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TZZE DIVINE SIDE OF AFFLICTION
Text: “The days of affliction have taken hold of
me.’’—Job 30:16.
Dr. Broughton’s first sermon after his serious
street car accident. During its delivery he sat in
a chair. Before preaching he said:
FEEL like I ought to apologize for
coming to speak today, but I am not
here out of any sense of duty; it is a
higher sense that has brought me here—
a sense of delight; a sense of love. I
could conceive of nothing that would
contribute more to my physical welfare
today than to be right where I am. I
have had many dark days in my life,
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and there has never been a time when I have not
found more comfort in mingling with the people
of God than anything else. I am reminded of a
friend of mine, a returned missionary from China,
who, several years ago, with his family, w y as spend
ing a few days visiting his people.
While there, the whole family was taken ill with
typhoid fever. This man had been one of my col
lege mates, and I happened at this time to be vis
iting in the same town that he was. Os course, I
was drawn to the suffering family, and oftentimes
called.
Just before going to church on Sunday night, for
I was to preach at the little village church, I was ,
pained to receive a message that the only daughter
of my friend and brother had just died, and that
his wife was just about as low as she could be, to
be living, and the two children were also very
low.
When I got to the door of the church, the first
person that I saw, seated well up to the front, was
my friend, the bereaved father, the husband of that
ill wife, and the father of those suffering children.
When I saw him, I was shocked, and 1 walked
on down the aisle to where he was sitting and
touched him on the shoulder. He looked up at
me and the tears began to rain down his cheeks, .
and he exclaimed, “Don’t think that I don’t care
anything about all this. It is the fact that I do
care that brings me here to this place of prayer.
I felt that if I could get with the people of God
and mingle my voice in song and prayer with
them I would get strength and power.”
It was the same feeling that brought me here
this morning. I felt that if I could get back here
I would receive the kind of strength that would
do my physical man more good, to say nothing of
the spiritual, than anything else I could possibly
do.
I felt also that I wanted to come to express to
you my very deep sense of gratitude for the very
loving, kind and affectionate way in which you have
tried to minister to the comfort of my wife and
myself. I speak not only to my own people, but -
also to the members of our congregation who are
not connected with the church. If it was in my
power, I would speak loud enough to be heard
throughout the land, for it is from one side of
this country to the other, that I have received words
of such comfort and such cheer,-and words convey
ing such a sense of prayer for us, as to bring one
down low before God in the very depths of hu
mility, and, at the same time, lift him up cn the
mountain peak of glory.
The last Sunday I was here I brought a very
pessimistic note concerning our new building en
terprise, which enterprise has been so deeply en
trenched in my heart and life and in yours, and
over which we had had such a period of rejoicing;
yet I felt that there needed to be a plain, un
varnished -statement of facts, though they would
seem to be of a discouraging nature, and I left you
that morning with drooping spirits, so I felt that I
ought to come back today and let you know what
has been taking place in the days that have elapsed
since then. I felt that I wanted to tell you this
myself.
There has been a marvelous change in the com
munity. Though I have not been able to visit and
talk to men, except a very few days before this ac-
Tabernacle Sermon by Reb. Len G. Broughton
cident which brought both my wife and I so near to
the other world, and yet, because God stood be
tween, there has come such a change in spite of
my inability to get to many people, that I felt I
bring to you this morning a ray of hope, which I
trust will be sufficiently bright to dispel every bit
of gloom that I may have scattered in my efforts
to be honest and true.
You remember I stated that there would ha\e
to come to us something like $50,000 well guaran
teed subscriptions in addition to the SIOO,OOO we
Lad already received, before we could venture an?
further toward the final culmination of our scheme.
There has come already more than $25,000 of that
needed $50,000. This has come largely through
the mails and over the telephone, and some of it
by the telegraph wires, so that, this morning, 1 feel
that there is nothing ahead of us but a clear sky
and the smile of God. I feel that victory is as
sured.
Only let me insist upon this one thing, and that
is, that you members of this church and friends of
this movement iemember that it is, after all, God
v jo giveth th", increase, and that you keep on youi
knees in prayer about this thing, and that you
lay hold uo-m your prayer meeting, as you have
cone since then, and make it a meeting of tremen
dous power that shall shake to the foundations the
unbelief and skepticism of men, and that you con-
Gnae to vork for the enterprise and fight for u
among your fellow T s, and do everything you can to
help carry on this w r ork which, it seems to me, God
has certainly put His stamp of approval upon, for
the devil has done everything he could to defeat it.
If ever there was a thing that the devil has endeav
ored his dead level best to defeat it has been this.
If ever there was a thing that it seems to me God
has said, “It shall not be defeated,” it is this.
