Limerick City Church
Facebook Page
  • Limerick City Church
    • Who We Are
    • Where we meet
    • Leadership >
      • The Task of Leadership
      • The Need for Leadership
    • When we meet
    • What We Believe
    • Testimonies >
      • What is Life all About?
      • Margaret
  • Sermons
    • Sermon Series >
      • Book of Acts
      • Choose Your Church
      • The Faith of Abraham
      • Fruit of the Spirit
      • Christian's Warfare
      • The Healthy Church
      • B.H. Clendennen
      • How to Judge
      • Grace in Jonah
      • The New Wineskin
      • The Uniqueness of the Bible
      • Strange Trials
      • The Prayer Closet
      • Mighty Conversions
      • Various 2013-14 Limerick sermons
      • Sanctification of the Spirit
      • Lot's Journey to Sodom
      • Wisdom for the Wise
      • 2015 Limerick Ireland
      • Redeeming the Time
      • Mary Limerick Malcomson
      • Salvation by Faith
      • The Ministry of Christ
      • Temptation
      • 2016 Sermons Limerick
      • Genesis 1-10
      • Rebuilding the Gates Nehemiah
      • The Shadow of the Cross
      • The Blood of Jesus
      • Unity in the Church
      • My Testimony
      • A Man Under Authority
      • Authority & Submission
      • Various 2017
      • Justification by Faith
      • Born Again
      • The Church
      • The Gifts of the Spirit
      • Various 2018
      • Jerusalem and Bible Prophecy
      • How to Store up Treasures in Heaven
      • How to Hear
      • Is this the Last Generation?
      • The Divine Exchange at the Cross
      • Water Baptism
      • School of Christ Convention 2018
      • The Latter Rain Covenant
      • The Marriage Covenant
      • Lost Things
      • Genesis 24
      • The Fight of Faith
      • 2019 Sermons LCC
      • Assurance of Salvation
      • Missing Links
      • Prayer
      • The Bible
      • Psalm 119
      • Grace Gifts
      • Various 2020
      • 2020 Vision
      • Battle for the Mind
      • Blood of Everlasting Covenant
      • Christ in the Crisis
      • The Corona Crisis
      • Czech Republic Page >
        • Czech 1
      • Biblical Teaching of Head Covering
      • Christ the Healer
      • Reaching Cults for Christ >
        • Candace healing testimonies
        • New Page 1
        • New Page
        • Ladies Meeting
        • Importance of church
        • Rest in the Lord
        • New Page
        • Birthday
        • Candace May 21
        • Shona test
      • Wise & Foolish Virgins
      • God's Message in an Evil Hour
      • Biblical Love
      • The Great Reset
      • Witchcraft in the Church
      • Joseph: A Vessel of Recovery
      • LCC sermons 2021
      • The Heaven's Rule
      • The Blood of Jesus & The Last Days
      • Spiritual Warfare
      • The Centrality of Christ
      • The Battle for the Mind Vol.2
      • SOC 2021
      • Raising Children Under Rising Tyranny
      • The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
      • London Conference
      • The 21st Century Church
      • The Advocate & the Accuser
      • Various 2022
      • Little Things of Scripture
      • Russia, Magog & Tarshish
      • A Heart for God
      • Social Justice & the Gospel
      • A Vessel of Revival
      • Ruin, Redemption & Regeneration
      • Candace Malcomson >
        • Candace Malcomson Funeral
        • Candace Testimonies
        • Candace Malcomson Bible Studies
        • Candace Worship & Songs
        • Candace Children's Talk
        • Candace Written Articles >
          • Christian Romance Novels
          • Christliche Romane. ROMANTISCHE ROMANE
          • Worship and Contemporary Christian Music
      • Sof
      • The Four Seasons of Life
      • Providence in the Book of Ruth
      • Daily Devotions
      • The God of the Valleys
      • Penal Substitution
    • Latest News
    • Articles >
      • Great Commission
      • Christ the Creator
      • Repentance
      • Jesus The Preacher
      • Missionary Churches
      • Leadership
      • Fasting
      • Unity in the Church
      • The Prayer Closet
      • GOD'S DWELLING PLACE IN EPHESUS
      • Things God Hates
      • CAN CHRISTIANS BE INDWELT BY DEMONS?
      • German
    • Books
  • Missions
    • Missionaries
    • Limerick Bible School
    • Encouraging Links
  • Blog
  • Contact LCC
    • Donate Page
    • LCC Events

