The following are extracts from a printed booklet that sampled sermons from the radio ministry of Pastor W. A. C. Rowe.
W.A.C Rowe was also the author of one of the first Pentecostal (and Apostolic) Systematic Theologies: One Lord; One Faith. Yet despite fondly dipping into this book many times over the years, I confess I knew next to nothing about this early Apostolic Pastor. That was until yesterday when this little book titled Skyway to the Heart made it’s way in to my hands.
Before I share a powerful extract from that booklet, here is a short bio and tribute to W.A.C. Rowe from another Apostolic Church legend, Pastor Ian McPherson who wrote the foreword.
” Billy” Rowe, as he was affectionately known by those who were intimate with him, is in my mind always associated somehow with another ” Billy”-Billy Graham.
Those of us who remember Pastor Rowe as he was in youth —a tall, handsome, striking figure-were irresistibly reminded of him on first seeing the famous American evangelist.
Nor was the likeness merely physical: it was moral too.
About Pastor Rowe there was the same dignity and nobility, the same poise and personal charm, the same radiant Christ-likeness.
Like Billy Graham, moreover, Pastor Rowe was a great master of the spoken word. He had the skill of a barrister in the cut and thrust of debate and could sway a council or conference by the cogency of his reasoning and by the persuasive manner in which he could present his case. He really loved people and was never happier than when in the midst of them. This gave him keen insights into human character and accounted to some extent for the extraordinary power he wielded over others.
But the resemblance between him and the great evangelist did not end even here. It was most marked in their being outstanding preachers.
I have reason to believe that Pastor
Rowe regarded himself as, first and foremost, an administrator. But I feel sure that, exceptional as were his qualifications in that sphere, it was as a preacher that he excelled.
Many of the addresses which he delivered at great conventions and conferences in Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and America as well as on the Continent of Europe will live on in the memories of those who heard them as long as life lasts. Every preacher, I suppose, has his favourite themes, and perhaps the subject on which Pastor Rowe delighted most of all to dwell was “The Glory of Christ.” His ministry was, however, rich and many-sided, and I have seen him often busy during leisure hours on a book which was to have been a systematic exposition of the whole field of Christian doctrine.
(Incidentally, I do hope that that book will be given to the world, for I am certain that into the making of it he poured the best and ripest of his thought).
To return to his preaching : the finest message I ever heard him give was on “Naboth’s Vineyard.” What a masterly discourse it was and how tellingly and compellingly it was applied !
Among all his work for the pulpit none gave him greater pleasure and for none did he prepare with such meticulous care than the talks which he gave Sunday after Sunday over the air in Melbourne. By means of this radio ministry he reached a very wide constituency and many letters came in expressing appreciation of the thrilling messages or asking for prayer or personal visitation.
I have myself been present with him when he sat in front of the microphone in the radio-station and I can testify that when the red light went on intimating that the apparatus was alive he did not merely talk at the microphone, he poured himself through it. As well as any broadcaster I have heard, he succeeded, not only in putting his message over, but in projecting his personality, as it were, through the mechanism.
It is no wonder the hearers were blessed. The addresses to which they listened were vital and vibrant with the very heart’s blood of the man who delivered them.
In this little book are published for the first time some of these inspired addresses. We miss the man behind them, for cold print can never convey an adequate impression of the impact made by the living word. Yet no-one can write with burning sincerity and passionate conviction without imparting even to his printed message something of the dynamic quality of personal communication. Of this these broadcast sermons provided convincing proof. About them there is that lightness of touch, elegance of expression and warm brotherliness of approach which all those who knew Pastor Rowe would expect from him. With all my heart I commend them. I know that they were penned in the atmosphere of prayer and that the breath of God blows through them.
Nobody who reads them can fail to be enlightened and enriched.
By his tireless labours and by study, ministry and the personal superintendence of a large group of churches throughout the Commonwealth of Australia, Pastor Rowe literally wore himself out. His labours took a terrible toll of his life. The end came suddenly. A sharp pain at the heart and in an hour or two he was gone. On his dying lips was a sentence which he had been in the habit of repeating and which indeed might well be taken as an epitome of the message of his whole life: “Jesus is a wonderful Saviour!” Looking back on the many happy associations I had with him, I recall particularly the day on which he and I together visited Dr. F. W. Boreham, the famous Australian essayist, in the latter’s bungalow in one of the beautiful suburbs of Melbourne. Dr. Boreham received us most graciously and we sat for some time chatting with him about matters of mutual interest. Then, as we rose to go, Dr. Boreham, a saintly old gentleman of more than eighty years of age, asked us if we would accept his blessing. We gladly consented.
Together in a small circle we stood in his lounge and, laying a hand on the head of each of us, Dr. Boreham prayed most fervently that God would visit us, and in the lovely language of the Aaronic blessing pronounced a benediction upon us.
Somehow I feel that that benediction breathes through these pages and I am sure that you too will feel it as you read them.
IAN MACPHERSON.
What a powerful tribute and insight into a man of God from previous generations.
Now here is a snap shot of his own writings. This one is on the theme of the love of God.
Incomparable Love
… I have loved thee with an everlasting love .
Jeremiah 31: 3.THE great French evangelical minister, Monod, when dying was asked how he felt. He replied, ” I have strength for nothing more than to think about the Love of God: He has loved us… that is the “All in all’ of divine dogmatics. Let us love Him, that is the ” All in all’ of human ethics.” Truly, a short, but incisive summation of the greatest truth and experience in life.
I was musing, with very much sweetness, on the same theme, the divine declaration in the Old Testament, ” I have loved thee with an everlasting love.” My mind leapt to the New Testament handmaid to that verse, ” That ye … may be able to comprehend… the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge.” What amazing love! What immense spiritual dimensions !THE LOVE OF GOD IS DEEPER THAN THE DEEPEST HELL.
We can imagine nothing lower than that.
It is this exercise of divine love that manifests the passion to redeem. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, tasted death for every man, both the first and the second deaths. He drank the totality of the cup of hell’s everlasting sufferings. In order to be the Saviour of the world, Christ went down underneath all the worst cases. Jesus descended into hell and gathered up the souls of the righteous and bore them up into Paradise. With the keys in the Master’s possession it bespeaks His complete dominance of the lowest hell. From God’s love comes the power to deliver. ” Jesus breaks every fetter.” He smashes the powers of evil. He destroys the Destroyer’s bondage. Whom the Son makes free is free indeed.
Rev John James 