Quote of the Day

The longing to see Christ that burned in the breasts of those first Christians seems to have burned itself out.  All we have left are the ashes.  It is precisely the 'yearning' and the 'fainting' for the return of Christ that has distinguished the personal hope from the theological one.   Mere acquaintance with correct doctrine is a poor substitute for Christ and familiarity with New Testament eschatology will never take the place of a love-inflamed desire to look on His face.

If the tender yearning is gone from the advent hope today there must be a reason for it; and I think I know what it is, or what they are, for there are a number of them.  One is simply that popular fundamentalist theology has emphasized the utility of the cross rather than the beauty of the One who died on it.   The saved man's relation to Christ has been made contractual instead of personal.  The 'work' of Christ has been stressed until it has eclipsed the person of Christ.   Substitution has been allowed to supersede identification.   What He did for me seems to be more important than what He is to me.   Redemption is seen as an across-the-counter transaction which we 'accept,' and the whole thing lacks emotional content.   We must love someone very much to stay awake and long for his coming, and that may explain the absence of power in the advent hope even among those who still believe in it.  

Another reason for the absence of real yearning for Christ's return is that Christians are so comfortable in this world that they have little desire to leave it.   For those leaders who set the pace of religion and determine its content and quality, Christianity has become of late remarkably lucrative.   The streets of gold do not have too great an appeal for those who find it so easy to pile up gold and silver in the service of the Lord here on earth.   We want to reserve the hope of heaven as a kind of insurance against the day of death, but as long as, we are healthy and comfortable, why change a familiar good for something about which we actually know very little?   So reasons the carnal mind, and so subtly that we are scarcely aware of it.

Again, in these times religion has become jolly good fun right here in this present world, and what's the hurry about heaven anyway?   Christianity, contrary to what some had thought is another and higher form of entertainment.   Christ has done all the suffering.   He has shed all the tears and carried all the crosses; we have but to enjoy the benefits of His heartbreak in the form of religious pleasures modeled after the world but carried on in the name of Jesus.  So say the same people who claim to believe in Christ's second coming.

- A. W. Tozer