The Dogs Bark But 

The Caravan Moves On!

                          By Pastor Max Solbrekken, D.D.

      Years ago I saw an interesting cartoon with the caption, ‘The Dogs Bark but the Caravan Moves ON.’  The cartoon featured a large elaborate caravan drawn by a number of powerful horses, with a few mangy little dogs biting at its wheels as it passed by them!

    Immediately, I thought about the Gospel Message of the Jesus Christ, that has been lied about, vilified, discounted, ignored and rejected by ‘Enemies of the Cross’ for nearly 2000 years and yet continues to be heralded across the world in great power!

   The Gospel marches on regardless of low-life, fame-seeking authors, penning distortions, lies and historical revisions in their hatred of Jesus Christ and their‘love of Money’! 
    Their lust-filled, play-acting cohorts together with money-grubbing perverts in Hollywood’s Movie conglomerates have been unable to stop the everlasting truth of Jesus of Nazareth and His sacrificial, vicarious death on the cross and glorious resurrection from the dead!

     God is in charge of everything! When the ocean tides come in and rush back out to sea, they carry with them refuse from the shore. The love of God is an ‘Ocean Divine’. It cleans up human lives, sweeping away the filth and garbage, leaving a clean slate! St. John stated: “If we walk in the light as He is in the Light, we have fellowship one with another and the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son cleanses us from all sin.” (1 John 1: 7)
                             WHO CAN STOP A RIVER?
    Damn it up and it will detour or go underground!  A river is awesome and at high tide unstoppable, as it sweeps inland and often leaving fertile soil in its wake. 
    The Bible is a river of life, cleansing minds and spirits of those who receive its life-giving nourishment and depositing fertile ground for the gifts and fruit of the Holy Spirit to grow and operate.

      For nearly two millennia Gospel preachers have walked for miles, ridden horseback and travelled by land, sea and air to share the GOOD NEWS with people of all races, religions and cultures, dispensing hope, peace and joy through our Lord Jesus Christ!

    Many have been brutally beaten, imprisoned, tortured and martyred. Their only crime was sharing God’s divine (gr. Agape) love with the people and wanting to help them. Christian martyrs have died trying to save souls, while Islamic suicide martyrs die trying to kill as many people as possible!  

     It has been said: “God’s Mills grind slowly.” His payday is not always on Friday or at month’s end! The Bible says:  “And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment.” (Heb. 9: 27); “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God?” (Heb.10: 31); “Do not be deceived. God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows that he will also reap.” (Gal.6: 7); “How shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation...” (Heb.2: 3)

    St. Paul stated: “For we must all (believers) appear before the judgment (heb. bema) seat of Christ to receive those things done in the body, according what he has done, whether good or bad. Knowing therefore, the wrath of the Lord, we persuade men…” (2 Cor.5: 10-11)

 The Bible describes the ‘Great White Throne Judgment’ where unbelievers will stand trial: “And I saw the dead, small and great, standing before God, and books were opened. And another book was opened, which is the Book of Life. And the dead were judged according to their works, by things that were written in the books…And anyone not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the Lake of Fire.” (Rev. 20: 11-15)

                             CHANGE AFTER REALITY CHECK!

     After more than fifty years in the Ministry I have documented many great conversions among those who had previously been vile sinners, atheists, free thinkers and others. Here are only a few great testimonies of God Divine power liberating sinners – all slaves of satanic intrigue and unbelief!

      AUGUST STRINDBERG - celebrated Swedish author – made this powerful statement shortly, before his death: “Clearly said: I ascribe all my misfortune to this one fact, that I have been godless! An individual that has broken contact with God cannot receive any blessings. All this talk about ‘being your own man and making your own happiness’ is chaff. If the Lord does not build the house, they labour in vain who build it. This is the whole truth! That misfortune can also strike a person of faith, we know. But the outcome is not the same. These accidents seem only like trials that pass over and leave peace in their wake! A curse rests upon all that an ungodly person puts his hand to. If money comes his way it will disappear like it came. Nothing remains – nothing prospers in the life of the ungodly!”

   Last year Norway’s Lutheran Newspaper, ‘Dagen’ carried this report: “THE CROSS ON AUGUST STRINDBERG’S GRAVE - On the Swedish Author August Strindberg’s grave, there has been raised a simple wooden cross. It carries quite a short inscription: ‘Hail to you cross, my Only hope!’

