Let Us Alone! The Cry Of Demons Order Printed Copy

Author: John Eckhardt
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About the Book

"Let Us Alone! The Cry Of Demons" by John Eckhardt explores the spiritual realm and the battle between good and evil forces. The book delves into the tactics demons use to influence and control individuals, and provides insights on how to overcome these dark forces through faith, prayer, and spiritual warfare. It offers practical advice and guidance for believers to stand strong in their faith and resist the schemes of the enemy.

John A. Broadus

John Broadus, Southern’s second president, was born on January 24, 1827 in Culpeper County, Virginia. After undergraduate and graduate work at the University of Virginia, he joined the university’s faculty as an assistant professor of classics. There, he displayed unusual facility in his post. He served simultaneously as pastor of the Charlottesville Baptist Church. In this period, Broadus won the heart of Maria Harrison, daughter of renowned classics professor Gessner Harrison. Married on November 18, 1850, the Broaduses had three daughters (Eliza, Annie, and Maria) together before Maria passed away on October 21, 1857 at twenty-six years of age. On January 4, 1859, Broadus married Charlotte Eleanor Sinclair, who gave birth to several additional children. The 1858 Education Convention elected Broadus to the seminary’s first faculty. Broadus declined the position because he had close ties to school and family in Charlottesville. For months, Boyce and Manly doggedly urged him to reconsider. After much thought, and not a little anguish, Broadus accepted. From the time he began teaching, Broadus showed a lifelong affection for instructing and mentoring students. Prior to the seminary’s closing in the Civil War period, Broadus drew a single student to his homiletics class. Rather than canceling the class, Broadus lectured to his lone pupil week after week, honing the content that later became the book The Preparation and Delivery of Sermons. The text’s durability was remarkable. Over half a century later, several seminaries used it in homiletics classes. When Southern suspended courses in 1862, Broadus served as a chaplain to Confederate soldiers. He returned to Southern at the war’s end and resumed his teaching post. His talents gained renown. Over Broadus’s career, the University of Chicago, Vassar University, Brown University, Georgetown College, and Crozer Theological Seminary each wooed the professor as a potential president. Large and wealthy churches invited him to be their pastor. Broadus declined these overtures. The greatest need and his greatest influence were at the seminary he loved. In 1889 trustees elected Broadus president of the seminary to succeed Boyce. He guided the school for six peaceful years. Broadus contributed much to the fields in which he taught. In addition to his landmark text on preaching, the scholar labored over his Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew for twenty years before publishing it. With such depth of thought, he excelled at preaching. University of Chicago professor W. C. Wilkinson once remarked of Broadus that he had “every natural endowment, every acquired accomplishment to have become, had he been only a preacher, a preacher hardly second to any in the world.” (1) By his plain exposition and conversational delivery, Broadus changed the character of SBC preaching, a shift seen in the current day. Broadus’s life is notable on a variety of fronts. While a pastor in Virginia, Broadus baptized Lottie Moon, who became Southern Baptist’s most famous overseas missionary. In the Civil War, Broadus preached before Confederate general Robert E. Lee and other Confederate generals, earning a standing invitation from Lee to preach for him. J. D. Rockefeller went further than Lee—he offered Broadus a hefty salary to become his pastor in New York City, an offer Broadus turned down. In 1886, on the 250th anniversary of Harvard University, the school conferred an honorary degree on Broadus due to his national academic reputation. In 1889, Yale University invited the professor to New Haven to deliver the Lyman Beecher Lectures on preaching. Broadus was the only Southern Baptist to address the Ivy League school in a series of talks. Together with Basil Manly, Jr., he founded the monthly Sunday School newspaper, Kind Words in 1866, a title that was eventually adopted by the Southern Baptist Convention’s Home Mission Board. As a preacher, professor, and leader, Broadus looms large in Southern’s history and in the history of the SBC. He was an active churchman at Louisville’s Walnut Street Baptist Church. Broadus passed away on March 16, 1895. (1) William Mueller, A History of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 67. Sources: William Mueller, A History of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Nashville, TN: Broadman, 1959.

