Beeson Podcast, Episode #232 Name Date >>Announcer: Welcome to the Beeson podcast, coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. Now your host, Timothy George. >>Timothy George: Welcome to today’s Beeson podcast. Dr Smith, I am so excited about the sermon we’re going to hear today by Dr C.M. Ward. I wonder how many of our Beeson Podcast listeners have even heard the name C.M. Ward. Let me tell you my relationship with C.M. Ward. I never met him in person. But when I was growing up in Chattanooga, just as a young fellow, young boy, young Christian man, I would listen every Sunday night to a radio program called Revival Time, and the speaker was C.M. Ward. We’re going to hear one of those sermons today that was preached on Revival Time. This was a broadcast that went over 600 stations throughout the country and other places as well. He was an internationally known evangelist with the Assemblies of God out the Pentecostal tradition. But he preached with such prescience, such succinctness, and such power. He really believed in God and that comes across when you listen to his sermon. Tell us what we’re going to hear from this great radio voice from the past, Dr C.M. Ward. >>Smith: Well, I am excited about talking about him because I have personal connection, at least indirectly, with him in that he mentions A.G. Ward, who went to God’s Bible School in Cincinnati where I graduated in 1970 with an associate’s degree. The title of this sermon, very succinct, memorable, “Victory in the Valley”. Not the mountain, but the valley because that’s what he really wants to deal with. No wasted words. I say to the listener what Jesus said to Judas, “Whatever you do, do it quickly.” Listen quickly because he will talk quickly, and the sermon will be short but very full. He uses, I think, subversive language, turns the phrase. If you really want to climb up, you have to first climb down. Sounds like Jesus. If you want to be exalted, you have to be humbled. If you want to save your life, you got to lose it. And if you want to be first, you have to be last, etc. And you can tell how suckled in scripture, Dean George, he is using a number of biblical examples to prove that there’s victory in the valley and that we only go up by going down. And as Luther would put it, we only advance going forward by going backwards. So, I can appreciate this kind of language. He’s personally involved. He says, I’ve been to the valley of dry bones and eschatologically, he's pointing to the time when he says, I have some more valleys that I have to go into before I climb. And he’s dealing with the fact of his death and resurrection and the second coming of Jesus even though he does not explicitly mention it. I’m moved by the message, well-articulated, chosen words very carefully and yet he takes and says a whole lot in a few words. >>Timothy George: He always did that in his preaching. And you know, something else, he was an evangelist at heart, and he ended every one of the Revival Time radio programs by singing, the choir singing “There’s Room at the Cross for You,” a wonderful hymn out of the Pentecostal tradition, written by Ira Stanfield in the 1940s. And he closes out and he talks about the long, long altar. He invites, he gives an invitation, invites people to that alter around the radio family that’s listening all over the place, bring their sorrows, bring their hurts, bring their needs to Jesus. And there’s a sense of great spiritual presence and moment as he closes every one of the Revival Time broadcasts. Well, you can tell, Dr Smith, although it was a lot of years ago, that still is vivid in my memory. C.M. Ward, I’m so glad to introduce him to our Beeson podcast listeners today. Let’s listen to C.M. Ward from Revival Time long ago, but relevant today. >>Ward: It’s common to associate peaks with triumph, never valleys. We scale heights for advantage. Isaiah says, “If you really want to see, instead of climbing up, you must climb down. Instead of getting the world beneath your feet, you must get to the bottom. Instead of looking beneath you, you must look above you.” There’s an interesting item about Moses. When the final hour arrived for God’s servant, God took Moses to the top of Mount Pisgah and let him look toward the land of promise. And the God buried the elderly leader in the valley. When Moses opened his eyes on the heavenly Canaan, it was not from the top of Mount Pisgah but from that low grave in the glen. And he buried him in the valley of the land of Moab over against Beth Peor. When Job paints a picture of rest at the end of life’s schedule, he says, “The clods of the valley shall be sweet.” And he would portrait concrete and forest, he says, “The horse paweth in the valley and rejoiceth.” So, it’s a picture of power. Bible poets used the simile so often, the rose of Sharon and the lily of the valleys. There are beauty and wealth in the valley. Battles are fought and won in the valleys. One of Joshua’s greatest was in the Valley of Aijalon. He found the day too short to smite all of his enemies and God lengthened the day of Joshua’s command. David won a great victory in the Valley of Salt. He slaughtered the Philistines. It was in the Valley of Rephaim that David’s veterans heard the sound of the going in the tops of the mulberry trees. There’s something to be said in interpreting life that results come by climbing down rather than climbing up. What advantage may come to me from the depths? Normally, I’m inclined to see little value in misfortune and hardship and calamity. It’s usual to side for peace and prosperity, success, and exemption. Most religious systems place a high rating on material blessing. The best seats are