day. Even theologians say, God is nowhere.” The biggest business to the church is to prove that God is now here. So often I hear people pray, “Lord, be with us in this meeting.” I never pray that prayer. You don’t have to. He’s already there where two or three are gathered in His Name. The problem is we are not aware of Him. The world doesn’t know He’s there because sin grieves and quench es the Holy Spirit. Jesus will do no mighty works because of our un belief. I am also tired of all of this de featism about the church. Men say it is too slow, too out of date, and so forth. Remember the gates of hell shall not prevail against the church! It is to be as a great dynamo. We know it has power but no one seems to know how to turn on the switch. What do we need to do? Five things: repent, confess and forsake sin, give up the world, make Christ Lord, and be filled with the Spirit. When we do, we will no longer be a reproach to the believers, where pagans sneer, “Where is now their God?”
Christianity when we have to beg most of the crowd to come to church. I feel like Joel. I'm ashamed of the world’s going by and looking at the corporal’s guard huddled in a lumber yard of empty benches singing, “Re vive Us Again.” If I were a non- Christian and dropped in on the aver age church during a revival, seeing a handful of the membership trying to get more recruits to join the army of the Lord (when most of the outfit had gone AWOL), I think I’d say, “Either Christianity is not what it’s supposed to be, or else this crowd’s been sold a cheap brand immunized against the real thing.” I would feel like rising up in the back pew and saying, “Where’s your God? What do you mean singing ‘Onward Chris tian Soldiers’ when most of your army has deserted? Why sing, ‘My Jesus, Love Thee, I know Thou art mine. For Thee all the follies of sin I resign,’ when most of your crowd are at home watching Sodom and Gomorrah? Where is your God?” Any organization, business, secret order, political party or social club with no more loyalty to its founder, that takes no more joy in its pro gram, that uses as much raw mate rial and turns out such a poor fin ished product as we churches do, would be out of business. We seem content in swapping a few members from one church to another like mov ing corpses from one mortician to another. We preach a dynamite gos pel and live firecracker lives. I can’t except this as normal. Christianity all too often becomes glorified big business demonstrating what efficiency in organization and enthusiasm can do, not what God can do. I heard of an infidel who had a sign in his office that read, “God is Nowhere.” His little granddaughter came in and brightly pointed out, “Oh look ! It says ‘God is now here.’ ” This makes a lot of difference the way one reads it. Herein are the two schools of thought in the world to- 8
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Dr. Charles L. Feinberg, dean of Talbot Theological Seminary, recently demonstrated the historic Jewish Passover at a banquet for Biola. Dressed as an orthodox Jewish father, he explained the different aspects of the ritual and how that even in these various things one could readilysee the Lord Jesus Christ. Behind him js the Scripture verse of Exodus, "When I se the blood, I wil pass over thee."
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