Reuben Archer Torrey (1856-1928) was both an evangelist and a Bible scholar.  
Long associated with D. L. Moody, he became most prominent during world 
preaching tours in 1902 and 1921.  His preaching in Wales in 1902 has been 
noted as one cause for the Welsh revivals of the early 1900s.  He was the 
first superintendent of the Moody Bible Institute and wrote numerous 
devotional and theological books.
         
Spiritual awakening followed R. A. Torrey throughout his career as an 
evangelist.  In revivals with the popular gospel singer Charles W. Alexander, 
Dr. Torrey filled meeting halls with his magnetic presence, passion, and 
earnestness.
         
To help the reading of this classic work, the original Scripture references 
have been replaced by the language of our time--the NIV.  Also, obviously 
archaic terminology and passages obscured by expressions not totally familiar 
in our day have been revised.  However, neither Torrey's meaning nor intent 
have been tampered with.

All Scripture references are taken from the HOLY BIBLE: NEW INTERNATIONAL 
VERSION (C) 1978 by the New York Bible Society, used by permission of 
Zondervan Bible Publishers.  

                                                      Tony Capoccia


         
                            The Great Attraction
                                     by
                                R. A. Torrey
                                 (1856-1928)


                 "But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, 
                        will draw all men to myself."  
                                                  JOHN 12:32


In a recent advertisement of a Sunday evening service in one of our American 
cities it was stated that there would be three attractions: a high-class 
movie show, a popular gospel pianist and his wife, and a melody from the 
opera, "Madame Butterfly," rendered by a well-known prima donna.  It is 
somewhat startling when an unusually gifted and popular preacher, or his 
advertising committee, thinks of the Gospel of the Son of God as having so 
lost its power to draw that it must be bolstered up by putting on a selection 
from a very questionable opera, rendered by a professional opera singer, as 
an additional attraction to help out our once-crucified and now-glorified 
Savior and Lord.
              
This advertisement set me to thinking as to what really was the great 
attraction to men in this day as well as in former days.  At once there came 
to my mind the words of our text containing God's answer to this question: 
"But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself."  
There is nothing else that draws like the uplifted Christ.  Movies may get a 
crowd of empty-headed and empty-hearted young men and maidens, and even 
middle-aged folks without brains or moral earnestness, for a time, but  
nothing really draws and holds the men and women who are worthwhile like 
Jesus Christ lifted up.  Nineteen centuries of Christian history prove the 
drawing power of Jesus when He is properly presented to men.  I have seen 
some wonderful verifications of the assertion of our text as to the marvelous 
drawing power of the uplifted Christ.
              
In London, for two continuous months, six afternoons and evenings each week, 
I saw the great Royal Albert Hall filled and even jammed, and sometimes as 
many turned away as got in, though it would seat ten thousand people by 
actual count and provide standing room for two thousand more in the dome.  On 
the opening night of these meetings a leading reporter of the city of London 
came to me before the service began and said, "You have rented this building 
for two consecutive months?" "Yes." "And you expect to fill it every day?" 
"Yes." "Why," he said, "no one has ever attempted to hold two weeks 
consecutive meetings here of any kind.  Gladstone himself could not fill it 
for two weeks.  And you really expect to fill it for two months?" I replied, 
"Come and see."  He came and he saw.
              
On the last night, when the place was jammed to its utmost capacity and 
thousands outside clamored for admission, he came to me again, and I said, 
"Has it been filled?" He smiled and said, "It has."  But what filled it?  No 
show on earth could have filled it once a day for many consecutive days.  The 
preacher was no remarkable orator.  He had no gift of wit and humor, and 
would not have exercised it if he had.  The newspapers constantly called 
attention to the fact that he was no orator, but the crowds came and came and 
came; rainy days, and fine days they crowded in or stood outside, oftentimes 
in a downpour of rain, in the vain hope of getting in.  What drew them?  The
uplifted Christ preached and sung in the power of the Holy Spirit, given in 
answer to the daily prayers of forty thousand people scattered throughout the 
earth.
      
In Liverpool, the Tournament Hall, that was said to seat twenty thousand 
people, and that by actual count seated 12,500 comfortably, located in a very 
out-of-the-way part of the city, several blocks from the nearest street-car 
line, and perhaps half a mile from all the regular street-car lines, was 
filled night after night for three months, and on the last night they crowded 
fifteen thousand people into the building at seven o'clock, and then emptied 
it, and crowded another fifteen thousand in who had been patiently waiting 
outside--30,000 people drawn in a single night!  By what?  By whom?  Not by 
the preacher, not by the singer, but by Him who had said nearly nineteen 
hundred years before, "But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw 
all men to myself."  
         
