He went on to conduct outdoor meetings on the street where he lived, and soon after took charge of a Bible class of about forty young people. He became acutely aware of the need for salvation of the people around him, which soon became his one passion. Although he continued in business at Uddingston for three years, he also became an evangelist, and many came to know the Savior through his ministry.
He later visited America and Canada, where God truly blessed his ministry. Afterwards, in October, 1915, John and Lily Drysdale [his wife] stepped out into full-time evangelism and for several months worked in Liverpool, Bootle and Hoylake, eventually settling in Birkenhead, a town across the river Mersey from Liverpool. They held meetings in a room they rented over a shop. John Drysdale preached Scriptural Holiness and the two of them were continually engaged in open-air work--summer and winter. They also had a passionate desire to create missionary interest among the people they ministered to. During their first year in Birkenhead God moved mightily, especially through the open-air witness, when great crowds would gather to hear the message of Full Salvation. During the open-air meetings Drysdale preached against sin until men and women felt the power of conviction; many opposed the work, but many were also soundly saved.
J. D. Drysdale believed fervently in holiness, that it must be preached. He established a Missionary Training Home at Birkenhead to this end--to train young men and women in the life and doctrine of holiness and send them forth to preach full salvation to the ends of the earth.
The following is from his book titled The Price of Revival:
"Without which no one will see the Lord.' Hebrews xii, 14.
"The text sets before us three things:
- God's standard of life for believers: Holiness.
- God's impartiality: No man.
- God's condition of seeing Him now and hereafter: Holiness.
"The words of our text are arresting, and when heard for the first time are most heart-searching. It is only when we have heard them over and over again, and turned a deaf ear to the exhortation, that they lose their grip, and fail to have the influence over our lives that they are intended to have.
"But the word of God never changes, and if our ears become dull of hearing, so that we fail to measure up to God's standard, we shall nevertheless find that we shall, at the last, be judged by His Word.
"'For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God? And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinners appear?'
"God has only one standard for His people, viz., 'Holiness unto the Lord.'
"God is no respecter of persons--kings and paupers--parsons and people, will be judged by the same standard.
"He is absolutely impartial.
"Now if holiness is an absolute necessity for seeing the Lord, it behoves us to look into the matter with
"and whole-hearted sincerity; and first of all we would point out that holiness is not an imputation as is commonly supposed by many people, and alas, too often taught by them. Nowhere in the Scripture are we taught that holiness is an imputation, but in many places we are clearly shown that it is an impartation. God is original holiness; it is His nature: but in many passages we are taught that we may become partakers of His divine nature. Let me give three Scriptures: 'For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit.' (Rom. viii, 3-4). 'Condemned sin in the flesh.' The design and object of the incarnation and sacrifice of Christ was to condemn sin, to have it executed and destroyed: not to tolerate it as some think; or to render it subservient to the purpose of His grace, as taught by others; but to destroy its guilt, power, and being, in the soul of a believer.
"Another passage of Scripture which proves conclusively that holiness is an impartation is Hebrews xii, 10, where the Apostle, dealing with the question of chastening, shows us that the Lord chastens for our profit, that we might be partakers of His holiness. Again we read in 2 Peter i, 4: 'Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises; that by these we might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.' The object of all God's promises and dispensations was to bring fallen man back to the image of God, which he had lost.
"This, indeed, is the sum and substance of the religion of Jesus Christ. We have partaken of an earthly, sensual, and devilish nature; the design of God by Christ is to remove this, and to make us partakers of the divine nature; and to save us from all the corruption in principle and fact that is in the world; the source of which is lust, irregular, unreasonable, inordinate, and impure desire; desire to have, to do, to be, what God has prohibited, and what would be ruinous and destructive to us, were the desire to be granted. The destructive principle is to be rooted out; and love to God and man is to be implanted in its place. This is the Christian's privilege; God has promised to purify our hearts by faith; and that, as sin hath reigned unto death, even so shall grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life; that here we are to be delivered out of the hands of all our enemies, that we might serve Him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before Him, all the days of our life.
"The statement 'partakers of His holiness' is arresting and convincing. There is nothing spurious here--no human standard of holiness--not sanctimoniousness, but true, heaven-born, God-given holiness--in a word a holiness that must, because of its nature, purge away the inbeing of sin--sin and holiness are sworn enemies. The two cannot live together, the one must give place to the other.