A Tolstoy Philosopher Finds Reality

9/4/2016

0 Comments

 
Picture
The wife of a wealthy Dutch, University Professor begged the Maréchale to talk to him and persuade him out of his decision to resign work, sell his beautiful villa, to become a ‘peasant’ digging potatoes—by choice. All of which came about because he believed in Tolstoy’s philosophy that peasants had no worries and had peace in this life because of their very few possessions and simple way of life. 

The Professor had heard a very wonderful and powerful message spoken by the Maréchale on the futility of life without Christ and had been deeply moved by it. On that same night, the Maréchale approached the Professor.

“Professor I have come to have a little talk with you”

That was just what he too desired.

“I am a Tolstoyist,” he said, and at once began to tell her of his theories. “We must work out our own salvation. All men are naturally equal, no one superior, no one inferior to another, and all should live the simple life, the life of nature!”

“Professor,” said the Maréchale, “this kind of talk is a reflection on God who made us. We are not all made with the same faces, nor with the same gifts. My mother could not wash clothes; if she tried it she would faint away. Why should we all attempt to do the same work?”

He flung away his cigar and exclaimed, “Look at those people round about here! I don’t want my children to grow up and just be like them. They do nothing but live for themselves. They all go the general round with everybody else.”

“What are you going to do, Professor?”

“I have taken a farm, where a hundred of us are going to live the life of peasants, wearing blouses and tilling the soil.”

“You won’t be there four-and-twenty hours before you will have quarrels and disputes. I have had some experience in dealing with humanity, and with all the gifts and graces of the Spirit it is difficult to keep people in love and harmony. Without that it will be a great failure.”

Then he broke out again. The only thing to put the world right was human effort, mechanical labour, the simple life according to nature... and so he ran on and on, eloquently expounding his theories. It was now about one o’clock in the morning when the Maréchale said, “Listen to me. One thing strikes me. You have never said a word all this time about sin. That is the great fact which confronts us in every nation, community, family, and you have never mentioned it—sin!”

“Oh,” he said, “we don’t say sin, we say sickness.”

“I am not going to quarrel with you about terms. Express the thing as you will, there is the great fact. You shelve it, but you have to face it. There is the great obstacle to all improvement—this fact of sin. Selfishness, call it what you please. Professor, what would you say to a murderer? This man is very sick indeed? Yes, and where is the doctor?”

The Professor looked in to the fire with his dreamy blue eyes, and made no answer. She touched his arm and said, “Here’s a drunkard. He has tried a hundred times to give up drink and failed. Professor, I bring him to you. What have you to say to him?”

“I will tell your drunkard that he is to exercise his will.”

“Is that all? Nothing more? You would insult my poor drunkard, telling him to exercise his will. He has no will to exercise!”

The Professor again dropped his head, looked in to the fire, and was silent.

“Do you not see,” she continued, “the will is broken—fallen with the rest of us? It is powerless, as tens of thousands would cry out. There is where we need a Saviour—a Divine hand that will take hold of our poor human need and lift us up—some One who will come into our hearts and bring new aspirations, new desires.”

It was about two o’clock when the Professor turned to her and said, “I throw up the sponge!” and the Tolstoyan, groping after the truth and sincerely eager to find it, added, “Pray for me, Maréchale. Live for us, give us the faith that will change us all.”

He asked her to speak in the great Volkspalast of Amsterdam, which holds four thousand people. She consented, and asked him, “What shall I say?”

“Say to them what you have said to me. Just tell them the same thing.”

