The Voice of the Blood

Oxford educated A. Paget Wilkes became a missionary to Japan with the Church Missionary Society led by Barclay Buxton in 1897. Subsequently he founded the Japan Evangelistic Band (JEB) which was devoted to a more aggressive evangelism and personal holiness. Wilkes envisioned "a band of men . . . who detaching themselves from the responsibilities and entanglements of ecclesiastical organization, would give themselves to prayer and ministry of the Word." He served his whole life in Japan but became well known through his books.

In his book The Dynamic of Life he explains how the Lord Jesus becomes our very life:

"But ye are come . . . to the blood of sprinkling that speaketh." -- HEB. xvii. 22-24.

"There is no more blessed word in the New Testament than this. It is deeply important to observe its exact phrasing, 'Ye ARE come.' There is no invitation, no command, no entreaty here. We are not bidden to come, we are told that we are there. It is a statement of fact. 'We,' if we are true believers and children of God, 'ARE come,' whether we realise it or not; whether we have any conscious consolation from it or not, the fact remains, 'we ARE there.' The way has been opened, the place prepared. Redemption on Calvary is the great accomplished fact of history. 'Redemption ground,' as it has been called, is the place appointed for us to stand and listen to the heavenly 'wireless.'

'. . . Saints, modern as well as ancient, shall give their testimony . . .

"Reginald Radcliffe, that great saint and evangelist of last century, writes thus: --

"'I feel as if I had been bitten and stung by Satan, and that his venomous tongue had saturated every inmost recess of my soul with his poisonous essence of gall. Nothing but the miraculous, almighty, purifying, cleansing, living and life-giving blood of Jesus, can cleanse me. I am satanically infused. Nothing but Jesus dipping me in His blood can cleanse. Thanks enough! Yea, let the caverns of hell hear me shout as devils fly in impotence. His blood is a million times too strong for them! What safety! What a tower! The waves may as well give over beating against it!'

". . . Every true Christian knows and acknowledges that he is a weak and feeble person. How often do we hear the expression thereof in prayer, as though it were a virtue and a mark of humility. In fact, it is regarded almost as the zenith of holy living and quite enough to excuse us before God, from the possession of any more positive experience.

"But with some, thank God! there is more. Not only do they know and acknowledge their weakness: they feel it deeply and feel it till it becomes a pain, an agony. How many have testified to this experience ere they have been endued with power from on high. It is then that with St. Paul they pass into the third experience, and cry, 'With joy I glory in my weakness that the power of Christ may make a tabernacle over me.'

"The removal of our own strength, the taking away of our own power by the Holy Ghost wherein we can positively glory and do it with joy, is a vastly different thing from that self-complacent, semi-despairing acknowledgment of weakness which we consider quite sufficient to excuse us before God from being 'strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.'

". . . I would pass on the story of one who listened to the voice from heaven, and proving the significance of the word, 'Once more,' received a kingdom wherein he has served his Master, with reverence and godly fear.

". . . When I first met him he had been brought into close contact with a more experienced servant of the Lord, a man of very ordinary ability, of no natural winsomeness either of manner or disposition; but he saw in him the life of God more abundant. To him he was a burning bush, just an ordinary lowly bush in the desert places of life, and yet aflame with divine life and power: and he turned aside to see and know the secret of so strange a sight. So it was that he came to me with eager and thoughtful queries.

". . . He was deeply impressed, he said, with the fact that the one whose life he had been closely observing, was in possession of something that he had not. I assured him to begin with, that if he was wholly the Lord's, this was not the case. No saint however eminent, I told him, had any stock of holiness or power or goodness in himself. All was in the Lord Jesus; but I made haste to add, that if there was a difference between them, that he supposed, the one whose life had so impressed him, had lost something that he had not yet got rid of. We were travelling in a railway carriage at the time, looking out upon the beautiful scenery of Derbyshire. I observed that, had the window-pane through which we were looking been of opaque or frosted glass (however beautiful the pattern of the pane might be), though admitting light into our compartment, it would have completely obliterated the view; and pressed home the parable. Some Christians gifted and talented as they are, have not lost this opaqueness. Others very ordinary in mental calibre, physical appearance and worldly status, are transparent souls through whom continually the Lord Jesus and His grace are apparent and visible to all."