                      I. The Exact Meaning of the Text
         
Let us now look at the exact meaning of the text.
1. First, notice who is the speaker, and what were the circumstances under 
which He spoke?  The Speaker was our Lord Jesus.  Not the Christ of men's 
imaginations, but the Christ of reality, the Christ of actual historic fact.  
Not the Christ of Mary Baker Eddy's foolish fancy, or of Madam Besant's 
mystical imaginings, but the Christ of actuality, who lived here among men 
and was seen, heard, and handled by men, and who was seen to die a real death 
to save real sinners from a real hell for a real heaven.

The circumstances were these.  Certain Greeks among those who went up to 
worship at the Jewish feast came to one of the apostles, Philip, and said, 
"We would like to see Jesus."  And Philip went to Andrew and told Andrew what 
these Greeks had said.  Andrew and Philip together came and told Jesus.  In 
the heart-cry of these Greeks, "We would like to see Jesus," our Lord 
recognized the yearning of the universal heart, the heart of Greek, as well 
as of Jew, for a satisfying Savior.  The Greeks had their philosophers and 
sages, their would-be satisfiers and saviors, the greatest the world has ever 
known, Socrates, Aristotle, Plato, Epictetus, Epimenides, and many others; 
but they did not save, and they did not satisfy, and the Greeks cried, "We 
would like to see Jesus"; and in their eagerness to see Him Jesus foresaw the 
millions of all nations who would flock to Him when He had been crucified as 
the universal Savior, meeting all the needs of all mankind, and so He cried, 
"But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself."  

2. In the second place, notice the words, "When I am lifted up."  To what does 
Jesus refer?  The next verse answers the question.  "He said this to show the 
kind of death he was going to die."  Jesus referred to His lifting up on the 
cross, to die as an atoning Savior for all mankind.  This verse is often 
quoted as if it meant that, if we lifted up Christ in our preaching, He would 
draw men.  That is true, and it is a crying shame that we do not more often 
hold up only Him in our preaching, for we would draw far more people if we 
did.  But that is not our Lord's meaning.  The lifting up clearly referred, 
not to Him not being lifted up in our preaching, but to His being lifted up 
on the cross by His enemies to expose Him to awful shame and to an agonizing 
death.  It is Christ crucified who draws, it is Christ crucified who meets 
the deepest needs of the heart of all mankind; it is an atoning Savior, a 
Savior who atones for the sins of men by His death, and thus saves from the 
holy wrath of an infinitely holy God, who meets the needs of men, and thus 
draws all men, for all men are sinners.  Preach any Christ but a crucified 
Christ, and you will not draw men for long.  Preach any gospel but a gospel 
of atoning blood, and it will not draw for long.
              
Unitarianism does not draw men.  Unitarian churches are born only to die.  
Their corpses strew New England today.  Many of their ministers have been 
intellectually among the most brilliant our country has ever known, but their 
churches even under scholarly and brilliant ministers die, die, die!  Why? 
Because Unitarianism presents a gospel without atoning blood, and Jesus has 
said and history has proven it true, "But I, when I am lifted up from the 
earth, will draw all men to myself."  "Christian Science," strangely so 
called, for, as has been often truly said, "it is neither Christian nor 
scientific," draws crowds of men and women of a certain type, men and women 
who have or imagine that they have physical ailments, and who will follow 
anything, no matter how absurd, that promises them a little release from 
their real or imagined pains.  It also draws crowds who wish to fancy that 
they have some religion without paying the price of true religion, genuine 
love, real self-sacrifice, and costly sympathy.  

But Christian Science does not draw all men, that is, all kinds and 
conditions and ranks of men.  In fact, for the most part, it does not draw 
men at all, but women, and the alleged men it draws are for the most part 
women in trousers, and men who see an easy way to make a living by preying on 
the vulnerability of luckless females.  No, a bloodless gospel, a gospel with 
a Christ but not a Christ lifted up on a cross, does not meet the universal 
needs of men, and so does not draw all men.

Congregationalism of the past years has been sadly tinctured with 
Unitarianism.  In spite of the fact that it has been an eyewitness to 
Unitarianism's steady decay and death, Congregationalism has largely dropped 
the atoning blood out of its theology, and consequently it is rapidly going 
to the wall.  Its once-great Andover Seminary, still great in the size of its 
endowment given for the teaching of Bible orthodoxy, but which the 
conscienceless teachers of a bloodless theology have deliberately taken for 
the exploitation of their "damnable heresies" (2 Peter 2:1), and which is 
still great in the number of its professors, graduated at their annual 
exercises last spring just three men, one a Japanese, one a Hindu, and one an 
American.  A theology without a crucified Savior, without the atoning blood, 
won't draw.  It does not meet the need.  No, no, the words of our Lord are 
still true, "But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to 
myself."  
              