But the “shall not be defeated” proposition of
God depends upon the spiritual condition of the
people whom He has blessed. Therefore I want
to urge you to be much in prayer, and to be faith
ful in your obligations to God and to your church.
We have gone right ahead with the plans, and the
committee, acting upon instructions, has employed
Mr. O. P. Richardson, a fine young man, a last
year’s graduate of Wake Forrest College, a young
man of splendid literary and business training,
having had his early training in a bank; a young
man of Christian character and integrity, whose
standing in scholarship and character gave him the
assistant professorship in the college where he
graduated. But he preferred a life of business, so
he is here to take charge of this matter.
I also want to bring to you a message from my
heart, backed up by the Word of God, upon the
divine side of affliction. I have had a chance per
sonally to test the things I am going to say about
this subject.
The Sermon.
I believe that there is a divine side of affliction.
I believe also that there is a human side to it, and
I believe that both the divine and the human side
of bodily affliction is found in the Book of Job, and
this book largely is the scriptural basis of what I
want to bring to you on this subject. Strange as
it may seem to you, it has been the Book that has
comforted me most in my affliction.
Job, as he stands out in the Word of God, stands
out as a real character. Despite what the skeptics
and the Bible critics, many of whom are in the pul
pits of today, say about it, Job is a real character
and not a fiction.
JOB A CHARACTER.
The wisest scholarship of the world today, after
making research after research, has come to the con
clusion, a conclusion that some of us reached by
faith long ago, that Job was a man and lived on
earth, and that he labored among men as a man,
and that his life was regarded by the people among
whom he lived as a most marvelous expression of
divine power.
Now, I say, this is the consensus of scholarship
The Golden Age for May 9, 1907.
It is the consensus of the opinions of men who are
able to go upon the ground itself, and study the
language and literature of the times in which Job
lived. Whenever you find a man today in the
pulpit that is sneering at Job as a character, mark
it, he is only advertising the shallowness of his own
learning. There is many a man today in the pul
pit who is being passed off as a scholar who has a
little bit of narrow scholarship, a scholarship no
deeper than the surface that men can see. It is
the superficialist that sneers and laughs and ridi
cules the sacred characters of the Word of God.
So, my first point is, that Job is a real character,
and that his experience was a real experience.
The first thing that will strike you about the
character of Job is his greatness—great from
every standpoint. In the first place he was great
because he had a big family. He had ten children;
seven sons and three daughters. I think that the
size of Job’s family was greatly to his credit. I
think that one of the greatest danger signals that
is today being waved before the civilization of this
country, is the repudiation that we find among so
many of the idea of family life. Motherhood and
fatherhood are being looked upon with contempt.
And let me say that the one who thus sneers, is
not fit to be called a man or -a woman.
Job was great in that he had a great character.
There was no man like him in the day in which he
lived.
GREAT WEALTH.
Job was great in wealth. Look at what is said
in the first chapter about the wealth of this great
man. “His substance also was seven thousand
sheep, and three thousand camels, and five hundred
yoke of oxen, and five hundred she asses, and a
very great household; so that this man was the
greatest of all the children of the east.”
Now, I do not believe, with so many people to
day, that because a man has money he is to
be suspiciously looked upon. Here is a man that
had the greatest wealth in his country at his time,
and with all his wealth he had the greatest char
acter and integrity to back it up with that any one
had ever been known to have. I believe that there
are men of wealth that love God and love their
fellow men; who are willing to live and die for
Christ and for their church.
I grant you that the most of men who revel in
great wealth are men, I have no doubt, who are not,
to say the least of it, in very close touch with God.
It ought not to be so, and need not be so in any
case.
Job was also great in that he could stand a
great trial and not falter, and after all, that is the
spiritual test of greatness. It is not what a man
has, but it is what he can stand.
Just see how he stood. One day his sons, and
they seem to have been a bad lot, had a great feast,
and they invited their three sisters. They had a
real, up-to-date banquet and a bacchanalian fea.ff.
After the feast was over, old Job, their father,
offered a sacrifice for them, for, he said, “Doubtless
they have sinned and cursed God in their feast
ing. ’ ’
THE DEVIL AT WORSHIP.
Just after this the sons of God came together.
They came for to worship, and as they were wor
shipping God, the devil made his appearance. Now,
you will observe this, that the devil always is found
where the deepest reverence and worship of God
is seen. There is not anything said devil
being present at that feast. That thing was in
spired of the devil. It was his own get up, and it
did not need his personal presence.
But when the sons of God came together to wor
ship, there is where he went, and there is where he
goes today. Has it occurred to you that that is
still the method of the devil? Show me the man or
the woman or the church that is walking close to
God and I will show you the man or the woman or
the church today where the devil is most likely to
be found. If I had to go hunting for the devil in