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EZ/E TAI TH INVISIBLE:
Tabernacle Sermon by Reb. Len G. Broughton, D. *D.
Steuographically reported for The Golden Age. —Copyright applied for
Text: “If ye have faith as a grain of mustard
seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence
to yonder place, and it shall remove, and nothing
shall be impossible unto you.” —Matt. 17:20.
H
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HILE I try to expound the law that I
feel underlies this great statement, I
would that we might all be asking our
selves honestly, candidly, if we believe
this text. Was Jesus Christ telling the
truth or was he speaking in exaggerated
language when he said: “Nothing shall
be impossible unto you?”
Today being the occasion of our tenth
anniversary of this Tabernacle, naturally I have been
giving myself to a study of the things that have
occurred in the past ten years in connection with
our work, and endeavoring to get at the line of truth
upon which the blessing of God has operated most
powerfully in the up-building of our work, and also
the line of truth that we feel to be the slogan of
our future triumph; and in thinking along these
lines, I have felt led to speak to you upon this sub
ject, “The Faith Invincible.” All faith is not
invincible, and I want, if I can, to show you why.
The Greatest Thing In the World.
Many years ago Henry Drummond wrote a book
that has circulated the world and in its circulation of
the world has carried untold blessing wherever it
has gone. The title is “The Greatest Thing In the
World.” Most of you have read it, and if you have,
I am sure you have found great blessing in the read
ing of it, as I have. He makes the greatest thing
in the world love, showing how love is the greatest
thing in the world. But candidly speaking, I think
he was wrong. I do not believe that love is the
greatest thing in the world. I will readily admit
that love is a tremendous factor in moving upon
the hearts and the consciences of the world, but I
believe that the greatest thing that the world knows
anything about is faith. It is far greater than love,
though properly speaking, it is inseparably linked
with love.
In the eleventh chapter of Hebrews, we have a
brief description of some of the greatest triumphs
in the history of the world, and the secret with
which these mighty triumphs operated is the thing
that we are speaking of —faith.
First, the faith that is invincible, is the faith
that is complete: Not all faith is complete; the
vast majority of faith of this world is very incom
plete. Very few in this world have ever known what
it was to have a complete and rounded faith; not
even the Apostles themselves knew. For faith to be
invincible, unconquerable, complete, it must be a
faith that properly relates both to man and to
God.
To begin with, man is the instrument of the faith
of God. If you were to ask me to give my concep
tion of the purpose of God in the making of man,
I would say, first of all, He made man that He
might have a chance to reveal His matchless glory,
and the might of His power; and then, too, His
great, loving heart needed an outlet. Before man
was created there was nothing in all the creative
work of His fingers, however grand and beautiful,
that satisfied His heart. There was nothing in the
brute creation that satisfied His heart’s longing.
To have His heart hunger satisfied, there must
be companionship and fellowship, and there
could be no companionship without intelligence,
and so man is created; that through him,
by means of his intelligence, God might have a
chance to manifest the might of His power and the
matchlessness of His glory, and through this mani
festation would come the companionship and the
love that He longed for, and in all God’s activities
in the world, He has reserved for man to join hands
with Him in the carrying out of His great purposes.
Mail’s Place In the Economy of God.
For man to be properly related to God, he must
first realize his own place; he must realize that he
is placed just “A little lower than the angels, and
The Golden Age for March 18, 1909.
crowned with glory and honor.” We sometimes
sing that song, “Oh, to be nothing, nothing. Only
to lie at His feet,” a blessed old hymn in many
respects, having blessed thousands of hearts, and
yet I believe that tlie sentiment of that couplet
is a misrepresentation of man’s place in connection
with God. We must remember that God’s relation
to us is the relation of a parent to his child; He
gives us this relationship; to us He is Father,
Mother, all; and His feeling for us is the feeling of
a parent heart for the child. When I want to study
the nature of God and the interest of God in my own
life and affairs, I come to see my owrf feelings and
longings with reference to my own offspring. Some
times I feel that no man is properly prepared to
understand God until he himself is a father, and no
woman is properly prepared to interpret God until
she is a mother. There is something that throbs
and beats in the parent breast that does not enter
into any other; a something that cannot be described,
but has to be felt to be understood. The parent hear.'
feels a pride in his child, and I cannot conceive
of how any parent would feel rejoiced to have his
child, bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh, presented
to him in the grovelling attitude of a worm in
the dust. Man is in no sense a nonentity; in every
sense he is the highest touch of the creative fingers
of the Infinite God. When God looked down on
man, the sum and substance, the cumulation of His
creative genius, He was happy; He could now have
companionship, because here was intelligence.
I heard a man recently preach a sermon on Moses,
and in the course of his remarks he said, “Oh, I
should be perfectly happy just to be the rod in the
hand of Moses; the rod that was used to drive back
the angry sea.” My brethren, he failed to take
into account the fact that there was a man back of
the rod; that that rod, though touched with the
supernatural fingers of the Infinite, was powerless to
control the sea; that it was God, using the man and
not the rod which held those waves back. If I had
but one address to make to the youth of this age it
would be along the line of the necessity for their
realization of their place in the great created world
of God.
