THE BURNING MESSAGE OF CHRIST'S FORERUNNER

John, the Baptist, was a unique character: he came on the scene of earth's activities at a unique time, preached in a unique place, to a unique audience, a unique message.

As to his unequaled character, an expert in character reading said that among all that were born of women there had not arisen a greater than John the Baptist, He was fearless, courageous, bold; daring. His enemy, Herod. bore witness to his character as fear-producing because of its holiness and justice. John was God's unimpeachable witness. They say that every man has his price -- not so John; he was the voice of no party or shibboleth: he was the voice of one crying in the wilderness; he expounded no doctrinal formulae and harped on no narrow hobby, but called all to repentance in preparation for the Coming One; he called the devotees of systems to follow a Person. He was the voice of God, ever ringing true to Him and exalting Him who was to follow. One translation tells us that for this purpose John the Baptist existed that he might bear witness to the coming One. Is there any more noble purpose for anyone's existence? The Angel gave testimony to the greatness of his character -- "For he shall be great in the sight of the Lord, " (where true greatness is properly estimated).

John was great in his self-effacement. He turned many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God, when he had many chances to turn them to himself as a great prophet, Or even as the Messiah; he kept himself in the desert until the day of his showing to Israel. He was not that Light (Jesus) but was sent to bear witness of that Light. The true Light was Jesus which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. When the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him-"Who art thou?" he denied that he was the Christ or that he was Elias, or that he was that prophet; He was only the voice of Another, inferior to the One who was to follow. My baptism is subordinate to His baptism; I am not worthy to unloose the shoe-latchets from His feet; though He comes after me, He is preferred before me. He encouraged his disciples to leave him and follow Jesus; his witness causing them to follow Christ for -- "I must decrease and He must increase." What a wonderful degree of self-effacement -- would that reader and writer could have more of it. This was the hiding place of his power. How many of us, with exalted professions of deeper grace, could have a praise service like John had when his followers left him and followed Christ? And how many of us would encourage them to hunt a ministry deeper than we could give them? If an audience en toto should leave the Nazarene's to follow the Methodists, or if an Alliance class should go in a body to join the holiness propaganda or the Pentecostal people, or an entire Baptist church go over in a body to the Presbyterians, would there be emulation of John's example, a praise service, or bitterness? John tells them to follow the One greater than he, and we tell them that we have the best thing going. This is a searching test of self-effacement, which John successfully stood, telling his converts that he and his message were inferior; that Another was superior; that he was lesser -- Another greater; John shows self-effacement also in the message he preached; he did not preach himself, he was a serious man in the world on serious business -- to preach God's message. "The word of the Lord came unto John the son of Zacharias in the wilderness." Oh, that all ministers today had the courage to get their message from the Lord and preach the "thus saith the Lord" even though the modern headman's block might be the penalty! Unique John the Baptist! How unlike him are we and thousands who call themselves by his name, and how little many of us know of the tremendous content of his message!

His garb, abode, ascetic life and abstemiousness in eating and drinking were also unique; locusts and wild honey, with no strong drink lest as the old prophet wrote, he err. Camel's hair, fastened with a leathern girdle constituted his garb. There is doubtless more connection between his manner of life and his tremendous spiritual power than we pampered, feted, banqueted, luxury-loving, ease-seeking moderns dream.

The time of his coming was also unique; arriving when for over four hundred years there had been no prophet's voice speaking with authority and power for God; when all men were in expectation and when the devout were eagerly waiting for the Consolation of Israel. This setting added, doubtless, to the power and appeal of his message.

Furthermore, the place or scene of his message was unique; the wilderness of Judea. A man must have great drawing power today to get an audience in the city, but John drew them from the city to the solitary wilderness of Judea by the thousands; he surely solved the problem of getting an, audience in the country; we would call it "Solving the Rural Problem." Spiritual power is the key to an audience; something to preach insures someone to preach to. The size of the preacher's heart regulates the number of his audience, and the state of his inner life, the fate of his sermon.

