by Robert M. Smith
You
might be asking yourself at this moment whether there are truly this
many games being played in Christian circles. And because of that you
might be feeling a tinge of reluctance to enter into this chapter since
it will be culminating our introspection with perhaps the most notorious
game of all. Well I can assure you that I have only dealt lightly with
this concept. There are far more “games” in our midst than these, and
this chapter will examine, albeit briefly, a major theme of Scripture.
Why
this “church theme”? I have three basic explanations to lay before you:
1) this theme is the reason why the New Testament was written …
virtually every epistle, and even the gospels, was penned to either
combat a problem in the church or to assist the church in its spiritual
growth; 2) as I have stated before, our Lord Jesus, in the book of
Revelation, has shown us how important the health of the church is to
Him … so it ought to be important to us as well; 3) the epistle of Jude.
This last inclusion might come as a shock but if you examine this small
and often overlooked letter from one of our Lord’s earthly brothers you
will find something extraordinary. In a single verse Jude reveals the
priority of church purity over all else: “Beloved, while I was very
diligent to write to you concerning our common salvation, I found it
necessary to write to you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the
faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.” (Jude 3 NKJV). He
wanted to write about the wonder and beauty of the salvation that had
come to all mankind – lovely themes of Christianity – but he tells us
that he changed his mind, being guided by the Holy Spirit into something
that was more important, more urgent. His intentions went from the
delights of Christianity to the tough and dirty job of cleaning up the
church [“contend earnestly for the faith”] by pointing out some of the
difficulties within the church and by pointing out the ways in which
those difficulties were entering the church. He spent the rest of his
time and energy writing about false teachers and the dangers of
heretical matters. His small letter is the perfect introduction to the
final book of the Bible where the Holy Spirit divulges the events at the
closure of time. Jude’s warnings find their completion in John’s final
epistle. Jude’s call for contention finds an echo in our glorified
Saviour’s evaluations of the churches (Rev 2 & 3).
Some
theologians have expressed that the seven churches listed at
Revelation’s outset can be seen as “church ages”. Others believe that
all the different types of the church mentioned – Ephesus, Smyrna,
Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, Laodicea – can be found in
every era. But no matter what perspective you adopt the best applied and
most often applied model of the church, in regard to the current North
American conditions, has been the church of Laodicea. Here’s what Jesus
said about this church:
“And to the angel of the church of the
Laodiceans write,
‘These things says the Amen, the Faithful
and True Witness, the Beginning of the creation of God: “I know your
works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I could wish you were cold or
hot. So then, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will
vomit you out of My mouth. Because you say, ‘I am rich, have become
wealthy, and have need of nothing’—and do not know that you are
wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked—I counsel you to buy from Me
gold refined in the fire, that you may be rich; and white garments, that
you may be clothed, that the shame of your nakedness may not be
revealed; and anoint your eyes with eye salve, that you may see. As many
as I love, I rebuke and chasten. Therefore be zealous and repent.
Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and
opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me.
To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with Me on My throne, as I also
overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne.
He who has an ear, let him hear what the
Spirit says to the churches.’” (Rev 3:14-22 NKJV)
This
group of Christians played the church game to the fullest extent. Note
that, at no time, during His assessment of this congregation did Jesus
commend them for any reason whatsoever. The other six churches were
known and complimented for some action or attitude but not this one.
They didn’t toil and stand against evil like the Ephesians; they didn’t
endure tribulation and poverty like Smyrna; they didn’t hold fast to the
name of Christ in the midst of Satanic onslaught like Pergamum; they had
no love, faith, service and patience to compare with those at Thyatira;
they didn’t even have a few unsullied in their midst to compensate for
their general shortcomings like those at Sardis. The Laodicean church
may have been “well-to-do” and they may have envisioned themselves as
blessed as a result of their prosperity, but according to Jesus they
were spiritually anemic and destitute [“wretched, miserable, poor, blind
and naked’]. The problems that the other churches experienced did not
keep them from being entirely useless and at no time during His
evaluation of them did Jesus ever place His finger on their attitudes.