     “Mikkel Vigilius made that statement in his May 1st. speech. He pointed out that August Strindberg had been a blasphemer most of his life. He had given himself over to a life of drinking and adultery, immersed himself in occultism and destroyed one marriage after another. He had given himself more violently to sinful practices then most men had.

     “Near the end of his life, however, he became totally convinced that the Bible was God’s Word, and that shortly he would meet God. In that situation he saw only one hope for salvation” Christ’s cross! Christ’s work of salvation him”, said Vigilius. And he stated further: “But the truth is that if Strindberg died in that faith, he is SAVED! And in reality, no one can be saved in any other way. By Christ’s cross and His saving work alone!” 

                                LIFE CHANGING REVIVAL NEEDED!   
GEORGE W. SHAW (1856-1950) winner of 1925 Nobel Prize in Literature said: “I am ready to admit after contemplating the world and human nature for 60 years that I see no way out of the world’s miseries but by the way that would be found by Christ’s will.”

ABRAHAM LINCOLN stated: “I now see as never before the preciousness of God’s love in Jesus Christ, and how we are brought near to God as our Father by Him.”

BLAISE PASCAL, French mathematician, scientist and philosopher (1623-1662) declared: “Man is an incomprehensible monster, at once sovereign greatness and sovereign misery… If they turn their back on God, one of two things will happen. They will think they are gods and become insane or turn to carnality and become animals.”

DAG HAMMERSJØLD, United Nations General Secretary, made this statement in 1956: “Unless the world experiences a thoroughly life - gripping spiritual awakening in the very near future, it will be irredeemably lost!”

MALCOLM MUGGERIDE, Former Marxist, celebrated writer, broadcaster and actor poured his time and talents into writing Christian apologetics, which portray a living Saviour, after his much – publicized conversion to our Lord Jesus Christ! In his book The Man Who Lives, Muggeridge writes:

       “That the resurrection happened, and that in consequence of it Jesus’ followers who had scattered drew together again, and resolved to go about their Master’s business, seems to me to be indubitably true. Likewise Jesus’ claim to be the light of the world, and His related promise that through Him we may be reborn into new men, liberated from servitude to the ego and our appetites into the glorious liberty of the children of God …

     “If the story of Jesus’ ended on Golgatha, it would indeed be of a Man Who Died, but as two thousand years later the Man’s promise that ‘where two or three are gathered in My name, there am I in the midst of them’ manifestly still holds, it is actually the story of  a Man Who lives!” 

   Muggeridge’s counsel to a troubled world is worth listening to: “Christ is the only answer to an insane world… They will not understand that the trouble with the Western Civilization is not economics, but more – good and evil! They are thinking they can make things work by policies, inventions, but man will never live on this planet without God.”

WILLIAM GLADSTONE, statesman, Prime Minister and unquestionably one ofGreat Britain’s most able and greatest legal minds of the 1800s stated: “Talk about the questions of the day! There is but one question and that is the Gospel. That can and will correct everything. I am glad to say that about all the men at the top in Great Britain are Christians. I have been in public office fifty-eight years, all but eleven of them in the cabinet of the British Government, and during these forty-seven years have been associated with sixty of the master-minds of the century, and all but five of the sixty were Christians.”

WINSTON CHURCHILL, famous British Prime Minister during World War 11 stated: “The return of Christ is man’s only hope.” This quotation is taken from the writings of Great Britain’s brilliant writer, Kenneth DeCoursey, revealing his private conversations with Sir Winston Churchill!

                                           GOD’S GREAT ANVIL!

     Jesus Christ stated: “I will build My Church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” (Matt.16: 18); “Jesus saith unto them, Did ye never read in the Scriptures, The stone which the builders rejected, is become the head of the corner: this is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes? And whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken; but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder.” (Matt.21: 22, 24)

C.S. LEWIS, brilliant British Oxford professor and Christian author (1898-1963) stated: “I am trying here to prevent anyone from saying the really foolish thing about Him: “I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.” That is the one thing we must not say.

     “A man who was merely a man and said things that Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on the level with a man who says he is a poached egg – or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse… 
    "But let us not come up with any patronizing nonsense about Him being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

  Many skeptics, agnostics, atheists, communists and modernist theologians have worn out their hammers on God’s great anvil. They have gone to their reward: A lost eternity and a devil’s hell. The cartoonist was right: ‘The dogs keep barking but the Caravan continues moving on.’ Praise the Lord!