THE MASTER'S WITHERING CONDEMNATION OF PROSELYTIZING

"For I have no man like-minded, who will naturally care for your state. For all seek their own, not the things which are Jesus Christ's." -- Phil. 2:20-21

"I have no one like him (Timotheus) for genuine interest in your welfare. Everybody is selfish, instead of caring for Jesus Christ." -- Moffatt's Translation

Christ Himself The Light

Like the dragon in Revelation, the proselytizer stands near when the child is born into the kingdom of heaven, ready to catch it away to his sectarian lair. A concrete example. A brother received the sanctification of the Spirit. The sheep stealer stood by and said -- "Now, brother, you are going to walk in the light, are you not?" The pertinent reply was, "If you mean by 'walking in the light,' the light of your little church, No. If you mean walking in Christ's light, Yes!"

Christ, Himself, is the Light of the world! Our little systems are not the light of the world. They are often, with their spiritual blindness and narrowness, the darkness of the world, shutting up the way to the kingdom of heaven, not entering themselves and hindering those who would. If we follow Him we shall have the Light of Life; there is no darkness in Him. If we follow them, we may find the great darkness of supposed light.

Let all men, movements, churches and preachers, teachers and evangelists and leaders be tested by the One who lightens every man that comes into the world! It is not that He lightens every man that cometh into our little denominational world, as some proselytizers vainly argue.

Not long ago, on entering the parsonage of a narrow sectarianist, we were struck with the inappropriateness in the light of his views, in having this motto on the door -- "Salvation is of the Lord." We cannot limit salvation, then, to our little systems or sect.

Emerson said, "Our goodness must have some edge to it, else it is none." Let us examine the pretensions of men to goodness, and their claims to the right to levy tribute on us. Let us try their claims to leadership over us. "If they speak not according to My Word, it is because there is no light in them." Let us insist upon some tangible return for our sacred tribute. Ah, too long we have claimed to see light in the light of men and their systems and theologies! Our light has been second-handed, sometimes seen through the smoked glasses of the ages. Job said. "I have heard of thee through the hearing of the ear." Oh, let us break for liberty and go to the Fountain of Light and Life direct! Paul's right to leadership rested on his direct call from God, giving power and spiritual helpfulness, not an assumed ecclesiastical dominion. "Not that we would have dominion over your faith, " he wrote, "but be helpers of your joy." "For by faith (not by Paul) ye stand." He who said that he was "less than the least of all saints, " had no desire to lord it over God's heritage.

There is little more ultimate hope in a new organization th, an in the old Protestant one, for there is no error into which the old has fallen that the new may not fall. The great need of the soul is not an organization or movement, but the vision of Jesus the Son who abides forever.

Said the proselytizer, "Why don't you come over with us, where you can keep thawed out?" Thus diverting the soul from faith in a Person to a system. But keeping thawed out is not contingent on a location, but only on having the heavenly fire within. Jesus, Moses and the prophets were flames of fire wherever they went.

To a bright girl, sanctified and shining amid the spiritual declension of a socialized church, the zealot said: "To go on with God and work and worship acceptably to Him, you must cros.s over the river to us." But God says not so -- to have victory she need only go on with the Lord Jesus Christ. rile saves wherever men call upon Him. He will be confined nowhere. "But, says one, "we have been coming to this place for twenty years -- it is a sacred spot to us." So say the Mohammedans and Catholics of their places of holy pilgrimage. Worship God, not the place. "In this temple is One greater than the temple."

Modern Pharisaism

One of the many cases of modern Pharisaism was that of a prominent professor of the higher life for twenty years, active in Camp-Meeting and revival work, prominent at the altar services, a loud shouter, who made the startling discovery, under penetrating truth, that if she had died she would have gone to hell. She had been raspy, harsh, critical, faultfinding, sour, censorious, abusive and denunciatory of others; her heart was full of unbelief; she confessed jealousy because another woman, a stranger to her, had the more striking personality. She deliberately resisted the Word of God which searched out her heart's condition, and rather than admit her true state, said within herself that the preacher was inspired of the devil to preach the truth which made her feel so uncomfortable. She finally humbled herself, God took away her heart of stone, refined away the harshness, melted her heart and eyes to tears, gave her a meek and quiet spirit, a full heart and a shining face and unctious testimony. Thus one may have the form of godliness, hold the theory as correctly as the straightest and most strict Pharisee, and yet be utterly destitute of that spirit of Christ without which we are none of His.

Proselytizing A Characteristic Of Pharisaism

Paul wrote that he had no man save Timothy like minded who would naturally care for the state of certain disciples, "for all men seek their own and not the things of Christ." He wrote of others who would creep in after his departure to take away disciples after themselves; and yet of others, who would compel certain ones to be circumcised that they might glory in their flesh; and finally of those self-seekers who were looking for things made ready to hand, the fruit of other men's labors, to avoid which selfishness, the apostle labored in virgin territory where Christ had not been preached.

How much zeal there is today to build up ourselves though we must tear down others to do it. Would it not be as honest to tear down another man's house to build our own as to tear down another's church in order to build our own? How often the confidence of good people has been violated when loaning a church to some religious adventurer under promise of fair play, only to be repaid for the courtesy by having the best sheep stolen from the flock, branded, fleeced and imprisoned in the new corral and given no more freedom to leave than a priest-bound slave to the Roman system.

The proselytizing spirit is an obsession organizing itself into a self-constituted Lookout Committee, ever alert for the poor, little unsophisticated stray sheep, browsing around in search of variety in pasture, little realizing that the owners of the pastures or corrals which have often very pretentious names, will no more feed them without wanting to own them, than the selfish farmer would pasture his neighbor's stock without charge.

