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Eighty-six years ago (February 5, 1837), in a humble farmhouse in Northfield, Massachusetts, a little baby was born to poor parents. This baby was to become, as I believe, the greatest man of his generation or maybe even of his century: Dwight L. Moody.
After our great generals, great statesmen, great scientists and great men of letters have passed away and been forgotten, and their work and its helpful influence has come to an end, the work of D.L. Moody will go on and its saving influence continue and increase, bringing blessing not only to every state in the Union but to every nation on earth. Yes, it will continue throughout the ages of eternity.
I shall not seek to glorify Mr. Moody, but the God who by His grace, His entirely unmerited favor, used him so mightily, and the Christ who saved him by His atoning death and resurrection life, and the Holy Spirit who lived in him and who alone wrought through him the mighty power that he was to this world. Furthermore: I hope to make it clear that the God who used D.L. Moody in his day, is just as ready to use you and me, in this day, if we on our part, do what D.L. Moody did which made it possible for God to use him so abundantly.
The whole secret of why D.L. Moody was such a mightily used man, you will find in Ps. 62:11: “God hath spoken once; twice have I heard this; that POWER BELONGETH UNTO GOD”. I am glad it does. I am glad that power did not belong to D.L. Moody; I am glad that it did not belong to Charles G. Finney, nor to Martin Luther, nor to any other Christian whom God has greatly used in this world’s history. Power belongs to God. If D.L. Moody had any power, and he had great power, he got it from God.
But God does not give His power arbitrarily. It is true that He gives it to whomsoever He will, but He wills to give it on certain conditions, which are clearly revealed in His Word. D.L. Moody met those conditions and God made him the most wonderful preacher of his generation - yes, to my mind - the most wonderful man of his generation.
But how was it that D.L. Moody had that power of God so wonderfully manifested in his life? Pondering this question it seemed to me that there were seven things in the life of D.L. Moody that accounted for God’s using him as largely as He did.
A fully surrendered man
D.L. Moody was a fully surrendered man. Every ounce of that two-hundred-and-eighty-pound body of his belonged to God; everything he was and everything he had, belonged wholly to God. Now, I am not saying that Mr. Moody was perfect; he was not. I guess I could point out some defects in his character, if I tried real hard. I have never yet met a perfect man, not one. I have known perfect men in the sense in which the Bible commands us to be perfect, i.e., men who are wholly God’s, out and out for God, fully surrendered to God, with no will but God’s will; but I have never known a man in whom I could not see some defects, some places where he might have been improved. No, Mr. Moody was not a faultless man. I presume I was in a position to know his flaws better than most other men, because of my very close association with him in the later years of his life, days when he opened his heart to me more fully than to anyone else. He had defects in his character as well as anybody, but while I recognized such flaws, nevertheless, I know that he was a man who belonged wholly to God.
The first month I was in Chicago, we were having a talk about something upon which we very widely differed, and Mr. Moody turned to me very frankly and very kindly and said in defense of his own position: “Torrey, if I believed that God wanted me to jump out of that window, I would jump.”, and I believe he would. If he thought God wanted him to do any thing, he would do it. He belonged wholly, unreservedly, unqualifiedly, entirely, to God.
Henry Varley, a intimate friend of Mr. Moody, loved to tell how he once said to him: “It remains to be seen what God will do with a man who gives himself up wholly to Him”. Upon this Mr. Moody said to himself: “Well, I will be that man.” And I, for my part, do not think “it remains to be seen” what God will do with a man who gives himself up wholly to Him. I think it has been shown in D.L. Moody. If you and I are to be used in our spheres, as D.L. Moody was used in his, we will have to put all that we have and all that we are, in the hands of God, for Him to use as He will, to send us where He will, for God to do with us what He will, and we, on our part will have to do everything God bids us do.
There are thousands and tens of thousands of men and women in Christian work, brilliant people, rarely gifted people, people who are making great sacrifices, who have put all conscious sin out of their lives, yet who nevertheless sadly stopped short of absolute surrender to God, and therefore have stopped short of fullness of power. But Mr. Moody did not stop short of absolute surrender to God. If you and I are to be used, we too must be wholly surrendered men and women.
