“And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Myself” (John 12:32)

“And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Myself” (John 12:32).

In a recent advertisement of a Sunday evening service in one our American cities it was stated that there would be three attractions:  a high-class movie show, a popular pianist and his wife, and an aria 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….  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 middled-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.

…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 stand two thousand more in the dome.  On the opening night of these meetings a leading reporter of the city came to me before the service began and said, “You have taken 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 Ghost, given in answer to the daily prayers of forty thousand people scattered throughout the earth.
In Liverpool, the Tournament Hall, that sat 12,500 people comfortably, located in a very out-of-the-way part of the city…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—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 years before, “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Myself.”

–R.A. Torrey
“The Great Attraction,” The Treasury of R.A. Torrey