Why Not Enlist?

By R. E. Smith

    In that final day we will not be looked over for medals, as someone has well said, but for scars – for scars!

    “Wounds!” you exclaim.  Yes, wounds and why not if we are followers of Him who was “wounded”?

    Friend, ponder well these questions:  What will be my rating in the day of grand review before the Lord of the Universe?  Am I merely a soldier on parade?  Is mine a painted uniform?  Have I shrunk from the open battlefield?  When was my commission changed?  Who made it nil?  Does it still stand?  Is not the Great Commission, the last message of a World Redeemer, changeless?

    Our answer must be rendered as we pass the cross, the empty tomb, Jerusalem with its upper room and its hillside glory under ascension benediction and last long word.

    Jesus came from far away, giving us a complete atonement and a great commission.  He commanded that His message be taken to the uttermost parts.  This is the work with divine authority.  It receives the needed energy from His power.  It carries sanction and if carried, divine approval.  His is the claim, the command; ours the opportunity, the obligation.  His the peace and the power; ours to witness and to win.

    In the great prayer of John seventeen, we read, “These are in the world.”  Jesus knew what it had cost Him, He knew what it would cost them.  To the pursuance of a great task He entrusted a few followers.  They failed and were rebuked.  They slept while He prayed. They deserted while He died.  They were few, feeble, foiled – but appointed.  He knew them and their task ahead.  He knew of the great outreach, the ministry of suffering to be and the flowing of martyr’s blood.

    On that wonderful Pentecostal day these feeble folk were transformed into living dynamos.  Men like them plus the Holy Ghost.  Oh, no, the Holy Ghost plus men like them!  For such awaits the dying world!

    Take one more look into the dark night of heathenism, and drape that night with deeper darkness.  Hang black curtains on every side. Fill the entire area with hopelessness.  Loose upon the sad-faced men and women beyond the border of blessing and holy benediction, fiends of anguish and despair.  They are sorrow-driven, filled with smothered agony, doomed to awful gloom.  Awful eternal doom – unless someone goes to them with the Gospel.

    The Gospel is all and in all to you and to me.  Why do we not with all speed introduce it to the other man, wherever he may be, that it may be all and in all to him!  Why not enlist to this end? “Every one of us shall give account of himself to God” (Rom. 14:12).