The Worst Enemy of Mankind!

The Worst Enemy of Mankind!

"being examples to the flock" (1 Peter 5:3).

"He will remind you of my way of life in Christ Jesus, which agrees with what I teach everywhere in every church" (1 Cor. 4:17).

They expect to see our descriptions of piety copied into our own conduct; and happy the man who having set forth true godliness in his discourses, in all its beautiful proportions and all its glowing colors, shall constrain the audience to exclaim, "The painter has delineated his own likeness!" Happy the man who,when the people shall ask, "What is true religion?" shall be not only able to reply in reference to his pulpit, "Come and hear," but in reference to his life, "Come and see!"

He alone is an honor to his pastoral office, who lives the gospel which he preaches, and adorns by his conduct the doctrines which he believes. But the unholy minister is a disgrace to Christianity, and the worst enemy of mankind! He is the most powerful abettor of infidelity, and does more to wither the eternal interests of mankind than the most malignant and pestiferous treatises that ever issued from the press. If he perished alone in his sins, our feelings might be those of unmingled pity. But when we view him ruining the souls of others by his example, we unite abhorrence with our compassion, just as we would at the conduct of the shepherd who first drove his flock over a precipice, and then dashed himself upon the rocks below!

~J. A. James~
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As Long As Preachers Allow Their Sermons To Be Dictated By Public Sentiment or the Worldly Desires of Their Hearers!

"They are not of the world, even as I am not of it" (John 17:16).

"As Christ is, so are we in this world" (1 John 4:17).

A Christian is one who is Christlike in character, in desire, and in deportment. No other has any right to bear Christ's name. Yet there are a multitude of people who call themselves Christians, who bear no resemblance to Christ in their lives. 

One of the most pitiable things that we can behold, is one who professes to be a citizen of the kingdom of God - and yet lives like a citizen of the kingdom of satan. The worldly professor fills his  days with folly - but his cup of joy is always bitter at the last. He gathers up the "fools gold" that glitters in earthly things. He lives after the flesh and after the world. He goes with the crowd. He misses all the blessedness of righteousness, and, worst of all, he misses heaven at the last. "You adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God." (James 4:4).

Those who still love the pride and vanity of the world, those who are absorbed in its frivolities, those who covet its gold and its honors, those who love its applause - these are those who are of the world.

Those hypocritical professors who bear Christ's name, but will not obey Him - dishonor Him, and by their example influence others to do the same, how shall they escape damnation? If there is one thing that God hates above all else, it is a proud and worldly heart! Such a heart can never be a reverential heart. Its religion is but hypocrisy. It is only a shame! It has no reality. It is only a cloak of respectability, while the heart is full of corruption.

The Christian life is, and ever will be, a life of separation from sin and pride and worldliness. If you are not willing to be thus separated, then you should have common honesty enough not to profess to be what you very well know that you are not! If you are going to be a Christian in name, then be one in reality.

Your character, not your profession, will be what will matter in the final judgment. "God will give to each person according to what he has done. To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality - He will give eternal life. But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil - there will be wrath and anger" (Romans 2:6-8).

If all preaching had honesty enough and courage enough to preach the truth - then the tide of worldliness that is overwhelming such a multitude of souls and sweeping them into perdition, would be somewhat stayed. As long as preachers allow their sermons to be dictated by public sentiment or the worldly desires of their hearers - they will cater to fashions, and souls by the million will drift on into the bottomless pit. Oh, what a reaping such preachers will have at the judgment! The full measure of God's wrath will fall on those preachers who fail to be true to souls and to God, in preaching those truths the Bible clearly teaches against sin and worldliness.

~Charles Naylor~
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Your Life Preaches All the Week!

A man is what he is on his knees before God - and nothing more! In great measure, according to the purity of the instrument, will be success. It is not great talents which God blesses - so much as great likeness to Christ! A holy minister is a powerful weapon in the hand of God!

Study universal holiness of life. Your whole usefulness depends on this; for your sermons last but an hour or two - but your life preaches all the week! If satan can only make a minister covetous; or a lover of praise, or of pleasure, or of fine eating - he has ruined your ministry!

"Lord, make me as holy as a pardoned sinner can be!"

~Robert Murray McCheyne~