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As the Church stands now, the man who sees this condition of worldly evangelicalism is written off as being somewhat fanatical. But
The Bible has no compromise whatsoever with the world. The Bible has a message for the evangelical church, calling it back home. The Bible always sends us out into the world, but never to compromise with the world; and never to walk in the way of the world, but only to save as many as we can. That is the one direction.
To negotiate with the world is to forfeit the sense of God’s presence.
When a generation comes along dissatisfied with the status quo and has a hunger for God that cannot be quenched by ritual and tradition, most of these do not come out of the religious hierarchy, but come stomping in unceremoniously with such a passion for God that they upset everything they come in contact with and bypass religious protocol, much to the affront of the religious Pharisees and scribes in control at the time. The religious leaders condemn them and try to put them out of “the Church.” However, they are the Church, and they inflame a new generation with a holy passion for the
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It seems so incongruent to me that a generation of Christians should so loathe the accomplishments of their forefathers and the sacrifice associated with the faith once delivered that they would court the frivolous attitude and spirit of “entertainmentism.”
Just because you tack the word “worship” onto a phrase does not mean that it is worship acceptable to God.
The Church Fathers came into the presence of God with a sense of overwhelming reverence, which captivated them and brought them before God in holy silence. What has happened to reverence today? Where are those who get caught up in the spirit of reverence before their God? Where are those who have experienced the holy hush in the presence of God?
We do not look back in order to go back. Rather, we look back so that we can make sure we are going forward in the right direction.
It is amazing that in a generation of Christians with more modern translations of the Scriptures than all the other generations put together, it is just about the weakest group of Christians we have ever seen.
There was a time when the Church set the standard for music. Then the world imitated the Church. Men like Beethoven, Mozart and Handel set the whole world singing, and the focus of their music was the Church. We no longer initiate our music; rather, we pipe in the music of the world around us. Now we go tramping out into the world in order to import into the Church the sounds of the world. We offer this “swine” on the altar of Jehovah. What blasphemy. We have so much more to offer God. Importing the culture around us instead of adoring the nature and character of Christ within us is the sad
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True Christianity is a mystery, a wonder, something alien and transcendent in this world. The Christianity of the New Testament is incomprehensible to the world. There is absolutely no way to build a bridge between the world’s standards and the Church’s standards.
I cannot find anything in the Scriptures or even in Church history that in any way suggests compatibility between the world and the Church. The taste of the Church should be infinitely higher and greater than the world’s. What satisfies the Church should in no way satisfy the world. The true Christian has an insatiable appetite for Christ and the things of Christ, while the world has no such appetite.
The idea that religion is a form of entertainment is so far removed from New Testament teaching that it amazes me that otherwise good churches have succumbed to it.
The Early Church was in wonderment at Christ. He dazzled them and stirred within such feelings of amazement that they could never get over Christ. All they talked about was Christ. All they thought about, from morning to night, was Christ. Christ was their only reason for living, and they were more than willing to die for Him. Now we look to celebrity to dazzle us. For some reason, we assume that carnal entertainment is the appropriate replacement for the sanctified adoration of the Most High. All of this worldly talent celebrity status is foreign to the New Jerusalem. No cheap thrill can ever
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Many evangelical Christians feverishly worship publicity marketing as though it were the panacea for all problems. How can they get people to come into their church unless there is a huge publicity campaign? Publicity now is to do what the Holy Spirit did under the Fathers of the Church. Madison Avenue is no replacement for the Holy Spirit moving in the hearts of men and women.
Every night of the week there is some activity going on that is absolutely wearing out God’s people. When do we have time to stay at home? When do we have time to go to our closets and spend time in prayer and intercession for the community around us?
We now have an over-stimulated generation. No longer do great feelings rise from within; they must be induced by extravagant saturations from the outside. The world lives by overstimulation, one soul-wrenching episode after another. And the Church is right there with the world. It should be that great thoughts stimulate us to the highest passion our mind and feelings can stand!
Pleasure in and of itself is not wrong; but what it takes to give us that sense of pleasure can be wrong. Do we take pleasure in the work of God? Do we take pleasure in the fellowship of God’s people? Do we take pleasure in the presence of God? Or must we go outside the circumference of our Christian fellowship and find pleasure out in the world? This is wrong.
To claim to be saved while ignoring His commandments is to live in utter delusion.
This is the broad framework upon which everything else must hang—that things are as they are, whether we like it or not. It is our business to find out how they are, accept them as they are and then make our teaching conform to them as they are. That is rather simple, isn’t it? Correct doctrine, then, is of vital importance, because it is simply the teaching of things as they are.
Nonconformity to the truth brings disaster.
If a man is wrong about God, he is bound to be wrong about himself.
Believe about yourself what God says about you. Believe you are as bad as God says you are, and believe you are as far from Him as God says you are. Then believe in Christ and that you can come as near to Him as He says you can, and accept what He says about you as being true.
It is my honest and charitable conviction that the Christ of the average religionist today is not the Christ of the Bible. It is a distorted image—a manufactured, painted on canvas, drawn from cheap theology Christ of the liberal, and the soft and timid person. This Christ has nothing of the iron and fury and anger, as well as the love and grace and mercy that He had, who walked in Galilee.
We are not called to always show a smile. Sometimes we are called to frown and rebuke with all long-suffering and doctrine. We must contend but not be contentious. We must preserve truth but injure no man. We must destroy error without harming people. In earlier times, when men were wrong, they contended, and in contending, they became contentious. In an attempt to preserve truth, they destroyed those who held error. Let us preserve truth but injure no man.
No Christian has any right to feel contempt, for it is an emotion that can only come out of pride.