The audience of the wilderness preacher was also unique: it was composed of the leading religious people of the day, with all the various parties -- Sadducees, Pharisees, Essenes, each thinking in partisan blindness, that they were the chosen of the Lord and doubtless talking over their superiority en route to hear the odd preacher whom they said would further confirm in his message, the rightness of their judgment. John must have read their thoughts, for in one of his startling sallies he said-"Think not to say within yourselves we have Abraham for our ancestor, " for it is not now a matter of ancestral connection or reform party connection, but of bringing forth fruit meet for repentance by all parties and Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down." Ah, how all our claims to superiority fade away before the burning words of the messenger who fears only God! The message is unique: being a call to repentance of professors of formal fruitless and ancestral righteousness unto real, rugged righteousness; from seemingness to reality. He was preaching to Pharisees who were separatists and reformers, filled with a complacency that they were the real people of God. John ignores all their pretense and ¢alls for reality. "When he saw the Pharisees come to his baptism he cried, "O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?" This is indeed startling that the loftiest professors are in greatest danger of the damnation, of hell! What the Pharisees needed anti what most of us today need is the possession of the things which precede the things we profess to have! The Pharisees were claiming the most exalted relation with God, and John calls them back to the very first principles of salvation -- Repentance, with the fruit thereof! And John demanded the scientific test of verification! -- "Bring forth therefore fruit worthy of repentance." The margin reads: "Answerable to amendment of life." Don't talk repentance with selfish unsubdued hearts and lives centered on self interest.

Again let us repeat: We need the things which precede what we claim to have, which is another way of saying we have not that which precedes rightness with God in the lowest degree nor that which follows this degree; we seem to have lost our way; this is the logical conclusion to the statement. Let us test this statement. Many claim to be holy, but peace precedes holiness Hebrews 12:14, and peace with all men, but do we live at peace among ourselves in the various divisions of the Higher Life Movement, or among the various divisions of the church? We claim the holiness which is subsequent to the peace and yet we are full of war! Church Movement, Community, World! We claim to be filled with the Spirit and that which precedes this is perfect unity; the disciples prior to the reception of the Holy Ghost on the Day of Pentecost, were all of one accord in one place before the Holy Ghost came!!! It is not unkind to say that those claiming that which is subsequent to the unity, the filling of the Spirit, need sadly that which precedes the filling, the one-accordness and the one-placeness -- the unity!

Take the content of John's message as preparatory to the baptism of Jesus and the conclusion is irresistible that many of those claiming Jesus' baptism really need John's. Who of us have the fearless courage of John; who of us are free as he was from the respect of faces and the fear of rulers? Who of us so incisively rebuke the evil of plural marriage within the life-time of a living companion? Who of us would as readily go to the headman's block for loyalty of convictions, as John? Who of us are as dead to the world and to men, as John? Who of us have our bodies under the perfect control which he had his under? Who of us preach such a standard of holiness as he preached in repentance? Who of us practice in the deeper life, the standard he preached in the initial life? When we can answer these questions by claiming that we excel in John's courage and message, then we can deny that our great need is the things which precede what we claim to have.

Repentance or rejection is the alternative John offers. "Every tree therefore, which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire." -- the axe is laid to the root of the tree -- His message to the most advanced "professors" is a message of repentance for the sin of fruitlessness. The call is to "every tree, " no matter what the profession, John insists upon the actual fruit of repentance. The Chinese have a vivid expression for repentance: "Sorrow and change." John was like the man reputed to be from Missouri -- he must be shown. With all the endless round of form and ceremony and ritual and traditional observance and devotion to temple and synagogue, there was no moral power exerted on the life to break up selfishness. So, we fear, is it today, that with all our whooping and shouting, noise and demonstration, loud praying and profession, emotional singing, hand-clapping and handkerchief waving, marching and holding up the hand, we are not yet free from selfishness or self.

John insists that if a man has repented, truly, he will show the change in a transition from selfishness to benevolence. The audience would fall back on their relation to the externals of the Temple as the evidence of their righteousness and rightness with God, but John said that Jehovah was tired of that and called for the real fruit of righteousness, or the result would be the penalty of being cut off (rejected) and cast out. When people fail to bring forth fruit unto God, He calls them to repentance and failing to secure that, He rejects them and gives the kingdom to others.

