Bloody Hands in the Mississippi — E.A. Johnston

The Gospel’s Power and the Church’s Loss of Authority

I don't think we know what the gospel is today. It's been so diluted to make it more palatable to sinful man. We robbed it of its power, Romans 1 .16 declares, for I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth.

The gospel Paul preached had power to save, but the gospel we preach today can't save a flea, much less a person hardened in sin. Years ago, the church had authority in the land and society used to look to the church for guidance.

Historic Preachers Who Confronted Sin

Back then, preachers were prophets who spoke out against sin. Men like Sam Jones and Mordecai Ham preached so hard against alcohol and its dangers that after their meetings in towns, taverns would go out of business for lack of customers.

Mordecai Ham once set up a tabernacle in the red light district of a southern town and held meetings there, and the brothels had to close their doors because all the girls working there got saved. But today, the church relaxed its attack against sin, and instead of warning folks about the danger of sin and the terribleness of damnation and hell, we just soothe their conscience today and entertain them.

The Watchman’s Duty to Warn the Wicked

There is a passage of scripture which sums all this up, which the modern church has turned its back on, and that passage of scripture can be found in the book of Ezekiel in chapter 3, beginning in verse 17.

Son of man, I have made thee a watchman unto the house of Israel, therefore hear the word at my mouth and give them warning from me. When I say unto the wicked, Thou shalt surely die, and thou givest him not warning, nor speakest to warn the wicked from his wicked way, to save his life.

The same wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but his blood will I require at thine hand. I will stop there, friends. And that's the duty of every God-called preacher, to warn men of their danger of damnation in a devil's hell, to warn men and women and boys and girls that they must repent and get their sins washed in the blood of the Lamb, Jesus, the only remedy for sin.

Revival and Faithful Preaching in American History

In America, about 160 years ago, the nation was in the midst of a great revival, called the Second Great Awakening, where thousands of souls were brought to salvation in Christ Jesus. Back then, America was still a Christian nation, and her ministers were faithful to the souls of men because they warned them.

Men like Charles Finney and Azahel Nettleton warned men of a future judgment that awaited all mankind, and these old faithful preachers were like watchmen on the wall for America, and they warned folks, and God attended their preaching with powerful revivals.

R.G. Lee’s Story of Entertainment Without the Cross

I want to share a story with you, friends, that it's always made a deep impression upon me. I discovered it while conducting my research on my biography of Rolf Barnard. Barnard was one of the speakers at a conference one year down in Louisiana, and so was Dr. R .G. Lee.

That's where they met, and these men were both fiery preachers who hit it off, even though one was an Armenian and the other a hard-balled Calvinist, and it was during that meeting in Louisiana when R .G. Lee shared with Rolf Barnard a story about his early ministry.

Listen to this story, friends, as I now give it to you. I know you'll find it interesting, especially you preacher boys out there. There's a big Baptist church in Memphis, Tennessee, and one of the former pastors was R .G. Lee.

He's known for preaching a famous sermon called Payday Someday. Well, there was a member in Dr. Lee's congregation, an attorney, who had to be out of town on business frequently, but no matter where this lawyer went, he made sure to catch a train back to Memphis on Saturday night so he could listen to R .G. Lee preach on Sunday.

He just loved to hear that man preach because he was so entertaining. R .G. Lee had a preaching style that loaned itself to entertainment because Dr. Lee was somewhat of an actor who could play several of the characters in a biblical narrative.

He held his audiences spellbound. Well, this lawyer got cancer, and he was in the hospital dying, and he called for his pastor to come to his bedside. Dr. Lee entered the hospital room whose window overlooked the Mississippi River.

The lawyer told R .G. Lee, I want you to know how much I've enjoyed your preaching through the years, and I never missed a Sunday if I could help it. I lie here dying, with only a few weeks left to live, so the doctors tell me, and I summoned you here to my bedside.

You're my pastor, but I summoned you here to reprimand you, sir, for never telling me how to be saved. You never preached the cross to where I could see it. You never put the blood out there where I could reach it.

You failed to warn me of my danger and peril of dying in my sins, and now I'm a dying and more than likely will die and be brought down into the ground in my sins, and I want to chastise you, sir, for failing to warn me.

The Bloody Hands and the Renewal of a Preacher

Well, R .G. Lee left that man's hospital room with his head down, feeling berated and guilty as charged. It was now dark outside as he slowly walked down to the banks of the Mississippi River. There, he got down on his knees in the mud, getting his white suit pants dirty in the process.

There he knelt, gazing out across the river while he leaned forward to dip his hands in the cold, murky water. He knelt there a while, beneath the moonlight, with his hands in that water, and as he felt the current of that mighty river coursing through his fingers, he reflected on what the dying man had told him, and R .G. Lee looked down at his submerged hands, and the combination of the silt in the river water and the reflection of the moonlight upon it made his hands, for a split second, look like they had blood all over them, and R .G. Lee cried out in anguish a soul, and right there and then he promised God that from that point forward he would preach a bloody cross and a blood-stained Christ, and he would warn men and women and boys and girls of their duty of repentance, and he changed his message that night, beneath that moonlit sky, and as R .G. Lee stood to his feet, he felt like Caesar, who had just crossed his Rubicon.

It was obvious to the congregation that a changed man was in the pulpit of that church, for now thunder and lightning accompanied his preaching, and in three months' time a move of grace got a hold of that church, and four blocks of downtown Memphis were shaken with revival, and that whole section of the city felt it.

A Call to Revival and Doctrinal Preaching

Listen to me, friend. You get a hold of God, and God will get a hold of you. We need revival today more than ever, as things just grow worse and worse in society in this sin-soaked land, and we have a whole lot of preachers today walking around with bloody hands because they refuse to warn men.

This is a call to the pulpits in this land to forsake their wicked and worldly ways, to return to the old gospel roots of preaching the great doctrines of ruin, redemption, repentance, and regeneration, and to warn folks of the great peril and danger of dying in their sins outside of Christ's blood.

A Prayer for Fearless Preachers and National Repentance

Let me pray. Oh, great God, I pray that you will raise up some prophets who will take a stand for you and cry out, thus saith the Lord, preachers who don't fear men, but only fear the Almighty. Let the pulpits in this country cry out against sin without fear of political correctness.

Let them speak with a holy boldness that marriage is meant to be between a man and a woman, that if you booze, you lose, that sleeping together outside of marriage is nothing but fornication. And if the church repents and turns back to you, Lord, then maybe, just maybe, we can then lead this nation back to you and turn America back to the God of the Bible again.

And if we do this, maybe, just maybe, we might see a little touch of heaven. When you send us a revival, they'll stir the tops of the mulberry trees. That revival wind blows from coast to coast. Make it so, Lord, I pray, and I pray these things in the strong name of Jesus.