When my dad was about eighteen years old, quick and strong, they had a dog they called Brownie.
Brownie was quite temperamental at times, when provoked.
One evening, after supper, as his sister, Mable was in the pantry washing and drying the supper dishes, my dad sat just inside the dining room-pantry door, and Brownie was lying behind the old Acord heat stove.
Suddenly Mable said to her brother, Royal, Brownie was a bad dog today, he bit one of the children. Dad glanced at Brownie and saw him roll those murderous eyes toward the pantry where Mable was nearly ready to leave her work and come into the dining room.
He felt something was about to happen so he was ready for any emergency. The second Mable stepped into the room, old revenge leaped for her throat. He no doubt would have killed her but Dad,
her brother was instantly as ready and as quick as the dog and sprang between her and the dog and broke his charge. Dad beat old Brownie into submission.
To prove My Dad at that early age believed in the Death route, when the chores were done and breakfast was over, he fastened a leach to Brownie, took a shot gun and shovel and went to the woods up behind the house. He tied old Brownie to a small tree while he dug a grave. When it was ready he laid the shovel down and took up the gun and when he aimed it at Browned, for the first time it dawned upon the dog what was coming. He had seen that gun overtake rabbits and squirrels many times. Dad made quick work of old Brownie, tool off his collar and leash and rolled him into the grave and covered him up.
That mad dog spirit, lunges straight for the throat of the church when offended. When that awful spirit of revenge, when it gets into the church there is no telling where it will stop. Wasn't it King Saul who murdered six of his own sons when a fit of carnal rage hit him?
When that awful spirit breaks lose in the heart of a Spirit-filled church, destruction and devastation follow, unless that heart, where it lingers, is either purified or removed from the group.
Paul said to have no fellowship with such works of darkness.
IV. THEN THERE ARE THOSE SILENT, HIDDEN, destructive, beastly termites of carnality that usually, sooner or later gets to work in the foundation of the church.
They are small, always hidden from sight, but though they seem to be so small, they can destroy buildings that way many tons. They work silently and relentlessly, honeycombing the foundation of the church, undermining confidence, destroying love, making influence ineffective.
Many a Godly minister has been ruined, as well as some of the most saintly lay persons, by the type of carnality that works under cover and never comes out into the open, as their numbers multiply and the devastation goes silently on.
Years ago in New England a woman got it in for her pastor and told of the worst kind of conduct morally and made herself a victim of his advances. The church moved in and he had no defense, with her word against him, so the church took his credentials and put him out of the ministry. He worked as a laboring man until he was along in years and retired from his labors. About that time this woman was dying and she got frightened because of what she had done and confessed that there was not a word of truth in what she had accused him. She had the blood of this good man's ministry on her hands to the judgment. Who would want to stand before God with all of that on her record for probably as much as 40 years or more.
It is amazing what can go on under cover, out of sight, like termites working, until something happens to bring it all to the light.
When we lived in Tennessee years ago there was a bridge over Kentucky Lake. This was on the road between Paris and Clarksville, Tenn. THE big steel bridge, with a built up causeway on both ends was a total of about a mile long. At one time men were painting the bridge. When they were
about to spray they stopped the cars from both ways to keep them out of the overspray. One of those traffic-stops caught my wife and me on the bridge along with a lot of others. We were held there long enough so that many got out of their cars and trucks and stood around and talked. It was a perfect day. There wasn't the faintest breeze. The water in the lake below was as smooth as a mirror. I noticed a raft down there floated by big oil drums. On the backside of that raft was a small box-like enclosure with a door that was open. Leaning up against this little enclosure, was a young man in a chair tilted back against the little cabin. He looked as though he might be asleep. I asked a truck driver, standing there, what that ma n on the raft was doing. It looked like he was doing nothing. He said, "He is fishing for mussels. they are little shelled animals and they get those shells and ship them to Japan for making buttons for jackets. I wondered what mussels were like and how could he catch them when it looked as though he were doing nothing. Suddenly he arose, went over to a winch which I had not noticed and cranked up a 50 gallon drum full of those mussels. He up-ended the barrel and piled them on the raft and put the drum aside. Then he went to the winch and brought up another. Then I noticed a rope ladder going down into the water, and a man's head and shoulders appeared. He had an oxygen tank on his shoulders and a respirator to provide him oxygen while he was down there The truck driven explained it all to me as I watched the proceedings.
Then, being a preacher, I made an application. Just look what was going on down there and the surface was as placid and tranquil as you could imagine. And I thought, in some homes, what awful storms are raging and continuing all the way to church, but when they come in, hand in hand, smiling until it was all covered up. I have a tape recording when David Wilkerson told of a terrible fight he and his wife had just before they were to go to a general gathering, filling a huge auditorium in California. But when they walked in, hand and hand, smiling it was all covered up. Nobody could dream by the beautiful surface what- had just been raging behind the scene. He said on the tape, "We had learned how to do it." (Lest I leave this story where David did not leave it -- let me say that before he got through preaching that night, God came, miraculously healed his heart and his wife's cancer that had her nearly dead. During the message they spotted each other, him in the pulpit and she clear back in the balcony and they both knew the great miracle had happened that healed their home that had been on the rocks for many months. He testified clearly that the healing was for life.) Back to the termites. I stood in a large church one time which had a beautifully varnished floor, and it was without a blemish until the spike heal from one of the woman went down through that hard wood floor as though it were as a sponge. The termites had eaten so close to the surface, still undetected until someone broke through and exposed them. It is a common thing for the termites to keep the surface looking as beautiful as ever, but they are relentless eating away at the foundations.
As the beastly termites eat away at the spiritual foundations of the church, the gloom deepens, The Holy Ghost departs and Angels weep. The Bible says, "If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do? And the termite attack is always aimed at the foundation. Wherever they work, faith in one another is destroyed -- Love for one another is destroyed; (we have seen a lot of that effect in our own ranks) The pleasure of worshipping together and being together is destroyed -- and the romance of praying together is destroyed In fact, every good thing that the Holy Ghost has charge of in the church is destroyed.