DEMAS THE DESERTER by T. L. Cuyler, D. D.

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 25, 1902

DEMAS THE DESERTER.

By T. L. Cuyler, D. D.

T. L. Cuyler, D. D.

“For Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world.” 2 Tim. 4:10.

I was very much affected—as probably you have been affected—by reading the accounts of the punishment of deserters in the army. Nothing in battle is so blood-chilling and horrible. It is so cool, so individual, so premeditated a life-taking. The leading forth of the offender before his whole regiment; the rehearsal of his disgrace to all his comrades; the pinioning of his arms; the bandaging of his eyes that he may not see what comrade takes his life; the open coffin beneath him, hungry for its prey; the file of soldiers all aiming at one poor fluttering heart (as if sportsmen should shoot a bird already caged); the ringing volley; the lightning-like death under a dozen wounds,—all this is enough to drive the kindred of the deserter to the verge of madness. The mother whose son lies in the sacred mold of Gettysburg or Chattanooga is happy in comparison with her whose hapless boy was blown into eternity from the coffin of a deserter. And why is the deserter’s doom made so awful?—Simply because the crime is so great and the consequences of the crime so fatal to the interests of an army and of the cause for which an army fights. If desertion will destroy an army, then the army must destroy desertion. It is not from sickness or disability that desertion grows—all such are exempted from battle by military law. It is the treachery that makes the deserter’s crime so black; and for the danger he brings to his comrades, and the demoralization he occasions in the army, his crime is punished so fearfully that other men will be deterred from imitating his bad example.

Now history has marked to infamy more than one deserter of his country, or of a sacred cause. Benedict Arnold stands already in American history, bandaged, pinioned, shot through with the volleys of a nation’s abhorrence.

In Scripture history hangs Judas the arch-deserter. In our text we read of another. Paul has pilloried the unhappy man. There he stands amid the gaze of all Bible readers. He is Demas the Deserter. The sentence which apostolic fidelity has affixed above his faithless heart is this: “Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world.” Better far for him if disease had laid him away from his work, or if tyranny had locked him in a dungeon to perish. Then were his record honorable; but his apostasy must have been trying if not ignominious in order to have constrained such a record as this.

Who was Demas? We know but little of him, yet the little we had known was most favorable. He had once been an associate of Paul in the ranks of Christ’s followers. Paul had honored him with flattering mention more than once. When he wrote his letter to the church at Colosse he coupled the name of Demas with the name of one of Christ’s biographers. He writes: “Luke, the beloved physician, and Demas, greet you.” This is good company and honorable; but a man may fall out of very good company into very dark disgrace. Judas belonged to the most favored group of men that ever trod our earth, and out of that constellation that revolved closest to the “sun of righteousness,” his star shot madly into everlasting night! Let no man trust for his special safety to the power of association—to his family alliance or his church affinity. From the most godly family a son may apostatize into open godlessness; and out of the bosom of the most orthodox church a tamperer with temptation may be seduced to everlasting perdition. To have been once in the most religious household, or the most evangelical church, will only increase the guilt and the shame of him who deserts them to the enemy.

But we know one fact about Demas. He not only professed love to Christ, but he had once suffered for his Christian profession. He had once worn the honorable badge of a prison-chain in the name of Jesus. Just listen to the roll of Paul’s fellow prisoners whom he mentions in his famous epistle to Philemon. Calling over his partners in martyrdom, he writes: “There salute thee Epaphras, my fellow prisoner in Christ Jesus; Marcus, Aristarchus, Demas, Lucas, my fellow laborers.” So wrote Paul of Demas once. His name reads there as proudly as the names of Arnold and Aaron Burr once read in the muster-roll of our Revolutionary patriots. There is a shock in the bare mention of these names as once true and loyal. Oh! my brother-member in the Christian host, are you certain that ten years hence some one may not turn to the record of this church and read your name with the same startled surprise? Have I not felt the same shock when I have read over some names of those with whom I sat at the Lord’s table less than ten years ago? Where are they now? Who now would suspect them of ever having been Christians? Where may you be?

