A worker for God says: “Today the world lies open to the army of God! The breaches in the devil’s fortresses are practicable! The bugles of God unceasingly sound the advance!” —C.T.S.
SO we must go on day by day for God. The forces of evil are all around us. The devil has “dug himself in,” and he and his lost hosts are warring against God and His Christ. And from Eden to Calvary, and from Calvary to this present day, the powers of darkness have been arrayed against the living God. The sword of the Spirit is the Word of God. The Word of God must be sent to every soldier and to every sailor. It will be an everlasting answer for these dear, brave fellows for all the shameful doctrine that is preached to them today. A worker at the Front writes to me: —
“At every opportunity we try in simple language to show God’s plan of salvation, and it is awful to think how much has to be cleared away before many can understand it. False props, false securities — but oh! so little teal faith. The latest now is a don’t care sort of spirit, because God being in everything, and we are God’s, therefore we can never die, because we are part and parcel of Himself.... Oh! what lies the devil invents to keep men from God.”
Listen now to what is preached to dying men at the Front today. Listen to what this preacher says: —
“He did not think it possible for anyone to go through the awful things which happened at the Front without feeling that, somehow or another, God could not stop them; that if He could, He would; but that in was so rife in the world, things were so wrong with the world, that God somehow or other could not stop it. So they believed and taught that. God could not stop these, things unless men came and ranked themselves with Him to do the work.”
These words, horrible in their blasphemy, are preached at the Front by accredited men to soldiers going forth, many of them, to certain death. Better to deny God than to preach a false God. Better for a man to die in infancy than to grow up, and facing men with immortal souls, dare to arraign the omnipotent God before the bar of his thoughts. But worse is to follow. He says: —
“He believed most sincerely that those who had thus sacrificed their lives at once became the inheritors of the glories of a new world. There was another conflict in progress — a great spiritual war. God could not win this war by Himself. If the forces of evil proved the stronger they must prevail.”
If this false teacher had ever stood before the cross of Christ at Calvary, and had realized what the power of omnipotent love could do to save a soul, he would never have uttered these words. If he had ever known what it was to stand a lost sinner before the holiness of God, he would have realized that the stupendous work of man’s redemption was settled between God and Christ alone. If he had been a truly converted man he would have known that it was the Creator-God who became the Redeemer-God, and that the same power that brought worlds into existence by a word had to be exercised in all its fullness of grace to save a soul from hell.
Angels at the Deathbed
A good deal has been said and written about the appearance of angels on the battlefields. They have appeared to those who are dying, as the following incident will tell: —
A child of eight is passing away. The mother love can do no more for him, but with an older brother of the child’s she watches by the bed. The child turns and says, “What is the time?” “Twenty minutes to four,” is the reply. “Then I shall soon be home,” exclaimed the dying boy. “I can see the angels coming for me; they are a long way off now, but at four o’clock they will be here. Come, mother, give me another kiss, for I shall soon be gone.” About two or three minutes to four he again inquired the time, and then he said, “Dear mother, the angels are here, and I must go.” And as the clock struck four he departed to be with Jesus.
Another child just before he passed away put his little hands up and said, with his eyes fixed on a certain spot in the room, “See, mama, someone in white.”
Angels at the Battlefield
These men in white have been seen upon the battlefields today. “Now and again,” a Christian tells us, “a wounded man on the field is conscious of one in white coming to help him.” Yes, they are “ministering spirits, sent forth to minister to those who shall be heirs of salvation.”
A mother’s prayers have many a time brought these “men in white” from the presence of God to guard the loved one prayed for in the hour of danger. A dying mother was praying for her soldier son, who was a stranger to his mother’s God. Many times she spoke of him, and said, “Oh, it would gladden my heart to know he was saved and fighting for the Lord, but if I do not live to see it, I know my prayers will be answered in His good time. I leave him in His hands.” And just before she died she was asked if she had any fear. Her answer was, “No, not a single fear or doubt, my blessed Lord keeps me in perfect peace. Christ is everything to me.”
Soldiers and sailors with praying mothers, their prayers have many a time interposed a barrier between you and death: While you are facing the foe abroad, think of the dear mother at home facing God for you.
The Roll Call of Heaven
The dying soldier lay facing eternity. He had fought his last fight. His once strong frame was weak as a child’s now. He scarcely breathed, and each respiration grew fainter and fainter. Suddenly, in a loud voice, he cried, “Here.” One hastened to his side and asked him what he wished. “Nothing,” he answered, “but they are calling the roll call in heaven, and I was answering to my name.”