Bold As A Lion

“The righteous are as bold as a lion” — Proverbs 28:1

Jesus is likened to a lion (Rev. 5:5). A lion is bold and backs down from nothing. When you spend time with Jesus, His boldness will rub off on you (Acts 4:12-13).

Peter Cartwright was a rugged and fearless circuit-riding preacher in the late 1700’s and early 1800’s. When he arrived at a new town to preach, he’d ride up a nearby mountain to look over the town.  He would turn to his associate and say, “I smell hell!”

In October, 1818 Cartwright was invited to preach at a conference in Tennessee.   The church was full to overflowing—Standing room only. After the song service, Cartwright got up to preach. He announced his text—“For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” Just then General Andrew Jackson entered the crowded church. With no place to sit, Jackson stood in the aisle and leaned on a post to listen.

One of the city’s more refined pastors pulled Cartwright’s coat tail and whispered, “General Jackson is here!” Cartwright writes in his autobiography what happened next:

“I felt a flash of indignation run over me like an electric shock, and facing about to my congregation, and purposely speaking out audibly, I said, ‘Who is General Jackson? If he don’t get his soul converted, God will damn him as quick as he would a Guinea negro!’”

That kind of talk won’t get you invited to speak to the local Ladies Aid Society. But nobody laughed at Cartwright, like the world laughs at Christians today. Maybe we should be a little more bold as we speak up for Christ!