ON WITH JESUS (Elder P.D. Gold)

The unity of Christ and his people, the members of his body, is the sweetest and most blessed of all relationships. Christ in you, the hope of glory, places within you the most precious pearl. There is no treasure on earth comparable to this. For it identifies you with him, and is the sweet odor that fills the whole house, and causes all your offerings to be acceptable unto God. 

The sweetness of love rests upon and within such, even God's love. For God loves Jesus, yea dwells in him bodily; he therefore that has Jesus has the Father also. For if God gives you Christ, how shall he not with him also freely give you all things? God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life. In all our service to the Lord, it is Jesus that performs: for God works in his people both to will and to do of his own good pleasure. We are created in Christ Jesus unto good works which God has foreordained that we should walk in them. Then this is God's workmanship. In preaching the gospel, what power is it, the preacher's power or God's power, that is mighty in pulling down strongholds? Who is it that quickens the dead? Is it Jesus or the preacher? Is the Lord so limited that he cannot quicken the dead except when a man is preaching the gospel? If the Lord is limited to preachers or preaching, so that he cannot operate on man only in preaching, then is he not a dependent God? I believe he is in every gospel preacher and in every gospel sermon. It is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father that speaketh in you. The reason the virgins love to hear preaching is that Jesus is in the preaching. There is no gospel preached if Jesus is not preached. It is the power of God and the wisdom of God that is preached. The highest, sweetest, and best form of labor ever rendered is when Christ is preached. 

But the Lord can comfort a child of God when there is no preacher present. He can send his word, which is not bound when there is no preacher to preach. Can one die in the comforts of faith when no preacher is present? Can one be raised up even from the dead when no preacher is present? Is the preacher dependent on the Lord, or is the Lord dependent on the preacher? Who makes gospel preachers? Does the Lord make something he cannot get along without when he makes a preacher? 

The Catholic notion that a priest must be present with a dying man to anoint and prepare him for death, and that without this the man cannot enter heaven, is a species of this jugglery that gives to man supposed power over the souls of men. It pleased God by the foolishness of preaching — not by the foolishness, or weakness, or strength of men — but by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. Men's wisdom says by our works we are saved. But it pleased God to save believers by that which is foolishness with men, namely, a crucified Christ. A finished and complete salvation is preached in Christ crucified. There is no work of man in this. There is no preparation of man in this. It is all of God. It is of God that we are in Christ Jesus, who is made of God unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption. Then all our glorying is in the Lord and of the Lord. We are one with him. We are hid in him. It is the Lord's work. His wisdom guides in it. His power performs all the work, and his grace crowns it. The more we are enabled to serve him, the more we praise him that he has counted us meet to serve him, and has wrought in us all this work. It is the Lord's work, and it is marvelous in our eyes. Great and marvelous are thy works, Lord God Almighty. Just and true are thy ways, thou King of Saints.

P. D. G.