An Address to Young Believers

We are all familiar with the passages in the New Testament that record our Lord's remarkable statement in regard to the faith that moves mountains. When the disciples saw how soon the barren fig tree had withered away after it was cursed, and expressed their astonishment in regard to this, we are told that,

"Jesus answered and said unto them, Verily I say unto you, if ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig tree, but also if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done. And all things whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive"-Matt. 21:21,22.

Mark's account is a little fuller, and I would like you to have that before you also. There we read in chapter 11:23-28:

"For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith. Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them. And when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have ought against any:that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses. But if ye do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses."

I do not suppose that any of you for a moment would take our Lord's words literally; that is, you quite understand that He had no thought that any disciples of His would ever, at any time, undertake to level hills and mountains of earth and stone simply by prayer and faith. For these, undoubtedly,

A Steam Shovel,

backed by prayer and faith, would be the proper method of procedure, according to a principle that runs throughout the word of God, whereby we learn that those who labor earnestly for the Lord can count on Him to give wisdom and strength for their service. If, therefore, it were necessary to level an actual hill in order, perhaps, to locate a meeting-house or a mission hall in its place, we would not simply go down on our knees and ask God to clear the ground for us, but

Faith and Works

would go together.

Our Lord was accustomed to the use of figurative language. How rich and full are His discourses! And how wonderfully does He illustrate in this way! He is a vine, His disciples are branches. Yet no one supposes that He referred to a literal grapevine, Men were trees, and "every plant that My heavenly Father hath not planted," He said,"shall be rooted up." Yet no one supposes that He was referring to unfruitful trees in orchards. He is the Bread of Life, He gives the Water of Life, He is the Light of the World, His Truth is a candle, not to be hidden under a bushel or a bed; that is, not to be obscured by either business or slothfulness. And so when He speaks of removing mountains, you may be sure He has in mind just such a mountain as is referred to in the book of the prophet Zechariah, chapter 4:7.

"Who art thou, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel thou shall become a plain:and he shall bring forth the headstone thereof with shoutings, crying, Grace, grace unto it."

The mountain was plainly a mount of difficulty and perplexity. God had brought back the remnant of His people from Babylon to Jerusalem. He had caused the Persian king to give them permission there to live and to rebuild the temple of the Lord. But hardly was the work begun before cruel and vindictive enemies commenced their opposition. They taunted them; they threatened them; they wrote lying letters concerning them to the king himself, and in response to this there came a new commandment causing the work to cease. Yet God had declared it must go on. And, through the prophets Haggai and Zechariah, He encourages the people to judge in themselves whatever is displeasing to His holy mind and contrary to His Word, and then to go on with the work, taking no account whatever of the hindrances. It was simply theirs to labor on in faith. He, on His part, undertook to remove the mountain that seemed so high and so forbidding; it would be but as a plain before them as Zerubbabel and his helpers continued the work in dependence on the Lord. For, after all, they were not to labor in their own power. In the vision of

The Candlestick, with the Golden Bowl

upon the top of it, replenished with pure, fresh oil from the dripping olive trees that stood on either side of it, and whose branches were represented as bending over the golden receptacle, the oil, thus silently and unseen to the eye of men, passed through the center stem of the lamp-stand and out through its arms to the limbs, thus keeping the light burning, He was illustrating the great truth that all testimony for Him is "not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord."

Nevertheless there were conditions that they must be careful to comply with, and not the least of these was their responsibility to act in grace toward one another, and to show to each other that same mercy and compassion which God had upon them. See chapter 7:-8-10:

"And the word of the Lord came unto Zechariah, saying, Thus speaketh the Lord of hosts, saying, Execute true judgment, and show mercy and compassions every man to his brother:and oppress not the widow, nor the fatherless, the stranger, nor the poor; and let none of you imagine evil against his brother in your heart."

Now in the account given in the Gospels, read in the light of this Old Testament passage, you will understand that the mountains to be removed by faith are mountains of difficulty, mountains of indifference, mountains of perplexity, such as we all have to face from time to time. Sometimes, indeed, the believer seems to be living in a narrow vale, surrounded on every hand by just such mountains, whose tops seem to reach up to heaven and almost exclude the very light of the sun-so high, so grim, so hard to overcome do they appear. Against mountains like these man's puny little spade or shovel would avail little indeed. All human effort at times becomes useless. The more one tries to remove the mountain, the higher it seems to rise, and the more discouraging do conditions become.

Yet here we have the plain word of the Lord,

"If ye had faith, ye should say to this mountain, Be thou removed and cast into the sea, and it should obey you."

There is no trial so great, no difficulty so hard, no perplexity so wearing, no trouble so overpowering but

FAITH can gain the victory

over it, and before believing prayer the mountains become a plain. We are told in 1 John 5:4:

"This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith."

But observe:There can be no such thing as the prayer of faith if certain clearly-defined conditions laid down in the Word of God are ignored. Only one of these conditions is particularly stressed in the Gospel account, but others are brought before us in various parts of the New Testament. In fact, there is one Old Testament verse that sums them all up:

"'If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me."

This verse expresses a great principle that runs throughout all dispensations. You cannot pray aright, if you do not live aright; you cannot pray in the Spirit, if you do not act in the Spirit; you cannot pray in faith, if you do not live by faith. It is utterly impossible to so pray as to be assured of an answer from God, unless the life be regulated by the Word of God. He who says, "Call upon Me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify Me," has also said:"Delight thyself also in the Lord, and He shall give thee the desires of thine heart. Commit thy way unto the Lord, trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass."
H. A. Ironside

(Concluded in next number.)