Friday, July 23, 2010

From what we are reading along with family altar in the morning

Our children beg for me to continue reading in this book, Thirty-three Years A Live Wire. In the morning when we have family altar I often also read 2 or 3 pages from John T. Hatfield or another exciting holiness book. Tomorrow we should finish the last chapter. If you find a copy to read, your children will be impacted and you will be left unsatisfied with the norm if you have a hungering after God's holiness.

"This is one of the Historic places of the Civil War. It was one of the strong fortifications of the Confederate army. Some of the old cannons are still there yet and they are just as good as ever, but they have no explosives about them. They are not in war now. How many old church professors are like those old cannons, sitting around on the breastworks of an old battlefield telling about what they did fifty years ago, but nor they are powerless, and the devil is no more afraid of their old brass cannons than a yearling bull would be of a popgun. One little sleepy devil could lay in the belfry and keep charge over a whole church full of such fellows.
". . . I had read of these battles in my boyhood days, at the time when the fight was on. I was not a soldier then, but I am now, I am in the war against sin and the devil, and it takes more backbone, grit and grace in these days to stand straight for God and declare against sin, than to shoulder a musket and go to war. There are men living to-day who were in those battles and fought bravely, who are now members of church and make a profession of religion and yet they are so cowardly they are afraid to let their wives and children hear them pray."

-pp293-294, Thirty-three Years A Live Wire: Life Of John T. Hatfield, By Himself, God’s Revivalist Office, Cincinnati, Ohio, no date.
John T. Hatfield was born in 1851 in Charlottesville, IN and was a personal friend of Uncle Bud Robinson who said of him, “He is always full of juice and freshness and fire and glory. Brother John never runs a meeting by a program; he is as liable to call mourners at the opening of his service as to call them at the close of his service. He is one of the greatest puzzles to the devil that is now living; the devil never knows what he is going to do next; he is about as liable to preach in one end of the church as the other – no strings on that man! He is a cyclone of grace turned loose on the hills of the earth to do just as the blessed Holy Ghost suggest to him.”
- post by Phillip

1 comment:

sherryldickinson said...

What an interesting book! I have read that book some time in the past but I need to find it so I can read it again. I need the fire that book tends to feed!
Bless you for having family altar with your children, Phillip. I am so grateful that your family has devotions together.
Love,
Mom D

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...