Today I find myself wanting to discuss doctrine. Perhaps it is the way the wind is blowing, perhaps it's the call to primitive Salvationism and the responsibility to know what I stand for and what I've signed up to withold.
Regardless, here we are:

"We believe that our first parents were created in a state of innocency, but by their disobedience they lost their purity and happiness, and that in consequence of their fall all men have become sinners, totally depraved, and as such are justly exposed to the wrath of God."

The reality of sin is this:
All fall short of God's glory.

Our hope, however is revealed in Jesus Christ, His teachings, actions, death, resurrection and ascension confirms that there is power, power, wonder-working power in the precious blood of the Lamb and that we can experience a newness of life when we repent and put our trust in Him to lead us.
Jesus Christ becomes the cure. The solution to the problem created by the human race.

William Booth said:

"There are many ways to damnation, but only one to salvation."

I tell you friends, I've seen untold numbers of people in our neighbourhood headed right for hell and the only people who are willing to delve after them into the dark angry ocean of sin and hell, following the example of Christ, are God's people. The 'redeemed'. That's us.
We MUST be willing. We MUST go.
It's painful when I see a brother in a dark corner injecting himself full of death and it's painful when I see a sister, looking to be 16 or 17, so strung out that she doesn't know or care that she's not wearing any shoes, walking towards her dealer, looking for her next fix her body contorting and grotesquely twisting all the way.
Even though it is unavoidably painful...we can never stop. I can never stop.

The Founder also said this:

"I don't want another ecclesiastical corps cumbering the earth. When the Salvation army ceases to be a militant body of red, hot men and women whose supreme business is the saving of souls, I hope it will vanish utterly."

We are challenged to look up on humanity as not only being ruined by sin and disobedience, utterly hopeless and consequently left to live under the compulsion of sin, separated from its Creator...but as a missionfield from which to pull men and women from the Devil's trap, where they are caught and held captive, forced to run his errands. (2 Timothy 2:26, MSG)

How can we be militant or even red hot if we barely acknowledge the reality of hell?

All covenanted soldiers agree that "all men have become sinners, totally depraved, and as such are justly exposed to the wrath of God."

Having said that though, how many soldiers have a concept of the reality of satan, his demons and eternal damnation?
It's an uncomfortable topic to say the least, but I'm sick of not talking about it.

“I saw the opening maw of hell” (Herman Melville)

Can YOU say that you have seen it?

I propose that if we, as soldiers in The Salvation Army, merely toy with the notion of the devil and his minions but don't actually BELIEVE in it's reality then we are merely toy soldiers. Our supreme business will NOT be the saving of souls, for, there is nothing immediate and dangerous to save them from, we will merely mollify and amuse them with our songs and our uniforms and our bourgeois meetings as they slip away into eternal punishment like water through our fingers.

"He is calling on you to jump into the sea, to go right away to His side and help Him in the holy strife. Will you jump? Will you go to His feet and place yourself absolutely at His disposal?
You must do it.
With the light that is now revealed to your mind and the call that is now sounding in your ears, and the beckoning Hands that are now before your eyes, you have no alternative. To go down among the perishing crowds is your duty. Your happiness from now on will consist in sharing their misery, your ease in sharing their pain, your crown in helping them to bear their cross, and your Heaven in going into the very jaws of Hell to rescue them." William Booth

THIS is what it is to be a soldier of the Cross.

Now what will you do?