The famous World Missionary Convention, held in Edinburgh,
Scotland in 1910, came to the conclusion that
the state of the Church was such as
to prove itself utterly unfit for the work
God put before it.
Andrew Murray then wrote a book called The
State of the Church, in which he took
those assessments and further analyzed the Church as
being self-centered with little consecration, vision, spiritual
dynamic, or prayer.
It is a vivid and scathing assessment.
One hundred years later, the state of the
Church has so deteriorated that it little resembles
the Christianity found in my Bible.
It's predominantly a powerless institution, with its members
set on their own personal self-preservation.
There are valid reasons why the Church is
an impotent institution today that has lost her
authority from on high and her influence upon
the nation.
I'll give you two reasons this evening, friends,
and I don't think too far off the
mark in my assessment.
The state of the Church today is utterly
unfit for the work God put before it
because, number one, it is a powerless Church
that has sold out to conformity with a
pagan society and compromised with preaching of a
diluted gospel.
I believe Alan Redpath, the former pastor of
Moody Church in Chicago during the 1960s, put
his finger on the sore spot of the
Church in his day when he said, Today
the Christian Church is helpless, behind the scenes
and away from the public arena.
We are facing powers of darkness too strong
for us because somewhere in our personal lives
we have forfeited all right to the Spirit's
anointing, His authority, and His power.
In His absence, all we can do is
to substitute planning and organization, schemes and techniques.
Alan Redpath recorded that observation, friends, over sixty
years ago.
What would the old boy say if he
could come back and take a look at
the state of the Church today?
The state of the Church today is utterly
unfit for the work God put before it
because, number two, the Church today is a
loveless Church.
It has no love for its own, much
less a society going to hell in a
handbasket.
In John's Gospel, in chapter fifteen and verse
twelve, Jesus told His disciples, This is my
commandment, that ye love one another as I
have loved you.
But we don't love like that today.
We don't follow that command today.
It's a loveless Church in a sin-loving
society.
Only a Holy Ghost revival can come and
set things back in proper order and priority
today.
The main reason why we are a loveless
Church is because Jesus Christ is not prominent
in our preaching and not preeminent in the
life of the Church, and that's because we
prefer to have it that way.