AMONG THE LIONS by Joseph Parker

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 30, 1888

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 14, No. 13.

AMONG THE LIONS.

By Joseph Parker

"The young lions roared upon him, and yelled, and they made his land waste: his cities are burned without inhabitant." Jer. 2: 15.

THAT comes of going from home, leaving sacred discipline, taking life into one's own hand, assuming the mastership of one's own fortune and destiny. Woe betide the man who goes beyond the bounds which God has fixed! Immediately outside those bounds the lion waits, or the plague, or the pestilence, or the pit hardly hidden but deep, immeasurable.

Luther said: "Who would paint a picture of the present condition of the church, let him paint a young woman in a wilderness or in some desert place; and round about her let him figure hungry lions whose eyes are glaring upon her, and whose mouths are open to devour her substance and her beauty." Is the church in a much better condition today? That is the natural condition of the church. The church always challenges the lion, tempts the devourer, excites the passions of evil men. When an evil generation tolerates the church, applauds its dogmas, and flatters its ministry, it is because that church has surrendered her prerogatives and trampled her functions in the dust.

"All that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution." That is not a historical statement limited chronologically; it is the eternal truth; wherever there is light it must fight the darkness; wherever there is holiness it must judge all evil, and make bad men afraid, and set them on the defensive, and extort from them the most vehement denunciations. Beware of a fictitious peace; beware of the flattery of bad men; it is because you are turning your eyes away from their false weights and scales and measuring-rods; it is because you wink when you pass by their revels and their orgies; it is because you are deaf when you hear their evil speeches and their cruel blasphemies. Know that the church of the living God is alive, and is fulfilling her destiny, when all round about her are men more cruel than ravenous beasts. Israel, the home-born slave, who ought to have walked arm-in-arm with the son of the house, left the precincts of the family and plunged into the way of lions.—Rev. Joseph Parker, D. D.