But in Laodicea the despicable and diseased arrogance – their attitude –
is front and center! The church game that this group had been playing
led them to utter delusion! Do you know of any church gathering that has
an ungodly swagger? Perhaps I should ask the question in a different
way: do you know of any church gathering in North America that
doesn’t have an ungodly swagger?
If we
gather under Christ as our Head for something, anything, other than the
complete honour and glory of God we can most certainly end up like the
Laodicean church. It is a natural process: the process of diminishing
returns. The lower our standards become, the lower our spiritual health
will be. In our day and in our North American fantasy world Christians
gather together for all sorts of reasons. Some attend church because of
family ties; “my father and his father before him came to this
meeting and intend to keep that going.” Some come to a specific church
under a force of habit; “on Sunday morning this is what we do
because we have always done it, so get up and get going.” Some go to
church because it is the acceptable thing to do in their
particular social circles; “Betty and Harry go to that church and, since
they are near and dear to us, it’s best that we go there too.” Some, in
a clever search for business opportunities will attend a specific
church; “a lot of wealthy and important people frequent that
establishment so it only makes good sense to go and rub shoulders with
them.” Others, in the hope of obtaining social opportunities will
prefer one gathering over another; “most of the coolest young people go
to that place so I had better stay cool and go there too.” Still others
have moralistic reasons for attending or avoiding certain
churches; “I don’t particularly like that doctrine so I’ll do my best to
stay clear of that group and find a more comfortable atmosphere.” Some
go to certain churches for personal development; “the program
around here really boosts my self-esteem and I love how they focus on my
needs.” Believers have been known to attend a specific church because of
political reasons; “a liberal or a democrat wouldn’t be caught
dead in this gathering and that suits me just fine.” Still other
rationale includes things like psychological grounds, in order to feel
good, and even to get some well-earned rest … but none of these things,
and many more besides, is of any value whatsoever. These are utilitarian
traps and pitfalls that jeopardize one’s eternal soul.
We, as
the evangelical church in North America, are in deep, deep trouble at
the moment. Our concept of “church” and Jesus’ concept of “church” are
worlds apart. We have distorted the very nature of what “church” is. The
mega-churches that many are so proud of are extremely good venues for
this disfigurement. They have altered the face of Christianity in our
time and this “makeover” has not necessarily been for the better. “There
is … a common thread” writes David F. Wells, “that ties Willow Creek not
only to its copycat followers, but also to those who were inspired
initially by its success but have gone on to develop their own
mutations. That common element lies in the fact that they are all
operating off methodologies for succeeding in which that success
requires little or no theology. It is an attempt to respond to the
spiritual yearnings of Boomers and Xers while creating an experience of
the church which is compatible with their habits, likes, dislikes,
wants, expectations and sounds. It produces an evangelism which is
modest in its attempts at persuasion about truth, but energetic
in its retailing of spiritual and psychological benefits. So successful,
so alluring, has this experiment become that it would not be an
exaggeration to say that it is transforming what evangelicalism looks
like.”[1]
We,
North Americans, think that “bigger is better”. We tend to “biggy-size”
everything but it is funny how God can alter a perspective with such
miniscule things. Last fall, as in every fall prior, my wife and I were
out raking up the autumn leaves in our back yard. Because we are so near
the forest we usually acquire a bumper crop of them. They are very good
as insulation and as springtime nutrition for garden plants but the bulk
of them must be gathered up and disposed of. Following a tip from my
neighbour many years ago I have used a 10’ by 10’ tarp to cradle the
raked leaves and transport them over to a small ravine on our property.
At that point I simply flip them into the ravine where they deteriorate
and/or become protection for both plants and small creatures that call
the gully their home. During this annual ritual I was suddenly struck
with the brilliant idea of using a larger tarp; at three or four times
the size of my orange tarp it could hold far more leaves and the job
could be completed quicker. I implemented my plan and when it came time
to drag the leaves to the gorge I had to beg for my wife’s assistance.
