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About the Book
"The Eighth Kingdom" by Perry Stone is a Christian fiction novel that explores the concept of spiritual warfare and the battle between good and evil. The story follows a group of individuals who possess unique supernatural abilities and must band together to defeat an ancient evil force known as the Eighth Kingdom. Through their trials and challenges, the characters learn about the power of faith, perseverance, and unity in order to triumph over darkness. The novel is filled with action, suspense, and deep spiritual themes that will resonate with readers seeking a thrilling and thought-provoking tale.
William Booth
General William Booth’s early life
William Booth was born in Nottingham in 1829 of well-bred parents who had become poor. He was a lively lad nicknamed Wilful Wil. At the age of fifteen he was converted in the Methodist chapel and became the leader of a band of teenage evangelists who called him Captain and held street meetings with remarkable success.
In 1851 he began full-time Christian work among the Methodist Reformers in London and later in Lincolnshire. After a period in a theological college he became a minister of the Methodist New Connexion. His heart however was with the poor people unreached by his church, and in 1861 he left the Methodists to give himself freely to the work of evangelism. Joined by Catherine, his devoted wife, they saw their ministry break out into real revival, which in Cornwall spread far and wide.
One memorable day in July 1865, after exploring the streets in an East End district where he was to conduct a mission, the terrible poverty, vice and degradation of these needy people struck home to his heart. He arrived at his Hammersmith home just before midnight and greeted his waiting Catherine with these words: “Darling, I have found my destiny!” She understood him. Together they had ministered God’s grace to God’s poor in many places.
Now they were to spend their lives bringing deliverance to Satan”s captives in the evil jungle of London”s slums. One day William took Bramwell, his son, into an East End pub which was crammed full of dirty, intoxicated creatures. Seeing the appalled look on his son”s face, he said gently, “Bramwell, these are our people—the people I want you to live for.”
William and Catherine loved each other passionately all their lives. And no less passionately did they love their Lord together. Now, although penniless, together with their dedicated children, they moved out in great faith to bring Christ”s abundant life to London”s poverty-stricken, devil-oppressed millions.
At first their organisation was called the Christian Mission. In spite of brutal opposition and much cruel hardship, the Lord blessed this work, and it spread rapidly.
William Booth was the dynamic leader who called young men and women to join him in this full-time crusade. With enthusiastic abandon, hundreds gave up all to follow him.
“Make your will, pack your box, kiss your girl and be ready in a week”, he told one young volunteer.
Salvation Army born
One day as William was dictating a report on the work to George Railton, his secretary, he said, “We are a volunteer army,”
“No”, said Bramwell, “I am a regular or nothing.”
His father stopped in his stride, bent over Railton, took the pen from his hand, and crossing out the word “volunteer”, wrote “salvation”. The two young men stared at the phrase “a salvation army”, then both exclaimed “Hallelujah”. So the Salvation Army was born.
As these dedicated, Spirit-filled soldiers of the cross flung themselves into the battle against evil under their blood and fire banner, amazing miracles of deliverance occurred. Alcoholics, prostitutes and criminals were set free and changed into workaday saints.
Cecil Rhodes once visited the Salvation Army farm colony for men at Hadleigh, Essex, and asked after a notorious criminal who had been converted and rehabilitated there.
“Oh”, was the answer, “He has left the colony and has had a regular job outside now for twelve months.”
“Well” said Rhodes in astonishment, “if you have kept that man working for a year, I will believe in miracles.”
Slave traffic
The power that changed and delivered was the power of the Holy Spirit. Bramwell Booth in his book Echoes and Memories describes how this power operated, especially after whole nights of prayer. Persons hostile to the Army would come under deep conviction and fall prostrate to the ground, afterward to rise penitent, forgiven and changed. Healings often occurred and all the gifts of the Spirit were manifested as the Lord operated through His revived Body under William Booth’s leadership.
Terrible evils lay hidden under the curtain of Victorian social life in the nineteenth century. The Salvation Army unmasked and fought them. Its work among prostitutes soon revealed the appalling wickedness of the white slave traffic, in which girls of thirteen were sold by their parents to the pimps who used them in their profitable brothels, or who traded them on the Continent.
“Thousands of innocent girls, most of them under sixteen, were shipped as regularly as cattle to the state-regulated brothels of Brussels and Antwerp.” (Collier).
Imprisoned
In order to expose this vile trade, W. T. Stead (editor of The Pall Mall Gazette) and Bramwell Booth plotted to buy such a child in order to shock the Victorians into facing the fact of this hidden moral cancer in their society. This thirteen-year-old girl, Eliza Armstrong, was bought from her mother for ÂŁ5 and placed in the care of Salvationists in France.
