The Bible companion, for pastors, evangelists and teachers...

Preface

The writer in his work as pastor and pastor evangelist iias found the scriptural facts contained in the following pages an exceedingly great help. The book has been, espe- ■cially in his evangelistic work, a kind of pocket companion.

In the many revival meetings he has held there has scarcely been one in which he has not had occasion to use one or more of the "studies," and always many of the Scriptures given at the close in answer to the excuses and reasons offered by old and young for not being Christians. He has repeatedly used them to great advantage in the preliminary or opening half-hour's service before the preaching, or as the Scripture lesson for that service. By this means these Scriptures have swept away all refuges, one by . qne, or lielped to get the stones of real difficulty out of the way of honest, earnest souls. The spiritual help these have rendered In meetings has been immense.

For the instruction of the church and the training of the young people in the regular services, as well as in revival work, the studies have also been of great value,, focusing the light of the Scriptures on these important subjects. Not only will pastors, young pastors especially, evangelists and Sunday School teachers find help here, but it is hoped that everyone who loves to read and study the Word of God, old and young alike, without regard to official position, will lind a great many doctrinal and practical questions, even some very difficult ones, treated in a plain, simple, compre- Tiensible way that will prove a real pleasure and profit. So much of the Scriptures is used, nearly two thousand texts being quoted, that it seems like opening great, rich gold mines of truth for God's children to revel in and enrich themselves with. So may it prove. The work might be called "Theology made easy," but this is not' its chief aim.

Many have regarded the "Studies" as a kind of Bible Wonder-book. Over and over in meetings and elsewhere the writer has been asked where a book like this could be obtained, and he has always been compelled to say, "Make one for yourself, as I did mine, with years of study and work." But realizing that few, if any, have been willing or able to pay such a price, the thought has come of publishing the book, so that everyone could have a copy for a small sum, get help from it, and be made more useful in the Master's service. That this double blessing may come upon the reader is the prayer of the writer.

W. A. AYRES.

Wichita, Kans., July 1, 1912.

CONTENTS. Page

Introduction, "Credo" 9

1. Tlie Bible 17

2. The Seven Sealed Savior 21

3. The Triune God 26

4. The Divinity of Christ 29

5. The Holy Spirit 32

6. Distinct Personality of the Holy Spirit 36

7. Office and Work of the Holy Spirit 39

8. Obedience Enjoined 41

9. Reward of Obedience 45

10. The Law 47

11. New Testament Commands , 50

12. New Testament Obedience 52

13. Man in Sin 54

14. Fruits of Sin 57

15. Penalty of Sin 59

16. Eternal Punishment 61

17. God's Justice and Mercy.... 64

18. The Unpardonable Sin 66

19. The Way of Salvation 68

20. Man's Free Agency , 71

21. God's Sovereignty in Election 74

22. Satan 77

23. Our Substitute 79

24. "The Blood" 83

25. Universalism 86

26. Repentance 88

27. Confession 92

28. Invitations 94

30. Change of Heart 102

31. Regeneration 105

32. Evidences of Regeneration 109

33. Seven Steps to Peace 112

34. Forgiving 115

36. The Divine Lamentation and Entreaty 123

37. The Heathen 127

38. Missionary Study 131

39. Justification 13&

40. Children and Salvation.— 141

41. Sanctification, or Bible Holiness 14&

42. Perseverance of the Saints 150

43. Consecration 157

44. Growing in Grace 160

45. Amusements 163

46. Following Jesus 166

47. The Church 171

48. Baptism 18a

49. The Lord's Supper 18&

50. Kingdom of God 19a

51. The Sabbath 195^

52. The Resurrection 199

53. Christ's Second Coming 20a

55. Heaven 219

56. God's Ownership 225

57. My Stewardship 225

58. Tithing 231

59. Temperance 235

60. What is a Christian? 241

61. The Christian Armor 24a

62. Loss and Gain 246

64. Christian Work 253

65. Twelve Steps in Back-Sliding 25S

67. Some Errors 261

68. Reviving 265

69. "Ebenezer" 267

70. The Lord's Prayer 269

71. Gethsemane 271

72. Praying 274

73. Asking for God 27^

74. Baptism of the Holy Spirit , 278

75. Filled with the Spirit 281

76. Led by the Spirit 283

78. A Faith Lesson 288

79. Love Chapter— 1 Cor. 13 290

80. Love Lesson 292

81. Vine and Branches 295

82. The Beatitudes .'. 297

84. Working 301

85. Consecrated Service 303

86. Soul-Winning 306

87. "Another Vessel" 309

89. Infirmities Healed 314

90. Nehemiah 316

93. Conditions of Success — Desire, Repentance, Choice.. ..323

94. Conditions of Success — Prayer, Faith.. 325

95. Conditions of Success 328

96. Conditions of Defeat 331

97. Conditions of Defeat 333

98. The Battle the Lord's 336

99. Captive Church Liberated 338

101. Marriage and Divorce 343

Twenty-five Excuses for not Coming to Christ 348

Twenty-five Reasons Why Sinners Do not Come to

Christ 361

Index - 372

W. A. AYRES.

' INTRODUCTION.