3. Note, in the third place, the words, "Draw all men."  Does "all men" mean 
all individuals or men of all races?  Did Jesus mean that every man and woman 
who lived on this earth would be drawn to Him, or did He mean that men of all 
races would be drawn to Him?  The context answers the question.  The Greeks, 
as we have seen, came to one of the apostles, Philip, and said, "We would 
like to see Jesus," and Philip had gone and told Andrew, and Andrew and 
Philip had gone and told Jesus.  Our Lord's ministry during His earthly life 
was to Jews only, and in the coming of these Greeks so soon before His death 
our Lord saw the sign of the coming days when by His death on the cross the 
barrier between Jews and Gentiles would be broken down and all nations would 
have their opportunity equally with the Jews, when by His atoning death on 
the cross men of all nations would be drawn to Him.  He did not say that He 
would draw every individual, but all races of men, Greeks as well as Jews, 
Romans, Scythians, French, English, Germans, Japanese, Americans, and men of 
all nations.  

He is a universal Savior, and true Christianity is a universal religion.  
Mohammedanism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and all religions but Christianity, 
are religions of a restricted application.  Christianity, with a crucified 
Christ as its center, is a universal religion and meets the needs of all 
mankind.  It meets the needs of the European as well as the needs of the 
Asiatic, the needs of the Occident as well as the needs of the Orient, the 
needs of the American Indian and the needs of the African Negro; and so our 
Lord said, "But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to 
myself."  

No race has ever been found anywhere on this earth to which the Gospel did 
not appeal and whose deepest need the crucified Christ did not meet.  Many 
years ago, when Charles Darwin, the eminent English scientist, came in 
contact with the Terre del Fuegans in their gross degradation, he publicly 
declared that here was a people to whom it was vain to send missionaries, as 
the Gospel could not do anything for them.  But brave men of God went there 
and took the Gospel to them in the power of the Holy Spirit and demonstrated 
that it met the need of the Terre del Fuegans, with such great results that 
Charles Darwin publicly admitted his mistake and became a regular subscriber 
to the work.

The Gospel, with a crucified Christ as its center, meets the needs of all 
conditions and classes of men as well as of all races.  It meets the need of 
the millionaire and the need of the pauper; it meets the need of great men of 
science like James D. Dana and Lord Kelvin, and the need of the man or woman 
who cannot read or write; it meets the need of the king on the throne and the 
need of the laborer in the ditch.  I myself have seen with my own eyes 
noblemen and servant girls, university deans and men who could scarcely read, 
prisoners in penitentiaries and leaders in moral uplift, brilliant lawyers 
and dull, plodding workingmen, come under its attraction, and be saved by its 
power.  But it was only because I made "Christ crucified," His atoning work, 
the center of my preaching.
              
4. Notice, in the fourth place, the words, "to myself." "I will draw all men 
to myself."  It is not to a creed or a system of doctrine that Jesus draws 
men, but to a Person, to Himself.  That is what we need, a Person, Jesus 
Himself.  As He Himself once said, "Come to me, all you who are weary and 
burdened, and I will give you rest" (Matthew 11:28).  Creeds and confessions 
of faith are all right in their place, they are of great value; the organized 
church is of great value, it is indispensable, and it is the most important 
institution in the world today.  Society would soon go to rack and ruin 
without it; we are all under solemn obligation to God and to our fellow man 
to support it and belong to it; but creeds and confessions of faith cannot 
save; the church cannot save; a Divine Person can save, Jesus Christ, and He       
alone.  So He says, "But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw 
all men to myself."  

                    II. Why Christ Lifted Up on the Cross
                          Draws All Men to Himself
         
But why does Christ lifted up on the cross, the crucified Christ, draw all 
men unto Himself?  There are two reasons why Christ lifted up, and Christ 
crucified, draws all men unto Himself.

1. First of all, Christ crucified draws all men to Himself because Christ 
crucified meets the first, the deepest, the greatest and most fundamental 
need of man.  What is man's first, greatest, deepest, most fundamental need? 
A Savior?  A Savior from what?  First of all, and underlying all else, a 
Savior from the guilt of sin.  Every man of every race has sinned.  As Paul 
put it in Romans 3:23, "There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall 
short of the glory of God."  

