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The famous World Missionary Convention, held in Edinburgh,

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Scotland in 1910, came to the conclusion that

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the state of the Church was such as

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to prove itself utterly unfit for the work

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God put before it.

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Andrew Murray then wrote a book called The

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State of the Church, in which he took

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those assessments and further analyzed the Church as

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being self-centered with little consecration, vision, spiritual

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dynamic, or prayer.

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It is a vivid and scathing assessment.

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One hundred years later, the state of the

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Church has so deteriorated that it little resembles

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the Christianity found in my Bible.

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It's predominantly a powerless institution, with its members

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set on their own personal self-preservation.

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There are valid reasons why the Church is

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an impotent institution today that has lost her

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authority from on high and her influence upon

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the nation.

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I'll give you two reasons this evening, friends,

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and I don't think too far off the

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mark in my assessment.

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The state of the Church today is utterly

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unfit for the work God put before it

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because, number one, it is a powerless Church

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that has sold out to conformity with a

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pagan society and compromised with preaching of a

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diluted gospel.

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I believe Alan Redpath, the former pastor of

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Moody Church in Chicago during the 1960s, put

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his finger on the sore spot of the

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Church in his day when he said, Today

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the Christian Church is helpless, behind the scenes

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and away from the public arena.

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We are facing powers of darkness too strong

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for us because somewhere in our personal lives

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we have forfeited all right to the Spirit's

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anointing, His authority, and His power.

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In His absence, all we can do is

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to substitute planning and organization, schemes and techniques.

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Alan Redpath recorded that observation, friends, over sixty

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years ago.

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What would the old boy say if he

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could come back and take a look at

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the state of the Church today?

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The state of the Church today is utterly

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unfit for the work God put before it

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because, number two, the Church today is a

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loveless Church.

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It has no love for its own, much

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less a society going to hell in a

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handbasket.

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In John's Gospel, in chapter fifteen and verse

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twelve, Jesus told His disciples, This is my

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commandment, that ye love one another as I

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have loved you.

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But we don't love like that today.

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We don't follow that command today.

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It's a loveless Church in a sin-loving

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society.

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Only a Holy Ghost revival can come and

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set things back in proper order and priority

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today.

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The main reason why we are a loveless

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Church is because Jesus Christ is not prominent

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in our preaching and not preeminent in the

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life of the Church, and that's because we

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prefer to have it that way.