It would not be so sad if the stealing, fleecing and corralling of the Lord's sheep were followed by building them up in the holy faith instead of training in the peculiarities of the new system; or if those who are most sly and efficient in sheep-stealing were also most efficient in feeding them. They seem little to suspect that their shibboleths, cliches (stereotyped expressions), issues, peculiar tenets, sectarian traditions, are often, at best, only husks; that Christ only is the Bread of Life. Let us ever remember, may we say here, that when tempted to speak of "Our people, " that the word of God designates them as "The flock of God."

There is a silent understanding often, among proselytizers, and they make the intended victim feel it, that unless the sheep leave everything and come over altogether with them, that he is not going all the way with God, which is utterly without Scriptural foundation.

Why steal the fruit of other men's labor's? Why not seek to excel in the edification of the Church rather than the ownership of the sheep? Why deceive the people into believing that a mere Change of church relation is equivalent to a change of heart?

A man, under proselytizing pressure, left one church to join another. He was wealthy and very stingy. During the transfer ceremony he said: "Why I feel different already." But was he really different? Not he! His deceived heart had led him astray. He had only changed the sphere of his bondage. He was not broken. He was cursed with the same miser heart in the new church. It is as great a crime to receive stolen goods as to steal them. The facts are that in this same church, composed of theoretical holiness professors (all prosperous farmers) they did not give as much money, all told, including the gifts of their new acquisition, as one well saved, truly sanctified man would do each year with a nominal income!

The Lord's command is: "Feed my sheep!" The true pastor will not encourage disgruntled folk in flitting from church to church. He will however, encourage them to repentance. Well he knows that the new sphere is powerless to break the bondage of sin.

A man came to the writer and asked if he did not think he ought to change his church relations. Observing the amber juice decorating the corners of his mouth and flowing down to the base of the chin, we replied that our candid opinion was that what he needed most was a change of heart!

The sin of proselytizing everywhere prevalent in greater or less degree is doubtless one reason why God cannot bless many of the churches with a mighty pentecostal outpouring. The unfair way in which they are built up in membership, grieves the Holy Spirit.

Is there not some way to repent of our sinful divisions, and love one another, thereby removing one large stumbling block to a world of scoffers? Can we not see that the interest of the cause of Christ at large, far transcends the success of any one local church branch? If proselytizers were as jealous to win men to Christ as they are to win them to their systems, how commendable would be their zeal. But having no Christ to offer man, they offer in His place, a transfer.

A Conference needs to be called for the disarmament of the sinful sectarian spirit. It is indeed strange that if our church names are so important, that Christ did not mention any of them. One poor zealot tried to prove that his church was: mentioned in the Bible-"Amethyst" -- a "Methist".

Although the unifying of church organizations is impracticable, undesirable, a worthless camouflage could it be realized, there needs to be repentance because of mudslinging, biting and devouring one another. There needs to be the brotherly spirit, the helping hand, and the sympathetic heart for all God's children who have entered other folds. Many of the modern sects (holiness and otherwise) have no more dealings one with the other than did the Jews of Christ's time with the Samaritans-ambition for leadership, desire for preeminence, fear of losing the stolen sheep, and jealousy, keeps them apart. [4]

It is true that if sufficient pressure as to the greatness of reputation of some of the leaders and workers be brought to bear upon the situation, they can get together for a three-to-four-days' high pressure Convention and show a seeming unity, but only to drift into the old antagonisms when the camouflage unity spell is over.

When the Spirit moves a Community, calling to self-effacement and unity of all God's children in Christ, carnality stirs in a multitude of activities and a seventeen days' Prayer Meeting is put on to keep the stolen sheep from straying from the fold.

We may tell hungry sheep ever so often that they are the only really worth while sheep in the world, but they will soon die if we do not feed them. Coddling saints and throwing bouquets at them is not a substitute for building them up in the faith and rooting and grounding them in the Truth. We grievously mislead the people when we appeal to them on the ground of party spirit; and when we tell them that they are the Lord's only worth-while people, or that their church is the best church going.

Said a sister to us, "From the teaching of our elders and bishops and preachers, and from the whole tenor of our periodicals, the idea has been ingrained in me that none are right but us; and yet, when God searched out her heart, she publicly confessed that she did not feel right toward a single member of her crowd. It is the old error of the substitution of a doctrine for the vision of Christ. Yet we cannot blame the poor sheep for the ambitious leaders of this people have caused them to err. Instead of building them up in Christ, they have been built up in sectarian peculiarities.

Many times we have had overtures made to us and offers of work if we would join the church where we were holding meetings, with the sincerely pious bait: "I covet your life for Our Church!" How much nobler to covet a life for the Lord and the larger service of ministering to those other sheep not of this fold.

After a thorough doctrinal examination while traveling to Chicago, a zealous proselytizer informed us that we were so much like his people in our views that we belonged to them and did not know it -- it only remained to go through the process of transfer and we would be welcomed with wide open arms by the brethren; the doors would fly open among them for service, etc., etc. The Lord said: "Behold! I set before you an open door, and no man can shut it." How much more blessed to be one of His, than "one of them."

So, everywhere we turn we must guard against the snare of the proselytizers who would entrap us in their sectarian bondage and rob of the freedom which we have in Christ Jesus to love and serve all alike. By this we would not intimate that there is not proper appreciation of sane denominationalism.  

4 It is frequently easier to get the so-termed nominal churches together for a union revival effort than to get the independent churches lined up for a united campaign.