What seemed like a good idea at the time actually required more
man-power to accomplish. The bigger the tarp; the bigger my problems in
handling it. So too with church gatherings. The bigger they get the more
administration is required … and the more human administration obtained,
the greater the propensity for problems and error. Even the disciples
learned this lesson in a relatively short time (see Acts 6:1-2) but we
have regressed. And along with our regression we have several erroneous
mindsets to address at the moment.
1) “Doing church” is a colloquialism that
defines an impoverished and worldly mentality.
There
are 108 occurrences of the word “church” is used in the New Testament,
and there is something very special about this word. All of those
references are nouns not verbs! Christians aren’t to do
church, they are to be the church! Why do I start here? What
difference does this really make? Well, let’s see how deep this goes.
“Doing
church” has become a catch-phrase in our time because many want the
church to be experiential … not in a charismatic way necessarily [I
believe I have dealt with that sufficiently already] but rather as a
sensual, non-theological event like going to the mall, the country club
or the bowling alley. “Doing church” consequently becomes a subjective
experience built on personal preference and truth is kicked to the curb
as being too “religious”, too tedious. It is assumed that if church is
to be theological it must, therefore, be boring and in need of an
update. Now, I want to point out that there is truly nothing wrong with
a good experience … but only insofar as it matches up with the truth of
the Word of God, not insofar as it neglects that truth. We have been
told explicitly that the church is the “pillar and bulwark of the truth”
(1 Tim 3:15) by God, so any dismissal of biblical truth, inadvertently
or otherwise, can relegate any gathering to fundamental and exceptional
error.
As of
late, say within the last 15 years or so, along with the rise in
popularity of the Christian music industry, there has been a
reconsideration of the import of John 4:23 [“But the hour is coming, and
now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and
truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him.”]. The unfortunate
aspect of this refocusing has been that only part of this verse has
found worth in many eyes: worshipping in spirit. There is indeed much
spirit around; so much so that I am aware of one gathering that
calls itself “the unchurch” … plenty of spirit but pathetically devoid
of truth. If we attempt to separate spirit from truth in worship we
shall no longer have true worship. If truth is not involved there may be
a spirit present but it will not be the Holy Spirit of God for He Who is
known also as the Spirit of truth (Jn 14:17; Jn 15:26; Jn 16:13; I Jn
4:6) cannot tolerate truth’s absence. In our time we have made truth
subject to our Christian experience while the true biblical
stance is the inverse. As truth holds sway over experience then, and
only then, will a true spirit take precedence in our gatherings. When
the truth ceases, however, according to Scripture the true spirit and
the true church cease simultaneously. John MacArthur also sees the
correlation between popularity, music, youth, spirit and the loss of
biblical truth: “The idea that the Christian message should be kept
pliable and ambiguous“ seems especially attractive to young people who
are in tune with the culture and in love with the spirit of the age and
can’t stand to have authoritative biblical truth applied with precision
as a corrective to worldly lifestyles, unholy minds, and ungodly
behaviour. And the poison of this perspective is being increasingly
injected into the evangelical church body.”[2]
And David Wells adds even more perspective to this languor over truth
when he writes: “It is truth, not private spirituality that apostolic
Christianity was about. It was Christ, not the self as means of access
into the sacred. It was Christ, with all his painful demands of
obedience, not comfortable country clubs that early Christianity was
about. It was what God had done in space and time when the world was
stood on its head that was its preoccupation, not the multiplication of
programs, strobe lights and slick drama. Images we may want,
entertainment we may desire, but it is the proclamation of Christ
crucified and risen that is the Church’s truth to tell.”[3]
The
apostate church that Paul warned about in 2 Thess 2:3-12 is fast
approaching. It has a ready-made audience among much of what we loosely
call “evangelical Christianity” for one of the major characteristics of
the apostate church is that it “loves not the truth” (2 Thess 2:12) and
that already exists today! And as the true church flounders too few
Christians actually care. As long as we can obtain some spiritual pep
rallies on a weekly basis, many of us remain unconcerned about the
overall state of the church in the twenty-first century.
