As I read this small excerpt of A.W. Tozer this stuck out to me "[b]This is so fully and clearly taught in the Scriptures and so well illustrated in Church history that it is hard to see how we can miss it[/b]" !! YES we have missed it as Keith Daniel emphatically says "You [u]cannot[/u] win the world by being like the world, the world [u]will[/u] win you!". The Church of Jesus Christ needs a revelation of the majesty of God and our calling heavenward in Christ Jesus. [b]Matthew 5:13[/b] - [color=FF0000]Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.[/color]---[b]On Being Different[/b]The Church's mightiest influence is felt when she is different from the world in which she lives. Her power lies in her being different, rises with the degree in which she differs and sinks as the difference diminishes. This is so fully and clearly taught in the Scriptures and so well illustrated in Church history that it is hard to see how we can miss it. But miss it we do, for we hear constantly that the Church must try to be as much like the world as possible, excepting, of course, where the world is too, too sinful; and we are told to get adjusted to the world and be all things to all men. (This use of the passage, incidentally, points up Peter's saying that Our beloved brother Paul wrote some things which the unlearned and the unstable wrest to their own destruction.) One sure mark of the Church's heavenly character is that she is different from the rest of mankind; similarity is a mark of her fall. The sons of God and the sons of men are morally and spiritually separated, and between them there is a great gulf fixed. When religious persons try to bridge that gulf by compromise they violate the very principles of the kingdom of God.
_________________SI Moderator - Greg Gordon