There is no difference between Jew and Gentile at this point, nor is there 
any difference between English and German at this point; there is no 
difference between American and Japanese at this point, no difference between 
European and Asiatic, no difference between the American and the African.  
"There is no difference; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of 
God."  Every man of every race is a sinner; "there is no difference" at this 
point.  And every man will have to answer for his sin to the infinitely holy 
God who rules this universe.  Therefore, all men need an atoning Savior, who 
can by His atoning death make propitiation for, and so cover up, our sins, 
and thus reconcile us to this holy God, and deliver us from His awful wrath, 
and bring us out into the glorious sunlight of His favor.  And Jesus lifted 
up is the only atoning Savior in the universe.  He who alone was at the same 
time God and man, He alone can make atonement for sin; and He has made it, 
has made a perfect atonement, and God has accepted His atonement and 
testified to His acceptance of His atonement by raising Him from the dead.  
The Lord Jesus actually meets our need, He actually meets every man's first, 
greatest, deepest, most fundamental need, and He alone.  In all the universe 
there is no religion but Christianity that even offers an atoning Savior.  

Mohammedanism offers Mohammed, "The Prophet," a teacher, but not a Savior; 
Buddhism offers Buddha, supposedly at least a wonderful teacher, "The Light 
of Asia," but not an atoning Savior; Confucianism offers Confucius, a 
marvelous teacher far ahead of his time, but not an atoning Savior.  No 
religion but Christianity offers an atoning Savior, an atonement of any real 
character.  This is the radical point of difference between Christianity and 
every other religion in the world, yet some fool preachers are trying to 
eliminate from Christianity this supreme fact, its very point of radical 
difference from all other religions.  But such an emasculated Christianity 
will not reach the needs of men and will not draw men.  It never has and it 
never will.  The Bible and history are at one on this.  

Jesus Christ offers Himself lifted up on the cross to redeem us from the 
curse of the law by "becoming a curse for us." "Christ redeemed us from the 
curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: 'Cursed is 
everyone who is hung on a tree'" (Galatians 3:13).  Men know their need; they 
may try to forget it, they may try to deny it; they may try to drown their 
sense of it by drink and indulgence or by wild pleasure-seeking or wild 
money-getting, or by listening to fake preachers in supposedly orthodox 
pulpits, like one who in this city declared recently that "the old sense of 
sin is fast disappearing," and added, "The change is for the better, not for 
the worse." He spoke also of "imaginary and artificial sins like 'the sin of 
unbelief,'" and then went on to say, "In this we agree with Christ," 
apparently not knowing enough about the Bible to know that Jesus Himself was 
the very one who said in John 16:8-9, "When he comes, he will convict the 
world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment: in regard to 
sin, because men do not believe in me."  

But in spite of all our attempts to drown or stupefy or silence our sense of 
sin, our consciousness of guilt before a Holy God, we all have it, and, it 
will not disappear.  Nothing gives the guilty conscience abiding peace but 
the atoning blood of Jesus Christ.  And so Christ lifted up draws all men to 
Him, and even wicked ministers of Satan, like the preacher I have just 
referred to, sometimes come to their senses and flee to the real Christ, 
Christ crucified, as I hope this one may.  Yes, Jesus, Jesus only, Jesus 
lifted up on the cross, Jesus crucified for our sins, making full atonement 
for our sins, He and He alone meets the deepest need of us all, and so His 
cross draws us all men to Himself.  Happy the man or the woman who yields to 
that drawing.  Woe be to the man or woman who resists that drawing; final 
gloom, despondency, and despair are their lot.  Oh, how many men and women 
who have gotten their eyes opened to see the facts, to see their awful guilt, 
and who have been plunged into deepest consequent despair, have come to me, 
and I have pointed them to Jesus on the cross, and have shown them by God's 
Word all their sins laid upon Him and thus settled, and they have come to 
Him, and believed God's testimony about Him, that He had borne all their sins 
in His own body on the cross, and they have found perfect peace and boundless 
joy.  And that is the only way to find perfect peace and boundless joy.
              
Will you set out to find peace?  If you do not, great gloom, utter despair, 
awaits you some day, in this world or in the world to come.  In my first 
pastorate I tried to get a man to come to Christ lifted up to meet his need 
of pardon; but though it was many years ago he held to the theology that is 
preached as "new theology" today, and sought to quiet the voice of 
conscience, and stupefy his sense of sin by denying his guilt and his need of 
an atoning Savior.  He did not wish to listen to me nor to see me.  But the 
hour came when death drew near.  A cancer was eating its way through scalp 
and skull into his brain; then he cried to those about his dying bed, "Send 
for Mr. Torrey."  I hurried to his side.  He was in despair.  "Oh!" he said, 
"Dr. Tidhall tells me that I have only a short time to live, that as soon as 
this cancer gets a little farther and cuts through the thin film of skull and 
touches the brain I am a dead man.  Tell me how to be saved."  I sat down 
beside him, and told him what to do to be saved.  I tried to make as plain as 
I knew how the way of salvation through the uplifted Christ, Christ uplifted 
on the cross, and I think I know how to make it plain, but he had waited too 
long, he could not grasp it.  I stayed with him.  Night came on.  I said to 
his family, "You have been up night after night with him, I will sit with him 
tonight."  They instructed me what to do, how to minister to him.  Time after 
time during the night I had to go to another room to get some nourishment for 
him, and as I would come back into the room where he lay, from his bed in the 
corner there would rise the constant cry, "Oh, I wish I were a Christian.  
Oh, I wish I were a Christian.  Oh, I wish I were a Christian."  And thus he 
died.
              