And then I should say, in the next place, in order
for a man to be properly related to God, there must
be a realization of his own potentialities and possi
bilites. I think that here is where a great many men
and women with ambitious minds falter and fail.
History tells us of a man in the army of Napoleon,
a private, who one day came riding so rapidly to the
emperor, for the delivery of an important message,
that when he stopped, his horse dropped dead. It
was at a very strategic period in the history of that
great leader, and things had to be done quickly.
His marshall wanted to know the will of the em
peror, and he must know quickly or all would be
lost. Ten minutes’ delay might mean the loss of the
whole struggle. Napoleon handed his reply to the
messenger, and pointed to his own horse, bearing
all the rich trappings that the emperor’s horse
would have, and said, “Take my horse and spare
him not.” The French soldier saluted and said,
“Nay, Emperor, I am not worthy to ride on your
horse.” Napoleon answered, “Say it not. There
is nothing too good for a soldier in the French
army. ’ ’
Oh, my young friends, God help me to fire you
with a realization of your divine possibilities; God
help me to shew you that whatever’ your station in
life, however much you are hindered by poverty, by
obstacles or difficulties of any nature, however ob
scure your life, never mind where it is lived, whether
in some back alley or on a beautiful boulevard, that
you are the creature of God, and there is nothing
that anybody else is that is too good for you. What
is it that this world enjoys that is too good for a child
of Go ? Is it wealth ? You are as deserving of wealth
as any man; is it culture, education, refinement, so
cial position? Do you not see that if you are God’s
child you are deserving of these things? Do yon
crouch and whine and say, “Oh, that is for the
more fortunate man.” Nay, my friend, sat it not.
There is absolutely nothing- that is too good and too
great for you.
THE BEST FOR GOD’S CHILDREN.
Oh, if somebody should ask me what has been the 1
one absorbing and all controlling passion of my life
during these past ten years, I would say that it has 1
been to make real these vital truths. As I have
moved about through the world and come in contact
with the greatest and the best that the world has, I
there has always been in my heart one thing, and
that has been, “My people deserve that.” When I
attended my first Bible Conference at Northfield,
when I saw that great surging, throbbing crowd of
Christian workers from all parts of the world as
they 'hung with such interest upon the words of the
great preachers, and as I realized the distance be
tween that place and this, and the impossibility of
the vast majority of our people in this country to
ever go there and receive their instructions and oe
built up and profited by what they could there learn,
there came one night when I was in prayer upon the
mountain top, an overwhelming passion; that pas
sion was to reproduce that which I had seen and
felt, in th land and among the people that I felt
were just as deserving of it as the rich people who
could afford to pay their money and go there and
get it; and that has been a great controlling- factor
in my ministry for these ten years; it has been the
deep consciousness of the fact that you are just as
much entitled to all these things as any people that
live on the face of the earth.
When I 'have heard a great lecturer as he thrilled
and stirred and moved the people, and when I have
realized that only a limited few could hear him
and be profited by what he says, I have thought, Oh,
how can I help to make this great blessing possible
for the people who have not much, but who are just
as deserving as any people on the face of the earth.
When I have seen a girl with great, throbbing po
tentialities expressing themselves in the brightness
of her face and her speech and the altitude of her
ambition, and when I have realized that she is poor
and without influence, I have felt, 0, how can I
make posible the development of the nature that
longs to grow, for she has just as much right to the
best as any one.
Never mind because our circumstances are not as
favorable as that of others; in the majority of cir- <
cumstances it is not our fault.; it is the circum- ’
stances under which we were born. Is it your fault? J
No, but you may use it as an advantage, by using J
your difficulties as steppingstones to climb to
things. Instead of feeling our littleness when we I
look at what other men have and are, let us feel 1
that it is our right too as we are the creatures off
God, the loving, longing, ambitious Father, desiring i
for all of His children to have the best.
PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY.
Then, too, I should say that before we can be
properly related to God there must be the
ness of our own personal responsibility. Joshua at*!
the head of the army of the Lord, marched to the
Jordan, and stood upon its border, looking down
upon its surging waters, but there was no parting
asunder of its waters until, at the command of God,
he marched on toward the stream until his toes f
touched the edge of it; and when he had come to
the limit of his own power, then the supernatural
power of God was manifested, and the waters were
divided, on the one hand rushing away to the sea,
and on the other banking up, and so Joshua and his
host marched across as if upon dry ground.
If you ask me to state the underlying cause
the failure of the church, for we must admit that t<y||
a great extent it has been a failure, I answer it
because the church fails to march on until it reaches *
the waters; we stand upon the dry bank, expecting
God to manifest His power and drive back the sea.
But in all the ages past, He has never worked that
way. It has always been with God —“Your extrem
ity, my opportunity.” We see that in the resurree-
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