2) The “emerging church” is an adaptation of a
worldly mindset that favours relativism over absolutes.
I owe
men like David F. Wells [Above all earthly powers, Christ in a
Postmodern World; and God in the wasteland.], Gene Edward
Veith, Jr. [Postmodern Times – A Christian Guide to Contemporary
Thought and Culture] and Os Guinness [The American Hour] a
debt of gratitude for making me aware of current trends within the North
American Christian community. Among these trends is what appears to be a
new revision of Gnosticism called the “emerging church”. Within its
confines there is a tremendous push toward a theological uncertainty
where the exclusivity of Christ is shunned. Using secular patterns and
techniques some churches are aligning themselves with
unregenerate principles, supposedly, in order to reach the lost. But in
his inimitable style, Malcolm Muggeridge has already seen through the
fallacy propagated by this approach, “In essence, Kierkegaard was making
exactly the same point as Pascal in the Lettres provinciales,
which, incidentally, he had read about this time with great delight.
Each one was insisting, in a different idiom and in quite different
social circumstances, with all the irony and emphasis at his command,
that the one sure way to abolish Christ’s Kingdom, irretrievably and
forever, was to make it ‘of this world.’”[4]
Being
blind to the facts that Muggeridge relays, the emerging church, with a
message that claims no distinctiveness and no uniqueness has actually
nothing to offer the lost except further and deeper lostness. And
with an echo of Kierkegaard’s sentiment McDowell and Hostetler, in their
book The New Tolerance state that the greatest dangers faced by
the true church today come from within the church itself. Sounding the
same alarm as Jesus (Matt 7:15) and as the Apostle Paul (Acts 20:29-31)
they wrote: “Do you see what is happening? Voices within the church
are calling upon Christians to abandon their stubborn insistence that
Jesus is the only way to salvation, the only name by which we must be
saved (John 14:6; Acts 4:12). Voices within the church are trying
to persuade us and our children that Christianity is no different, nor
more true, than any other faith.
As
Christ’s church strives to come to terms with the world, Soren
Kiekegaard’s words echo ominously, warning of the result of such unholy
compromise with the new tolerance: ‘Christianity is abolished.’”[5]
3) The “seeker sensitive church” delivers
accommodation to the culture along with no change required in the
sinner.
Some
so-called evangelical church groups are doing virtually anything to be
inviting and attractive to all people. The prime motive behind this
adaptation is the quantitative success of increased popularity,
increased membership and increased finances. One can summarize this
mentality in a single sentence: “Accept Jesus and stay as you are!” This
promotion of an “easy believism” is quite business-like. It is a
transaction without personal commitment; a religious resignation of
passivity that alters nothing of any significance in a man. It unlocks
no doors and sets no one free; it bends to the will of the creature
instead of the Creator.
While
on one trip into southern United States in 2007 with my wife, she was
searching the radio dial in the car to find a Christian station. Usually
Deb searches for Christian music which, for the most part, I “tune out”
but as we were passing through South Carolina she found one station that
caught my interest immediately. We joined a talk forum that was already
in progress so we had no idea of who we were listening to but the
subject intrigued me instantly. The main topic revolved around a
critique of the “seeker sensitive” or “culturally accommodating” gospel.
And as they talked I drove the car and considered deeply what they were
bringing forward. Here are some of the contemplations -theirs mixed with
mine - that took place that afternoon in my car:
By
melding true Christianity with other cultures and consequently the
religions of those cultures – often with the genuine longing of bringing
Christ to the nations – erroneous doctrines can and do arise. And the
impossible becomes the new religious reality wherein such misnomers like
“Messianic Muslims” or “Messianic Hindus” start cropping up. Based upon
the rationale of those who would promote these aberrations I could well
imagine this postulate going as far as approving “Messianic Satanists”!
To reveal its shortcomings why not take it to its obvious extremity …
why stop “half way”?!