2. In the second place, Christ lifted up on the cross, Christ crucified, 
draws all men to Him, because lifted up there to die for us He reveals His 
wonderful love, and the wondrous love of the Father for us.  "This is how we 
know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.  And we ought to 
lay down our lives for our brothers" (1 John 3:16), and "You see, at just the 
right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.  God 
demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ 
died for us" (Romans 5:6, 8).  There is nothing that draws men like love.  
Love draws all men of every region.  But no love draws like the love of God.  
"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever 
believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." (John 3:16) that
verse has broken thousands of hard hearts.
              
One night, preaching in my own church in Minneapolis, the whole choir stayed 
for the after-meeting.  The leading soprano was an intelligent young woman 
but living a worldly life.  She remained with the rest.  In the after-meeting 
her mother arose in the back of the church and said, "I wish you would pray 
for the conversion of my daughter."  I did not look around but knew 
instinctively that the daughter's cheeks were flushing, and her eyes flashing 
with anger.  As soon as the meeting was dismissed, I hurried down so that I 
would meet her before she got out of the church.  As she came toward me I 
held out my hand to her.  She stamped her foot, and with flashing eyes cried, 
"Mr. Torrey, my mother knows better than to do that.  She knows it will only 
make me worse." I said, "Sit down, Cora."  She sat down, and without any 
argument I opened my Bible to Isaiah 53:5, and began to read, "He was pierced 
for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment 
that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed."  She 
burst into tears, and the next night accepted Jesus Christ.  I had to go to 
Duluth for a few days, and when I returned I found that she was seriously 
ill.  One morning her brother came hurrying up to my home and said that she 
was apparently dying, that she was unconscious, and white from the loss of 
blood.  I hastened down, and as I entered the room she lay there with her 
eyes closed, with the whitest face I ever saw on one who was not actually 
dead.  She was apparently unconscious, scarcely breathing.  I knelt by her 
side to pray, more for the sake of the mother who stood beside the bed than 
for her, for I supposed that she was beyond help or hearing.  But no sooner 
had I finished my prayer than in a clear, full, richly musical tone she began 
to pray.  These were her words, "Heavenly Father, if it be Your will, raise
me up that as I have used my voice for myself and only to please myself that
I may use my voice for Your glory, but if in Your wisdom You see that it is 
best for me not to live, I shall be glad to go to be with Christ," and she 
went to be with Christ.
              
Oh, I have seen thousands melted as I have repeated to them and shown them 
the picture of Christ on the cross, as told in Isaiah 53:5, "He was pierced 
for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment 
that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed."  

A few days ago I received a missionary magazine containing a testimony from 
one who was going to Egypt under the Egypt General Mission.  This young 
missionary said, "When I was twelve years old, during the Torrey-Alexander 
meetings, in 1904, I gave my heart to the Lord Jesus Christ.  Dr. Torrey was 
speaking on the text, Isaiah 53:5, and he asked us to repeat the words with 
him, but changing the word 'our' into the word 'my.'  While repeating the text 
in this way I suddenly realized, as if for the first time, that Jesus had 
really suffered all this for me, and there and then I gave my life to Him."
         
Oh, men and women, look now! See Jesus Christ lifted up on the cross, see Him 
hanging on that awful cross, see Him wounded for your sins, bruised for your 
sins, and the punishment due you was given to Him.  Oh, men and women living 
in sin, men and women rejecting Christ for the world, men and women who have 
looked to the lies of other systems that deny His atoning blood, listen! "He 
was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the 
punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are 
healed."  Won't you yield to that love, won't you give up your sin, give up 
your worldly pleasures, give up your willful errors, and accept the Savior 
who loves you, and died for you, who was "pierced for your transgressions; 
crushed for your iniquities" and upon whom the punishment that brought us 
peace was laid?  Accept Him right now!
          
Transcribed by Tony Capoccia of

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