Meantime, what are we going to do? Give up to the evil? Give up to the liberals? Give up to the dead Church? Give up to those who have chosen to walk in the lowest shadow of Christian living? Never. Dare to contend without being contentious. Dare to preserve truth without hurting people. Dare to love and to be charitable. Let us put our chin a little higher and our knees a little lower, and let us look a little further unto the throne of God for Jesus Christ, who sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. Let us be courageous but tender; severe but kind. And let us pray in the Holy
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The Old Testament was for the Jews, but the spirit of the Old Testament is the same Spirit that wrote the New Testament. The same laws intrinsically apply; the same principles underlie the message. And while the dispensations change, the God of all dispensations has not changed.
If there is anything I have asked God for, it is spiritual discernment. It makes you just about as popular as a hawk in a henhouse or a skunk at a picnic. You are not popular at all, and you will never be popular, because nobody wants to be awakened.
If God never answered another prayer for me as long as I live, I still want God to know that I want to serve Him until I die. If He never did another thing for me from this day on, if He withdrew His hand and let me go to pieces physically, mentally, emotionally, financially and every other way, I would still want Him to know I want to serve Him just because He is God.
The act of accepting Christ, if it is a true act, has an instant effect upon our entire moral life, and it changes the man from being a bad man to being a good man. God will not, by some trick of grace, take evil, foul-minded, self-righteous and vile people into his heaven. When He saves a man, He saves him from sin. If he is not saved from sin, he is not saved at all!
God saves only sinners, and He saves only sinners who know they are sinners. He saves only sinners who admit they are sinners; but He saves sinners and turns them from being sinners to being good men and full of the Holy Spirit.
No man lives unto himself. Either directly or indirectly, you are deeply influencing somebody else. If you are a carelessly living Christian, there may be persons who will use your careless life as a shield, a hiding place for his own much more serious iniquity. Or there may be those who kneel at night and say, “God, make me like brother So-and-so, make me like Mrs. So-and-so.” It can be both ways, for deeds have consequences and are the result of choices, whether they are impulsive choices or carefully thought out choices.
For some reason, many Christians have the idea that when they are born again, they do not have to deal with consequences. Therefore, many live a life of flagrant disregard for the idea of consequence. After all, so they say, “I’m living by grace.”
First, we need spiritual discernment. We need Christians whose eyes have been opened to see the treacherous condition the Church faces today and to show the way out. Along with discernment, we need courage to speak out against those dangers and call the Church back to her Rock, Jesus Christ.
As long as sin remains, human society will be a threat to the Christian soul. Human society’s sin, unbelief, diversions, ambitions, however skillfully disguised, are a threat to the Christian soul.
Many Christian leaders will apologize and compromise and smooth things over with the world. But you will find nothing but stern insistence in the Bible that we ought to forsake the world and not in any way be influenced by its sin or unbelief or diversions or ambitions or worldly spirit.
I have gone into churches where it was obvious that nobody expected anything to happen, and the result, of course, is what you would expect . . . nothing.
Suppose you pray for something and do not get it, and it is obvious that you are not going to get it. Do not let that finish you off. Maybe you are not living right; maybe you are praying selfishly; maybe you have misunderstood the will of God. Go to the Scriptures, search it out, get right with God, give God a chance at you, then try it again and press on. Finally, the Lord will either tell you to hold on, or that you are praying for the wrong thing and to pray for this thing and He will give it to you; or else He will give you what you prayed for the first time. But do not stay defeated.
A discouraged heart always exaggerates everything. Do not trust a discouraged spirit, for it will never give you the true picture of you or your situation.
Regardless of your victory or failure, your relationship with God does not change. You are no less dear to God when you are a failure than when you are successful.
God is above spite, which is why He pays no attention to someone who gets up and says, “If there’s a God, let Him strike me dead in 10 seconds.” Ten awful seconds pass when scarcely the heart beats and nobody breathes, waiting for the spiteful God in heaven to strike him down. The superstitious are waiting for God to rise up and act like a man. God is not spiteful. God is infinitely patient with us poor little chest-beating boasters. He is infinitely kind and merciful. If He were not, we should all be in hell today.
Antinomianism is a long, jaw-breaking word that means that certain people tend to run unchecked logic to extremes. If I get up and say, “You are free,” they immediately leap into the air and say, “Thank God, I’m free. I’ll do as I please,” and they go out and commit sin to show how free they are. Paul said, “For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another” (Gal. 5:13). God set us free, but He did not set us free to do evil. He set us free to do good. Freedom to do good is the Christian’s liberty. God never said,
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Christian liberty is never about the freedom to commit any sort of sin. The child of God who lives from within and whose heart is a fountain of affection and love for God will not sin; but if he does, he will confess it with sorrow and be forgiven and cleansed from it and determine not to go back to that wallow anymore.
I think it would be safe to say that people who have nothing to do are responsible for most of the deviltry in the world.
Some people say there is nothing for them to do around the Church. The Church has a wealth of talent and there is nothing for them to do. I suppose that person would mean that there is already a soloist, or there is no committee to be chairman of. If it has to be chairman of a committee or singing solos, the average church would not have room for everybody. But any Christian worth his salt will find something to do in the kingdom of God.
If you are too busy in the Lord’s work to spend time in the Lord’s presence, you are too busy in the Lord’s work.
If you were as faithful in going to work as you are going to prayer meeting, you probably would not have a job for long.
Somebody is going to control your mind. Who is it going to be? Is it going to be the advertiser? Is it going to be the public school? Is it going to be the media? Or is it going to be God?
The only way to help the world is to stay free from its brainwashing. The man who has adopted its ways can never help it. It is by standing aloof from its ways that we can help it. The aloof man is the only man that can do any good. You can only help a sinner by going contrary to him.