"CREDO,"

The meaning and force of which is, 'M believe," should be our abiding rule and principle in looking into God's Word; yet faith in God and his Word is not of necessity a blind and unreasoning or unreasonable process. Indeed, faith is most reasonable. The highest and best exercise of our reason will certainly lead to faith. Doubt, unbelief, infidelity are alone unreasonable, utterly destitute of any sound reason;!, as Lord Bacon said, "A little philosophy (or reason) inclineth men's minds to atheism; but depth of philosophy (or reason) bringeth them about to religion again." When any one, old or young, high or low, learned or unlearned, talks loudly of his infidelity, denies or makes light of God or his Word, or of the truth and reality of the Christian religion and experience, he only parades openly his ignorance and shows to everyone his lack of sound reason and good judgment, of true refinement and real morality. Such a person is to be pitied, and keeping the above facts in view, he need be feared by no one. But for any one who is an honest doubter, as well as for the strengthening of the faith of every one, the following

SEVEN POINTS

of reasoning may be very helpful to faith. Space will not allow of enlarging upon each point as would be very interesting, but even this brief statement makes a very complete chain.

I

I believe that myself and all mankind, and, in fact, all nature, animate and inanimate, the earth and everything around it and upon its surface, really exist as I see them.

I hold this to be self evident and to require no argument to prove. This is a first truth — an innate or intuitive idea of our being — one which no process of reasoning can disprove, inasmuch as all reasoning is based in some way or other upon the operation of our senses; and if we do not exist we certainly have no sense, and if we have no sense we surely cannot reason and it is useless to talk about doing so. It is more rational and reasonable to believe in our existence than not, notwithstanding the sophistries of some of the philosophers. To sane minds, educated or ignorant, it is certain that we exist.

II

I believe there is a Great First Cause, or Creator.

I believe this simply from manifest intelligent design in all the works of nature, especially animate nature. I have never known anything that amounts to anything to happen by chance, yet the world is full of beauty and order and use; how came it so? To believe that it all happened so would take more credulity than it requires faith to believe in a Creator. My own work shows intelligence and design and proves me the designer and workman. We never think a house, a watch or a locomotive happened by chance. We know man made them for we see the evidence of his workmanship on them. If I should see a house on an island in the middle of the ocean and no human beings living there, I would not believe that the house just happened there; I would know that some man had been there and made it.

When we see a work of man so nearly resembling a work of nature as to be unable to distinguish between them, for example a wreath of natural and another of artificial flowers, is it reasonable to believe that one is a work of art, the result of a skillful designer and a careful workman, and the other — happened by chance? We may profess to believe it, but is it rational and reasonable to really do so?

All man's work shows design and intelligence and we naturally think of man as the designer. But what work of man is for an instant to be compared in beauty and wonderfulness of design with man himself, or any other object of animated animal or vegetable creation? Man, himself, makes nothing by accident or chance, and yet he will believe that all the more, vastly more wonderful works of creation all happened by accident! It seems absurd to ask whether it is reasonable for me to believe so or not. I must throw away my reason to believe that way. It is most reasonable to believe in a Creator, is it not? Without a Creator how dense and dark a fog of mystery all existence becomes!

What philosopher has yet unraveled the mystery of even the lowest form of" animal or vegetable life? Believing in a Creator, how the light breaks in! Shall I refuse the light which my best reason leads me to, and grope on in the dark? I cannot accept an unfathomable mystery in the place of what my reason assures me is a certainty. I must believe In a Creator.

III

I believe the Creator possesses tlie following prominent characteristics:

1. Intelligence. Design, skill, beauty, perfection in all his works prove his intelligence without room for any argument. Doubting his intelligence, we must doubt our own, but both are most reasonable and certain.

2. Omnipotence. The Power that can create one world must certainly be able to create a million more if it wanted to do so; only omnipotence can create anything.

