Echo taps

Patriotism filled the air of New Concord, the small eastern Ohio town where I grew up.

Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, and Armistice Day were flag-waving holidays of parades and salutes to the United States and to the soldiers, living and dead, who had fought for freedom and democracy.

My father was one of those soldiers. He served in France during World War I, delivering artillery shells to the front on trucks and horse-drawn caissons, and he came home partially deaf from a cannon blast but otherwise unharmed.

He also was a bugler. He blew the bugle for reveille and taps, for mail call and mess call, and when the flag was raised.

At home, on those patriotic days that I remember, Dad was again called upon to play the bugle. He marched in the parade formations when the local veterans from the Thirty-seventh Ohio Division marched down Main Street on Armistice Day, and played the colors when they raised the flag at the American Legion hall at the end of the parade.

But the bugling I remember best was the taps he played on Memorial Day.

A house that is immortal

Moody once said, “Some day you will read in the papers that D. L. Moody, of East Northfield, is dead. Don’t you believe a word of it! At that moment I shall be more alive than I am now. I shall have gone up higher, that is all—out of this old clay tenement into a house that is immortal; a body that death cannot touch, that sin cannot taint, a body fashioned like unto His glorious body. I was born of the flesh in 1837. I was born of the Spirit in 1856. That which is born of the flesh may die. That which is born of the Spirit will live forever.”

Source: The Overcoming Life by Dwight Lyman Moody

Aiming to be a man fully consecrated to Him

D. L. Moody was not an ordained minister, but was an effective evangelist. 

He was once told by Henry Varley, a British evangelist, “Moody, the world has yet to see what God will do with a man fully consecrated to Him.” 

Moody later said, “By God’s help, I aim to be that man.” 

A glorious future

Some think that on the first day we’re converted we’ve got everything. To be sure, we get salvation for the past and peace for the present. 

But then there’s still the glory for the future in store. 

That’s what kept Paul rejoicing. He considered his afflictions, his stripes, and his stonings as nothing, compared to the glory that was to come. He considered those things nothing, so that he could win Christ. 

The right kind of bait

You must use the right kind of bait. Many don’t do this and wonder why they’re not successful. 

You see them try different types of entertainment to try and catch men. This is a step in the wrong direction. 

This perishing world wants Christ, and Him crucified. 

Pull in your nets

I have been asked by many good men, “Why is it we don’t have any results? We work hard, pray hard, and preach hard. Yet success doesn’t come.” 

I’ll tell you why. It is because they spend all their time mending their nets. No wonder they never catch anything. It’s critical to hold inquiry meetings, and pull the net in to see if you’ve caught anything. If you are always mending and setting the net, you won’t catch many fish. 

Who ever heard of a man going out to fish, setting his net, letting it stop there, and never pulling it in? Everybody would laugh at the man’s foolishness. 

Interpreting prophecy

Just before writing some of the most Old Testament-like warnings in the New Testament, in his second letter the Apostle Peter wrote about the nature of prophecy.

He specifically draws a contrast between • something that's made up (“cleverly told fables” 1:16; “a product of human initiative” 1:21) and • something that has the backing of the Holy Spirit (1:21).

He clearly comes down on the side of the supernatural origin in writing, “no prophecy found in Scripture is a matter of the prophet's own interpretation … but it comes when men are moved to speak on behalf of God by the Holy Spirit” (1:21-22).

In other words, the meaning is not up to the man giving it because he is not the origin of it.

Limited man would not come up with God-sized ideas or actions, but he can communicate them.