More Bad Guys Pour In
Luke 11:14-28
Illustration
by Jon L. Joyce

As Jesus explained in this Scripture: the only way to be rid of a demon for good is to crowd him out with the best. Don’t leave any room for his return. The room will be filled. If you don’t fill it with good friends, it will attract vandals. Our lives are like the old unruly western frontiers. Lawbreakers bully the town that has no competent marshall. And even if there is a posse and a successful shoot-out, more bad guys pour in.

Manitoba, Canada used to be a free-for-all territory. Nobody was tough enough to put it in order. Lawbreakers and six guns poured in. Every time it was swept out made more room for more. Finally Samuel Benfield Steele came. He was 22, so tall and thin he had to wear a sash under his tunic. He was promoted to inspector of the Northwest Mounted Police, and made them mounties. He trained them in 36 degrees below zero weather. He was ordered with a party of 25 horsemen to Calgary, Alberta to police the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway. The riot came when he was sick in bed, but he got up and coldly faced a mob of flashing knives with a drawn pistol and singlehandedly faced down the mob at a narrow bridge. In the Canadian WHO WAS WHO there is this sentence about Samuel Steele. "His coming meant order. His presence meant justice. His name was worth a regiment." Doesn’t that remind you of the name that is above every other name before whom every knee shall bow and every tongue confess? Send for him for he is not far from any one of us. "For the love of Christ controls us."

CSS Publishing Co., Inc., His Hands, by Jon L. Joyce