Go tell it on the mountain - James Baldwin [57]
His later memory of this sermon was like the memory of a storm. From the moment that he raised and looked out over their faces again, his tongue was loosed and he was filled with the power of the Holy Ghost. Yes, the power of the Lord was on him that night, and he preached a sermon that was remembered in camp-meetings and in cabins, and that set a standard for visiting evangelists for a generation to come. Years later, when Esther and Royal and Deborah were dead, and Gabriel was leaving the South, people remembered this sermon and the gaunt, possessed young man who had preached it.
He took his text from the eighteen chapter of the second book of Samuel, the story of the young Ahimaaz who ran too soon to bring the tidings of battle to King David. For, before he ran, he was asked by Joab: ‘Wherefore wilt thou run, my son, seeing that thou hast no tidings ready?’ And when Ahimaaz reached King David, who yearned to know the fate of his headlong son, Absalom, he could only say: ‘I saw a great tumult but I knew not what it was.’
And this was the story of all those who failed to wait on the counsel of the Lord; who made themselves wise in their own conceit and ran before they had the tidings ready. This was the story of innumerable shepherds who failed, in their arrogance, to feed the hungry sheep; of many a father and mother who gave their children not bread but a stone, who offered not the truth of God but the tinsel of this world. This was not belief but unbelief, not humility but pride: there worked in the heart of such a one the same desire that had hurled the son of the morning from Heaven to the depths of Hell, the desire to overturn the appointed times of God, and to wrest from him who held all power in His hands power to meet for men. Oh, yes, they had seen it, each brother and sister beneath the sound of his voice to-night, and they had seen the destruction caused by a so lamentable unripeness! Babies, bawling, fatherless, for bread, and girls in the gutters, sick with sin, and young men bleeding in the frosty fields. Yes, and there were those who cried—they had heard it, in their homes, and on the street corners, and from the very pulpit—that they should wait no longer, despised and rejected and spat on as they were, but should rise to-day and bring down the mighty, establishing the vengeance that God had claimed. But blood cried out for blood, as the blood of Abel cried out from the ground. Not for nothing was it written: ‘He that believeth will not make haste.’ Oh, but sometimes the road was rocky. Did they think sometimes that God Forgot? Oh, fall on your knees and pray for patience; fall on your knees and pray for faith; fall on your knees for overcoming power to receive the crown of life. For God did not forget, no word proceeding from his mouth could fail. Better to wait, like Job, through all the days of our appointed time until our change comes than to rise up, unready, before God speaks. For if we but wait humbly before Him, He will speak glad tidings to our souls; if we but wait our change will come, and that in an instant, in the twinkling of an eye—we will be changed one day from this corruption into incorruptibility forever, caught up with Him beyond the clouds. And these are the tidings we now must bear to all the nations: another son of David has hung from a tree, and he who knows not the meaning of that tumult shall be damned forever in Hell! Brother, sister, you may run, but the day is coming when the King will ask: ‘What are the tidings that you bear? And what will you say on that great day if you know not the death of His Son?
‘Is there a soul here to-night’—tears were on his face and he stood above them with arms outstretched—‘who knows not the meaning of that tumult? Is there a soul here to-night who wants to talk to Jesus? Who wants to wait before the Lord, amen, until He speaks? Until He makes to ring in your soul, amen, the glad tidings of salvation? Oh, brothers and sisters’—and still she did not rise; but only watched him from far away—‘the time is running out. One day H