Somebody Forgot to Tell the Kids

The little room was packed on that hot summer night. The crowd leaned forward as one, almost as if by mutual consent, the old wooden pews groaning under the shifting weight. Small children slept on hard wood floors on makeshift pallets of feather pillows and hand stitched quilts, blissfully unaware of all that went on around them. Windows were thrown open to catch what night time breeze might find its way in, but that was unlikely on that muggy, sticky night, the kind of night when you pray for cool rain. The only breeze to be found in that little church came from tattered cardboard fans wobbling precariously on scalloped wooden sticks. And yet no one noticed the crowd or the hard pews or the stifling heat because their attention was riveted on the man of God as he opened up the Bible and began to speak. The message was both simply profound and profoundly simple: Jesus, the Only Begotten Son of God who came to die on a cross, shedding His blood so that no one need perish. Every man and every woman and every child heard their own story that night because the Spirit of the Lord was so prevailing. Truth from the Word of God began its work of slowing peeling away the layers of sham and pretense that religion brings, revealing the beauty of grace. It was a sight to behold. Sweat began to bead up on the face of the old preacher and slowly found its way onto the shoulders of what had once been a finely starched and hot-ironed white shirt. His tie had already found its way across the room, draped unceremoniously across the old piano bench. Here and there tears ran down the cheeks of the Christians in that room as conviction and forgiveness flowed freely. It was easy to spot the folks who had never met Jesus. Their body language gave them away, their uneasy thoughts written plainly on their faces: Why had they come? What had possessed them to ever walk through that door? Could they just get up and leave? That was the natural man talking. The spirit man wanted just one thing: to touch Jesus. As the message reached its thundering crescendo, the little choir began to sing: Almost persuaded now to believe; Almost persuaded Christ to receive; Seems now some soul to say, Go, Sprit, go Thy way, Some more convenient day On Thee I’ll call. There was not a trained voice among them, but when they lifted up their voices in four-part harmony, I declare it sounded like the angels of heaven chimed in. There was a pleading in the song and in their voices, an unashamed passion for the ones that Jesus loved so much. The old wooden altar would not stand empty for long. It had played host to generations of the worst of sinners seeking forgiveness; to mothers and fathers heartbroken over wayward children and to husbands and wives crying out in despair over their marriages; to lonely people searching for a Divine Friend and to men and women enslaved by sin. And so they sang. Almost persuaded, come, come today; Almost persuaded, turn not away; Jesus invites you here, Angels are lingering near, Prayers rise from hearts so dear, O wanderer, come. Come on, wanderer, come on. The atmosphere crackled with anticipation as people began to move toward the old wooden altar, kneeling here and there in the same grooves worn by the kneeling form of previous generations as they had taken refuge there. Each person who knelt there that night needed something different from Jesus and no one went away disappointed. No one ever leaves disappointed, but not everyone responded. Not everyone gravitated toward Jesus. There was a tumultuous battle going on the in that room. Saints were weeping aloud, praying for lost sons and daughters and friends. All over the building the hands of the lost clutched the backs of pews fighting to resist Christ’s redemptive call choosing to cling instead to an old, decayed life of sin. Here and there the hands unclenched and feet did the heart’s bidding. But not everyone. Almost persuaded, harvest is past! Almost persuaded, doom comes at last! Almost cannot avail; Almost is but to fail! Sad, sad, that bitter wail, Almost….but lost. The writer of this song penned these words after listening to a sermon based upon this thought, “He who is almost persuaded is almost saved, but to be almost saved is to be entirely lost.” That is my recollection of that night as my memory reaches backward some sixty years. Some would describe this scene as Elmer Gantryesque, but they would be wrong. There was no theatrical manipulation that night, just a simple man given over to a mighty God. In a brief two-hour period they had left a venomous world behind and walked into an atmosphere of mutual love and acceptance. They had sung His praises, not by rote, but with passion and in unity in four-part harmony. The preacher had presented to them the Bible – not a set of principles about the Bible, mind you, but the Word of God itself. They had heard the unmitigated truth of heaven and hell and verbal road signs had been posted along the way, warning of the need for salvation. And then they heard of a thing called grace and the road map was complete. What would I give to walk into a service like that once again! What happened? How did the simplicity of the Gospel of Jesus Christ become so obscure, so shrouded in ethics and cold principles? The answer is so simple as to defy belief: Somebody forgot to tell the kids.