We'll Be Heroes
by
Major Stephen Court
(reprint from
JAC#17)
A
CAPACITY crowd bustles in the stadium. Generations of saints -
famous greathearts and unknowns - mingle. The air is bristling
with expectancy. The conflict has intensified since their day.
The war is peaking to its eternal climax and the veterans are
cheering us on (see Hebrews 12:1). Daniel and Josiah are
shoulder-to-shoulder with John Wesley and Charles Grandison
Finney, a few rows up from the Army's own Railton and
Catherine, all cheering and praying for us to step it up.
As the old song says:
We'll be heroes, we'll be heroes,
When the battle is fierce;
When the raging storm louder grows
Will our courage increase
By the cross.
They gave their
lives to this cause and left us a legacy of example,
inspiration, and instruction. The world was not worthy of many
of them (see Hebrews
11:38)
and now they are looking to us to seal the victory.
Are we interested in being heroes? 'The shields of his
soldiers are red,' says the word of God (Nahum 2:3 New
International Version). Red with blood: blood from the enemy
and the blood of the Lamb. Faith is our shield. Until we
exercise it in confrontation with the enemy we have no
defence. We will have no wounds but we will have no victories
either.
We shall conquer, we shall conquer
Through the blood of the Lamb;
And we ne'er will retreat, though we die,
Till the conquest we've won
By the cross.
The Bible gives us our orders: 'Get up, you officers, oil the
shields!' (Isaiah 21:5). Who is going to rise up? Who will
attack, with polished faith, to demolish the enemy?
We are rising, we are rising,
And the foe shall be driven;
As warriors brave let us sing:
We have victory and Heaven
By the cross.
Our heroes wished they could be in our place. William Booth
prophesied that Heaven's saints dream of being in our
situation, willing temporarily to pass up the pleasures of
paradise for the glory of one last battle. But they can't.
It's up to us.
When we're dying, when we're dying
In the arms of his love,
On the wings of faith we'll ascend
To the
palace
of
God
By the cross.
There's the battle-cry. It's a call for heroes. An invocation
for wholly devoted warriors to engage the enemy in the name of
our great commander-in-chief by the power of God, with the
weapons of righteousness (see 2 Corinthians 6:7). I don't want
to let Daniel and Josiah down. I'm going all out for Wesley
and Finney. I'll die to please Railton and Catherine. I'll win
for Jesus. Won't you join me? We'll be heroes!
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