The devil and the Church # 2

The devil and the Church # 2

This spirituality is not a by-play, not to be kept in a corner of the Church, not its dress for holiday or parade days, but it is its chief and only business. If God's Church is not doing this work of converting sinners to holiness and perfecting saints in holiness, wherever and whenever this work is not blazing and conspicuous, wherever and whenever this work becomes secondary, or other interests are held to be its equivalent - then the Church has become worldly! Wherever and whenever the material interests are emphasized until they come into prominence, then the world comes to the throne and sways the scepter of satan.

There is no readier and surer way to make the Church worldly - than to put its material prosperity to the forefront; and no surer, readier way to put satan in charge. It is an easy matter for worldly assessments to become of first importance, by emphasizing them until a sentiment is created that these are paramount. When collecting money, building churches, and statistical columns are to stand as evidences of real church prosperity - then the world has a strong lodgment, and satan has gained his end.

Another scheme of satan is to eliminate from the Church all the lowly self-denying ordinances which are offensive to unsanctified tastes and unregenerate  hearts, and reduces the Church to a mere human institution - popular, natural, fleshly and pleasing.

satan has no scheme more fearfully destructive and which can more thoroughly thwart God's high and holy purposes - than to transform God's Church and make it a human institution according to man's views. God's right arm is thereby paralyzed, the body of Christ has become the body of satan, light turned into darkness, and life into death.

Men who sit in apostolic seats often through a marvelous blindness, sometimes through a false attachment to what they deem truth, and for what they consider the honor of Christ - are found trying to eliminate from the system of Christ those painful, offensive, unpopular, and self-denying features to which it owes all its saving efficacy, and beauty and power, and which stamp it as divine.

We have a painful illustration most instructive and warning in Peter, recorded thus: "From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life." Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. "Never, Lord!" he said. "This shall never happen to you!" Jesus turned and said to Peter, "Get behind me, satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men." Then Jesus said to his disciples, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? For the Son of man is going to come in his Father's glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what he has done!" (Matthew 16:21-27).

Here is a lesson most suggestive, a lesson for all times, a warning for each man, for all men, for church men, for saintly men and for apostolic men. An apostle has become the mouthpiece of satan! Alarming, horrible, unnatural and revolting picture! An apostle, zealous for his Master's glory, advocating with fire and force a scheme which would forever destroy that glory! An apostle, the apostle Peter - satan's vice-regent! The apostle who had but just made that inspired confession, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God," which placed him in highest honor and commendation with Christ and the Church! Before the words of that divine and marvelous confession had died from his lips, this same apostle is the inflamed and self-willed advocate of views and plans which will render his confession void, and raze the impregnable and eternal foundations of the Church.

Peter, a chief apostle, fathering and advocating schemes which would discrown Christ of His Messiahship, and bring Heaven's favorite plan to a most disastrous and shameful end!

How did this come about? What baneful impulse impels Peter? satan has entered him and for the time being, has mastered his purposes, and so Christ reproves Peter, but in the reproof strikes a crushing blow at satan. "Get behind me, satan," a reminder and duplicate of the wilderness temptation. "You are a stumbling block to me." The devil's trigger to catch Christ in the devil's trap, "You do not have in mind the things of God - but the things of men."

The devil is not in sight. Man appears and his views are pressed to the front. The things which men savor in church plans and church life, are against God's plan. The high and holy principles of self-denial, of unworldliness of life, and of self-surrender to Christ - are all against men's view of religion, a losing thing with them. The devil does not seek to destroy the Church directly. Men's views would eliminate all these unpopular principles of the Cross, self-denial, life surrender and world surrender. But when this is done, the devil runs the Church. Then it becomes popular, cheery, flesh-pleasing, modern and progressive. [Yep! and that is what kills true faith and sends church goers to hell at the end (and they don't even know why until the end.] 

