The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1917, Page 17

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The Lutheran Pioneer.

A MISSIONARY MONTHLY.

PuBLIsHED BY THE EVANGELICAL LutHErRAN SyNopicaL CoNFERENCE oF NortH AMERICA.

REV. F. J. LANKENAU, EvITon.

Entered at the Post Ofice at St. Louis, Mo., as second-class matter.

Vol. XXXIX

0 ST. BUYES MO., MARCH, 1917. 2 3.

No. 3.

Also for Them.

So many unbelievers
And heathen go astray
In spiritual helplessness,
In sorrow and dismay.

The promise of the Gospel

Is also meant for them;

The blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son,
Was also shed for them.

Oh, let us, then, have pity
On them in their distress,
And lead them from those barren wilds
To faith and happiness.
H. Osternvs.

The Uplifted Christ.

“And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will
draw all men unto Me.” (John 12, 32.) It was
thus the Savior spoke with the shadow of the cross
falling athwart His path. His hour was near at
hand, the hour of His great sacrifice. In the near
future, He who had been made sin for us, though
He knew of no sin, was His own self to bear our
sins in His body on the tree. Soon the Lamb of
God, bearing the sins of the world, was to shed
His blood for us, and thus furnish all men a foun-
tain to cleanse them from all sins. And it was
a dreadful hour that was now so near, an hour
of anguish and bloody sweat, an hour of shame
and torture, an hour in which all the vials of
wrath would be poured out upon Him, an hour
when all His infernal enemies would combine their
fury against Him. As He looked into the near
future, He saw Gethsemane with all its agony of
soul, Caiaphas’s palace with all its revelation of
human hatred, Pilate’s hall with all its con-
temptible weakness and crying injustice, and Cal-

vary with all its awful pain and ignominious

death. All those wounds, bruises, chastisements,
and cruel stripes He saw in the near future. The
cross on Calvary, with Him, the scourged and thorn-
crowned Victim, lifted up and hanging thereon, in
the agonies of a death more horrible than we can
imagine, mocked by men and devils, forsaken by
His ever-loving Father, while the earth shuddered
at the sight and the sun retired to weep in secret,
—all this Jesus saw before Him.

Yet, though the hour of His travail is so near,
He looks beyond what is so near to what the more
distant future has in store. He sees that by His

lifting up from the earth on the cursed wood of

the cross He will draw all men unto Himself.. The
Savior sees that His death on the cross will have
the effect of drawing men to Him. His death, as
our Substitute and sacrifice for our sins, will draw
multitudes out of every nation to believe in Him
and receive Him as their Savior.- By His death
Christ has drawn mankind out of the mire of sin
and out of the jaws of hell; by the mighty travail
of His soul He has opened wide the everlasting
arms of divine grace, which shall never close till
they fold all the elect to the bosom of eternal bliss.

’ Oh, how many have been drawn to Jesus since
the day He was lifted up! The history of the
Church since the day of Pentecost furnishes abun-
dant proof that the Lord’s prophecy has been thor-
oughly fulfilled during the past nineteen centuries:
Wherever Christ Crucified has been preached, and
the story of the cross fully told, souls have been
converted and drawn to the Savior, just as iron
filings are drawn to a magnet, in every part of
the world. ‘The preaching of the crucified Jesus

drew unto Him three thousand souls on the first

* day of Pentecost, and it drew people unto Him

in superstitious Lystra, voluptuous Antioch, proud F