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From my favorite preacher (of old)--nuthin' but truth!
TRUE CHRISTIANITY—LIVE IT!
Catherine Booth
Edited by Buddy Balagia
Jesus Christ has ordained that His people are to set themselves to stem the torrents of moral and social pollution; they are to go and beard the lion in his den; to face the slaves of sin, open their eyes, and bring them down to His feet, just as much as were His early followers; and never till we do it shall we realize a better state of things. All the legislation, education, or provision of better dwellings, as I shall hereafter try to demonstrate, won't touch the moral cancer, the spring of all this wickedness and misery; nothing will do it until the Christians rise up to do their Master's bidding.
But I say, they do not see any need for it, and they try to quiet us who do. You have to prove, and argue, and drive, and almost show them damnation before you can get a bit of service of any sort of them. They have no heart for the fight. They do not feel these things.
As God said of the fallen and false prophets of the Jews, "They lay not these things to their hearts." They lay their own business to their hearts. You see it depicted on the countenances of these Christian men if the balance is on the wrong side; if bankruptcy stares them in the face, you soon find that out. These Christian women lay the welfare of their own families or their hearts; you soon find out when a child is sick, or in any kind of disgrace or danger. But these same men and women can walk about the walls and see the desolations of Zion without any of these marks of distress or apprehension, without any such tears or groans.
They will manifest more anger against the people who urge them to fight, than they will against the enemy. A great many of them hate the Salvation Army for this more than for any other thing. They say "You are always at us: let us alone, we want peace." They want to be quiet and comfortable, and to have their religion in a snug, back-parlour fashion. Fight! they hate the name of fighting. Going out to face a mob! Oh dear no, that is out of all question. How could you ever think of such a thing. Being mocked, and spit upon, and kicked, and buffetted, and perchance killed for Christ!
They would think you were clean gone made. The moment anybody attempts really to obey Jesus Christ, they cry, "Mad! mad! away with such a fellow; he is not fit to live." What a veritable laughing-stock to hell such professed Christians make themselves. The devil says, "All right; let them alone. Let them go to their sanctuaries, let them have their creeds and ceremonies, let them sing their sweet hymns, and amuse themselves with their religious entertainments and their Bible classes; do not disturb them whatever you do, they are amongst my best and most successful allies." Oh, may God show us these things, and help us to set work to awaken every backslidden, lazy professor within reach of us.
Many of these latter day Christians are most zealous in building the sepulchres of the prophets, that is, of the saints--the spiritual warriors of bygone times. They are often great at lectures on these ancient worthies--Luther, George Fox, Wesley, and others, and they will listen most interestedly to a dissertation on their heroism, just as they would listen to a lecture on Shakespeare or Milton; but as to imitating their deeds of valour, it never enters their minds any more than if they had been inhabitants of another sphere. They simply go, in the great mass of instances, to have their intellects amused, their feelings tickled.
It never dawns on them that they are to go and imitate the example of these heroes. They do not perceive that it ought equally to be the absorbing interest of their own lives, and that they are equally called to brave men and devils in propagating the kingdom of Christ in the earth. They go home and live the coming week exactly as they lived the week that preceded it. They admire the men who laid down their lives for the King a hundred or three hundred years ago, and will perhaps put up a monument to their memory, but as to doing so themselves, or allowing themselves to come into the same circumstances of persecution, they would soon almost go to hell. I speak the things I know and have witnessed till my heart is sick.
Viva Cristo Rey!
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Posted by theophilus on 2008-08-25 16:11:18 | Rating: | Views: 49
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In my opinion this is because too many just have a religion and not a relationship. We aren't supposed to blend in with the world. We've been called to be God's soldiers and it's high time we pick up our weapons.
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Posted by itybitybiblemommy
on 2008-09-15 21:36:23
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