Our Moral Climate
         Does Not Encourage Faith

           By A. W. Tozer
 

       And ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake:
        but he that endureth to the end shall be saved.
                                                             --  Matthew 10:22

        There is a plain and evident fact in genuine Christianity
        that is often overlooked by eager evangelists bent on
        getting results: that to accept Christ it is necessary that
        we reject whatever is contrary to Him!

        Let us not be shocked by the suggestion that there are
        disadvantages to the life in Christ.  Everyone who has
        lived for Christ in a Christless world has suffered some
        losses and endured some pains that he could have avoided
        by the simple expedient of laying down his cross.

        The contemporary moral climate does not favor a
        faith as tough and fibrous as that taught by our Lord and
        His apostles.  The delicate, brittle saints being produced in
        our religious hothouses today are hardly to be compared
        with the committed, expendable believers who once gave
        their witness among men.  And the fault lies with our leaders.
        They are too timid to tell the people all the truth.  They are
        now asking men to give to God that which costs them nothing!

        When will Christians learn that to love righteousness,
        it is necessary to hate sin? -- that to accept Christ it is
        necessary to reject self? -- that to follow the good way we
        must flee from evil? -- that a friend of the world is an
        enemy of God? -- that God allows no twilight zone
        between two altogethers, where the fearful and the
        doubting may take refuge at once from hell to come
        and the rigors of present discipline?

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        Yours in Christ,
        Paul N. F.