Did you read my recent “From My Files” post? In this post, I made a promise and I’m here now to keep my word. This is the first of several upcoming posts that will share some of the powerful thoughts, quotations, and stories that I’ve read, organized and stored in numerous Excel spreadsheets and MS Word document files. I believe that these treasures are just too good to keep to myself. So, without further ado (whatever “ado” is), here is the first “From My Files” post.
THE BACKGROUND: In December of 1999, the Christian world honored the hundredth anniversary of the death of the legendary preacher, D.L. Moody. During this time, our local Moody Radio Network station aired several programs that told of Moody’s incredible accomplishments for the Kingdom. One of these broadcasts mentioned the book The Wonderful Career of Moody and Sankey, in Great Britain and America: Together With the Trials and Triumphs of Faith written by Robert Boyd, D.D. in 1875. After hearing story after story taken from this book, I knew that it was a no-brainer. I needed this book!
The book became a great addition to my library. Among the collection of Moody’s anointed teachings about faith and his chronicling of Moody and Sankey’s travels and ministry, Boyd related a story about a young man’s eyewitness account of what happened in a Y.M.C.A. meeting in Sunderland, England in July 1873.
THE QUOTE ADDED TO MY FILES: “On the following Sunday night, when I got to the rooms of the Young Men’s Christian Association, I found the meeting on fire. The young men were speaking with tongues, prophesying. What on earth did it all mean? Only that Moody had been addressing them that afternoon. ‘What manner of man is this?’ thought I; but still I did not give him my hand . . . Many of the clergy were so opposed to the movement that they turned their backs upon our poor innocent Young Men’s Christian Association, for the part we took in the work; but afterward when the floodgates of Divine grace were opened, Sunderland was taken by storm.”
THE QUOTE SOURCE: Robert Boyd, D.D. The Wonderful Career of Moody and Sankey, in Great Britain and America: Together With the Trials and Triumphs of Faith (New York: Henry S. Goodspeed & Company, 1875), 402.
