Free The Titanic's Last Hero by Moody Adams Page B

inspiration of his magnetic presence. I never left his company without returning home to pray. This was invariably the effect Mr. Harper’s presence had on me.
    May a double portion of his holy, consecrated spirit fall on those of us who are left a little while longer, not only to “hold the fort,” but to storm the forts of darkness as our brother loved to do.

CHAPTER 13
    JOHN HARPER’S PARTING TEXT
    Tribute by Pastor William Wright
    My parting with him
    near the station at Old Cumnock
    last March,
    was an incident worth remembering.
    We agreed to give each other a text. …
    The text he gave me
    was one that had been much in his mind
    for a considerable time,
    “He that doeth the will of God
    abideth for ever” (I John 2:17).
    DENNY AND SURROUNDING DISTRICTS ARE much indebted to God for the gift of Mr. John Harper. I felt there was a manifestation of Christ in his life that I had not known before. We had on one occasion a conversation about the indwelling of Christ, and he suggested our need of being “strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man,” that Christ might dwell in our hearts by faith. Early in life he had experienced this strengthening process, and when he came to Denny, it was seen in a marvelous degree.
    He believed in having the text he was to preach from direct from God, and I have seen his soul in great trouble until he had the witness of the Holy Spirit in regard to the passage of Scripture he was to expound. He also had the stamp of heaven on the title he gave to the subjects he preached about, and his divisions were masterly.
     
    DENNY, SCOTLAND, IS SHAKEN FOR GOD
    Denny is not easily moved, but when he had the town placarded with bills asking, “Is there a hell?” it made some stop and think. He announced one subject that has remained with me: “The hardest thing in the world,” which he proved to be to go to hell, from II Peter 3 and 9, as the sinner has to go there against the will of God.
     
    GREEN FIELDS AND WHITE FIELDS
    In September 1910, John Harper delivered one of the freshest and most hopeful messages I have ever heard. The subject was “green fields and white fields.” The fields were green in the eyes of the disciples; they were white to the harvest in the eyes of our Lord. In delivering a mighty message from God during the same short mission, he raised a question for the evolutionists to answer, in this form: “If the status of human character is continually rising, how is it that the One Who is almost universally recognized as the perfect man, Jesus, existed nearly nineteen hundred years ago?”
     
    FIGHTING THE FORCES OF HELL
    It was Harper’s firm conviction that Satan would have killed him if he could. He was continually conscious, especially in the latter years of his ministry, of the conflict going on in every service between the powers of light and the powers of darkness. He gave me a little hint personally last September in London that has been very helpful to my soul, to this effect: “The devil cannot touch you on resurrection ground.” Although often assailed by Satan, he enjoyed in a superlative degree the rest of God.
    Nine years ago I asked him the question, “In the gospel, what takes the place of the fourth commandment?” His instant reply was “The rest of God.”
    To the uninitiated, his removing from Glasgow to London looked like a wrong step, but a revived church in London, and other churches influenced for good, proved it to be the mind of the Spirit, which he had followed in leaving Paisley Road for Walworth Road.
     
    PARTING WORDS FROM JOHN HARPER
    My parting with him near the station of Old Cumnock last March was an incident worth remembering. We agreed to give each other a text. I gave him “feed my lambs,” which led him to make this noteworthy statement: when he was in Chicago, he was earnestly engaged in secret prayer, when God, by His Holy Spirit, gave the assurance to him that his little daughter, six years of age, was a