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Wednesday August 6, 2014

A CALL TO UNITED PRAYER

J. K. POPHAM

[From The Gospel Standard, September 1914.]

In times so serious, in circumstances so calamitous and terrible, we feel moved to say a few words to our readers with respect to what, as a people, we should do.  We cannot be indifferent to the welfare of our dear country.  It is the land of our birth, our privileges, our blessings.  In our midst God has in infinite condescension placed His name.  He has given us His glorious gospel, bestowed on us the unspeakable gift of a long line of true ministers, some of them mighty in the Scriptures, clear and powerful in expounding them, and eminently useful in their generation, and destined to be so in the future, England has been as the land of Goshen; and dark as our country has become, we doubt not God has still many in it in whose dwellings the true light shines.  But this nation, so peculiarly favoured, has deeply revolted from God, and provoked Him to anger with continual sins.  Our national sins, our church sins, our family sins, and our personal sins are before Him.  We His people have not listened and answered to the warning voice of His servants the Reformers, the Puritans, and the ministers of later date who have spoken in His name to the people of our land.  Many of Owen’s words are appropriate to us and our times; we give an instance from one of his Posthumous Sermons: “Neither you nor I can tell what to say as to the sins of the nation, of all sorts of persons, – our priests, prophets, princes, people.  Nor you nor I can tell what to say unto the deadness and slowness of all sorts of professors – of me and you and of all sorts of professors – to come to such a reformation as may give us faith to plead for an interest in the fining-pot, and not in the furnace.

I know what the general hopes of men plead and speak.  Well, bring forth your reasons, plead them before God this day if you can, if you have anything to plead but sovereign grace and mercy.”  We can use these words as our own.  And if God should now come to search Jerusalem with candles, and punish the men that are settled on their lees, who should stand?  (Zeph. i. 12).

Can we then wonder that evil has overtaken us?  True, this war is unjustly forced on us.  Against Germany we have done nothing to cause it.  So far we go to battle with clean hands; we must fight for our national existence.  But we are not guiltless before God: against Him we have grievously sinned, cast His Word behind our back, provoked Him to anger continually to His face.  And so we go behind the injustice done to us by men, and see richly-deserved wrath from God coming down upon us.  “Without cause” GOD was moved against Job, and permitted a fourfold evil to befall him.  And to Job there were no Sabeans, no fire, no Chaldeans, no wind, but only God.  Shall not we, against whom God has many things, acknowledge Him the Author of this present calamity?

We believe there are a few in our land who are moved to pray in secret and mourn with godly sorrow over their own and the nation’s sins; and we are thankful that there have already been special meetings for humiliation and prayer held in some of our chapels; but we think it would be pleasing to God if we as a denomination set a time apart for such meetings.  Many instances are given us in Scripture of God’s people in calamities and necessities unitedly waiting on Him (2 Chron. xx. 3, 4; Joel ii. 15; Zeph. ii. 1-3).  Be it ours to follow them.  And we venture to suggest the second week in September as a suitable time for this purpose.  Any day in that week, according to the circumstances of our congregations, may be arranged by our brethren in the ministry and deacons.  And may the Lord pour upon us a spirit of prayer and true repentance, and cause our eyes, like Jehoshaphat’s, to be upon Him alone in this day of trouble.

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