Frankfort Pilgrim College - Pilgrim Yearbook (Frankfort, IN)

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51112 fflvww fx F 1 0 L1terary PERFECTION-AN EXHORTATION CContinuedj to you, Be perfect l You are dealing with His will and with what He com- mands. It is what God says, that we want and He says that He wants you to be perfect. You and I have to measure up to and meet the demands of His will. There is 110 other way at hand. VVe had just as well face the question and then we had just as well put it into practice. I dontt care if man's practices have put it away down to a low standard and they say, 4'This is the way, walk ye in it. Notwithstanding God in some sense is demanding something here that is like Himself, at least in some measure, and God wants you to be like Himself in the degree and measure and manner and in the thing he has put down here as perfection. God will never be satisfid with you if you fall short. He may be content with you in a measure of time while you arc making the effort, while you are trying to reach the plane, but even then you may hear the word, even before you are ready, You have camped at this place long enough, you have stopped with this attainment long enough, go on to perfection. I don 't like to think that we are to go on and on and never get anywhere. I don't like that a bit more than I would like to be asked to sit down to a good dinner and the people say, Try to make out your dinner, and me sit there and not eat a thing. I don't like the idea of all the time reaching out for a thing and never getting it. God means for you and me to be perfect. He has a reason why He wants us to be like that. He wants us to know Why. When I hear Jesus out there on His face before the Father making the plea and the cry that they, his people may be one, even as the Father and He are one, I begin to sec that God wants us to be like Himself so thatwe will be in perfect unity and unison with Himself and His true children. That is what God is after. He wants his church to be in unison with Himself. He wants them to be one with Himself and with His Son. He wants them to be in harmonious unity, without friction. Oh, if the saved person could only get things fixed up and oiled up so that he could get along without trouble or friction and a lot of things that a1'e continually dc- stroying the unity of a soul with its God: and in the church, if We could have the thing running and moving nicely without the friction that is thrown in that is destroying the unity with one another! Just think of it. There is where our great trouble lies! Our trouble is but little with the outside world. Do you know that one of the great objects of the Holy Ghost is to baptize the church into one body, is to baptize its several members into one body, and how per- fect is that oneness that comes by that baptism. It is so perfect that the eye cannot get along without the hand. the hand without the foot, and the foot without every other member of the body, and that when any member is injured the other parts immediately do those things which would make the other member whole. Is that the way things are Working? Is that the kind of spirit we find manifest about us? It should be that way. Some boys were out playing yesterday, I was standing near by. All at once one of the boys sprained his ankle. I turned at his ery. There was pain in his voice and I saw that his hands Were on the wounded part doing every- thing they could do by rubbing to ease the pain, the mind was lost. in the act of helping thc suffering member. Oh, he couldn't keep his hands back from it! There was a oneness of purpose, of sympathy, of action, the hands busy trying to relieve, the voice crying with pain that made known the need and was crying to everything about for help to relieve the suffering.

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' Uhr 45121111111 a' Literary 'Q Q9 G9 PERFECTION-AN EXI-IORTATION Qi f By C. G. Taylor ax I believe that the Lord is shaping things throughout the earth for His K9 coming. Things in the natural world, the governments of the earth, social ca life, religious life, morals, and everything else that can point to the fact of the E' Qi near approach of Christ are pointing that way. Political events as well are F shaping rapidly for the final fulfillment of the prophecies concerning His 2 coming. The nations are again filled with jealousy. Fear and trouble sit upon 9, the brow of almost every government. The fight for prestige and supremacy L9 J is on all through the East. Peace has almost departed from all these countries. Q The man of sin seems to be getting' ready to raise his head and take possession of things and then the end. Glory! I do not love unbelief and sin and ungodliness, but a time of unbelief will come. It is now coming and seeing it makes me feel like I am going to live C9 until the coming of the Lord. I want to see His coming in the air to take His QR Q people for so they will not go through the difficulties and sorrows that are E0 coming on the world. Just recently they have opened that great seat of learning for the Jews , in Palestine. The Jews have been granted the privilege of a Jewish state, the erection of their temple is planned, they are gathering back. This is the fig tree sign of the coming. And then when we see the anti-Christ spirit that is arising- in Assyria from where the man of sin is to come, f'Look up for you Q3 know your redemption draweth nigh! Glory to God! Gy Q The people are running into apostasy at a fearful pace. Men of God are Q weeping between the porch and the altar, crying for God's help and deliver- ance. Then there is a settling downg the keenness of vision is gone. or goingg th there is a lukewarmness ong and there is not the seeking for the deep spiritual things that there was a few years ago. Surely the Lord is at hand. Come 2 quickly, Lord. This is just the prelude for what I want to say to you. These signs tell me J that His approach is innninent. I am asking the Lord to keep me ready for it. Q Q Hut what does it mean to be ready? There is a text of scripture in the fifteenth EQ ---' chapter of Matthew, the forty-eighth verse, Be ye therefore perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect. which will help us to answer the question. If the Bible is God's word, how can any one stay in indifference. in luke- 69 warmness, in carelessness, in sin, when this word breaks on your ear? This text G9 QQ is God's own word, and was spoken by His son, the Lord Jesus Himself. It G3 commands you and me to confess the great truth that it is God's will,-our is perfection. You and I cannot get around it. God forbid that any might at- s . g tempt to explain it away, or any heart evade it. or any conscience stir itself gf against it, or put it aside from the practices of life. This is God's thought and it was not said just simply for a select few, but it is made so broad that it tg is almost universal. It is God's thought for the world that you be perfect. If ED you believe that God is perfect, you realize that a perfect God could not utter Gy anything less than an expression like this. He could not declare his full will for you and me to be anything less than the perfections that belong to us as His children. He could not be true and utter anything lower than that for ci the final work of grace in the hearts and lives of his children. It is folly to GQ think that He could let people be deceived by any thought as coming from 3 Himself that we should be lower than being like Himself in our sphere. Young man, God says to you, 'KBC perfect! Young woman, God says 3 iv -9 4-

