Conclusion

Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away. MATTHEW 24:35

Eighteen chapters can make it look as though R. A. Torrey taught a great many things. In one sense he did; few teachers have ranged so widely, from the personality of the Holy Spirit to the right hour for Bible study. But underneath it all was one conviction, and everything else is that conviction applied. God has spoken plainly, and He means exactly what He says.

Follow it through and the shape appears. The Spirit is a Person because Scripture ascribes to Him knowledge, will and love. The Father gives the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him because Jesus said so. Prayer according to God’s will is heard because John says so. The Bible is the Word of God because it claims to be and Christ treated it so. Jesus is God because He is called God and claimed what only God may claim. The believer is justified from all things, and may know he has eternal life, because God says so. Every Christian should speak to others of Christ because Christ called His followers fishers of men. And judgement is real because Jesus warned of it. One habit of mind, applied with remarkable consistency for fifty years.

The danger of this book

A reader who has come this far may be in some danger, and Torrey’s own story shows what it is. A teacher so confident, so practical, so full of steps and rules and conditions, can leave his readers with a new law. Seven steps to the baptism with the Spirit. Three times of prayer a day. Fifteen minutes of Bible study at least. A list of ways power is lost. A soul to be spoken to every day. Each of these is good counsel. Together, taken in the wrong spirit, they can become a burden that crushes the conscientious and puffs up the successful.

Torrey knew this danger better than his manner sometimes suggests. He warned against a life governed by rules, calling it bondage. He insisted that a Christian who stumbles should go straight to his Father, confess, believe he is forgiven because God says so, and go on light-hearted. He said that it is base ingratitude to brood over sins God has cancelled. The same certainty that made his demands so sharp made his comfort so solid. Hold on to both.

Two things to carry

First, take God at His word. When your feelings contradict His promises, believe the promises. When a doubt arises, face it honestly and on your knees. When a command is plain, obey it. When a warning is given, heed it. Most of what Torrey became, he became by doing this.

God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good? NUMBERS 23:19

Second, ask. Ask for the Holy Spirit, for power in whatever service God has given you, and for the salvation of people you know by name. Ask definitely, ask in faith, ask according to His will, and keep asking. Torrey’s whole life was built on the conviction that God gives to those who ask, and most of us have not because we ask not.

A last word about the man

We have been honest about his limits. His teaching on the baptism with the Holy Spirit as a distinct experience after conversion is disputed by many careful readers, and it should be held with an open hand, with Ephesians 5:18 at least as prominent as Acts 2. His seven steps can harden into a technique. His certainty could become bluntness and his bluntness harshness; he spoke of opponents in ways a gentle reader will regret, and he stated alternatives more starkly than truth always allows. His apologetics bear the marks of an age that expected evidence to settle every question. And on hell he used imagery and rhetoric that go beyond what Scripture requires, even where his substance was the historic faith.

None of this has been said to diminish him. It has been said because his own method requires it. He taught his students to test everything by the Word of God, and he would not want to be exempt.

Not unto us, O LORD, not unto us, but unto thy name give glory, for thy mercy, and for thy truth’s sake. PSALM 115:1

He died at Asheville in October 1928, in his seventy-third year. He had been a sceptic who was answered, a pastor who lived by prayer, a teacher who trained a generation, and an evangelist who stood before some of the largest audiences of his time. But those who knew him best remembered something quieter: a man of regular, uninterrupted prayer and daily Bible study, who kept the habits of a small room while he stood before great crowds. The young man who had resolved one night at Yale to end his life, and who instead found himself on his knees, promised God that he would go wherever he was sent. He kept the promise. The God who had kept His word to him kept it to the end.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Return to the chapter of this book that made you least comfortable. Choose one application point and practise it for a month.

2. Ask whether any of Torrey’s counsel has become a new law to you. If so, bring it to God and receive it again as grace.

3. Write down three promises of God you will deliberately believe this week, whatever your feelings.

4. Begin, or renew, a daily list of people to pray for by name, and ask God for the Spirit’s power to speak to them.

5. Choose one of Torrey’s own books from the Reader’s Guide that follows, and begin it this week.

A PRAYER

Faithful God, You have spoken plainly, and You mean what You say. Forgive me for the promises I have not believed and the commands I have not obeyed.

Teach me to take You at Your word as Your servant Reuben Torrey did, and keep me from turning Your counsel into a new law.

Fill me with Your Holy Spirit, teach me to pray, and give me a love for those who do not know Christ.

And as You kept Your word to him to the end, keep Your word to me, until I see You face to face. Amen.