With the fidelity and firmness of love, John sternly tells the divided religious parties before him that they are all wrong; that they have lost their way and that they should stop fault-finding and turn to repentance and fruit-bearing. Every tree -- bringeth forth fruit, or fire! Methodist tree, Baptist tree, Presbyterian tree, Holiness tree, every tree. We need this message of John preached to the multitudinous religious parties of our day who all, in a measure, seek their own and not purely the things which are Jesus Christ's. A general house-cleaning for all, and repentance of all, with its accompanying fruit -- or fire! The Master confirmed this note of his forerunner: "Every branch in me that beareth not fruit He taketh away -- If a man abide not in Me he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them. and cast them into the fire, and they (the unfruitful) are cast into the fire and burned." Fruitfulness is the badge of rightness with God. "Bear fruit. so shall ye be my disciples." Fruitlessness always has lurking in the background, some unrepented sin! Nothing can hinder fruit except sin!

The deeply religious, but unspiritual people, wondered what John meant by the insinuation of selfishness, and asked him to explain: "And the people asked him, saying, What shall we do then? He answered and saith unto them. "He that hath two coats let him impart unto him that hath none!" This was a shocking answer to those who had lived self-centered lives -- as though ther fellows had no claim to their benevolence. Real repentance is a change from selfishness to benevolence! It is a hard saying -- who can bear it? Not the hypocrite, not the Pharisee, nor the one who lives in his selfish emotions, nor the one who substitutes Churchianity for, Christianity. There must be a change of masters -- from the mastership of Satan and self and the world to the Mastership of Jesus. "One is your Master, even Christ; -- "And all ye are brethren." No one who makes Jesus Master, is indifferent to the interests of his brother. John the Baptist recognized this fact and called for a repentance that would think of the interests of our brother as well as our own; that would look not only on our own things but also on the things (or welfare) of others: hence, with him, repentance included impartation (under Divine guidance) of the extra coat. This does nat mean that a man might not have two coats, or three or four, or as many as he needs arid uses, or a surplus of other things, for we are commanded to use this world's things (not abuse them); or the possession of whatever is essential in life or. business, but it does mean that, with all, he recognizes the Lordship of Jesus and the rights of his fellows and is ever ready to impart the coat or aught else the Lord directs him to give. John continued: "He that hath meat, let him do likewise" (impart to the needy). The margin reads -- "Food" -- let him impart of his food to the unfortunate brother who lacks.

A man may be limited in his ability to impart to others, but never in his willingness if he has received John's message. There may be a necessary use of the cold storage, but there is a vast difference, for instance, between storing eggs. from avarice and storing them with benevolent motive to keep the price reasonable, because they are scarce. Right wrongs no one and is not condemned by God or man. Greed has the. withering curse of both. One baron received a withering rebuke from a conscientious missionary to whom he had given a fifty dollar check. He took the missionary through his cold-storage and calling his attention to vast stores of eggs, the price of which was then prohibitive, and said that he was holding them for a further advance with blazing indignation, the missionary reached for the check and handed it to him, saying that if that was the way he got his money, by taking advantage of his fellows' necessities, he did not want it. Bravo! Missionary!! May God greatly multiply your kind, who will not sell indulgences to modern sinners for ill-gotten money! That sanctified professor who, during the war, when his fellows needed food, refused three dollars a bushel for three thousand bushels of potatoes, grown from God's seed, in God's soil, and aided by God's sunshine and rain and other unknown laws of growth, holding them from the market for five dollars per bushel price, was a potential murderer, knowing no more of the sanctification Christ died to provide than the Hottentot, and as far from the repentance leading to the impartation to the need of his fellows which John the Baptist taught, as the East is from the West. And the farmer who held wheat that then was over three dollars a bushel, for a further advance, with which he planned to buy an automobile, received his just punishment when some pest ruined the wheat. The spirit of avarice in unduly hoarding needed food, which Bible repentance imparts, is also potential murder, for if the creatures from whom it is withheld should die of starvation, -the withholders are their murderers. And the man who juggles the coal-market either by withholding coal or labor or cars or authority, is the murderer of those who freeze to death or contract disease from insufficient heat. These men are often respected members of the church and often they profess the highest life, yet, according to the rugged, fearless, God-inspired message of the Baptist, their imperative need is of the things which precede that which they profess to have; namely, the impartation of coats, food, meat, coal, work, good wages, oil and money to him that hath none; and they who receive of their ill-gotten pelf are what the law calls partis criminis, partakers of crime. Oh, the accounting day for the preachers and church leaders and colleges who have stood by with outstretched hand for a share in the stolen loot! Anyone who has not the unselfish spirit of impartation of that which is just and equal in all his relations with men, has never repented of sin.