what if my singleness never ends

It happened suddenly this past May, the moment I’d prayed for and sought after for quite some time: the moment I became okay with lifelong singleness. Something inside me relaxed as I sat at a coffee shop, my mind not even on relationships but preoccupied with a menu over dinner with friends. And then suddenly, I felt content to be single — not only for another few months, or even years, but even until the day I die, if God chooses that for me. “I don’t want to skip what God chooses to give me during singleness.” More than ever before, the years stretching out before me don’t seem like a romance-less, spouse-less, and (okay, let’s face it) sex-less gray void. It was a beautiful moment that could come only from God, a moment of triumph over an idol that has long battled for the throne of my heart. Whether it’s for a season or a lifetime, I’ve found that I don’t want to skip what God chooses to give me during singleness. Already Loved The more weddings I attend (which is several a year at this stage of life), the more the feeling sinks in that I may never be a bride. But the feeling isn’t altogether sad. Because I’m already dressed in white, you see. My friends’ immaculate dresses and the wedding day itself symbolize something mysterious and beautiful: the “robe of righteousness” God’s people already wear (Isaiah 61:10) and the “fine linen, bright and pure” we will put on at the wedding feast of the Lamb (Revelation 19:8). I’m already pursued by someone who wove the very sinews of my being together. I’m already loved with a love that will outlast every other. I’m already known more intimately than I can fathom. It’s so easy to read that last paragraph and think “so cliché,” especially since this is yet another Christian article about singleness. Just be still. Do you realize what that paragraph means? You’re known just as you are (1 Corinthians 13:12). Even the inmost places of your heart — the darkest, the brightest, the most wounded, the most joyful, the most romantic — God knows and comprehends them to their depths. He cares for your unspoken and most intimate needs. There isn’t a thought you can speak before God knows it’s there (Psalm 139:4). Dwell on that. Do God’s presence and promises carry so little preciousness that we can scoff and declare them “cliché”? Faulty Assumptions So often, we spout inane phrases to single people like “God will bring you the right guy.” They reveal the heart so completely: I have to have a romantic relationship in my life at some point to be whole. We might subtly think, I don’t have to have it now, God. Or even next month. But at some point, God, you’ve gotta bring someone for me to marry. But he doesn’t. God does not have to bring us someone to marry. He simply is not obligated to do anything for us that is not for his glory and for our joy in him. And since we’re not all-knowing, we cannot claim to know what will give us the most long-term joy. We can make guesses, certainly. But the ultimate decision is up to our God, who has never ceased to provide exactly what his people need — from the garments of skin worn by Adam and Eve (Genesis 3:21) to our own daily bread (Matthew 6:11). “I am already loved with a love that will outlast every other.” I’m not saying you won’t have difficult days where you yearn to be a husband or wife (I have those days too!), but I am saying that Jesus will meet you in those difficult times. He is gloriously gracious like that. The Spirit is willing and able to teach your heart many things, including contentment in singleness as long as God sees fit — and even if it’s lifelong. Don’t get me wrong: seeking marriage is great. If you’re interested in a godly someone, use wisdom and discernment and be intentional about it. But don’t fret. You may marry that person, and you may not. Whatever happens, don’t let it overshadow what God has already done for you and the glorious place you are headed. Three Suggestions “That’s great,” you may say as you read this. “But how can I do that?” I don’t pretend to know the complete answer to that question, but here are three suggestions that have helped me. 1. Recognize that you can’t be content on your own. Contentment is a work of God (Philippians 4:11–13). Pray to him for it. Lay your will and your heart down completely, and not in a way where you’re trying to be holy and spiritual so that you can get the “true prize” in your eyes. God can change your heart from that too; just ask. He is a Father who listens to his children. 2. Second, don’t surround yourself with romance. I’m not saying avoid all your friends’ weddings — each is a time for rejoicing and celebrating God’s work in their lives! But don’t inundate yourself with romantic comedies and TV shows and books and other media that are constantly focused on romance. Doing this can easily irritate wounds and give a foothold for envy and comparison to wreak havoc on your emotions. 3. And third, enjoy singleness. Seriously. If you’re not content in singleness, then you won’t be content in marriage. Spouses and significant others are not contentment charms; wedding vows are not magic incantations that produce lifelong fulfillment. “If you’re not content in singleness, then you won’t be content in marriage.” Give your time to ministering to friends and your community. Pursue your interests intently. Learn to manage your money. These activities do not have to be less fulfilling just because you are spouse-less! Believe it or not, if you do marry, there will be times when you yearn for singleness, and it isn’t likely to come again (at least not in the same way). A Better Goal So I come alongside you as a fellow single, encouraging you to join me in laying down the idol of romance. Let’s prepare now to better serve a future spouse or, if we never marry, to enjoy Jesus no matter married or not. Marriage is great, but it isn’t ultimate. The honor of “ultimate” remains with our true romance: the God who creates, sustains, intervenes in, and pursues the hearts of his people from eternity to eternity (Psalm 90:1–2). Amen.