By Fenter Northern
There is always the hidden joy in the soul abiding there due to the knowledge of our salvation and being heirs of eternal life.
However, we older members in the Lord’s church recall the jubilant thrill that rang in the congregations during the early years of last century when the church was growing by leaps with building programs everywhere. So much of that excited expectancy seems to have faded away with the coming of the new century. It’s sad that young Christians do not know that wonderful delight of seeing so many souls so excited as we did responding in those great gospel meetings. In those early days they lasted two weeks,–two Sunday meetings with morning services, without any complaining. Meetings gradually decreased in time to one week, then Sunday through Wednesday. Preachers in big demand for meetings taught in Bible colleges. That limited their availability to weekends. This made weekend meetings popular among the churches. Finally, interest even in these short meetings waned so much some were questioning if the day for gospel meetings was over in the church. Churches began on special Sundays having meals after morning services with a second service following the meal, then eliminating the evening service. With the graying of memberships, evening services have been jettisoned in some places. What the future holds with the ebbing of preaching and teaching service no one knows, but this I know. No congregation can survive that has lost its appetite for the true bread of life.
How long must the church wait for such enthusiasm to fall upon it again?How long must it wait until Ezekiel’s vision of dead bones in God family rises up into a standing army for God? When will it be that the wind of the Holy Spirit will blow away religious lethargy and the sunshine of a new spirit filled era cause Christians to lift up their hearts demanding that the church be purified from its staleness with the trumpet of the Lord pealing from the pulpit, “Hear ye the word of the Lord.”
Meantime, that which seems to be preventing such from happening is apprehension, fussiness, dislikes, temperaments, preconceptions, and indifference all which are just common, nasty sins. This generation in the church is as temporary as all others that have gone before it. It must accept and seize the opportunities with which we are so richly blessed today. Are we asking, “Does the congregation pass the all seeing eye of God that looks into the secret places of the soul for the desire to make all things according to the New Testament?
There is an authentic highway to heaven and we are given a divine GPS system to be programed by the 27 books in the New Testament. You can be no more authentic than that. One must ask themselves deep in the heart, “Do I really want it that way?” If we had been born in the age of the Campbell’s, and the Stones when the common people were hearing the hoof prints of horses galloping across the nation with flying banners saying , “Let there be light,”
How encouraged I have been in my ministry of 70 years to have had a word, a letter, or a phone call come out of the blue thanking me for sharing with them the truth years ago and that by grace they were children of God on their way to heaven. It makes me know, as Paul said, my” labor in the Lord is not in vain in the Lord” (I Cor. 15:58). There would be no great jubilant thrill, I think, that could come to me in heaven than someone approach me and say, “I am here, Fenter, because of you.” I believe you would feel the same way.