use military measures. Go and compel them to come in.
Oh! People say you must be very cautious. You must not push religion down people’s throats. What! Should I wait until an unconverted, godless man wants to be saved before I try to save him? Am I to let my unconverted friends and acquaintances go quietly down to damnation, and never tell them about their souls until they ask, “If you please, I want you to preach to me!”
Is this anything like the spirit of early Christianity? No! Therefore we must make them look, and if they run away from you in one place, meet them in another, and let them have no peace until they submit to God. This is what Christianity ought to be doing in this land, and there are plenty of Christians around to do it. Why, we might give the world such a time of it, that they would get saved in self-defense – if we were only aggressive enough and determined that they should have no peace in their sins.
What We Must Do
Men are preoccupied with many things, and we need to bring this subject of salvation powerfully to their attention. There is some one soul that you have more influence with than any other person on earth. Are you doing all you can for their salvation? Take them lovingly aside and say, “My dear friend, I have never spoken to you closely, carefully, and prayerfully about your soul.” Let them see the tears in your eyes, or if you can’t weep, let them hear the tears in your voice. Let them realize that you feel their danger, and are in distress for them. Then God will give His Holy Spirit so they can be saved.
It is a bad sign for the Christianity of this day that it provokes so little opposition. If there were no other evidence of it being wrong, I could tell from just that. When the Church and the world can jog comfortably along together, you can be sure there is something wrong. The world has not compromised – its spirit is exactly the same as it ever was. If Christians were equally as faithful to the Lord, separated from the world, and living so that their lives were a reproof to all ungodliness, the world would hate them as much as it ever did. It is the Church that has compromised, not the world.
You say, “You’re implying that we should be getting into endless conflict with the world!” Yes- “Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword” (Matt. 10:34) There would be uproar, yes! The Acts of the apostles are full of stories of uproars. One uproar was so great, that the Chief Captain had to get Paul over the shoulders of the people, otherwise he would have been torn to pieces. “What a commotion!” you say. Yes, and bless God, if it was like that now, we would have thousands of sinners saved.
The Dignity Of Love
“But,” you say, “wouldn’t that be inconsistent with the dignity of the Gospel?” It depends on what you mean by “dignity. ” It was a very undignified thing, humanly speaking, to die on a cross between two thieves. The Pharisees spat upon the humbled sufferer and shook their heads and said, “He saved others, He cannot save Himself.” Ah! But He was intent on saving others. That was the dignity of everlasting, unquenchable love, baring its bosom to suffer in the place of its rebellious creature – man. It was incarnate God, standing in the place of condemned man – the dignity of LOVE!
Oh friends! Will you get this baptism of love! Then you will, like the apostles, be willing to stuff your body into a basket and be let down by the wall, if need be – or suffer shipwreck, hunger, peril, nakedness, fire, or sword, or even beheading (II Corinthians 11:23-33) -if thereby you may enlarge His Kingdom and win souls for whom He shed His blood. Oh Lord, fill us with this love and baptize us with this fire! And then the Gospel will arise and become glorious in the earth, and men will believe in us, and in it. They will feel its power, and they will yield to it by the thousands, and by the grace of God, THEY SHALL! — By Catherine Booth