saved for assets. Few board members are chosen for their sorrow, poverty, financial difficulty, and tragedy. They usually represent bank accounts, success in business or profession, the better section of the city, and framed certificates. Yet the fact is that people who escape trouble miss growth. The hardships of life are growing pains. It’s necessity that brings discovery. It did for Paul. I wonder sometimes if he would have been nominated for any board at all. What could he offer to the money hungry crowd? He was a ma who had learned to take pleasure in necessity. I’m often asked how I received the name Morse. M-o-r-s-e like the morse code. C.M. Ward. I’ll tell you now. The man who became my father was a young Methodist circuit rider. He rode horseback in the old west. And one Sunday, as he preached to the early settlers, he was saved under his own preaching. Until that night, he had never been born again by the Holy Spirit. A thirst for holiness gripped him. And that thirst led him to God’s Bible School in Cincinnati. The giants of holiness taught there. Morrison, Paradigm, Hadley, Reese, and others. A.G. Ward thirsted for knowledge of the word. He emaciated himself through deprivation to further his study. He was without means. He tried to eke out an existence under appalling circumstances without family, without support, without friends. Almost totally alone. He collapsed physically, completely broken in half. He lost his sight. He became blind. Seemingly, he was forgotten, an unheralded misfortune. And then the miracle happened in the valley. Many, many miles distant in New Jersey, a Mrs. Morse was seeking her God. She was a woman of means and position, married to Dr Morse whose clinic shadowed the great clinics to come in this nation. As Mrs. Morse prayed, God the Father showed her accurately in a vision this young man, now blind and at the point of death, lying exhausted in poverty on the banks of the Ohio River. She was told his name and many other details. She was told to go to Cincinnati and take him to her spacious home. She did so. Mrs. Morse nursed A.G. Ward back to health, providing the best of care and the best of food. And then, she laid hold of God for his sight and God healed A.G. Ward. Some several years later, A.G. Ward married, and the couple waited for their first born and I arrived. And out of gratitude, my parents gave me the name Morse. Incidentally, it was Mrs. Morse who introduce A.G. Ward to Dr A.B. Simpson and the Christian and Missionary Alliance. Now, those who seek ease live on the surface. Severe testing produces the best in man. This is set forth in the ministry of Jesus. He took the three, Peter, James, and John to the mountain top and was transfigured before them. They saw His celestial glory and they were dazed. They were impressed. It was another world. They were dazzled and blinded. It was too much for them. They could not discern the meaning. They heard personalities which belonged to history. They saw two giants of whom they’d read in the Old Testament. It was overpowering. They never knew the purpose until they descended. Then they looked into the face of human need. Then they discovered that glory consists not in dwelling apart on the heights of privilege, not in spasms of rapture, but in ministering to the afflicted and in lifting the burden from the weary. There’s a temptation to all of us to be climbers. We want to climb socially. We want to climb financially. We want to climb academically and theologically. Jesus was not a climber. He was a descender. He found an organization quarreling about who was to be the greatest, swollen with pride, forgetful of service. They were throne conscience. Then Jesus said, “Let us get down.” And taking a towel, he washed the feet of these junior executives. It embarrassed them but it taught them that true greatness is a dividend of service. They’d been climbing for a fall. How easy it is to become dizzy and tumble amid your letterheads and committee assignments and certificates of achievements and your advertising. You’re safe when you’re washing feet. They saw that men were great, not as they served, but as they serve. Christ always dug. He emphasized solid foundations. He made Paul more than a conqueror. How? Through strikes, shipwrecks, stonings, prisons, parrels of bandits, loneliness, misunderstanding, wilderness, pain, watchings, hunger, nakedness and weariness. That’s not a description of a loser. Paul is a winner. He says, “I will come to visions and revelations.” Having gone down, he has now taken up. It’s important to be an undergraduate. It’s in solitude that you discover what a friend is worth. You see your neighbors you’ve never seen before. It is in sickness that you value your health. It ascends wealth and job. It is in bereavement you discover compassion, and you find that no man liveth to himself. Sometimes mister, it takes a valley of remorse. We must pay the penalty for our mistakes for breaking the rules. We see penalties meted out by game officials in football and basketball and hockey and they’re costly. Now, life is like that. I’m sorry. A second later, I’m caught. I’m exposed. I’m ashamed. The purpose is to learn. I determine not to repeat the mistake, to be guilty of infractions, to lose my temper, to take unfair advantage, to trip or rough the other man. And sometimes lady, it’s a valley of misfortune. Reverses come. A house and furnishings and keepsakes and valuable are burned. A lawsuit is lost. The stock market drops. A crop is ruined. The business goes under. We’re down in the depths. Many make the real finds of life. They find values that cannot perish from flame or flood. Honor, integrity, love. They