A man of Prayer
Mr. Moody was in the deepest and most meaningful sense a man of prayer. People oftentimes say to me: “Well, I went many miles to see and to hear D.L. Moody, and he certainly was a wonderful preacher”. Yes, D.L. Moody certainly was a wonderful preacher - it was a great privilege to hear him preach as he alone could preach; but out of my acquaintance with him I testify that he was a he far greater pray-er than he was preacher. Time and time again, he was confronted by obstacles that seemed insurmountable, but he always knew the way to surmount and overcome all difficulties. He knew the way to bring to pass anything that needed to be brought to pass. He knew and believed in the deepest depths of his soul that “nothing was too hard for the Lord” and that prayer could move God to do anything.
Oftentimes Mr. Moody would write me when he was about to undertake some new work, saying: “I am beginning work in such and such a place on such and such a day. I wish for you to get the students together for a day of fasting and prayer”. I would read those letters to the students in the lecture room and call on them for “a day of fasting and prayer, first for God’s blessing on our own souls and work, and then for God’s blessing on him and his work.” Often we were gathered in the lecture room far into the night - sometimes till one, two, or even five o’clock in the morning, crying to God, just because Mr. Moody urged us to wait upon God until we received His blessing. Oh, so many men and women have I known, whose lives and characters have been transformed by those nights of prayer and who have wrought mighty things in many lands because of those nights of prayer!
One day Mr. Moody drove up to my house at Northfield and said: “Torrey, I want you to take a ride with me.” I got into the carriage and we drove out toward Lover’s Lane, talking about some great and unexpected difficulties that had arisen in regard to the work in Northfield and Chicago, and in connection with other work that was very dear to him. As we drove along, some black storm clouds lay ahead of us, and then suddenly, as we were talking, it began to rain. He drove the horse into a shed near the entrance to Lover’s Lane, and then laid the reins upon the dashboard saying: “Torrey, pray”; and then, as best I could, I prayed, while he in his heart joined me in prayer. And when my voice was silent he began to pray. Oh, I wish you could have heard that prayer! I shall never forget it, so simple, so trustful, so definite and so direct and so mighty. When the storm was over and we drove back to town, the obstacles had been surmounted, and the work of the schools, and other work that was threatened, continued as it never before, and still continues on this day. As we drove back, Mr. Moody said to me: “Torrey, we will let the other men do the talking and the criticizing, and we will stick to the work that God has given us to do, and let Him take care of the difficulties and answer the criticisms.”
A deep and practical student of the Bible
The third secret of Mr. Moody’s power was His deep and practical study of the Word of God. Nowadays it is often said of him that he was not a student, but he surely was! He was not a student of psychology, nor of anthropology – he probably would not have known what that word meant; he was not a student of biology, of philosophy, nor even of theology in the technical sense of the term, but he was a student, a profound and practical student of the one Book that is more worth studying than all other books in the world put together: he was a student of the Bible. Every day of his life, I have reason to believe, he arose very early in the morning to study the Word of God, way down to the close of his life. Mr. Moody used to rise about four o’clock in the morning to study the Bible. He would say to me: “If I am going to get in any study, I have got to get up before the other folks get up”; and he would shut himself up in a remote room in his house, alone with his God and his Bible.