W. T. Stead told the story in a series of explosive articles in The Pall Mall Gazette which raised such a furore that Parliament passed a law raising the age of consent from thirteen to sixteen. However, Booth and Stead were prosecuted for abduction, and Stead was imprisoned for three months.
William Booth always believed the essential cause of social evil and suffering was sin, and that salvation from sin was its essential cure. But as his work progressed, he became increasingly convinced that social redemption and reform should be an integral part of Christian mission.
So at the age of sixty he startled England with the publication of the massive volume entitled In Darkest England, and the Way Out. It was packed with facts and statistics concerning Britain’s submerged corruption, and proved that a large proportion of her population was homeless, destitute and starving. It also outlined Booth’s answer to the problem — his own attempt to begin to build the welfare state.
All this was the result of two years” laborious research by many people, including the loyal W. T. Stead. On the day the volume was finished and ready for publication, Stead was conning its final pages in the home of the Booths. At last he said, “That work will echo round the world. I rejoice with an exceeding great joy.”
“And I”, whispered Catherine, dying of cancer in a corner of the room, “And I most of all thank God. Thank God!” As the work of the Salvation Army spread throughout Britain and into many countries overseas, it met with brutal hostility. In many places Skeleton Armies were organised to sabotage this work of God. Hundreds of officers were attacked and injured (some for life). Halls and offices were smashed and fired. Meetings were broken up by gangs organised by brothel keepers and hostile publicans.
One sympathiser in Worthing defended his life and property with a revolver. But Booth’s soldiers endured the persecution for many years, often winning over their opponents by their own offensive of Christian love.
The Army that William Booth created under God was an extension of his own dedicated personality. It expressed his own resolve in his words which Collier places on the first page of his book:
“While women weep as they do now, I’ll fight; while little children go hungry as they do now, I’ll fight; while men go to prison, in and out, in and out, as they do now, I’ll fight—I’ll fight to the very end!”
Toward the end of his life, he became blind. When he heard the doctor’s verdict that he would never see again, he said to his son: “Bramwell, I have done what I could for God and the people with my eyes. Now I shall see what I can do for God and the people without my eyes.”
But the old warrior had finally laid down his sword. His daughter, Eva, head of the Army’s work in America, came home to say her last farewell. Standing at the window she described to her father the glory of that evening’s sunset.
“I cannot see it,” said the General, “but I shall see the dawn.”
God Answers Better Than We Ask
A godly king, backed into a deadly corner, teaches us a liberating truth about prayer. In one of the great tragedies in all of Scripture, David’s son Absalom has exploited his father’s love and conspired against him. Now the rebellion has grown strong, and David is left with no option but to flee Jerusalem in hopes of living to fight another day (2 Samuel 15:14). “Prayer is for turning the tide, for changing the seeming course of history.” As he retreats, weeping as he goes, barefoot, with his head covered in shame, it gets worse. He learns that his most prized advisor, Ahithophel — whose counsel “was as if one consulted the word of God” (2 Samuel 16:23) — has joined Absalom (2 Samuel 15:12). Yet in this most desperate of moments, when David could have crumbled, or wallowed in self-pity, his reflex is Godward. He breathes up a prayer: O Lord, please turn the counsel of Ahithophel into foolishness. (2 Samuel 15:31) Unlikely Plea Admittedly, the prayer seems utterly unlikely, if not impossible, humanly speaking. None was wiser than Ahithophel. One might as well ask for the sun to stand still as to pray for Ahithophel’s wise counsel to turn into folly. Yet these are the very moments for which God has given us prayer. He opens his ear to his people. Not for calling down more comforts for an already cushy existence, but precisely for the times when life and death are at stake. Prayer is not an exercise in naming ahead of time what already seems to be the natural course of action. Prayer is not for making an educated guess out loud to God about what seems to be unfolding already. And it’s certainly not for advising God as to how things should go, as if he needed a counselor (Romans 11:33–34). Rather, prayer is for turning the tide, for changing the seeming course of history. Prayer is for desperate times and dire moments, when we’re backed in a corner — when humanly speaking, the desired outcome, and what seems to be our last chance, is painfully unlikely to unfold, and we need God. We need him to intervene. Without the interruptive fingers of Providence reaching down into the details to disturb what seems to be, from our vantage, the natural course of action, we are doomed. But if he is God, and if he is listening, and if he acts, then we have a fighting chance. Cause and effect do not carry the day. God does. So, David prays. God Does the Unthinkable No sooner has David prayed than Hushai the Archite, who is loyal to David, meets him with torn coat and