This
radio program was most enlightening and it triggered so many thoughts
and insights within me. As I listened it stirred me to inescapable
conclusions and what bothers me most about this unscriptural mentality
is not so much the attempt at watering down the true gospel in order to
accommodate cultural and religious longings – as bad as that really is –
but rather the horrendously unscriptural and unspiritual perspectives
that bring this about. Being accustomed to spurning the Word of God for
the sake of a personal religious experience has led to the obstruction
of the true gospel, and subsequently to this aberration. It is not that
great a leap from unsound doctrinal practice to the compromising
position of preaching a gospel that acts as a melting pot for any and
all religions of the world. The quest of reaching out to all people for
Christ is commendable but to reach into all religions – sanctioning
their practices and beliefs as long as Christ is recognized in some
obscure way – is simply anathema.
A
Muslim that claims to receive Jesus as Saviour cannot, based upon the
truth of the Bible, continue to hold the Koran higher than the Bible, or
continue to adhere to the teachings of Mohammed. There is no
compatibility between Islam and true Christianity, and this must be
stated, understood, received and believed. In other words, there is no
such thing as a “Messianic Muslim” … these two terms cannot coexist …
this becomes a spiritual oxymoron. To leave the same old religious
foundation intact and by merely adding Jesus to the mix is not, by any
stretch of the imagination, “good news” … it is grossly distorted news!
This is an erroneous attempt at blending light and darkness in direct
contravention to the teaching of the Word of God. But then again this
appalling concept is the natural outcome of a group/system/mindset that
has been in existence for decades; true colours are merely coming
forward at the moment.
The
essential underlying problem in a “seeker sensitive” movement is one of
foundations. If a criterion other than the pure truth about Christ and
the centrality of the Cross is used to substantiate a particular
denomination it acts simply as an opening for the devil. He will utilize
any loophole and take advantage of any nuance over time. If anything is
misused in the church he will find it and he will cause ruin with it.
One of the best examples of this is the inappropriate use of the
spiritual gifts given to the church. If we do not perceive these gifts
as spiritual tools for building up the body of Christ we are in trouble.
If we look upon them as deterministic in nature – that is determining
salvation and sanctification – we have ripped them out of context and
have moved ourselves into the path of destruction. This is no miniscule
distinction! This is precisely where the errors of foundation come into
play. When certain things are dragged out of their proper context – out
of their supportive roles and functions – into a position of dominance
and authority the overall and ultimate consequence will always be error.
Just as in the construction of any building in any community, the error
of the present merely testifies to the original error in the foundation!
4) The “postmodern church” where orthodoxy and
truth and meaning have been displaced by affluence.
When a
dominant culture gets converted there is always a grave danger that it
will become the new standard by which all conversion is measured. When
North American middle and upper-middle class people get “saved” and join
the North American evangelical church the very nature of the church gets
rearranged. The notions and views of the middle class suddenly become
the notions and views of the church. The church subsequently is seen as
a byproduct of the culture and as a systemic platform for the promotion
of class values. Over time this has become a major factor in the modern
development of the church … and it has certainly led to the displacement
of pertinent New Testament perspectives under the semblance of
modernization and accommodation.
The
term “postmodern church” is a front for the elimination of moral
boundaries within the church. The expectations and the desires of the
dominant classes are transferred to the doctrines of the church for the
expressed purpose of eradicating discomfort and conscience. The
resultant freedom, as Wells indicates, is a most dangerous
attempt at breaking the moral shackles of true Christianity in favour of
humanistic autonomy: “In a world without meaning there are no
restraints. Once God has died and the world has become empty, humans
assume a terrifying freedom. It is the freedom to slip off every moral
command and every remnant of belief … When the world becomes
meaningless, it also becomes dangerous. Minorities and the weak have
much cause for concern when the world becomes empty.”[6]
As
such, the postmodern church endeavors to present an up-to-date rendition
of church. In its politically acceptable toleration of every conceivable
vulgarity and in its pursuit of every conceivable middle class caprice
it will not tolerate thoughts of hell, sin, the exclusivity of Christ,
repentance, the Cross and a host of other personally offensive truths.