I shall never forget the first night I spent in his home. He had invited me to take the superintendence of the Bible Institute and I had already begun my work. I was on my way to some city in the East to preside at the International Christian Workers’ Convention. He wrote me saying:
“Come up to Northfield as soon as the Convention is over”. He drove over to South Vernon to fetch me. That night he had all the teachers from the Mount Hermon School and from the Northfield Seminary come together at the house to meet me and to discuss the problems of the two schools. We talked till deep into the night, and then, after the guests had gone home, Mr. Moody and I discussed the problems a while longer. It was very late when I got to bed that night, but very early the next morning, about five o’clock, I heard a gentle tap on my door and Mr. Moody’s voice whispering: “Torrey, are you up?” I happened to be; I do not always get up at that early hour but I happened to be up that particular morning. He said, “I want you to go somewhere with me,” and I went down with him. Then I found out that he had already been up an hour or two in his room studying the Word of God. Oh, you may talk about power; but, if you neglect the one Book that God has given you as the one instrument through which He imparts and exercises His power, you will not have it. You may read many books and go to many conventions and you may have your all-night prayer meetings to pray for the power of the Holy Ghost; but unless you keep in constant and close association with the one Book, the Bible, you will not have power. And if you ever had power, you can not maintain it, except by the daily, earnest, intense study of that Book. Ninety-nine Christians in every hundred are merely playing at Bible study; and therefore ninety-nine Christians in every hundred are mere weaklings, when they might be giants, both in their Christian life and in their service. Though Mr. Moody knew little about science or philosophy or literature in general, he did know the one Book that this perishing world is longing to know.
Oh, men and women, if you wish to get an audience and wish to do that audience some good after you get them, study, study, STUDY the one Book and preach, preach, PREACH the one Book., and teach, teach, TEACH the one Book, the Bible, the only Book that is God’s Word, and the only Book that has power to gather and hold and bless the crowds for any great length of time.
A humble man
The fourth reason why God continuously, through so many years, used D.L. Moody was because he was a humble man. D.L. Moody was the humblest man I ever knew in all my life. He loved to quote the words of another; “Faith gets the most; love works the most, but humility keeps the most.” He himself had the humility that keeps everything it gets. As I have already said, he was the most humble man I ever knew, bearing in mind the great things that he did, and the praise that was lavished upon him. Oh, how he loved to put himself in the background and put other men in the foreground. How often he would stand on a platform with some of us little fellows seated behind him and as he spoke he would say: “There are better men coming after me.” As he said it, he would point back over his shoulder with his thumb to the “little fellows”. I do not know how he could believe it, but he really did believe that the others that were coming after him were really better than he was. He made no pretense to a humility he did not possess.
In his heart of hearts he constantly underestimated himself, and overestimated others. He really believed that God would use other men in a larger measure than he had been used.
At his conventions at Northfield, or anywhere else, he would push the other men to the front and, if he could, have them do all the preaching - McGregor, Campbell Morgan, Andrew Murray, and the rest of them. The only way we could get him to take any part in the program was to get up in the convention and announce that we will hear D.L. Moody at the next meeting.
Oh, how many a man has been full of promise and God has used him, and then the man thought that he was the whole thing and God was compelled to set him aside! I believe more promising workers have gone on the rocks through self-sufficiency and self-esteem than through any other cause. I can look back for forty years, or more, and think of many men who are now wrecks or derelicts who at one time, the world thought, were going to be something great. But they have disappeared entirely from the public view. Why? Because of overestimation of self. Oh, the men and women who have been put aside because they began to think that they were somebody, that they were “IT,” and therefore God was compelled to set them aside. God used D.L. Moody, I think, beyond any man of his day; but it made no difference how much God used him, he never was puffed up.
One day, speaking to me of a great New York preacher, now dead, Mr. Moody said: “He once did a very foolish thing, the most foolish thing that I ever knew a man, as wise as he was, to do. He came up to me at the close of a little talk I had given and said: ‘Young man, you have made a great address tonight’.” Then Mr. Moody continued: “How foolish of him to have said that! It almost turned my head”. But, thank God, it did not turn his head, and even when pretty much all the ministers in England, Scotland and Ireland, and many of the English bishops were ready to follow D.L. Moody wherever he led, even then it never turned his head one bit. He would get down on his face before God, knowing he was human, and ask God to empty him of all self-sufficiency. And God did.
