Bondage To Freedom - Preface
Preface
This presentation is a development from what was originally a taperecording of a study given by the author in 1965. So blessed were the hearers, that they asked for the study to be put into print, but there was a reluctance to do this as it was felt that cold print could hardly do justice to such a living subject. It was felt that time should be allowed to pass to the point where the written version could be set forth with telling effectiveness.
However, it was finally agreed that an interim printing should be made directly from the taperecording with some editing to improve it. This was done and appeared under the title From Bondage to Deliverance.
In this form it was quite in demand and an excess of ten thousand copies have been printed over the years in English, with other editions appearing in German, Scandinavian and Zulu at least. Copies of these have even turned up inside the East European Communist countries.
As the existing copies in passing into circulation have exhausted the stocks but not the demand, it was decided that the time had come when the authentic written version should at last be produced, some ten years after the original taperecording was made as the basis of the earlier editions. A great deal of experience has been obtained in the presentation of the subject in the meantime, and the witness has been given in life after life of the certainty of the victory to be gained by all those who will faithfully apply the principles set forth herein. Without the least fear of overstocking, therefore, we have run this first such edition to ten thousand copies under a slightly revised title, From Bondage to Freedom.
The need which this paper is designed to meet is very great. Everywhere there are people who are hungering for the conquest over the power of sin. They do not want complicated arguments about the theory of religion, but they do need and want simple, practical revelations of how they can enter into the salvation offered.
Yet they are hampered in this search by many things. There is the power of preconceived opinions and ideas so that in the very reading of a study like this, they are apt to see it in the colour of what they have thought before. Thus, while they think they agree with every word written, they are in fact seeing it as saying something other than it says. For this reason, we would encourage all to strive to understand what the publication is actually setting forth and not what they think it is setting forth. For this reason it is well to read it several times rather than but the once.
There are the many too who find, as all must do, that the surrender of the old man of sin calls for considerable sacrifice and this all too many are not prepared to make. How many one meets today who are positively alarmed by the way in which the world is going, who long for a reversal of the trend, but are not interested in God's way of doing it.
This is extremely disappointing to those who have tasted of God's way and know the freedom and the peace it brings. Therefore, we do pray that as you read this little production that it will find you as one of those who will give all, nothing withholding, that you may obtain the Pearl of great price.