GENERAL WILLIAM BOOTH: SALVATION ARMY PROPHET
By Pastor Max Solbrekken, D.D.
By Pastor Max Solbrekken, D.D.
Shortly before his death General William Booth made the following statement which summed up the philosophy of his life:
While
women weep as they do now, I’ll fight; while little children go
hungry as they do now, I’ll fight; while men go to prison, in and
out, in and out, as they do now, I’ll fight; while there is a
drunkard left, while there is a poor lost girl on the streets, while
there remains one dark soul without the light of God, I’ll fight –
I’ll fight to the very end.
General William Booth stated: "I fear that in the next century there will be Religion without the Holy Ghost, Christianity without Christ, Salvation without Redemption, Forgiveness without Repentance, Politics without God and Heaven without Hell."
That is exactly what we are seeing today in the many of the Churches across the Western world! HOW VERY TRAGIC, INDEED! Leonard Ravenhill wrote: "The greatest tragedy is a SICK Church in a DYING World."
In his book 'The Fire of God' Dr. Oswald J. Smith, founder of People's Church, Toronto stated that while studying the lives of great men of God like Wesley, Whitefield, Finney, Moody and Booth, he discovered that their preaching majored on five subjects. They were sin and salvation, Heaven and Hell and Judgment!
After fifty years in Christ's Ministry, I have discovered that he was correct in his analysis of what type of preaching brings the Holy Spirit's conviction upon sinners unto repentance. Without these foundational doctrines, the Church loses its moral ground and takes a downward spiral that ends in modernism, confusion and apostasy!
General William Booth stated: "I fear that in the next century there will be Religion without the Holy Ghost, Christianity without Christ, Salvation without Redemption, Forgiveness without Repentance, Politics without God and Heaven without Hell."
That is exactly what we are seeing today in the many of the Churches across the Western world! HOW VERY TRAGIC, INDEED! Leonard Ravenhill wrote: "The greatest tragedy is a SICK Church in a DYING World."
In his book 'The Fire of God' Dr. Oswald J. Smith, founder of People's Church, Toronto stated that while studying the lives of great men of God like Wesley, Whitefield, Finney, Moody and Booth, he discovered that their preaching majored on five subjects. They were sin and salvation, Heaven and Hell and Judgment!
After fifty years in Christ's Ministry, I have discovered that he was correct in his analysis of what type of preaching brings the Holy Spirit's conviction upon sinners unto repentance. Without these foundational doctrines, the Church loses its moral ground and takes a downward spiral that ends in modernism, confusion and apostasy!
These five subjects are the bedrock doctrines of Christ that must remain unmovable in a corrupt and perverse world: SIN and SALVATION, HEAVEN and HELL, and JUDGMENT! Sin is a stench in God's nostrils, an abomination in His sight and a blight on the human race, but Jesus Christ the Lamb of God was slaughtered as our substitute on Calvary's Cross, thereby meeting the demands of Divine Justice for our sins!
Rev. James Denny said:"If God has really done something in Christ in which the salvation of the world depends, and if He has made it known, THEN it is our Christian duty to be intolerant of everything which ignores, denies, or explains it away."
The old Puritan Preacher RICHARD BAXTER declared: "I preach like a dying man to dying men. Every time I preach, I preach as if it were the last time I will preach."
Robert Murray McCheyne stated: "Men return again and again to the few who have mastered the spiritual secret, whose life has been hid with Christ in God. THESE ARE OF THE OLD TIME RELIGION, HUNG TO THE NAILS OF THE CROSS."
MARTIN LUTHER said: "I live as though Christ died yesterday, arose today and is coming back tomorrow." Jesus Christ was so real and precious to the Great Reformer that it seemed like yesterday that he was at the Cross watching Jesus Christ suffer, bleed and die for his sins.
And it was like today that He visited the empty tomb and heard the angels saying: "He is not here. He is Risen as He said!" And if He is returning tomorrow, we have less than 24 hours to work, so lets get started!
C.T. STUDD, the great British Missionary to China, India and Africa, stated: "Some want to live within the sound of Church or Chapel bell. I want to run a rescue shop within a yard of Hell."
