Heralds of God
Overview
Named best preacher of the twentieth-century by Preaching Magazine, James Stewart wrote books on preaching that “have inspired tens of thousands of preachers to strive for greater effectiveness in their proclamation of God’s Word.” Heralds of God is perhaps Stewart’s best known work, and stresses the role of the preacher as proclaimer of “the mighty acts of God,” not a propagator of ideals, opinions, or parties. Stewart presents a clear picture of the preacher’s world, theme, study, technique, and inner life.
Top Highlights
“When all is said and done, the supreme need of the Church is the same in the twentieth century as in the first: it is men on fire for Christ.” (Page 220)
“This is no time to be offering a reduced, milk-and-water religion. Far too often the world has been presented with a mild and undemanding half-Christianity. The Gospel has been emasculated long enough. Preach Christ to-day in the total challenge of His high, imperious claim. Some will be scared, and some offended: but some, and they the most worth winning, will kneel in homage at His feet.” (Pages 26–27)
“God’s deed in Christ touches life at every point. It speaks to every aspect of the human predicament. It stretches all horizons illimitably. It bursts through the narrow orbit of habitual thought-forms, hackneyed social attitudes, doctrinal predilections. There is no plummet that can sound this ocean’s depth, no yardstick that can measure the length and breadth of this Jerusalem. And the surest way to keep your ministry living and vigorous and immune from the blight of spiritual lassitude and drudgery is to draw continually upon the unsearchable riches which in Christian doctrine are lying to your hand; and to remember that you—no less than the New Testament preachers—are commissioned for the purpose of kerygma, the proclamation of news, the heralding of the wonderful works of God.” (Pages 69–70)
“Dr. L. P. Jacks was entirely right to remind us that ‘every truth that religion announces passes insensibly into a command. Its indicatives are veiled imperatives.’ But what I am concerned to assert is that in the Christian religion the indicatives are basic and fundamental. And nothing could be more marrowless and stultified and futile than the preaching which is for ever exhorting ‘Thus and thus you must act,’ and neglecting the one thing which essentially makes Christianity: ‘Thus has God acted, once and for all.’” (Page 66)
- Title: Heralds of God
- Author: James S. Stewart
- Publisher: Charles Scribner’s Sons
- Print Publication Date: 1946
- Logos Release Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
- Subjects: Preaching; Clergy › Religious life
- Resource ID: LLS:HERALDSOFGOD
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2022-02-12T03:50:28Z