Posted on 01/23/2005 6:04:42 PM PST by thePilgrim
The average Christian is like a kitten that has found a ball of yarn and has played with the yarn and romped until it is wrapped in a cocoon. The kitten cannot get itself out. It just lies there and whimpers. Somebody has to come unwind it. We have tried to be simple, but instead of being simple we have simplified—we have not become simple. We are sophisticated and overly complex.
We have simplified until Christianity amounts to this: God is love; Jesus died for you; believe, accept, be jolly, have fun and tell others. And away we go—that is the Christianity of our day. I would not give a plug nickel for the whole business of it. Once in a while God has a poor bleeding sheep that manages to live on that kind of thing and we wonder how. (Rut, Rot or Revival, p. 173)
Oh, brother or sister, God calls us to worship, but in many instances we are in entertainment, just running a poor second to the theaters.
That is where we are, even in the evangelical churches, and I don’t mind telling you that most of the people we say we are trying to reach will never come to a church to see a lot of amateur actors putting on a home-talent show. (Whatever Happened to Worship?, p. 17)
(Excerpt) Read more at a1m.org ...
Your source there is railing against Antinomianism, and rightly so.
Bump for later read.
We have the breezy, self-confident Christians with little affinity for Christ and His cross. We have the joy-bell boys that can bounce out there and look as much like a "game show host" as possible. Yet, they are doing it for Jesus’ sake?! The hypocrites! They’re not doing it for Jesus’ sake at all; they are doing it in their own carnal flesh and are using the church as a theater because they haven’t yet reached the place where the legitimate theater would take them. (Sermon, “Complete Surrender,” Chicago)
Religious shows leave a bad flavor. When they enter the holy place, they come perilously near to offering strange fire to the Lord. At their worst they are sacrilege; always they are unnecessary, and at their best they are are a poor substitute for prayer and the Holy Ghost. Church plays are invariably cheap and amateurish, and in addition to grieveing the Holy Ghost, those who attend them are cheated by getting wretchedly poor entertainment for their money. (The Early Tozer: A Word in Season, p. 98)
Thanks, Pilgrim. Looking forward to getting to this tonight.
Nice to see you quoting a fine Arminian like A.W. Tozer.
Oh, I like reading Tozer. I think he would reject the vast majority of what passes for Christianity today.
He may indeed. I just find it interesting that you would quote someone who is so strongly Arminian.
I read tons of Arminian stuff. It just happens to be that most of it is garbage. Some of it, though, is pretty good stuff.
Indeed. Perhaps there's hope for you yet. ;-)
If you haven't seen this, it's worth a look.
The Great God Entertainment
1955 | A. W. Tozer
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1164094/posts
Thanks for the link. I knew we'd seen this before.
If you like Tozer, you can listen to some excellent recordings of him here...
http://www.sermonaudio.com/search.asp?SpeakerOnly=true&currSection=sermonsspeaker&keyword=A%2E%5EW%2E%5ETozer
(watch the long url wrap)
***Thanks for the link. I knew we'd seen this before.***
Actually thay are different articles.
Tozer was all over this.
Ah, so they are.
If I may ask, you say you are non Christian, but your post seems to suggest that you are religious.... Would you mind explaining what you believe.
Thanks,
Christian.
Heresy in the Church Religious entertainment has so corrupted the Church of Christ that millions don’t know that it’s a heresy. Millions of evangelicals throughout the world have devoted themselves to religious entertainment. They don’t know that it’s as much heresy as the counting of beads or the splashing of holy water or something else. To expose this, of course, raises a storm of angry protest among the people. (Success and the Christian, p. 6)
But I say that if the gospel proclamation has to bring that in in order to get a crowd, boycott it. (The Tozer Pulpit, Book 1, p. 139) Wordly Programs Evangelical Christianity is gasping for breath for we happen to have come upon us a period when it is a popular thing to sing about tears and prayers and believing. You can get a religious phrase kicked around almost anywhere right in the middle of a worldly program dedicated to the world, the flesh and the devil. Old Mammon with two silver dollars for eyes sits at the top of it, lying about the quality of the products, shamelessly praising actors who ought to be put to work laying bricks. They call that religion, and I will admit that, all right, but it isn’t salvation and it isn’t Christianity and it isn’t the Holy Ghost. It isn’t New Testament and it isn’t redemption—it is simply making capital out of religion for a price. (The Tozer Pulpit, Book 3, p. 34)
At some point a couple years ago I realized that worship was more about me than God. It had to be what I liked, what made me feel good or cry, or made me want to dance ... heck there is a song "Its all about you" ...It dawned on me I should not have to be telling God that . IT IS ALL ABOUT HIM.
That revelation changed worship for me. I have come to hear the testimony of the saints in the old hymns, and seek the face of God in worship, not my self pleasure..
It is symbolic of the truth of the Church of wages due , it is all about man, and how much God loves him and needs him. What would God be without man after all?
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