"Then again one is struck with the practical nature of this holiness. In reading through Hebrews xii, we find the word 'lest' mentioned four times. In ver. 13 there is an exhortation to holiness, 'lest that which is lame be turned out of the way.' How practical! Oh the numberless souls, weak in faith, who are being turned out of the way through the unsanctified lives of many professed Christians.
"Again, in ver. 15 we have the words, 'Looking diligently lest any man fall from the grace of God.' The most prolific cause of back-sliding and falling from grace is the failure of so many Christians to go on to entire sanctification, and the enjoyment of their inheritance in Christ. Once more in ver. 15 we have the expression 'lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled.'
"What schisms and separations have taken place from this root of bitterness. What interminable squabblings there have been in the visible Church throughout its history, because of this poisonous plant. The antidote is to be 'rooted and grounded in love.' This is holiness.
"Again in ver. 16 we read, 'Lest there be any fornicator, or profane person as Esau; who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright.' What black chapters there have been in the Church's history through the lusts of the flesh, inordinate affection and lasciviousness. Many a soul has made shipwreck here; but there is deliverance, thank God. Holiness does not de-humanise men and women, but it certainly does free them from 'fleshly lusts which wage war against the soul,' and gives them power to keep the body under, lest, after preaching to others they become castaways.
"Oh how blessedly practical holiness is!
"No wonder it is spoken of as 'A rest which remains for the people of God.'
To all Thy people known,
A rest where pure enjoyment reigns
And Thou art loved alone.
A rest were all our souls' desire,
Is fixed on things above,
Where fear and sin, and grief expire,
Cast out by perfect love."
"Then again, the latter part of Hebrews xii, 14. 'Holiness without which no man shall see the Lord,' seems to convey the thought of immediate obtainment of holiness. No one knows when the Lord may return, or, if He should tarry, how suddenly we may be called upon to leave this world by death. Life is uncertain; death is very certain--and the text says holiness is the preparation necessary to meet the Lord; either in the air or by the way of death. Without it--'no man shall see the Lord.'
"Some time ago a minister attended a convention at which he was greatly stirred and quickened. On the following Sunday he preached to his people on 'Ye must be born again,' and closed by saying that he had discovered that something else was necessary; that we must be holy to meet the Lord, and then he added, 'but, of course, that takes a lifetime!' Afterwards a friend said to him, 'And what is a lifetime? It may be over to-day or past to-morrow.' This minister confused purity with maturity.
"Reader, do you realize that only the present moment is yours? The next belongs to God. Now is the accepted time--behold now is the day of full salvation.
"Death will not deliver from sin,--death is an effect--and an effect can never remove a cause. Growth will not remove sin, for growth never changes the nature of anything.
"Growth in grace--is not growing out of sin, but growing in grace and knowledge.
"There is only one thing that can purge our hearts from sin and this brings us to the method or medium of holiness, viz., 'The baptism with the Holy Ghost and fire.'
"It was so in the case of the apostles, for Peter testifies in Acts xv, 8-9, that 'God which knoweth the hearts, bare them witness, giving them the Holy Ghost, even as He did unto us, and put no difference between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith.'
"It has been the case of multitudes since. The Church has always prospered when its leaders have experienced and taught the possibility of immediate holiness.
"It is God's way, and of this He has given abundant evidence by setting His seal to the ministry of all who have stood loyally for the truth.
"The need of the day is a holiness revival in the church preparatory to the Second Coming of the Lord, and also that the poor devil-driven world may take her seriously and begin to realize that the blood of Jesus Christ still cleanses from all sin, and the Holy Ghost gives power to live a holy life.
And give Thy servant to possess
The land of rest from inbred sin,
The land of perfect holiness.
Lord I believe Thy power the same,
The same, Thy truth and grace endure,
And in Thy blessed hands I am,
And trust Thee for a perfect cure.
Come, Saviour, come and make me whole,
Entirely all my sins remove;
To perfect health restore my soul,
To perfect holiness and love."
"Holiness is so plainly taught in the Scriptures that no minister of the Gospel proposing to teach men the way of salvation can be true to himself and to his people and ignore this doctrine. Any doctrine of holiness that leaves a man without purity of heart is not Scriptural. After all debating, theorising, and hair-splitting, to be holy is to be free from sin, not only to be delivered from the commission of sinful acts, but to be cleansed from indwelling sin in fact. This involves the cleansing power of Jesus' blood, and the faith that trusts in the full sufficiency of the Atonement made on the Cross. To fully preach holiness, one must necessarily preach the fall of man, the glorious sufficiency of Jesus, and the fact that the fallen race is shut up to faith in Him; that outside of Him there is no hope."
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