Oh, men and women! Especially young men and young women, perhaps God is beginning to use you; very likely people are saying: “What a wonderful gift he has as a Bible teacher, what power he has as a preacher, for such a young man!” Listen: get down upon your face before God. I believe here lie one of the most dangerous snares of the Devil. When the Devil cannot discourage a man, he approaches him on another tack, which he knows is far worse in its results; he puffs him up by whispering in his ear: “You are the leading evangelist of the day. You are the man who will sweep everything before you. You are the coming man. You are the D.L. Moody of the day”; and if you listen to him, he will ruin you. The entire shore of the history of Christian workers is strewn with the wrecks of gallant vessels that were full of promise a few years ago, but these men became puffed up and were driven on the rocks by the wild winds of their own raging self-esteem.
His entire freedom from the love of money
The fifth secret of D.L. Moody’s continual power and usefulness was his entire freedom from the love of money. Mr. Moody might have been a wealthy man, but money had no charms for him. He loved to gather money for God’s work; he refused to accumulate money for himself. He told me during the World’s Fair that if he had taken, for himself, the royalties on the hymnbooks which he had published, they would have amounted, at that time, to a million dollars. But Mr. Moody refused to touch the money. He had a perfect right to take it, for he was responsible for the publication of the books and it was his money that went into the publication of the first of them. Mr. Sankey had some hymns that he had taken with him to England and he wished to have them published.
He went to a publisher (I think Morgan & Scott) and they declined to publish them, because, as they said, Philip Phillips had recently been over and published a hymnbook and it had not done well. However, Mr. Moody had a little money and he said that he would put it into the publication of these hymns in cheap form; and he did. The hymns had a most remarkable and unexpected sale; they were then published in book form and large profits accrued. The financial results were offered to Mr. Moody, but he refused to touch them. This is the point at which many an evangelist makes shipwreck, and his great work comes to an untimely end. The love of money on the part of some evangelists has done more to discredit evangelistic work in our day, and to lay many an evangelist on the shelf, than almost any other cause.
His consuming passion for the salvation of the lost
D.L. Moody had a consuming passion for the salvation of the lost. He made the resolution, shortly after he himself was saved, that he would never let twenty-four hours pass over his head without speaking to at least one person about his soul. Mr. Moody was a man on fire for God. Not only was he always “on the job” himself but he was always getting others to work as well. He once invited me down to Northfield to spend a month there with the schools, speaking first to one school and then crossing the river to the other. I was obliged to use the ferry a great deal; it was before the present bridge was built at that point. One day he said to me: “Torrey, did you know that that ferryman that ferries you across every day was unconverted?” He did not tell me to speak to him, but I knew what he meant. When some days later he learned that the ferryman was saved, he was exceedingly happy.
Once, when walking down a certain street in Chicago, Mr. Moody stepped up to a perfect stranger and said: “Sir, are you a Christian?” “You mind your own business,” was the reply. Mr. Moody replied: “This is my business.” The man said, “Well, then, you must be Moody.” Out in Chicago they were used to Moody, because day and night he was speaking to everybody he could about being saved. One time he was going to Milwaukee, and in his seat sat a traveling man. Mr. Moody sat down beside him and asked him: “Where are you going?”. When told the name of the town he said: “We will soon be there; we’ll have to get down to business at once. Are you saved?” The man said that he was not, and Mr. Moody took out his Bible on the train showed him the way of salvation. Then he said: “Now, you must take Christ.” The man did; he was converted right there on the train.
Oh, young men and women and all Christian workers, if you and I were on fire for souls like that, how long would it be before we had a revival? Imagine if the fire of God falls on us tonight and fills our hearts, a burning fire that will send us out all over the country, and across the water to China, Japan, India and Africa, to tell lost souls the way of salvation!
Definitely endued with power from on high
D.L. Moody had a very definite endowment with power from on High, a very clear and definite baptism with the Holy Ghost. Mr. Moody knew he had “the baptism with the Holy Ghost”; he had no doubt about it. (Editor’s note: Moody’s personal “baptism of the Holy Ghost” and the subsequent use of that term by Moody and Torrey did not refer to a glossolalia speaking in tongues experience.) In his early days he was a great hustler; he had a tremendous desire to do something, but he had no real power. He worked very largely in the energy of the flesh.