What has always perplexed the writer is where we come in who claim to have a baptism in advance of the baptism unto repentance which John preached, and yet who still have never had our selfishness conquered. It is startling, by the evidence, that we have neither John's nor Jesus' baptism. Somewhere the enemy has put a counterfeit over on us and until we discover and admit this, we will have no interest in the real. Let us examine further and closer. "He that hath two coats let him impart to him that hath none, and he that hath meat (or food) let him do likewise." -- that is, let both divide with the unfortunate who have none. This is a fifty-fifty division. Fifty percent of all! One half! and what amazes us is that John asked this of the people in his baptism of repentance. He was not as eager to get members as we are, so he did not lower the standard and make it easy for the dear people. He would rather they be embarrassed with the unpleasant truth now than when they stand before God's throne, so he kept back no truth in order to build up his own popularity. Half of all in initial salvation! Where do we come in who claim full salvation, a degree higher than the initial? Oh, so much higher in theory, and oh, so much lower often, in practice, when we squeeze out a Mormon's one-tenth for the Lord; and often that not fairly computed. It would surely be a gain to our Higher Life to take it back to John in the wilderness and get the content of his lower life added to it. Oh, that we would stop playing church and playing holiness and playing Pentecost and playing Victory and get down to business and really repent! That God would do for us what an Irish friend asked Him to do for him: "O, Lord. I want you to take away from me everything that looks like Mike!" Amen, O Lord, take away from us all everything that looks like us and let remain only that which looks like Thee!

The servants of Jesus are a unit with Him in their demands of discipleship's conditions. Finney demanded of those who were converted under his ministry that they surrender utterly everything to Jesus as Lord and Master, and some took him so seriously that they appeared before a notary public and had a Quit Claim Deed duly wrought and sealed in which they solemnly quit-claimed everything they possessed over to the Lord to be used as he should direct. How different was his spirit from Dowie's, who had the money paid to Dowie.

A man under terrible conviction, worth half a million dollars, came to the writer and asked what he should do, and our reply was (and the reply of every servant of God should be) "Do only what God clearly leads yon to do." And the Lord is a unit with His sincere servants. confirming by the Spirit the Word preached -- the hand of the Lord was with John -- and preaching Himself the same note that His loyal forerunner had preached. He confirms John's preaching of repentance as the gateway of salvation, to the self-righteous Jews -- by sounding the same note in His first sermon: "From that time Jesus began to preach and to say -- "Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." He left them not long in doubt as to what that repentance was to involve, "Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple." He boldly calls Matthew to leave his lucrative position as Collector of the Port, which he forthwith does, and immediately follows Jesus in the way; thee fishermen who left boats, nets. and their established trade of supplying the Jerusalem market with fresh fish, do not hesitate to bid adieu to father, equipment, and money-making business.