dirt on his head in mourning (2 Samuel 15:32). David has prayed for Ahithophel’s counsel to turn sour, but now David also acts in faith. He sends Hushai to feign fealty to Absalom, serve as a spy, and perhaps even “defeat for me the counsel of Ahithophel” (2 Samuel 15:34). “Prayer is for desperate times and dire moments, when we’re backed in a corner.” Hushai goes, and like Ahithophel, is received into Absalom’s conspiracy. One of the first orders of business is whether to chase David down and overtake him as he retreats. Ahithophel speaks first: “Pursue David tonight . . . while he is weary and discouraged” (2 Samuel 17:1–2). Per normal, this is wise counsel. “And the advice seemed right in the eyes of Absalom and all the elders of Israel” (2 Samuel 17:4). The great sage has spoken, and this looks like a done deal. And such will spell the end of David — were it not for Hushai, who then speaks. “This time the counsel that Ahithophel has given is not good,” says the mole (2 Samuel 17:7). He then paints David not as the weak and discouraged man that he is, but as mighty, enraged, and expert in war. And God does the unthinkable: he turns the hearts of Absalom and all the men of Israel to say, “The counsel of Hushai the Archite is better than the counsel of Ahithophel.” What? This is a stunning turn of events. An impossibility, apart from God. Only God himself can turn the hearts like this. And so, 2 Samuel 17:14 adds the explanation, “For the Lord had ordained to defeat the good counsel of Ahithophel, so that the Lord might bring harm upon Absalom.” No one could have seen this coming. Even David did not at the time of his prayer. Hushai’s deceptive word carries the day, the dominoes begin to fall, and it soon means the end of Absalom, and salvation for David. He Answers Better Than We Ask So, God answered David’s prayer. Or did he? Remember how the king had prayed: “O Lord, please turn the counsel of Ahithophel into foolishness” (2 Samuel 15:31). God had not answered that prayer. In fact, 2 Samuel 17:14 confirms that Ahithophel had given “good counsel.” Yet we find no lament from David that God didn’t answer his prayer. No complaints that the Lord hid his face, or that his ears were stopped, or that he could not see. No mourning. No frustration. No wallowing. David prayed one seemingly impossible prayer, took a modest step in faith, and trusted God to work salvation for him. And David had no sour grapes that God didn’t answer his prayer precisely as he asked. In fact, David delighted to pray to, and to praise, a God who makes a habit of answering better than we ask. No Scriptwriter Could Guess In his commentary on 2 Samuel, Dale Ralph Davis observes, No sooner does [David] pray than Yahweh begins to answer his prayer — and that in a way no scriptwriter could have guessed. Our prayers deal with the what; God’s answers deal with the what and the how and the when. And how the how can surprise us! (160) Our God delights to free us from being the author of our own stories of salvation. When we pray, it is not our job to foresee how God might bring out the rescue and lay out the details for him, even as often as it is our instinct to do precisely this. Most of us fathers would be a little annoyed, if not greatly, if our children not only asked for things but also insisted on laying out exactly how we should go about fulfilling their request. It is a father’s joy to surprise his children with the means, if not with the end. “Our God delights to free us from being the author of our own stories of salvation.” Fortunately, even as we try to counsel him, our Father in heaven is patient. He endures our folly. And he also wants to free us from feeling we need to give him directions. Not only can we not give him directions, but we can trust that his heart is far greater for the holy outcomes we want than our hearts are. And his ways of answering our prayers, according to his good pleasure, are more stunning than we can dream. He loves to answer better than we ask. Not Precisely but Substantially For those who have walked with this God for even a modest measure of time, we have seen him answer far better than we’ve asked. Which, alongside his Father’s heart (Luke 11:11–12) and the gift of his Spirit (Romans 8:26–27), gives us great incentive to pray, and keep praying. In other words, our human instincts, our ignorance, and our inability to counsel him are no disincentives to pray, but rather good reason to keep asking of him who knows how to give better than we know to ask. He knows. “Your Father knows” (Luke 12:30). We do not. “We do not know what to pray for as we ought” (Romans 8:26). His judgments are unsearchable; his ways, inscrutable (Romans 11:33) — which is all the more reason to ask him. Already Answered When Paul celebrates “him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think” (Ephesians 3:20), he is no mindless optimist. He’s not asking us to groundlessly expect “the best is yet to come” without solid proof in the past and present. And Paul has provided it, rooting his doxology in the gospel he just rehearsed. We were dead in sins, and God made us alive together with Christ. We were separated and alienated, without hope, and God brought us near by the blood of Christ. In the gospel, our God has already answered better than we could have asked. Christ came, he died, he rose — and though we often don’t know precisely how to pray, we do know that our Father loves to hear our requests, and outdo them. Article by David Mathis
