The Chief Dangers

It was General William Booth who said,

“The chief dangers of the 20th century will be religion without the Holy Spirit, Christianity without Christ, forgiveness without repentance, salvation without regeneration,
politics without God, and heaven without hell.”

‘Writing in the late 19th century, this was extremely insightful – prophetic. Prophetic in the sense of both seeing and understanding what was coming, and in the sense of calling it out ahead of time. If it was true in the course of the 20th century, which William Booth only saw 12 years of, it is certainly true, on steroids, in the 21st century’s ‘post-everything’ world.

What Booth probably didn’t see, however, is that these things would become true of the evangelical church as a whole, including his radical Salvation Army movement. If he did see it, he’d have given them what for in his own inimitable style! In fact, he also once said that, ‘when The Salvation Army ceases to be a militant body of red hot men and women whose supreme business is the saving of souls, I hope it will vanish utterly.’

I am borrowing Booth’s quote not to make comment about the contemporary Salvation Army, but about wider contemporary evangelicalism, which appears to me to be a mass of confusion in so many parts. The church is pressed down by the weight of the world’s opinions and the general oppression of truth.

As Isaiah says, ‘Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter’ (Isaiah 5:20). So many things in our contemporary society are so unlike the values of the Kingdom of God and yet we’re told by Jesus to pray, ‘your Kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.’

I heard this question the other day in relation to this: how seriously do you think they take God’s will in Heaven?

It’s a question that doesn’t need an answer to be verbalised, does it? It’s self-evident that God’s will rules and reigns SUPREMELY in Heaven. It should do here too. That’s where the rub comes for anyone fearful of causing offence or standing for truth today. To cause offence is the number one social crime, but here’s the thing: it isn’t the ‘prophetic extremist’ who should pray, believe and live these words of the Lord’s Prayer. All disciples of Jesus are invited to pray and live this way in the midst of a world that often rejects the things of God.

This matters deeply to me because it matters deeply to God.