It was from a Roman prison that Paul wrote of poor Demas as a fellow sufferer in bonds for Christ. It was from the same spot that he wrote a while after, “Demas hath forsaken me.” Why? Has his health and spirit broken? Has he gone to labor elsewhere? “Demas hath forsaken me.” Has he grown sick of his faith so soon? Did his Master desert him, and refuse to answer his prayers? We read the conclusion of the sentence which, as Guthrie says, “like a scorpion, carries its sting in its tail:” “Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world.” There is the secret out at last! Every man who has ever brought disgrace on his Christian profession, or has fallen out of his church-standing had some secret reason for his fall. He deserted under the seduction of some besetting sin. If we could come at the sad roll of all the backsliders or open apostates, we might read over the specifications like these: “Deserted from moral cowardice,” “Deserted through neglect of prayer,” “Deserted from love of the wine bottle,” “Deserted through the enticements of irreligious associates,” or, “Deserted through unbelief.” Demas’s name has the Holy Spirit’s specification beside it. He deserted for “love of the world.” Whoso loveth the world, the love of God is not in him.

This is the last we read of poor Demas. Tradition says that he sank so low as to become a priest in a heathen temple. But whether this were so or not we need not discuss. We do know that he forsook his Master’s cause in its hour of peril, and preferred the “world” to Christ. Was Demas a sincere Christian once, and did he fall away from grace? Or was he only a false professor who never had been converted? The word of God does not answer these questions; and

surely we dare not attempt to do so. It is enough to know that no Christian is safe against seduction unless the grace of God be at the time the ruling principle in his soul. It is enough to know that God never promises to keep a man who is off the post of duty. It is enough to know that every man is tempted, and if he yields, he falls. Demas yielded and fell. To what did he yield? To the world? Paul encountered the world; went into its thickest, saw its brightest allurements; met its fiercest assaults, and its most attractive lures to his ambition. He never deserted. Why?—He never loved it; he so loved Jesus that he could not love the world. His heart was possessed by Christ. He could not serve Christ and Mammon; he served Christ alone.

Demas loved the world. It would have done him no harm if he had not. It will do you none so long as you keep it out of your heart. But when it works into the soul, it eats out the loyalty to Christ and consumes the spirituality of the soul. It is a slow, subtle, silent process—very gradual, too. I never knew a church-member who deserted his Saviour for the world suddenly and at once. The process of corrupting conscience, and consuming away his love for heavenly things is always gradual. Commonly he keeps up the external appearances and forms of religion long after his heart has become alienated from the Saviour.

In the Island of Cuba they will show you sometimes a piece of timber in a dwelling or in a framework of a mill that looks sound and firm. A sudden pressure on that timber, and it will snap asunder, filling your eyes with a fine white powder. Why is this? A subtle worm, bred in that climate, eats in stealthily to the center, devours the fiber, and turns the seeming solid beam into a hollow shell of dust. Desertions from sobriety; desertions from integrity; desertions from Christ, are the result of gradual corruption of the heart’s core. Externally, there is orthodox profession; internally, a worm. Love of the world was the busy borer in Demas’s heart that ate out his conscience and ate out his loyalty to Jesus; he deserted under strong pressure for want of inward stamina of godliness to bear the strain.

If you ask the captain of the old “receiving ship” in a navy yard why so gallant a vessel is never sent to sea, he will tell you that she is dry-rotted down to the keel. She looks stout on the outside; but they dare not trust her an hour to a tempest.

In nearly every church there are members whose hearts become dry-rotted with “love of the world.” They bear the ensign of orthodoxy “at the peak.” Some of them lie moored at the wharf of formalism, useless and unseaworthy; some sink, imbedded in the mud. Others, venturing out, are overtaken by fierce gales of temptation or assault. The hollow timbers crash up in the gale, and the broken spars floating on the billows are the only relics of the foundered vessel.

