ROCK! Solid Rock! Fixed—immovable—impregnable!
HE CHURCH OF Gon is built upon the Rock of Ages, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it!
God's Word and work are fashioned of enduring stuff, and shall abide forever.
Angry billows rage and hurl themselves upon it ceaselessly, only to be broken into a thousand shattered sprays, falling back exhausted, sobbing out their own futility.
Thus it was that Angelus Temple and the Foursquare Gos pel, a part of the mighty Church of God, and founded upon that Rock, remained unshaken and unscathed in spite of every attempt of Satan to destroy its effectiveness for Christ. The angry clouds of persecution and hate melted away and the light of God shone forth upon the work once more. The revival fires swept onward!
In the Fall of 1927, I answered a call from the British Isles for a return campaign, and while there spoke in Royal Albert Hall, London; City Hall, Glasgow, Elim Tabernacle, Carlisle, and other large halls and auditoriums in England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. This campaign was really the beginning of the fulfillment of my vision to see "The Foursquare Gospel Around the World.” Today, the sun never sets on the Foursquare Flag!
The next few years saw the work extending on and out, both at home and abroad. One cause for much tejoicing were
- 230 the “lighthouses” — branch churches— which sprang up like mushrooms in nearly every locality. These were not premeditated by us; we did not first draw the blueprints and then build a work to fit them, but the work sprang up everywhere and we had to hasten to put the needful amount of scaffolding under it to hold it together. During the summer following the initial semester of the Bible School, the students declared that instead of taking the usual vacation they would rather preach and put into practice that which they had learned. So we bought the tents, similar to those in which I had preached the gospel when I began my own evangelistic career, and started them out. The thought was, that the students would merely hold services throughout the summer and then fold their tents and return them to the warehouse till the next vacation. But lo! the students were received with almost ravenous welcome everywhere, and the people in neatly every instance purchasd the grounds upon which the tents stood, builded a church or tabernacle there and kept the workers for pastors. Each annual convention increased in interest and attendance as more churches were established and foreign mission stations were founded by graduate ministers. * In the Spring of 1930, I led a specially chartered and conducted tour to the Holy Land to spend Easter Sunday at the tomb of our Lord with members of my congregation, Our party left New York City on the twentieth of March, spent twentysix wonderful days en route, conducting daily worship services aboard ship, and stopping off at various ports of call to engage in sightseeing trips. We arrived in Haifa, Palestine, on April 16, and proceeded by special trains to Jerusalem, where we spent five golden days in the locale made sacred to our hearts by the ministry of our Lord. It was from this trip that I brought back the famous "Holy Fire Service” as I saw it at the Holy Sepulchre, and which since has become an annual Easter Sunrise event in Angelus Temple.
+ planted the Foursquare banner in twenty-one states, broadcast over forty-three radio stations, and delivered 332 sermons, I returned to my pulpit in Angelus Temple to report that America was starving for the Word of God. Everywhere, men and women and little children cried out for the “old-time” religion and a sweeping, wholehearted return to the “faith of our fathers.”
Tt was while making this tour that I was brought face to face with the realization that America was at the cross-roads, spiritually speaking. This fact was forced to my attention primarily by the attitude of a group of eleven young men from an eastern university who had invited me to luncheon in Boston. "Away with God! Away with the Scriptures! Away with the religious drag on the wheels of progress!” they had exclaimed, one by one.
“Young men,” I protested, “your words are destructive pickaxes, undermining the foundations of the nation!” “Now, now, Sister McPherson,” they smiled in their politely superior fashion, “you are not going to remind us of the faith of the Pilgrim Fathers and the national motto: ‘In God We Trust!’ The teachings of the Nazarene have outlived their usefulness; education and science have supplanted religion and ancient legend; cold reasoning is the new savior of the world.”
“Stop!” I interrupted. “If you take the hand of God from the guiding wheel of any nation, it will crash. Retrogression and not progression will follow as surely as night follows the setting of the sun. Blessed is that nation whose God is the Lord.”
“That sounds as if you were quoting Scripture. Where is your proof?” they demanded with challenging eyes,
Piqued by their challenge, I decided to find for the youth of today an uncontrovertible answer. I went out and looked upon the world with new eyes. I circled the globe, climbed the Himalayan foot-hills on frozen Tibetan borders, traversed the fiery deserts of Africa, penetrated the tropic jungles of Zamboanga, and looked into the golden face of modernized Toyko, searching the world for first-hand information. My quest over, one culminative conviction thundered with three-fold intensity within my soul: “Blessed is that nation whose trust is in the Lord!” Returning to America, I put my observations on paper in a volume entitled: “Give Me My Own God!”
Because I have always believed that the eye-gate was as important to the preaching of the gospel as the ear-gate, I began depicting Bible truths by means of “illustrated sermons,” almost from the very day the doors of Angelus Temple were flung open. While I was criticized for this to a certain extent by those who did not understand, yet I was enabled by this simple method to preach to capacity crowds, while a number of minister friends of my acquaintance were forced to cancel many of their services for lack of attendance and interest. Through this means, thousands of souls which otherwise might never have entered a church door, were won to the Lord Jesus Christ. These illustrated messages were enlarged upon to a great extent by putting a number of them to music. The Temple band, organ, and choirs began presenting entire operatic scores composed by myself as God would give them to me in the stillness of the night, or while riding in a train en route to a speaking engagement in another city or state, These are usually featured during special seasons of the year, such as “The Bells of Bethlehem,” and “Regem Adorate” (my first) at Christmas; “The Crimson Road” and “The Rich Man and Lazarus” at Easter, and so on.
Many people ask me to what we ascribe the success of the meetings in Angelus Temple and “on the field,” the throngs, the interest of the people as they sit on the edge of their seats, hearts thrilled with the truth and simplicity of the old, old story, as they drink in the message.
The secret of power lies, not in oneself or one’s surroundings, but in the message which is borne; not in personality, but in the Christ which shines above the personality.
A little girl, speaking from her heart on a farmer's porch, with smoking kerosene lanterns swinging in the trees for lights —a young wife in China, grappling for days for a single heathen soul—a white tent and an automobile—huge auditoriums, enormous conclaves of people. Thus is the power of the message, even when spoken by the lips of a woman.
The explanation of that power is found in the words of our Lord Himself: “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me.”
Great oratory, flowing eloquence and fine sounding words that paint the sunsets in glowing colors, the preaching of social reform and community uplift—none of these things can fill the gaping void or satisfy the hungry soul of a lost world
The gospel of Jesus Christ the same, yesterday, and today and forever, meets these needs —a Christ Who still delivers from sin, heals the sick, strikes off the shackles of dope, breaks down the gates of brass, saws asunder the bars of iron Satan has made, and leads His people to freedom and victory!