“Who said that Jesus Christ was
irrelevant in this hour of crisis? Who can really imagine that He was a pale,
idyllic dreamer who said poetic things about lilies and birds, and need not be
taken seriously?
I must state my own conviction that, for lack of taking him seriously, we may be at this moment watching the whole setup of Western civilization break up and perish. Men will not heed the preacher who says these things. They shrug their shoulders and laugh uneasily, as the men of Babylon laughed, and of Egypt and Greece and Rome and Mexico, and the rest of the fourteen ancient civilizations whose ruins are still being dug out of the desert sands. But, if I may put it thus, God’s workshop floor is littered with the broken instruments that snapped in His hands and which He discarded because He could no longer use them. This is a solemn moment. We may be watching the whole of Western civilization, both Europe and in America, snap in God’s hands at the time when He wanted it most; but proud, boastful men, drunk with power, senseless with material success, blinded by the achievements of science, intoxicated by victory, and forgetful of the blood of the brave, forget God does not exist for nations, but that nations exist for God, that life is not given us to play with. We are not even here to be happy. life exists for God, and when any expression of it can no longer contribute toward His ends, it passes into the dust of the useless.
What can we do? In this hour when so many churches in their present way of life are too dead to be Christ’s instrument, get into a group, or form one in your own home or church where you can meet, and thrash out these questions in the light of the Christian religion and the will of God.”
I must state my own conviction that, for lack of taking him seriously, we may be at this moment watching the whole setup of Western civilization break up and perish. Men will not heed the preacher who says these things. They shrug their shoulders and laugh uneasily, as the men of Babylon laughed, and of Egypt and Greece and Rome and Mexico, and the rest of the fourteen ancient civilizations whose ruins are still being dug out of the desert sands. But, if I may put it thus, God’s workshop floor is littered with the broken instruments that snapped in His hands and which He discarded because He could no longer use them. This is a solemn moment. We may be watching the whole of Western civilization, both Europe and in America, snap in God’s hands at the time when He wanted it most; but proud, boastful men, drunk with power, senseless with material success, blinded by the achievements of science, intoxicated by victory, and forgetful of the blood of the brave, forget God does not exist for nations, but that nations exist for God, that life is not given us to play with. We are not even here to be happy. life exists for God, and when any expression of it can no longer contribute toward His ends, it passes into the dust of the useless.
What can we do? In this hour when so many churches in their present way of life are too dead to be Christ’s instrument, get into a group, or form one in your own home or church where you can meet, and thrash out these questions in the light of the Christian religion and the will of God.”
Leslie D.
Weatherhead in “The Resurrection and the Life”, Abingdon-Cokesbury Pres., 1948,
Pg 59