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WIP CEIPHIHH 3 Q E 0 Sf Literary 2. 3 PERFECTION-AN EXHORTATION E CConti.nuedJ This old world is already condemned by sin, already under the throes of a K9 smitten conscience, already suffering the pangs caused by being away from 3 Q God and out of communion and harmony with Him. Why doesn't somebody Ci run with a cry of sympathy, with a voice of love, with the hands of helpful- f, ness, with brains to think and act? I want you to know when I saw two of 't 1. the boys quit the game, quit their own pleasures, lay aside their own dc- fi lights, turn away from their comrades, and come one on either side to support. R J their stricken friend and finally taking him up in their hands and carrying him to their room, that I didn't hear one wo1'd of, You ought to have been C' ashamed of yourself, or Good enough for you, or Well, you ought to suffer for the way you have done. I didn't hear an exclamation of that kind. VVhat am I talking about 0? I am talking Christian perfection, the per- Q fection of divine love, about what Jesus Christ will do when the heart is Ci made new and His presence in the heart is unhindered and what He will cause QQ you to do. And yet, so often right in the so-called church of Jesus Christ, we see little of the manifestation of the unity and oneness that there should I 1 , be. For the church folks too often say, Good enough for him, he deserved 3 it. It should have come harderfl I do not believe what he said, or 'KI won't have any thing to do with him. You hear those things thrown out on every side. The other fellow hears it and he wonders at such exclamations, Q9 and the barrier is thrown up and division comes in, and then we go out Q Q without ever making it right or fixing it up, and we tell the world, This is our Q Christianity, come and serve God,', but we drive them from God by such me practices. We talk about a world that is dying for love, dying for sympathy. -'QU 3 Then as we testify to the goodness of God. to us, we let that neighbor see gossip, 'Q baekbiting and lack of confidence and when he wants a penny's worth of bread, we have nothing to spare of the bread of life! If I get a glimpse of myself, if I see myself, if I am made to know myself, then I can get away J from it, but if I don 't see myself, I may go on and o11 indefinitely without ever C5 getting away from it and be lost and cause my neighbors to be lost. J And then another thing that God meant is that He wanted to assist us in our communion with Himself. There is one thing beautiful above everything else and,that is to feel something warming the heart as we hear our brothers ---- EJ and sisters talk to one another about Christ and see their spirits lift, with the Q9 Q love of Hod in their souls, Godward and toward one another. I too feel some- P P thing burn in my soul and I love to have it like it was with the disciples when they walked down with Christ through the country when they said, t'Did i not our hearts burn within us while He talked to us? If I can just get my gf brothers and sisters to talk the talk in my presence that which will burn on my heart, l like to have them around. I think they are the finest folks in the C9 world. But when they want to tell me the faults of my neighbors, when they X3 want to make me a dumping grounds for trash, it doesn't make my heart burn in unity with them nor in sympathy with my fellow man, nor doesn't make me want to pour out my heart and faultfinding and pretence. They that feared the Lord spake often one to another. I am con- Q9 55 vineed to the depths of my soul that all around there are souls who are hun- E3 gry and souls who are thirsty and souls who arc longing and crying to hear somebody talk out of a heart full of love for God, of the things of God. That is what the old prophet meant when he said that they who loved the Lord W2 -Snif-