certainty because we have either accepted or endured a doctrine of universal conformity. The forces that reduce the pow er of an influence o f God and Christ in the lives of our people are seeking to become levelers of men. It is their conviction that only through lowering mankind to a dependency upon the ideas, ideals, and material judgments of superior people can we live to gether in harmony and peace. Evidence is rampant that this kind of meddling and interference with God’s natural law brings fearful conflict, death, destruc tion, riots, crime, and disregard of decency and principle among our people. Today there is widespread de votion to the idea that nothing, absolutely nothing, can be allowed to remain the same. All things must change, and there is prac tically no consideration given as to whether the change is good or bad — right or wrong — easy or difficult — necessary or unneces sary. The doctrine of change stands on just the precise idea that change is inevitable. That is ab solutely true. Change of various kinds and sorts takes place every day everywhere. But irresponsi ble, erratic, violent change only for the sake o f making things dif ferent is as illogical and as un reasonable as it is unspiritual. No intelligent person argues against the necessity o f using question marks after many o f our inherited ideas and practices of the past. But when the question mark is turned into a totem pole or a marble altar on which the people are supposed to lay their sacrificial offerings, such people have escaped the general limits of common sense and sound judg ment and have launched off into material idolatry and a rushing toward a degree o f spiritual in sanity. If human reason has so totally lost its respectability and no one is allowed to go from a major and minor premise to some sort of orderly conclusion, then the wel-
ministers o f the Gospel turned their pulpits and their pastoral duties toward direction of the so cial order to the near exclusion of the sal vat iona l order as abounds in our time. In that same 22nd chapter of Ezekiel, the Prophet speaks of Israel’s religious leaders in these words: “Her priests have done violence to my law and have profaned my holy things; they have made no distinction between the holy and the common, neither have they taught the difference between the unclean and the clean, and they have disregarded my Sabbaths, so that I am profaned among them.” Israel’s religious leaders of that earlier time would be appalled to observe what is transpiring in the churches o f God today. Even the daily press — notoriously indif ferent to religious news— reports a few lines on the inner and back pages that tell us clearly how growing numbers o f Americans treat holy things with irrever ence and sacred things with con tempt. Not only have vast numbers of Americans lost all sense of the sacred, the moral, and the ethical, but the spiritual leaders from both the laity and the priesthood are often found in the forefront of this irreligious pursuit of com fort rather than conviction — of accommodation rather than truth — of the pleasant life rather than the meaningful life. If God is to have men who will stand in the gap and hold back the flood o f destructive emotional and spiritual forces, we must first understand the nature of the problem and why things are the way they are. There are three major forces that have brought about the chaos, frustration, and anti- Christian era in which we live. They touch both the philosophical and reli gious bases, were first voiced by few in number whose intensity deceived millions, and have been permitted to flourish by both the unwary and the fearful. First, we live in this age of un
1 (o^cr m t in J ULb_b JttluulMJ by Frank Carlson
T h e s u b j e c t o f the text I am using is “Wanted a man — a man who will stand.” We have had men in both ancient and Mod ern history who have had the courage to take a stand and stand firm. In Ezekiel 22:30, the Prophet says: “ And I sought for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand in the breach before me for the land, that I should not destroy it.” God is searching for men who are unique, thoroughly saved, and filled to running over with His Spirit. God and the world need men who will stand in the gap. Modem Americans have ac cepted and are tolerating condi- tions never before permitted by any generation o f our ancestors. Never have so many hated on such .flimsy cause. Never have so many denounced so many with such little knowledge. Never has the dollar been as important as it is today. Never has wild pleasure or physical abandonment been considered fitting human behavior as it is today. Never have public officials been so brazen and open in seeking the vote of the people through prom ises of things that are morally and spiritually wrong. Never have
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