Like some hideous precursor to the onslaught of cultic activity it
disarms Christians and deters the lost. In his book God in the
Wasteland, Wells quotes H. Richard Neibhur in what must surely be a
perfect unveiling of the erroneous nature of the postmodern church when
he writes, “the gospel H. Richard Niebuhr once described as consisting
in a God without wrath bringing people without sin into a kingdom
without judgment through a Christ without a cross.”[7]
There
is not such thing among true believers as the postmodern church.
Whatever else it wishes to be, it is most certainly not biblical
Christianity and should be revealed accordingly. It merely stands as
another condemnation of the church games that mankind loves to play …
and it leads us to our final consideration.
5) Christianity, through the use of what may
be called “spiritual marketing”, is seen like any other commodity in
this world.
Then Jesus went into the temple of God
and drove out all those who bought and sold in the temple, and
overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who
sold doves. And He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be
called a house of prayer,’ but you have made it a ‘den of
thieves.’” (Matt 21:12-13 NKJV)
Jesus
ousted the merchants, the marketers and the profiteers almost 2,000
years ago but they are back, in record numbers, in our day because we
have not maintained His zeal and His vigilance for the purity of the
church. The moment we started dealing and promoting the true church with
the business strategies and acumen of the modern world there should have
been alarm bells sounding and resounding in our souls! But there weren’t
… and that alone shows us where we stand!
I want
you to read carefully the following quotes from David Wells because I am
attempting to reveal how great a problem exists within the church at the
moment and he, among others, has studied and seen the devastation within
the church. It took us a few years to get this way but, as a whole,
North American evangelical Christianity is now perilously stuck in this
quagmire and only by God’s grace, mercy and power are we ever going to
get out of this putrid mess. Some of these things appall me to no end
and I would be remiss to ignore them in this chapter:
“… in
America anything and everything can be ‘commodified’ and sold, from
style to sex, from ideas to religion. In towns and cities are churches,
mosques and synagogues; in the Yellow Pages there are choices for
worship on Sunday morning ranging from the Episcopalians to the Baptists
to the Assemblies of God; at the local bookstore, shelf after shelf is
filled with books on New Age, self-help, witchcraft, holism and
Buddhism. This is Western freedom and Western commercialized culture.
Here, we have the ability to hope for what we want, shop where we want,
buy what we want, study where we want, think what we want, believe what
we want, and treat religion as just another commodity, a product to be
consumed.”[8]
“Willow Creek Community Church’s food court was, like its worship
services, just the harbinger of things to come. Seeker churches often
advertise themselves as serving Starbucks coffee. In Houston, there is a
church that sells McDonald’s hamburgers, in New York, a sidewalk bistro
operated by a church which offers a full menu and a splash of Chardonnay
to go with it. In Dallas, after feeding the soul, one can relax the body
in a sauna in the church. In Munster, Indiana, a church entered into a
business relationship with a string of Burger King restaurants. The
restaurants advertise the church’s musical programs and plays and the
church promotes Burger King on its radio program. Others are luring the
public with skating rinks and fully equipped fitness centers. In
Florida, The Potter’s House Christian Fellowship opened an entire mall
in 1996 as part of its church operations. It purchased the former
Southern Bell phone center and converted it into a mall with a
bookstore, dry cleaners, a bus terminal, a café, a room for games, a
hair salon called Angel’s Hair, financial services, balloon shop, a
school, law offices, and an art shop. The fact is that across a broad
spectrum of church life, enormous effort is now being invested in making
the Church seem desirable for reasons that have nothing to do with
worship, biblical knowledge or service. Investment specialists,
entertainers, and inspirational gurus make the rounds. There are dances
and dinner theaters. There are music and voice lessons, karate and
travel excursions.”[9]
“This
is probably the first time, for example, that Christian people anywhere
in the West have thought that ecclesiastical structure is, in principle,
offensive, that religious symbols, such as crosses, should be banned
from churches, that pulpits should be abandoned, that hymns should be
abolished, that pews should be sent to the garbage dump, and that pianos
and organs should be removed. All of this has been happening on the
forefront of this movement. This is probably the first time, too, that
churchgoers have wanted their buildings to be mistaken for corporate
headquarters or country clubs.”[10]
Visit
the Christian bookstore of your choice and have a quick look
around at the shelves and the walls. Check out the book titles, peruse
the Christian music section, be mindful of the posters and
advertising gimmicks, examine the toys and trinkets, study the
testimonial gadgets and above all else try and calculate how many
man-hours [complete with approximate costs involved] went into the sales
and promotions that you are looking at. Then take note of every medium –
radio, television, publishing – to watch and listen for all the
marketing schemes and “spin- doctoring” utilized in the advancement of
various churches, various ministries, various doctrinal stances and
various functions.
