Matthew 10:22
All men will hate you because of me, but he who
stands firm to the end will be saved.
There is a plain and
evident fact in genuine Christianity that is often overlooked by eager
evangelists bent on getting results: that to accept Christ it is necessary that
we reject whatever is contrary to Him!
Let us not be shocked by
the suggestion that there are disadvantages to the life in Christ. Everyone who
has lived for Christ in a Christless world has suffered some losses and endured
some pains that he could have avoided by the simple expedient of laying down
his cross.
The contemporary moral climate
does not favor a faith as tough and fibrous as that taught by our Lord and His
apostles. The delicate, brittle saints being produced in our religious
hothouses today are hardly to be compared with the committed, expendable
believers who once gave their witness among men. And the fault lies with our
leaders. They are too timid to tell the people all the truth. They are now
asking men to give to God that which costs them nothing!
When will Christians
learn that to love righteousness it is necessary to hate sin? that to accept
Christ it is necessary to reject self? that to follow the good way we must flee
from evil? that a friend of the world is an enemy of God? that God allows no
twilight zone between two all togethers where the fearful and the doubting may
take refuge at once from hell to come and the rigors of present discipline?
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