WAR:  Brings down the population

– for the One-Worlders

 

Rings up the profits     

–        for the Warmongers.     

 

                                                                – eab, 4/3/09

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COMMENCEMENT ROAD

Where leads the road from commencement?

Ah, yes – where leads that road?

And what be its direction,

And, how heavy its load,

That load, on the road, from commencement.

                – eab, May, 1968

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AN AWAKENING

AN  AWAKENING

 CONVENTION HERALD

May 1986

 Edgar A. Bryan

 The Holiness movement has re­laxed. We have elected “our” President. We have erected our permanent structures. We have selected our priorities. We have drawn lines (in some cases very artificial) that separate us from the world. We have given over the major arenas to the Calvinists. And we have congratulated ourselves on our growing schools and our few mission fields. The world is not evangelized. Many camps, churches, schools, and missions are but shadows of their former power, and we are relaxed.

Parents, Pedagogues, Professors, Pastors, and Presidents, dare we try to wake up? Can we with our status quo mentality, holier-than-thou attitudes, and golden lined ideas bestir ourselves in this drowsy age? We are, without doubt, in the sleeping virgin era. Slumbering, relaxing saints (if we qualify for such a wonderful title) we are.

    Religious fervor fueled by studious Bible reading, heated white hot by the billows of soul searching prayer and beaten into usefulness by the waters of persecution and the anvil of hard work is sadly missing.  What is the answer? Is there a possibility of an awakening in the last seasons of this century? I believe there is. Without claiming all the answers and while puncturing my own balloon in many points, allow me to suggest a review.

Parents, the regaining of the Holi­ness Movement’s fervor can begin with you. Please reinstate family Bible reading and prayer. Bring tears, real unashamed tears back into dry family circles. Worship around the fireplace, kitchen table or master bedroom, and it will make the chil­dren understand more about church, God, and eternity. It is unknown what a thousand burning family altars; could do for our sleepy movement.

    Dad, consider taking righteous but right control of the family. Re­draw those once dear lines of dress. (God help the dad who doesn’t directly or indirectly explain why his daughter should dress modestly and then sees her fall.) Restrict the worldly intrusion of music. Replace spectator sports with some good father/son recreation above ques­tion. And let that dating son or daughter use your living room with you home or double date with you and your sweetheart.

Parents, do not expect too much of the local Christian school. Kids just like yours and some worse, attend there. Support it, pray for it, go to all the P.T.F.’s and/or P.T.O’s, but don’t expect it to be heaven. The best Christian school is no substitute for a Godly holiness home where love and concern for others prevails.

    Pedagogues (to include principals) -A revival of the holiness movement could begin in the school where you labor. Please be faithful to every staff prayer meeting. Heaven can come down your souls to greet … Glory can crown your mercy seat, and if it does, the day will be so much easier. Your attendance or nonattendance will not go unnoticed. Parents see or hear, students know, and He knows.

Hypocrites in holiness schools ­What a subject! Please, “Teach,” be true blue, everyday. My son or my daughter is watching and may be forever hurt. If you don’t want to be genuine, please go make something else – don’t make more hypocrites.

Really pray in class. Don’t just go through a form. Make chapels high­lights of the week. Ask God for His patience, love, mercy, and (at times) His strictness. History is so impor­tant; grammar definitely so; math, science, and P.E. have their needed places, but Pedagogues, one Book and only one will survive. It shall not pass away. Approach it with rever­ence, prayer, personal openness and your students will do likewise.

Professors – you, your prede­cessors and your successors have unmeasured influence – godly or worldly. No thinking person can say that a movement is not affected by its colleges. Kingdoms and nations have been. Denominations have been. And the holiness movement of the 1980’s and 1990’s is today being influenced by you. Pray as YOU, have never prayed before.

Some of your students will become evangelists, some pastors and teachers. The soul burden, the holy discernment, the care for a lost heathen world that they see (or 0, God help us! they don’t see) will be reflected in their own future mini­stries. Others of your students through further education, transfers or dropping out will become some of tomorrow’s lay leaders in our holiness churches. They will remember a class closed in prayer and tears, or a college prayer meeting where they were sanctified or, (forbid it Lord!) they will remember a light remark about Scripture or a joke that re­vealed a worldly uncaring attitude toward people.

If the Holy Spirit can show through you maybe, God helping you, you can start awakening the youth of this movement. If He doesn’t dominate your life, and if you are not entirely sanctified, the students may drift into cheap religion, go to ungodly colleges and lose their souls.

Only God knows how much of the holiness movement could be revitalized by a few dead-to-self pro­fessors and their associates.

Pastors, hundreds strong across America, we hold a valuable key in the chain of revival. Regardless of where you trained or if you didn’t train, begin to gather around you some grand old holiness classics and biographies. But wait! Don’t stop there – read them. Read awhile and pray awhile, or take a long walk, or write out some of the ideas these books inspire. Bury yourself in God’s Word. In short, through reading and prayer, ask God to revive your own heart in this sleeping age.

Preach the Bible. Don’t get carried away preaching fads. Don’t follow the T. V. and radio preachers. Preach Christ and Him crucified. Preach about heaven. Preach about hell until it is hot on your own heel. Preach the Gospel, not words of men. Our families, our businessmen, our children and our entire con­gregations need to be fed on the Word, and men, we must do it.

Too many pastors with other re­sponsibilities do not spend time alone. They do not meditate; do not reflect on life and its needs. Too few of us have a real vision of our church and its true mission. Wesley said that the world was his parish. Many a pastor would be embarrassed to say his county was his parish if he thought the local businessmen would hear. They would know it wasn’t the truth.

Pastors, the lack of young people volunteering for the regions beyond is our fault to a large extent. Almost every, if not every, real revival has lead out youth into full time Christian service and part of that group went overseas. 0 God, will You help Your men in Your pulpit? We need to stir ourselves.

Presidents of conferences, mission boards, camp meetings, and colleges, your zeal or lack of it is directly mirrored in your organization. If you have been in office very long at all and you crave a real Holy Ghost moving in your midst, others feel it. There is a difference between really craving and mere words for pub­lishing or broadcasting.

Some of you are not going to rock the boat. Things are good enough or at least “better than before” and you are satisfied. Oh, in the quiet of the night, deep in your soul you wish for a kind of New England Awakening, but you would like for your group to get some of the credit for starting it. No, you aren’t going to rock the old boat. What with committees, budgets, favoritism, and previous commit­ments, you will let that little wish slide.

Your men could be the starting place of a fresh breath from heaven. Your men could have a Biblical confession meeting for their faults and God Himself would listen in. Pastors look on, youth look on, and the world looks on. Can you or will you leave the “Mr. Cool” leadership image behind and ask God to revive our poor movement?

The holiness movement is relaxed.

I have been. You, reader, have been far more than you would like to admit. We claim to have entire sanctification, but we are not seeing the power. We have “revivals” with­out lasting results. We travel hun­dreds of miles to repeat the same scores of pledges to keep things going – going for what? For the conversion of the local bartender? For the evangelization of our major cities? For the salvation of millions in Asia or Africa? For what, I ask? Is it just to keep said organizations going?

Please accept this in the spirit written. I want God to help me and this article is a confession of my own dryness. Our God lives. Our God wants to visit His people. He needs men and women who will see the problem and then start now be­coming spiritual giants in this our age.

    Awake, my brothers, Awake!

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