Vision for the Lost or Lost Vision - PART TWO

- Harold Hill in fsaof.blogspot.com -

"To begin with, how about saving people from hell? An early-days Salvationist was an uncomfortable person with whom to share a railway compartment. You would be ear-bashed on the subject. Today, many of us are more anxious to demonstrate our inoffensive normality. The fact that many Salvationists have become less motivated to engage in personal evangelism probably indicates a slackening commitment to the doctrines underlying such activity. A diminished conviction that our neighbour is going to hell renders us less inclined to risk giving offence by trying to save him from it....

...We naturally idealise the early Army as a time of exponential growth, but statistically, the Australasian flood tide had peaked by 1900. In barely a generation the initial energy had begun to dissipate, the vision begun to fade. Reinhold Niebuhr echoed Luther in writing that, “By its very nature the sectarian type of organisation is valid for only one generation… 

Rarely does a second generation hold the convictions it has inherited with a fervour equal to that of its fathers, who fashioned these convictions in the heat of conflict and at the risk of martyrdom.” The children and grandchildren of those who had experienced the miracle of the changing of beer into furniture did not necessarily enjoy the same kind of vital conversion experience of their own. They grew up within the world of the Salvation Army and it was their familiar sub-culture, but they did not necessarily inherit the evangelical imperative. Many found the sub-culture restrictive and they began to slip away."

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Will it happen?

From fsaof-blog (Former Salvation Army Officers´ Fellowship):

GERALD COATES

"You will witness how God intervenes (and grips) the Salvation Army and how you as an army will achieve things you never thought would be possible."

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RUPEBA is one of Scandinavia's most visited Christian blog sites, and is the product of a Salvation Army officer, Lt. Peter Baronowsky. He is a son of the regiment, his parents having served as SA officers until their retirement. Peter and his wife Rut, hence the blog title RU PE BA, served as teachers/administrators at the Army's Jeloy High School in Norway before returning to Sweden and establishing a number of in-house training programs. And concurrently, a SA house church with a steady increase of interested persons joining the fellowship, becoming soldiers and some moving on to officership.

 Both are prolific writers and between them have authored scores of articles, booklets, study guides and many books. 

As they entered into their sixties they felt called to officership, were ordained and commissioned to command the SA work in Latvia. Now retired, since December 2012, their considerable Salvationist influence continues unabated; lecturing, preaching, leading Bible weekends at home and abroad, daily blogging, and added this week, a pod and webcast site. 

RUPEBA and the FSAOF often share blog material. Peter posted the first two of Major Harold Hill's paper, and this morning the
the below was his feature article.

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Vision for the Lost or Lost Vision: William Booth's Legacy PART ONE.

- Harold Hill on fsaof.blogspot.com -
"When William Booth burst in the door of his Hammersmith home late one night in 1865 and exclaimed, “Darling, I have found my destiny!” he’d been walking through the slums of the East End of London. That glimpse of hell on earth constituted Booth’s primary vision; hell was the East End writ large and forever. Commissioner Wesley Harris once asked Commissioner George Joliffe, once secretary to William Booth, what motivated the Founder. Joliffe replied, “His vision of Hell!”

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