You can
now get rich, slim, healthy, smarter, more successful, more satisfied
and become a better character to boot … the Christian way! Did
you know that you can also do yoga the Christian way … and
probably astral projection too? There is a Christian way to do
everything that has formerly been off-limits to those who were following
hard after Christ. So many believers feel that they are missing out on
life and, in our candy-coated society, have decided to exchange the
truth for the lies of this modern age. With a deep longing to parade
around with the lost, the worst marketing venture ever undertaken has
happened in our lifetime, at our hands: Christ has been sold for this
world’s bowl of swill! A. W. Tozer would not have us ignorant of these
petty compromises and how the Lord shall deal with them. I think it
fitting to give him a hearing at this point before we close: “Again, in
these times religion has become jolly good fun right here in this
present world, and what’s the hurry about heaven anyway? Christianity,
contrary to what some had thought, is another and higher form of
entertainment. Christ has done all the suffering. He has shed all the
tears and carried all the crosses; we have but to enjoy the benefits of
His heartbreak in the form of religious pleasures modeled after the
world but carried on in the name of Jesus. So say the same people who
claim to believe in Christ’s second coming.
History
reveals that times of suffering for the Church have also been times of
looking upward. Tribulation has always sobered God’s people and
encouraged them to look for and yearn after the return of their Lord.
Our present preoccupation with this world may be a warning of bitter
days to come. God will wean us from the earth some way – the easy way if
possible, the hard way if necessary. It is up to us.”[11]
Our job
is to first repent and then to start caring … caring about the purity,
the health and the state of the church in North America but most of all
to start caring about the truth and the Son of God who sacrificed all in
order to secure us in that truth. We have lost our “first Love” and with
it has come the loss of everything else. The games we have been playing
are killing us. It’s high time we stopped.
[1]
David F. Wells, Above all earthly powers, Christ in a Postmodern
World. Grand Rapids: William B Eerdmans, 2005, Page 265
[2]
John MacArthur, The Truth War. Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas
Nelson, 2007, Page xi
[3]
David F. Wells, Above all earthly powers, Christ in a Postmodern
World. Grand Rapids: William B Eerdmans, 2005, Page 231
[4]
Malcolm Muggeridge, A Third Testament, Orbis Books, Maryknoll,
NY, 2004, Page 88
[5]
Josh McDowell & Bob Hostetler, The New tolerance, Tyndale
House Publishers, Wheaton, 1998, Page 188
[6]
David F. Wells, Above all earthly powers, Christ in a Postmodern
World. Grand Rapids: William B Eerdmans, 2005, Pages 190-191
[7]
David F. Wells, God in the wasteland. Grand Rapids: William B
Eerdmans, 2005, Page 83
[8]
David F. Wells, Above all earthly powers, Christ in a Postmodern
World. Grand Rapids: William B Eerdmans, 2005, Page 77
[9]
David F. Wells, Above all earthly powers, Christ in a Postmodern
World. Grand Rapids: William B Eerdmans, 2005, Page 287
[10]
David F. Wells, Above all earthly powers, Christ in a Postmodern
World. Grand Rapids: William B Eerdmans, 2005, Page 282
[11]
A. W. Tozer, The Best of
A.W. Tozer – Volume 1, Christian Publications Inc., Camp Hill,
PA, Page 57