A popular jazz orchestra plays in two prominent American churches. In another church endowed years ago by a godly woman who must be turning over in her grave, a hippie performance is staged. We read of blasphemous and demonic shows in sanc tuaries. Even in evangelical Christianity, the strange, weird, bizarre and fantastic take over. The world is called in to join its music and methods with ours on the ground that the end justifies the means. David hauls the ark on a new cart. Isn’t it more up-to-date and doesn’t it make better time? We try to expedite the work of God with new devices not of God and the end is tragedy. Rehoboam hangs shields of brass in the temple where once there was gold before Shishak came along. The church has been robbed, but instead of admitting it and getting back to the gold standard, we shine brass to make it look like gold. The whole pitiful business, false worship and imitation revivals, is an admission of failure. We substitute wood, hay and stubble for gold, silver and precious stones. It is a day of deception with Satan, the Mock Angel, disguised as an angel of light. It is a day of imitation, of tares so much like wheat that few discern the difference. Jannes and Jambres simulate the work of Moses. We live in a generation incapable of reverence in the presence of a holy God. Watch the average Sunday morning con gregation come in and go out of church. How few know how to worship in spirit and in truth! God wants us to be holy because He is holy. “Ye shall be holy unto me for I the Lord am holy and have severed you from other people that ye should be mine” (Lev. 20:26). That was spoken to Israelites but Christians too are a chosen generation, an holy nation and a peculiar people. Today a vulgar gen eration cheapens the holy things of God and treats treasure like trash. One wonders what would happen if McCheyne, Brainerd or Robertson of Brighton attended today’s religious extravaganza, complete with platform stars, new beat music and a talk on “Hallelujah, ain’t God grand!” This counterfeit worship and imitation Christian ity will not be stopped by mere pulpit denunciation. Only a confrontation with a holy God will end this prostitution of holy things, this cheapening of the Gospel. Only when God rends the heavens and comes down will all this sham be shown up for what it really is. When the genuine appears, the counterfeit will be destroyed even as Antichrist will be destroyed by the brightness of the Lord's coming. If we ever have a real revival and if God visits His people, there will be red faces among us. Church leaders will blush and hang their heads in shame and embarrassment for the silly and stupid ways we have tried to promote the work of God in the energy of the flesh. We will need no athletic personalities and theatrical celebri ties on the platform. It will not be drummed up and
put on by mass media. Pentecost was its own pub licity; it needed no press agent. Drama will be out, for we shall have reality. The church has always been lowest in spirituality when highest in dramatics. When God comes down, hootenannies will give way to hymns and performance will yield to experience. Gos pel jazz will fade away and we shall be chagrined that we ever sank so low as to tolerate it. Big names will mean nothing. The cause of Christ will not need the approval of a politician to give it status, nor a plug from a movie star to put it over. The language and livery of the world will have no place in worship. All these cheap things will vanish in the light of heaven. Men will be aware only of God’s holiness and their sinfulness and no flesh will glory in His presence. Isaiah will cry, “Woe is me!” because his eyes have seen the Lord. The best way to detect counterfeit money is not by studying all kinds of bogus currency. The best way is to know real money so well that all other kinds can be spotted at once. Men and women who know God can discern phony religion instantly and only such people can demonstrate the true. Only those who worship God in spirit and in truth know the difference between religious performance and spiritual experience. But do we have many such peo ple today? Can we expect a deep revival in a shallow generation? Most church people have no appetite for the deep things of God. They want cream puffs and soda pop instead of the bread and meat of the Word. When the church gets back to first-hand Christianity, she is not interested in cheap religion. When the Spirit takes over, we lose our taste for sawdust! We need a new vision of God to get us away from the funny boys on television to men of the cross of whom McCheyne wrote: “Men return again and again to the few who have mastered the spiritual secret, whose lives are hid with Christ in God. These are of the old-time religion, hung to the nails of the cross.” F. B. Meyer visited in a Scottish home one day where the new-fallen snow made the morning's wash look gray by contrast. “Mon,” exclaimed the old housewife, “What can stand against God Almighty’s white!” When we see the best we are and can do against the background of God’s holiness, we shall cry “Woe is me!" But there is no hope for us until we are sick of all else and hungry for God in holy desperation. Not satisfied with brass shields, but determined to have gold or nothing. God will not visit us until we reach the end of all our tricks and substi tutes and are shipwrecked on Him. If revival does not come, another day IS coming when our Lord returns and that day shall declare it. That day will show up the difference between Chris tians and churches that built with wood, hay and stubble and those who built with gold, silver and precious stones. All the trash will go up in smoke and we shall see that what mattered was to take time to be holy and walk with the Lord. KB 13
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