are things that cannot be stolen. What you are cannot be taken from you. What you have given cannot be forfeited. So, walk through the hospitals, mister. There in those valleys, you’ll meet some of the greatest people, folk to whom pain had become sacramental. You meet giants and patients and appreciation. The immature are the selfish. The coddled, the whimperer, the protected, what do they really know about life? Sometimes it’s the valley of death. The path is narrow and dark. You enter and leave in single file. Suddenly, there opens the eternal vision. I can never know really, personally know what the future holds until I enter the valley of death. The Bible uses a phrase, the valley of decision. Very soon in life, I am faced with yes and the no. What will I study? Who will I marry? What line of employment will I seek? What friends will I cultivate? I’m locked into these things. It is yes or no. It’s not the mountaintop of decision, it’s the valley of decision. I’m never helped by attitudes of sight and conquest of distances. I have to make these decisions on the basis of for better or for worse, in sickness or in health, in loss or in gain. I cannot see from beginning to end. This is the agony and the ecstasy. I know this in my lifetime. I’ve been to the valley of dry bones, to sermons that seem to have lost all their meat, to services that seem to be ready for internment, to audiences with no response. Can these live? I’ve witnessed more than one resurrection. I’ve seen songs come alive. I’ve seen messages suddenly touched by another world. I’ve seen audiences rise. Looking back folk, no, I wouldn’t have missed it. I have these and other valleys to enter and I’ll meet you in the valley. I need you. We make friends in the valley. We learn the mischief of what divides the sanctity of what unites. There we learn the common denominator. Barriers disappear. So, don’t shun the valleys, sir. It never need be the symbol of disgrace. Jesus descended. He came down to walk with man. I know this, I have some walking to do before I’m ready to climb. But “I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.” And one day soon, there will be just one more valley to cross and then the lights of home. A long, long altar is the time and the place for personal experience. It alone is life changing and situation changing. So, come with me in these next 10 seconds and invest the most important moments of your life. >>Choir: “There’s room at the cross for you.” >>Ward: Cleto Reeves there in Las Cruces, New Mexico needed help so he came. He wanted to take and pass the state plumbers examination. “Father Ward, God helped me with a score of 84 percent. I didn’t feel nervous at all.” Mrs. A. Lipscomb there in Washington D.C had another kind of problem. Her husband and the neighbor had quarreled bitterly, and she interceded at this altar. She says, “God undertook. It is as though nothing had ever separated them. I witnessed a miracle of reconciliation.” Mrs. Mary Atwood of Norfolk, Virginia felt a frightening development, a large growing lump on her thyroid gland and she came to this altar. “Father Ward, the lump dissolved. I had no need of surgery.” So, there is a very present help just as the Bible says. Jesus, thou art alive in us. We profess to all men that thou art the Christ, the only begotten son of God, Savior, Messiah. I pray for the distressed, people with consciousness violated and accusing. I pray for the dispossessed, those abandoned and terrified. I pray for the angry and those in the clutches of the devil. Open my kingdom to them through Jesus, the Way, the Truth, and the Light. I pray that thou would help young African nations. I pray that there will be less weapons and more food. I pray for those who long for suitable marriage partners. Bring such happiness to men. I pray for the lonely. I pray for rains to fall in may dry places. Honor the sobs at this altar, the tears that fall. There are Hannahs here. There are Stevens here. There are Esters here. There are Samuels here. These are thy friends, Jesus. Give us more preachers in the pulpit, Lord. We ask all to thy glory. Amen. I praise God for your experience with us. Now, the Master had come again as He did to the pool and as He did to Bethany and as He did to the upper room. I adore His ministry among us. He will discern with me, in the spirit, His special move towards a small child who has not yet begun to talk, and parents are so worried. These parents will be excited this week. The child will say the first baby words. And these parents will know that Jesus has not forgotten their home. He is concerned. So, give Him the glory. I love to serve and present the victor of Calvary. He says, “I will never leave you. I will never forsake you.” So, lean. Lean hard this week. Now, this is the meeting. The goal always is to have Jesus present and to know His direction for us. We’re not asking you to join anything. We ask you to belong. The Holy Spirit builds our fellowship, and we love those He adds. We want you because we need you. And the meeting foreshadows the meeting in the air. It will be the first opportunity to meet the dead in Christ. So, ask the Holy Spirit to make you ready “for it is not by might nor by power, but by my spirit, sayeth the Lord.” >>Announcer: You’ve been listening to the Beeson podcast with host, Timothy George. You can subscribe to the Beeson podcast at our website, Beesondivinity.com. Beeson Divinity School is an interdenominational evangelical divinity school training men and women in the service of Jesus Christ. We pray that this podcast will aid and encourage your work, and we hope you will listen to each upcoming edition of the Beeson podcast.