Helping Bring Back The King

By Edwin L. Kilbourne

    The watchmen on the walls of the bulwarks of God’s Kingdom on earth are beholding movements, signs and warnings which indicate that the culminating stratagem in the fulfillment of God’s purpose on earth is indeed now being worked out.

    These are days when those who are not following “the plan of the ages” and feeling heartthrobs of the Son of Man could very easily become despondent pessimists. If one were to allow the newspapers and commentators of the day to guide his living and thinking, he could well understand the attitude of those who, in a fit of despondency, take their own lives. Enough is known of the dark picture of our times so that it is unnecessary again to remind ourselves of all that Satan is doing in the marshalling of his forces and machinations in the final working out of his plans.

Laborers Together

    Though we are exhorted not to be ignorant o Satan’s devices, there is the danger of being overcome with the situation of his making, and by which we are so surrounded that we can easily lose sight of the glorious fact that God is at work also, and that His plan is the one that is to conquer! Furthermore, there is the danger of our losing sight of the momentous fact that you and I not only have a part in His plan, but that its successful outcome is very largely dependent upon us.

    We do not have any choice in this set fact of God’s having made Himself dependent on man’s fellowship and cooperation with Him in the fulfillment of His redemptive plan for every creature in all lands. But we do have the choice as to whether or not we will be obedient to His commission and therefore, be a helping or hindering factor in His heart-purposes toward mankind.

Sacrificial Suffering

    In this day I feel the necessity of reminding my own heart and exhorting your heart to realize that one of the prime reasons for the sad spiritual picture of the world today is the fact:  that we as individuals are the ones upon whom lies the load of responsibility for the speedy success of His program that is going to “bring back the King” in His glory and reigning power.

    In this day of gigantic organizations and movements, it is easy to imagine that the church, the missionary societies, and their programs are going to accomplish the fulfillment of His designs as projected at Calvary, empowered at Pentecost and commissioned in His “Go ye.” Organizations are essential to economical procedure in any task, but your part in His organization is not fulfilled when you have added your contribution whether it be large or small, unless it includes the uttermost part of your consecrated being.

    In “all out” warfare, a government is not asking a soldier for his donations, or even for his enthusiastic interest, but for his sacrificial suffering in the leaving of all that he loves, and even to the sacrificing of his life when the call comes. The government likewise demands the limits from all those who cannot go to the battlefront. It reaches into your home, your savings, your bank account; it rations your food, your clothing and even restricts your pleasures; it curtails your travels and regulates your rentals and home life when you cannot travel. In fact, your whole life is controlled.

    Though God’s cause on earth is of far greater moment, and though He too, has planned that all the material needs be supplied by man exists and has his possessions by the goodness and grace of God, He demands nothing and no one. Nevertheless, He has made His cause absolutely dependent on us and that which we possess, but He wants what we give to be entirely a love gift of our own free will.

Voluntary Self-Renunciation

    Had God arbitrarily demanded and taken the necessary men and means, there would not be a man, woman, or child without the blazing light of Calvary on his or her pathway, and every creature would, in every generation, have had the opportunity of knowing the Christ of redemption, as is his right. 

    But (and let us read it to our shame) because it has been put on a voluntarily basis, no generation since Paul’s day has been evangelized, and today a continued accumulated neglect has resulted not only in a world greatly unevangelized, but in which heathen population is hourly increasing faster than we are endeavoring to evangelize it. Strange, indeed, and beyond comprehension, is the reaction of our professed love to Him to whom we owe our all!

    The watchman upon the wall looks out and sees the great unfinished task, the still unfulfilled commission, the disobeyed command. He sees the cause of Christ languishing because you and I as individuals are not measuring up to the love we claim for our Lord, Redeemer and Master.

    In our determination to see an unevangelized world told The Story, are we willing to be as He was who possessed all, but became poor? That is poverty triumphant! Until we have love such as His which will cause us to reserve nothing for self, but live recklessly in regards to self-preservation, the world will never be evangelized, nor will our hands be free of the blood of those who could have known, had we been like our Master.

    The man upon the wall is none other than He who stood over against the treasury – He looks to see how much compelling, constraining love we have for Him and His heart-purposes for unreached millions in this midnight hour.