But it is the devil's church - founded on principles pleasing in every way to flesh and blood! No Christ is in it, no crucifixion of self, no crucifixion of the world, no eternal judgment, no everlasting hell, no eternal heaven. Nothing is in it that savors of God - but all that savors of men. Man makes the devil's church, by turning Christ's Church over to worldly leaders. The world is sought and gained in the devil's church - but the man, the soul, Heaven, are all lost - lost to all eternity!

The very heart of this disgraceful apostasy, this dethroning Christ and enthroning the devil - is to remove the Holy Spirit from His leadership in the Church (and in the church people), and put in unspiritual men as leaders to plan for and direct the Church. The strong hands of men of great ability and men with the powers of leadership - have often displaced God's leadership - is the doom and seal of apostasy. There is no true leadership in God's Church but the leadership of the Holy Spirit. The man who has the most of God's Spirit is God's chosen leader, ambitious and zealous for the Spirit's sovereignty, ambitious to be the least, the slave of all. [YES!]

There are two ways of directing the Church - God's way and the devil's way. God's way and man's way of running the Church are entirely opposite. Man's wise plans, happy expedients and easy solutions, are satan's devices. The Cross is retired - and the world comes in. Self-denial is eliminated - and all seems bright, cheerful and prosperous. But satan's hand is on the ark, men's schemes prevail, the Church fails under these attractive devices of men, and the church's spiritual bankruptcy is complete.

All God's plans have the mark of the Cross on them, and all His plans have death to "self" in them. All God's plans have crucifixion to the world in them. But men's plans ignore the offense of the Cross - or despise it. Men's plans have no profound, stern or self-immolating denial in them. Their gain is of the world. How much of these destructive elements, esteemed by men, does the devil bring into the Church, until all the high, unworldly and holy aims, and heavenly objects of the church are retired and forgotten?

One of these attractive, man-savoring, satanic devices - is to pervert the aims of the Church so that the main object of the Church is not so much to save individuals out of society - as to save society; not to save souls - so much as to save the community. The world, not the individual, is the subject of redemption.

This popular,seductive and deadly fallacy, entirely subverts the very foundation of Christ's Church. Its materializing trend is so strong that it will sweep away every vestige of the spiritual and eternal - if we do not watch, work and speak with sleepless vigilance, tireless energy, and fearless boldness. The attitude and open declaration of much of the religious teaching we now hear, is in the same strain and spirit which characterized Unitarian, Jewish, or rationalistic utterances half a century ago.

To save society is a kind of religious fad to which much enterprising, lauded church work is committed.Advanced thinkers and discoverers have elaborated the same idea. They entomb religion in the grave where Judaism has been buried all these centuries!

The phrase "to save the world," has a pompous sounding; and it is appealing to flesh and blood, for the Church to apply itself to "bettering the temporal surroundings" of the individual, and improve his sanitary conditions; to lessen the bad smells that great his nose, to diminish the bacteria in his water, and to put granite in the pavement for him to walk on instead of wood or brick.

All this sounds finely, and agrees well with a material age, and becomes practical in operation, evident and imposing in results.

But does this agree with the sublime dignity and essential aim of the Church? Do we need any Church to secure these ends? Councilmen of common talent, and efficient street commissioner, and the ordinary vigilance of the average policeman, will secure these results in their best way.

It needs no Church, no Bible, no Christ, no personal holiness, to secure these ends - and this is the point to which all this vaunted advance tends. If the ends of the Church are directed to those results which can be as well or better secured by other agencies - then the Church will soon be regarded as a nuisance, a thing to be abated by the most summary process.

The purposes of the Church of God rise in sublime grandeur above these childish dreams and decadent philosophies. Its purpose is to regenerate and sanctify the individual, to make him holy and prepare him by a course of purifying and training, for the high pursuits of an eternal life. The Church is like the net cast into the sea. The purpose is not to change the sea - so much as to catch the fishes out of the sea. Let the sea roll on in its essential nature, but the net catches its fishes.

~E. M. Bounds~

(continued with # 3)