Take the case of Zacchaeus, the publican. At the sight of Jesus he gives away half of his fortune; illustrating the statement of John in his epistle, that whosoever seeth Jesus sinneth not. Many of us will never lose our avarice and covetous selfishness until we have a vision of Jesus. There was something about the unselfish, open, benevolent, beautiful countenance of Jesus which so impressed Zacchaeus that he could never be as he had been before; he saw that his whole life was wrongly centered in the interests of Zacchaeus, no matter whom the oppressive juggernaut must crush to minister to Zacchaeus' surplus, and that henceforth his life must have for its center, the Man whom he saw coming down the road. "The half of my goods I give to the poor." This was the type of convert the Master was interested in, those who became firebrands forthwith. The answer of Christ to Zacchaeus is often overlooked: "This day salvation is come to thy house!" If as much as half was surrendered by Zacchaeus, where is our conception Wrong when we claim Victory, Pentecost, Healing and Sanctification and the blessing received at Keswick, etc., blessings a degree higher than Zacchaeus received, and in our stewardship take a backward step? If a man gives fifty percent when he receives the "first blessing, " he should surrender one hundred percent for Divine control when he receives the "second blessing."

To the publicans who came to John's baptism he said; in reply to their inquiry, "Master, what shall we do?" -- "Exact no more than that which is appointed you." Repentance for exaction! John's rugged type of repentance cures a man from selfish exaction, of all oppression and defrauding, of all exorbitant rates of interest and profiteering, even where the law permits.

The writer knows of one manufacturer who, on a supposed death-bed, plead with God to be allowed to live so that he could repay the shop-men whom he had robbed of living wages. Another case was that of an old Jewish woman who saw that her fortune had been made by underpaying hundreds of clerks in the great Department Store and she had no rest in her conscience until she restored several hundred thousand dollars to the clerks, a friend of the writer receiving a check for $700.00. How many swollen fortunes would shrink if John's burning message on the sin of exaction could ba. heard and heeded! All these things were given "for our admonition on whom the end of the age has come."

John did not specifically preach it, yet it was so strongly implied that it should be given passing notice -- Reparation -- Restitution -- not as a means of salvation but as a fruit of repentance -- namely, the adjustment of all accounts as able and every wrong to man made right where possible. Then too, Separation from sin and from fellowship with sinners is included in his message -- the Christian will change crowds; he will not go to many of the old places and do many of the old things.

To the soldiers, John says -- "Do violence to no man, " and some took this so literally that it is said, for the first three centuries of the Christian Era there were no Christian soldiers found in the armies; that, when soldiers were converted, they frequently paid the price of martyrdom because of their convictions.

Again, John said that they were to be free from false accusation and to be content with their wages. To the ruler, Herod, he ministered reproof for having his brother's wife while the brother was yet alive -- "It is not lawful for thee to have her" -- in other words, if the law of the Romans did sanction the adulterous union, the law of God did not. How criminally silent are many pulpits today about this fearful, and ever-increasing evil of easy divorce and re-marriage, with America holding the world record! John reproved Herod for "All the evils he had done." How rare today is the ministry of reproof! How, by our silence, we condone sin in others and become partakers of their sins! "Thou shalt not suffer sin upon thy neighbor; but thou shalt in anywise reprove thy neighbor, else it will be sin in thee, " wrote the old prophet. Again, Paul charges Timothy: "In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus who will judge the living and the dead, in the light of His appearance and His reign, I adjure you to preach the Word; keep at it in season and out of season, refuting, checking and exhorting men; never lose patience with them, and never give up your teaching, for the time will come when people will decline to be taught sound doctrine and will accumulate teachers to suit themselves and tickle their own fancies; they will give up listening to the Truth and turn to myths. Whatever happens, be self-possessed, flinch from no suffering, do your work as an evangelist, and discharge all your duties as a minister." (Moffatt's translation.) How criminally silent we are, often, about the selfishness and sin of paying members of church, camp and movement!

John's message also contained a note of aspiration for a greater baptism than his, administered by the One coming after him -- "He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost." And, as though the searching things enumerated by John were not enough, the record adds -- "And many other things preached he in his exhortation unto the people." His baptism was a baptism unto repentance for the remission of sins, "The objective of his baptism was not the mode nor the element but unto repentance, involving the elements we have pointed out. There is great danger of being more enthusiastic for the mode of its administration than its tremendous content or objective, which gives the knowledge of salvation by the remission of sins.

This, in brief, is a picture of the unique wilderness preacher and his meteor-like, but startlingly effective ministry. God gram us more of his type for an age sunken in religious complacency!