Chapter: Fifty
"In reading such men as Wesley and Finney one is struck with the bold way they dealt with hindrances to God's work wherever they found them. They dared to look at any work of religion, to examine the claims of any would-be prophet, and appraise them for what they were worth. They were thus able to purge out those false elements which, if allowed to remain, would soon have brought the work of God to a stop.
This is an art which very much needs to be revived in the tricky times in which we live. We now seem afraid to probe into anything that claims to be of God lest we violate the spirit of love or lay irreverent hands upon the ark.
Have we forgotten that we labor under a direct injunction to "try the spirits" and "prove all things"? Through our failure to obey this charge a hundred abuses are allowed to linger within the Church, weakening it, hindering it and throwing it open to just reproach.
The fashion now is to tolerate anything lest we gain the reputation of being intolerant. The tender-minded saints cannot bear to see Agag slain (see First Samuel 15), so they choose rather to sacrifice the health of the Church for years to come by sparing error and evil; and this they do in the name of Christian love.
We are under obligation to disturb all seats of wickedness, and where this is done out of sincere love for God and men, great good is bound to follow. No true work of God will suffer from the prayerful examination of Spirit-filled men. Timidity masquerading as love has allowed useless forms and unscriptural practices to persist in many a church till they have slowly smothered the life out of it and brought it to desolation. And many a promising work of revival has been wrecked because no one was courageous enough to stand against the abuses that entered to destroy it.
We must not be afraid to inquire. The difficulty, of course, is to do this in a Christian spirit. It is hard to find fault without being a faultfinder or to criticize without being censorious. But we have it to do if we hope to keep the work of God pure in a day of iniquity."
A. W. Tozer
This is so very true, I have and will continue to stand for the truth of God's word, even within the church, where sadly some are more concerned with teaching things that are more politically correct than the truth, and trying to do all things in love, at the cost of truth.
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