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TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks About Our Lord's Return (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 00.3. Preface
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Preface
In my boyhood days I heard much from Mr. Moody's lips about our Lord's return, and belief in it became a real warm thing to me. Later I became rather confused over the different teachings regarding it, until by and by it was practically pushed out of my working program. I still believed that I should live so as to be always ready if He should come, but I had no grasp of the true teaching about the great event, even while I felt tremendously the emphasis placed upon it in the Bible. It had practically slipped out of my prayer-life. So that if prayer influences in any way our Lord's return, the confusion in my mind robbed my prayer of that influence.
Then I was led to pick up the Bible afresh on this subject. Earnestly trying to forget all the books I had read, I went prayerfully and slowly to work to gather out, and gather up, just what the Book itself teaches. I had no thought of making a book; I was concerned only with getting straightened out myself. The result arrived at has profoundly affected my outlook as a follower of Jesus Christ, my attitude toward the great problems of Christian service both at home and in foreign mission lands, my prayer-life, and my understanding of numerous passages of Scripture hitherto obscure to me.
And so because of the deep and deepening conviction that one's right outlook, and attitude and prayer exert a positive influence upon the time of our Lord's return, and that in this subject is found the key to the clear, broad grasp and understanding of the precious Word of God, I am letting this modest little messenger in print carry to others the results of my study, and the method by which the results were reached.
I am not concerned so much about any one accepting what is put down here, but I am deeply and intensely concerned that many may make a fresh, thorough study of God's Word, on the simple plan used here, or any other adequate plan, that its clear, emphatic teachings may be clearly and broadly grasped, and the whole life yielded to their power.
The plan followed is, not to study present world conditions, nor the likelihood nor unlikelihood of certain things happening, but only to try to gather up the teachings of the Book on this subject.
The final work on the manuscript has been done while crossing the Pacific Ocean, and in China. The distance from home makes impossible my own attention to proof-sheets. I am deeply grateful to Mr. Revell for his great kindness and painstaking care in personally supervising the reading of the proof-sheets.
S. D. G.