The Only Way To Change the World

Author: Michael Gott

Change the world!—That is, of course, what we are called to do—to be a candle in the darkness giving both light and life to the world around us allowing as many as possible to warm themselves in the flame.  But which one of us believes the world with its un-evangelized billions will ever be changed and become as God desires the world to be?

Which of us could think that somehow God could use us to alter the direction of the world?  After all, there are some who think it’s more openly rebellious to God now than when Billy Graham started preaching.  He, having faithfully preached Christ to more people than any other man in history, and we dare to assume we could do better?  Not likely!

But let us return to something more realistic; impacting the world.  Each of us can have a part in it, but how?  The British man of letters G. K. Chesterton once commented, “The world has been moved most by men who contradicted it most!”  But that is certainly not the spirit of the church in most places today.  “I looked for the church in the world only to find the world in the church,” said a Christian thinker.  It’s a modern day mixture of the world within the church.

One Sunday worshiper turned to a friend and asked about his church, “Is this a sheepfold or a zoo?”  Long ago in Nazi Germany Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote from his prison cell about cheap grace and warned that it was grace without contrition and grace without commitment.  It sounds like the church today.
 
It was told of Theodore Epp, the founder of Back to the Bible, that at a certain point in his life he became disturbed about the fact he was not receiving very much critical mail.  He withdrew for a private retreat and deeply searched his heart.  He came back saying, “I’m afraid that when I’m pleasing everybody, I’m not pleasing the Lord, and pleasing the Lord is what counts.”  Epp did not become someone out looking for trouble, but he did want to preach a message that confronted evil and impacted lives.  He certainly didn’t want to be a coward whose only aim was to simply avoid trouble and gain popularity.

I do not remember recently hearing anyone talk about separation from the world; today it’s integration with the world.  Separation is a discarded concept.  Who and how are we contrasting or contradicting the world?  Who dares?

Today, many of those who go to church will tell you they expect to be entertained.  Like the pastor who said to his evangelist as the meeting started on Sunday morning, “I’ve got to tell you, if they don’t laugh, they don’t come back.  My people are spoiled.  They want to be entertained, and I know that’s not the way it should be, but it is the way it is!”  This story is not fictional but actual!

So we have come a long way—the evangelist is now the entertainer.  What started as an experience never to be forgotten has become a performance never without humor.
 
Vance Havner often said in his final years, “This fusion of the church and the world is the masterpiece of demonic deception in these last days.”  I recall his saying like the baldheaded prophet Elijah, “There’s a delusion today, we are being prepared for the antichrist.”  Oh, for such men as that today!  It is no wonder that Billy Graham once said the Lord left Vance Havner around so long so that he might remind us how we ought to preach!  (I think he even repeated those words at his funeral.)

Paul’s question to the Galatians seems timely as a trumpet blast at a boot camp, “who hath bewitched you?” (Galatians 3:1)  Well, we do know this; what is often being produced today is counterfeit Christianity.  If one studies the teaching of Jesus seriously, you realize that He warned that the person without integrity of heart actually thinks that the darkness is light!  Duplicity is a significant word.  While hypocrisy is lying to others, duplicity is lying to ourselves.  When that happens, light becomes darkness, wrong becomes right, and compromise at the most important points becomes acceptable.

We desperately need integrity today, someone with the gold seal of heaven on his or her forehead!  Saying the right words, having the right endorsements, choosing the right terms of emphasis, and being seen with the right people is no sign that a person is right— not in God’s sight!

For that reason I think we should be asking God not for another great evangelist but for another true prophet who has the grit and grace and gall to stand and contradict what is going on today.

Young Criswell came to First Baptist, Dallas, years ago and immediately installed mourners’ benches!  Today when the new preacher comes, there is a Starbucks coffee bar that goes in just before the PowerPoints!
 
If ever Vance Havner spoke as a prophet, he did when he said, “You can put the fact together, but the problem is more than the sum of all its parts.  The witchery of these times is so charming and pleasant and magical, and such good men endorse it that it seems downright unchristian to question it.”  And that is said so well, since the average sermon is said in such a harmless positive way that to preach in any other style makes one appear something of a crank out of step with the mood of the moment.  In Walden, Henry David Thoreau said, “There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted.”  Give Paul Powell the credit for courageously saying what needs to be often said:

Today, we want soft-sell, we want relevance, we want an upbeat, low-key, clever, motivational, friendly, informal, yuppified and abbreviated faith.  No ranting, no raving, no Bible thumping, no heavy commitments, no strings attached, no muss, no fuss, we want the same salvation as in the old time religion—but with half the hassle and a third less guilt.  It is rooted in the dumbing down and the easing-up of the demands of the gospel.

So that, today most secular world leaders would be far more likely to honestly talk about the seemingly insurmountable problems than the average preacher.  Everything must be said in a positive tone and with a beguiling smile.  Yes, even as storm clouds gather around the globe, and the menacing clouds become lower and darker; still it is not time to talk about the end time.

In the solemnity of coming divine judgement we must preach with as much compassion as conviction, with broken-ness but with boldness—but preach we must, totally contradicting the whole world system.  And with tears saying all will be eternally lost if they refuse and neglect God’s offer of mercy and forgiveness.  So we dare not neglect to warn of judgement to come, and we must not fear saying, “that the whole world lieth in wickedness” just as John, the beloved, said in I John 5:19.
 
But we must not be afraid to be out of step.  Augustine said, “It is better to be persecuted for having said the truth than to be favored for having flattered.”  Warren Wiersbe said boldly, “Sermons that flatter sinners will never save sinners.”  He adds, “Jesus was far from being a successful preacher.  In fact, some of His messages were so convicting that His listeners wanted to kill Him!”

And we must ask boldly, is what is often called preaching today not a form of flattery?  And, of course, nothing is so shabby and dishonest and nauseating as the spirit of flattery of the world, the flesh, and the devil by a man in the pulpit!

Jesus never did it, and today He is not standing around “with His hat in hand” waiting for the world to give Him a casual nod.  I do not know of Jesus ever descending to that level.

Listen, then, to Oswald Chambers.  He is not in the user friendly mode when he says, “There is nothing attractive about the Gospel to natural man; the only man who finds the Gospel attractive is the man who is convicted of sin.”  The Greek word translated “deceit” in the New Testament means to “bait a hook.”

Jesus and Paul and the Pentecostal preacher Peter persuaded people.  They did not seduce them or flatter them or manipulate them; they baited no hooks!  Let us maintain our integrity lest we practice duplicity of a religious fraud with a Bible in our hands.

Again our friend Chesterton echoes these weighty words, “The world has been moved most by men who contradicted it most.”  Yes, yes!

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