Love of the world ate the heart through and through. This was Demas’s destruction; it may be yours. Love of the world! Did not Paul love it when he abandoned ease and promotion and hope of gain, and threw himself into the holy enterprise of saving the poor lost world for Christ? Did not Jesus love the world when He shed His blood on Calvary?—Ah, yes!

Thus may you and I love it. Would to God we loved more “to do it good;” to give our time and gold and talents to rescue it back to God. Would that we so loved the world’s highest interests that we did not allow the world’s lower interests and the world’s sinful pursuits to seduce us over to its sway. Would that in trying to draw the guilty world up toward God, we did not allow it to drag us down to conformity with itself. It is not love for sinners’ souls that endangers a Christian; it is a love for sinners’ sins. The world’s pursuits, so thoroughly selfish and earthly in their aims; the world’s principles, so utterly at variance with the law of God; the world’s pleasures, so corrupting to the soul; the world’s fascinations,—these are the fatal enemy. It was against these that the divine direction was pointed: “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world.”

Any person who becomes a friend to the world’s ways becomes an enemy to Christ’s. When you begin to love them, you begin to dislike religion. When you begin to worship money, you cease to worship God. When you begin to love the house of pleasure, you begin to dislike the house of prayer. When you begin to love bad books, you begin to lose your relish for the Bible. When you seek irreligious associates, you draw off steadily from intercourse with the people of God. When the greedy lust of the world has eaten out a Christian conscience,—when it has deadened the spiritual sense; when it has dry-rotted the whole heart; when it has banished Christ and possessed the soul’s affection,—then the man is ready to desert. Nay, he has deserted. What is any man worth to the Church or to God when his heart is the property of Satan? He may linger within the camp, and even wear the uniform of a church-member. But when the bugle calls to action, he is not in the ranks. When a march of reform is ordered, or a strife for God’s law is waged, he is “missing.” How often we miss “Demas”! He is always missing when he is needed. Is a call made for men of moral nerve and faith to execute some movement of reform? Demas is missing. Does a good cause grow unpopular? Demas deserts it. Does the pastor arouse opposition by preaching boldly the truth? Demas whispers, “This will never do; my minister is a good man, but he is so indiscreet.” Paul, the caged giant in the lion’s den at Rome, writes sorrowfully, “Demas hath forsaken me.”

But among us it does not require dungeons or gibbets to fright many a nominal Christian from his post. A stormy Sabbath leaves Demas’s pew empty. At the prayer-meeting we seldom see Demas at all. He complains that it is “too dull,” or that he is “too busy.”

The deserter from military duty, let me say in closing, is seldom reprieved. War has no bowels of compassion. Its laws, like the laws of Draco, are written in blood. The offense, the court-martial, the sentence, the execution, follow, as the bullet follows the flash of the gun. But in the warfare of faith, mercy tempers justice, and waits long for repentance. God offers pardon and restoration to backsliders who seek Him penitently and with tears. The blessed Jesus who gave Peter his second opportunity for service after his first shameful desertion, is our Jesus. Erring disciple, He is your Jesus.

Do not be content with tears of sorrow over neglect of duty. Stop not with merely grieving over your sins of desertion. Come back to your allegiance. Do not sit conscience-stricken beside a closed closet-door; open it again in contrition, and enter it with penitence. Go back to your vacated seat in the meetings for prayer. If you have wronged any one in purse or reputation, hasten to make restitution.

Find again your lost place in the Master’s field of labor. Open that dust-covered Bible once more, and renew your vow of allegiance before the cross. Waste not one precious moment in searching for a lost hope. Let it go; perhaps it was not worth the search or the having. Seek a reconversion, a new heart, and a new hope of which you will never need to be ashamed.

Do this betimes. The Judge standeth at the door. Only an inch of time remains, and then cometh the end. The day of grace for deserters to return to Christ will soon be over; and when death orders the final court-martial, it will be too late. What thou doest, do quickly.