Some time afterwards, when she was in Amsterdam, he went to observe the work that the she was doing with some of the best and some of the worst types of human nature. He was deeply moved while she talked to young girls who had fallen into evil ways.  And he acknowledged that while sin—self-love—mocks our ideals and prevents them from being realised; while sin keeps us moving in an endless circle like a dog running after its tail; while we can no more save ourselves from sin than we can escape from our own shadow, the love of Another introduces us into a new world, gives us a new nature, and makes all things possible, even growth into the likeness of Christ, who not only breaks the power of sin, but makes us partakers of His holiness.

The Professor learnt that the simple life of obedience to Christ is for all men and nations, the divine way of victory and progress. The idealist had found his true Ideal. This same Professor is now with Him, seeing Him face to face, changed into His image…   
—Excerpt from The Maréchale by J. Strahan
0 Comments

A 19th Century ‘Facebook’

2/4/2016

0 Comments

 
Picture
Excerpt from, The Maréchale (Katie Booth Clibborn) by James Strahan
 
One day a French Baron, who had received a great blessing at the Maréchale’s Conferences, said to her, “What you lack here is pictures; for instance, the saints. Those beautiful faces, with their sweet celestial expressions, diffuse a sentiment of reverence and quietness, and they would form such a beautiful background to you. You should have the Virgin, and Saint Francis, and many others. That is what you lack in all your halls: could we not do something?”

“Baron,” said the Maréchale, “will you come here next Sunday evening?”

“Yes, certainly.  Are you going to speak?” He never lost a chance of hearing her.

“Yes; be sure you do not miss it.”

 
On Sunday evening the Maréchale marshalled her little group of officers in to the Hall. She filed them in, men on one side, women on the other. She stood in the midst of them, and spoke. At the end of the meeting the Baron came forward. “Maréchale,” he said, “you have no need of pictures. Those figures! Those faces! They are your pictures.”
 
Her friend, Frank Crossley, was greatly struck by this incident. He wrote: “I was specially interested in the remark upon inspired faces. I once heard Rendel Harris, a great Bible scholar and collector of Biblical scripts, say  that Bible critics might tear the volume [written work] into shreds, but they could never rub off the light of God from the faces of His people.”
 
The Maréchale once wrote, “We are sometimes told that our uniforms, our young women speaking in public, our tambourines and our processions bring contempt upon religion. It is a mistake. That which is the laughing-stock of the world and of Hell is a religion without sacrifice. People will never believe in Christians who, while professing to be disciples of Him who had not where to lay His head, live in luxury, seek first the comfort of their family, the health and position of their children, and let their souls perish for lack of that Gospel which they profess to believe. There is the secret of the unbelief of France; that is what makes the young who are in search of truth cry, ‘Comedy!’ On the other hand, those faces which radiate the light from on high, those young people who rise up to give themselves to God instead of the world, those men and women who declare, with a sincerity which leaves no room for doubt, that they consecrate their life to God for the saving of souls, are more eloquent than the most beautiful discourses.” 


A well-known socialist of the time, who greatly admired the Maréchale, wrote of the Salvation Army, “I confess that I find it remarkable that among these young girls, pretty as well as plain, is the complete absence of the ordinary feminine expression. . . In looking with searching, scrutinizing eye at the faces enveloped in this ugly bonnet, we have not deciphered the least vestige of this expression, neither timidity, nor awkwardness, nor restlessness, nor the consciousness that people are thinking of them. Nothing. These faces are the free faces of free creatures.”

0 Comments

    Limerick City Church

    We are a church that has a real burden for the city of Limerick. We are praying that many will experience true salvation in Christ and that the Lord will pour out His Holy Spirit in a genuine revival.

    Categories

    All
    B.h. Clendennen
    Faith
    Hymn
    Men Of Faith
    Shiloh
    The Church

    RSS Feed

    Archives

    April 2022
    August 2020
    May 2018
    April 2018
    November 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    August 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    August 2015
    June 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013