3. Wisdom and Goodness. Wisdom is wonderfully displayed in the mechanical execution and perfection of all the works of creation, and goodness in the felicitous arrangement of it all, there being no physical necessity without something to meet or fill it and the ability to obtain it — light for the eye, food and drink, clothing and shelter for bodies, etc. The needs of all the creation so wonderfully provided for proves the goodness of the Creator. If he wpr^ pvii and has the power he does, would there not be manv wants unsupplied? Hunger and thirst, with no way to satisfy them, like Tantalus, a king in Greek and Roman mythology, who for his misdeeds, was placed in a lake of water which always subsided whenever he attempted to drink, and under a tree laden with all manner of delicious fruits, which always eluded his grasp. The Creator does not tantalize his creatures so, therefore he must be good.

IV

I believe that life, death and Immortal existence are facts.

The first two of these facts are not doubted by men in their right minds. Our immortal existence seems clear from the following reasons:

1. Every race of mankind has such a belief.

2. The instincts of the soul impel us to look forward with hope and joy; why, if there is no future existence?

3. The aspirations of the soul — the soul's unrest, shrinking from death, hope and fear — animals are not distressed by the fear of death or animated by the hope of future life.

4. The thought and desire of immortality is in all nations and the Creator is good; shall his goodness fail by thus tantalizing us with a thought and aspiration that is not to be satisfied? Would he be good if he failed here? Why should such aspirations not be fulfilled? Is the power of the Creator more finite than the mind of his creatures?

5. Matter once created we believe will continue to exist forever: shall we believe that mind which regulates and controls matter and exercises such dominion over all the rest of creation is alone mortal? That the greater shaFI perish and the lesser continue forever?

6. Do not the analogies of nature prove immortal existence? Day and night, the seasons, hibernation of plants and animals, transformation of insects, etc. In sleeping and waking are we not taught it every day of our lives, sleep representing death, and waking, immortality or a future life?

V

I believe that good and evil, vice and virtue exist; that virtue brings happiness and vice brings misery, and that the Creator is the author of good, and that evil, outside of our Bible knowledge of it, has some unknown or inexplicable cause or origin. The Creator is good and must have made man good and to do good, and the good he now is and does, (valueless, however, because of lacking the original purpose of the Creator), is not his own, but the marred and ruined remains of the original work of the Creator in him. The evil man does must be his own. "Man is the parent of his own vices." This is reasonable, for we know we do wrong, and our best reason tells us the Creator cannot do wrong. Evil is in man, but we cannot find the origin of it, outside of the Bible. Philosophy and reason has never reached the root of evil. Yet this very matter of evil or sin affects us more than anything else here, in crime, war, sorrow, suffering, misery and death, and must continue to affect us in the hereafter, unless a remedy is found here, for,

"Endless sin means endless woe; Into endless sin I go.

If my soul from reason rent, Takes from sin its final bent."

Reason knows no remedy for sin and evil; the mystery and the misery of it remain and must continue. We hunger for happiness and we long for rest, but evil mingles bitter with every cup of sweet; crime and misery and wretchedness, sin and sorrow and sickness and death surround us on every hand. In vain the poet inquires of the full, serene and lovely moon:

"Hast thou not seen some spot Where miserable man might find a happier lot?" And again of his own soul:

"Is there no happy spot, Where mortals may be blest; Where grief may find a balm And weariness a rest?"

How many souls have imploringly sought the same answer, but to what human being, outside the Bible, has yet come more than the echo of his own words in reply?

VI

I believe the Creator lias given us a written revelation. I am irresistably led to this belief from the following circumstances:

1. I am intelligent and capable of receiving and comprehending such a revelation.

2. I have an aspiring mind — mental and spiritual aspirations that could not be satisfied without it; aspirations that lead me to believe that I am immortal, reach after the infinite, and grope in darkness after the unknown Great First Cause.

3. I exist here with evil within and surrounded by it, subject to varying tides of happiness and misery, sickness and health, pain and death, yet am wholly ignorant of whence I came and whither I go.

4. I know that evil exists, but I know no certain cause of, or remedy for it, notwithstanding it so deeply concerns me. I am harassed with evil here and distressed with uncertainty of the hereafter.

5. I possess moral faculties and qualities which greatly affect my happiness or misery, hut am utterly ignorant of any fixed laws either producing or directing them.

6. My Creator is intelligent, omnipotent, all wise and good, and capable of giving me the revelation I need — of providing for my moral and spiritual nature as well as he has for my physical.

7. Believing this I must believe that he has revealed himself to me; doubting such a revelation, I must doubt his goodness, for his goodness is seen in his providing for the necessities of his creatures; and doubting his goodness I must doubt all the rest, step by step, and so sink down into blind atheism. But does it not seem much more reasonable to believe in a written revelation than to doubt one? To me, from such reasons, it seems certain.