Of People ... and the God they want

... the professed church seems to have learned nothing. We are still seeing as men see and judging after the manner of man's judgement. How much eager-beaver religious work is done out of a carnal desire to make good. How many hours of prayer are wasted beseeching God to bless projects that are geared to the glorification of little men. How much sacred money is poured out upon men, in spite of their tear-in-the-voice appeals, nevertheless seek only to make a fair show in the flesh.

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A church that is soundly rooted cannot be destroyed, but nothing can save a church whose root is dried up. No stimulation, no advertising campaigns, no gifts of money and no beautiful edifice can bring back life to a rootless tree.

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It appears most people go to church for consolation. In fact, we have now fallen upon times when religion is mostly for consolation. We are now in the grip of the cult of peace - peace of mind, peace of heart, peace of soul and we want to relax and have the great God Almighty pat our heads and comfort us. This has become religion.

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... we have been forced to look elsewhere for our delights and have found them in the dubious artistry of converted opera singers or the tinkling melodies of odd and curious musical arrangements. We have tried to secure spiritual pleasures by working upon fleshly emotions and whipping up synthetic feeling by means wholly carnal.

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Those christians who belong to the evangelical wing of the church (which I believe is the only one that even approximates New Testament christianity) have over the last half-century shown an increasing impatience with things invisible and eternal and have demanded and got a host of things visible and temporal to satisfy their fleshly appetites. Without Biblical authority, or any other right under the sun, carnal religious leaders have introduces a host of attractions that serve no purpose except to provide entertainment for the retarded saints.

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Values which Christ has declared to be false are brought back into evangelical favour and promoted as the very life and substance of the Christian way. How eagerly we seek the approval of this or that man of worldly reputation. How shamefully do we exploit the converted celebrity.

 

 

Of God ... and the people He needs

At the heart of the Christian message is God Himself waiting for His redeemed children to push in to conscious awareness of His presence.

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The world is perishing for lack of knowledge of God and the church is famishing for want of His Presence. The instant cure of most of our religious ills would be to enter into the Presence in spiritual experience, to become suddenly aware that we are in God and that God is in us. This would lift us out of our pitiful narrowness and cause our hearts to be enlarged.

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My fellow man, do you not know that your great sin is this: The all-pervading and eternal Presence is here, and you cannot feel Him.

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God fully expects the church of Jesus Christ to prove itself a miraculous group in the very midst of a hostile world. Christians of necessity must be in contact with the world but in being and in spirit ought to be separated from the world - and as such, we should be the most amazing people in the world.

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Deity indwelling man! That, I say is Christianity, and no man has experienced rightly the power of Christian belief until he has known this for himself as a living reality. Everything else is preliminary to this.

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... when Jesus Christ by His Spirit meets with two of His believing people, you have a church! You have it without any upkeep and without any overheads and without elections. But Jesus Christ must be central and His Presence must be known among His people.

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One hundred religious persons knit into a unity by careful organisation do not construe a church any more than eleven dead men make up a football team. The first requisite is Life always.

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That God is here and that He is speaking - These truths are back of all other Bible truths; and without them there could be no revelation at all. God did not write a book and send it by messenger to be read at a distance by unaided minds. He spoke a Book and lives in His spoken words, constantly speaking His words and causing the power of them to persist across the years.