But there were two humble Free Methodist women who used to come over to his meetings in the Y.M.C.A. One was “Auntie Cook” and the other, Mrs. Snow. These two women would come to Mr. Moody at the close of his meetings and say: “We are praying for you.” Finally, Mr. Moody became somewhat nettled and said to them one night: “Why are you praying for me? Why don’t you pray for the unsaved?” They replied: “We are praying that you may get the power.” Mr. Moody did not know what that meant, but he got to thinking about it, and then went to these women and said: “I wish you would tell me what you mean”; and they told him about the definite baptism with the Holy Ghost. Then he asked that they might pray with him and not merely for him.
Auntie Cook once told me of the intense fervor with which Mr. Moody prayed on that occasion. She told me in words that I scarcely dared repeat, though I have never forgotten them. And he not only prayed with them, but he also prayed alone. Not long after, one day on his way to England, he was walking up Wall Street in New York; (Mr. Moody very seldom told this and I almost hesitate to tell it) and in the midst of the bustle and hurry of that city his prayer was answered; the power of God fell upon him as he walked up the street and he had to hurry off to the house of a friend and ask that he might have a room by himself, and in that room he stayed alone for hours; and the Holy Ghost came upon him, filling his soul with such joy that at last he had to ask God to withhold His hand, lest he die on the spot from very joy. He went out from that place with the power of the Holy Ghost upon him, and when he got to London (partly through the prayers of a bedridden saint in Mr. Lessey’s church), the power of God worked through him mightily in North London, and hundreds were added to the churches; and that was what led to his being invited over to the wonderful campaign that followed in later years.
I shall never forget to my dying day the eighth of July, 1894. It was the closing day of the Norm field Students’ Conference—the gathering of the students from the eastern colleges. Mr. Moody had asked me to preach on Saturday night and Sunday morning on the baptism with the Holy Ghost.
On Saturday night I had spoken about, “The Baptism with the Holy Ghost: What It Is; What It Does; the ‘ Need of It and the Possibility of It.” On Sunday morning I spoke on “The Baptism With the Holy Spirit; How to Get It.” It was just exactly twelve o’clock when I finished my morning sermon, and I took out my watch and said: “Mr. Moody has invited us all to go up to the mountain at three o’clock this afternoon to pray for the power of the Holy Spirit. It is three hours to three o’clock. Some of you cannot wait three hours. You do not need to wait. Go to your rooms; go out into the woods; go to your tent; go anywhere where you can get alone with God and have this matter out with Him.” At three o’clock we all gathered in front of Mr. Moody s mother’s house (she was then still living), and then began to pass down the lane, through the gate, up on the mountainside. There were four hundred and fifty-six of us in all; I know the number because Paul Moody counted us as we passed through the gate.
After a while Mr. Moody said: “I don’t think we need to go any further; let us sit down here.” We sat down on stumps and logs and on the ground.
Mr. Moody said: “Have any of you students anything to say?” If I think about seventy-five of them arose, one after the other, and said: “Mr. Moody, I could not wait till three o’clock; I have been alone with God have been since the morning service, and I believe I have a right to say that I have been baptized with the Holy Spirit.” When these testimonies were over, Mr. Moody said: “Young men, I can’t see any reason why we shouldn’t kneel down here right now and ask God that the Holy Ghost may fall upon us just as definitely as He fell upon the apostles on the Day of Pentecost. Let us pray.” And we did pray, there on the mountainside. As we had gone up the mountainside heavy clouds had been gathering, and just as we began to pray those clouds broke and the raindrops began to fall through the overhanging pines. But there was another cloud that had been gathering over Northfield for ten days, a cloud big with the mercy and grace and power of God; and as we began to pray our prayers seemed to pierce that cloud and the Holy Ghost fell upon us. Men and women that is what we all need: the Baptism with the Holy Ghost.
Taken from Why God Used D.L. Moody by R.A. Torrey, Sword of the Lord Publishers.
Dr. R.A. Torrey: (1856 - 1928) One of D.L. Moody’s successor’s. An renown American preacher and evangelist, that held Revival crusades in various countries across the world.
He also is the author of more than 40 books. |
