The devil and the Church # 3

The devil and the Church # 3

No bigger fools would ever be found than fishermen who were spending all their force trying by some chemical process to change the essential elements of the sea, vainly hoping thereby to improve the stock of the fish that they had not and never could catch. By this method, personal holiness, the great desideratum for church operation and ends, would be impossible, and Heaven would be stricken from creed and life and hope.

To save the world and ignore the individual, is not only foolishly utopian, but every way damaging. It is the process, fair and laudable in name, to save the world, but in results it is to lose the Church, or, which amounts to the same, making the Church worldly - and thereby unfitting her or her holy and sublime mission. Christ said that gaining the world and saving the man, are antagonistic ends. Christ teaches Peter that his satanic device would gain the world to and for the Church - but would lose the soul. Everything would seem thrifty to the worldly cause - when in reality all was death!

The Church is distinctly, preeminently and absolutely a spiritual institution - that is, an institution created, vitalized, possessed and directed by the Spirit of God. Her machinery, rites, forms, services and officers have no loveliness, no pertinency, no power - except as they are channels of the Holy Spirit. It is His indwelling and inspiration, which make its divine being and secure its divine end. Id the devil can by any methods shut the Holy Spirit out from the Church - he has effectually barred the church from being God's Church on earth. He accomplishes this by retiring from the Church, the agencies or agents which the Holy Spirit uses - and displaces them by the natural, which are rarely if ever the media of His energy. Christ announced the universal and invariable law when He said, "That which is born of the flesh is flesh; that which is born of the Spirit, is spirit."

The Church may have a holy preacher, a man of great prayerfulness, of great grace, filled with the Spirit. But if satan can by any method retire him, and put a man of no prayerfulness, plausible, eloquent and popular - the Church may seem to have gained, but it has gained by the substitution of natural for spiritual forces, a gain which has all unconsciously revolutionized the Church.

Imagine a church with the leadership of holy men, not highly cultured, but well-versed in the deep things of God, and strong in devotion to Christ and His cause, not wealthy, nor of high social position. Now change these officers and put in men who are every way decent in morality, but not given or noted for prayer and piety, men of high social position and fin financiers, and the Church scarcely realizes the change - except marked improvement in finances. But an invisible and mighty change has taken place in the Church, which is radical. It has changed from a spiritual Church to a worldly one. The change from noonday to midnight, is not more extreme than that. At this point satan is doing his deadliest and most damning work - the more deadly and damning because it is unnoticed, unseen, producing no shock and exciting no alarm.

It is not by overt, conspicuous evil that satan perverts the Church - but by quiet displacement and by unnoticed substitution. The spiritual gives place to the social- and the divine is eliminated, because it is made secondary.

The perversion and subversion of the Church is secured by satan when the spiritual forces are retired or made subordinate to the natural; and social entertainment, and not edification becomes the end. This process involves not only the aims and ends of entertainment, but it is intended to soften and modify the distinctly spiritual aim, and to widen from what is deemed the rigid exclusiveness of spiritual narrowness. But in the end it eliminates all that is distinctly spiritual, and that which is in any sense deeply religious will not survive the death of the spiritual. Edification as the end of God's Church is wholly lost sight of - and entertainment, that which is pleasing and pleasant, comes to the forefront! The social forces not only retire the spiritual forces, but effectually destroy them.

A modern church with its kitchen and dining room, with its club and gymnasium, and with its ministries to the flesh and to the world - is both appealing and alarming. How suggestive in the contrast it presents between the agencies which the primitive Church originated and fostered, as the conserver of its principles and the expression of its life, and those which the modern and progressive Church presents as its allies or substitutes.

The original institutions where wholly spiritual, calculated to strengthen and cultivate all the elements which combine to make a deep and clear experience of God. They were training schools for the spiritual life, as the chief end. They never lingered in the regions of the aesthetic and the worldly. They fostered no taste nor inclination which was not spiritual, and which did not minister to the soul's advance in divine things.

They took it for granted that all who came to them, really desired to flee from the wrath to come, and were sincerely desiring after Christlikeness, and that their obligation to furnish to these the best aids, were of the most sacred and exacting kind. It never occurred to them that sports or social events were channels through which God's grace would flow and could be laid under tribute for spiritual uses.

These social and fleshly events are regarded in many quarters as the perfection of spiritual things. These agencies are arrayed as the mature fruit of spiritual piety, flavored and perfected by its culture and progress, and ordained henceforth as the handmaids of the prayer and preaching meeting. We object most seriously to the union. What have they in common? "How indeed can two walk together, unless they are agreed?"

What elements of piety are conserved by social events and entertainment? What phases of spiritual life do they promote? By what feature of the gymnasium is faith invigorated? Where do you find in it any elements which are distinctly pious, or are aids to piety? How do social events produce a more prayerful, a holier life? What secret springs has entertainment to bring the soul nearer to God? Wherein does it form or strengthen the ties of a Christly fellowship? Is it not frivolous and worldly? It is not sensuous and fleshly? Does it not cater to and suit the tastes of the carnal, the superficial and worldly? What unity of purpose and spirit is there between the gymnasium and witnessing for Christ. The one is intensely spiritual - the other has in it no jot or tittle of spiritual uses.

We might as well add to the list of heavenly helpers, the skating rink, calisthenics and the gymnasium. If the young people desire to join a gym, enjoy a social or have fun - then let them do so; but do not deceive them and degrade piety by calling these things holy institutions and nourishers of spiritual life.

Disguise it as we may; reason about it as we will; apologize for it as we do; we may vainly philosophize of growth and change and culture. But the truth is, we have lost that intense type of personal experience, that deep conviction of eternal things which are such evident features of all great spiritual movements. Many preachers and people have fallen so low in their experience that they do not relish these distinct and strongly spiritual agencies; and are devising schemes and institutions to gratify their non-spiritual tastes with schemes which are midway between Christ and the world; which, while not essentially wrong, do not possess one grain of spiritual power, and can never be the channels of heavenly grace.

It is said we cannot get the people to attend the distinctly spiritual means of grace. What is the trouble? Are the institutions worn out and no longer of value to the humble, pious soul? Who will dare affirm this? The tastes of the people are base and perverted. Shall we then change the agencies to suit their unsanctified appetites? No! Let us tone up the appetite for spiritual things, and correct and elevate the tastes of our people.

Let the revolution begin with the preacher. Let him wrestle with God until his ordination vow becomes  vitalized, so that all can feel the pressure of his aim, the ardor of his zeal, his singleness of purpose, and the holiness and elevation of his life - and until the people catch the fire and purpose of his heart, and all press on to Christlikeness.

Under this method, mighty, divine impulse - entertainment and the social meeting will be forgotten and become stale, and all saintly assemblies will be attractive and delightful.

The Church cannot confederate with non-spiritual agencies. By doing this, she discards the Holy Spirit. She cannot be the caterer to unsanctified desires. Neither is it her province to fall down to the beggarly task of entertaining the people. This is her saddest mistake, when her solemn assemblies are surrendered to the concert and social, her praise is turned into worldly music, her classrooms are turned into parlors, her socials become more popular than her prayer meetings, the house of God made a house of feasting, and social cheer is sought after rather than a house of prayer. The unity of the Spirit and the holy brotherhood are displaced and destroyed - to make room for social affinities and worldly attractions. Her high and royal duty, that by which she maintains her spotless fidelity to her Lord - is to stress holiness and afford all means for its advancement and growth. This done, spiritual character and affinities will order all the rest.

~E. M. Bounds~

(The End)