The Old-Fashioned Gospel - All The LORD is near Daily Devotionals for 2024

For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek.
Romans 1:16 NKJV

The Old-Fashioned Gospel
Dr. Berry, a preacher famed throughout the English-speaking world, was a liberal theologian when the following incident took place:

“One night there came to me,” he says, “a Lancashire girl with her shawl over her head and clogs on her feet. ‘I want you to come and get my mother in,’ she said. ‘She is dying, and I want you to get her into salvation.’ I did all I could to get out of it, but it was of no use. I found the house, and upstairs I found the poor woman dying. I sat down and talked about Jesus as the beautiful Example, and extolled Him as a leader and teacher. She looked at me out of the eyes of death and said, ‘Mister, that’s no good for the likes of me. I don’t want an example. I’m a sinner.’

“There I was face to face with a poor soul dying, and had nothing to tell her. I had no gospel; but I thought of what my mother had taught me, and I told her the old story of God’s love in Christ’s dying for sinful men, whether I believed it or not. ‘Now you are getting at it,’ said the woman. ‘That’s the story for me.’

“And so I got her in, and I got myself in. From that night,” added Dr. Berry, “I have always had a full gospel of salvation for lost sinners.”

What a testimony to the old-fashioned gospel preached by Paul, Wycliffe, Luther, Wesley, Whitefield, Spurgeon, and multitudes of saintly men of God—the old, old story for which Huss, Ridley, Latimer, Cranmer, and thousands besides have died, rather than surrender its blessing. It is still doing its happy work in spite of the flood of evil cast out by the dragon’s mouth (cf. Rev. 12:16; 16:13). It is still winning its peaceful conquests. Nothing can stop it!

-- A. J. Pollock