These are three quotes by AW Tozer in his critique of the church during his life 50 years ago.  They are evidence that some things in human nature don't change and that many of the errors that exist in the church are simply new expressions of old faults that have plagued the Church since it's inception.  They should be a swift kick to the pants of Christians of any denomination or age.

 

“To speak of the ‘deeper life’ is not to speak of anything deeper than simple New Testament religion. The ‘deeper life’ is deeper only because the average Christian life is tragically shallow.” 

 --

 

"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.

Our churches these days are filled (or one-quarter filled) with a soft breed of Christian that must be fed on a diet of harmless fun to keep them interested. About theology they know little. Scarcely any of them have read even one of the great Christian classics, but most of them are familiar with religious fiction and spinetingling films. No wonder their moral and spiritual constitution is so frail. Such can only be called weak adherents of a faith they never really understood."

--

The evangelical Christian need make no apology for his beliefs. They are in direct lineal descent from those of the apostles. He can check the tenets of his total creed against the life giving, transforming beliefs of church fathers both East and West, reformers, mystics, missionaries, saints and evangelists, and they will check out one by one. Then let him check them all with the Holy Scriptures and again they will prove to be sound. What then is the trouble? Why the inertia, the torpor that lies over the church? The answer is that we are too comfortable, too rich, too contented. We hold the faith of our fathers, but it does not hold us. We are suffering from judicial blindness visited upon us because of our sins. To us has been committed the most precious of all treasures, but we are not committed to it. We insist upon making our religion a form of amusement and will have fun whether or not. We are afflicted with religious myopia and see only things near at hand. God has set eternity in our hearts and we have chosen time instead. He is trying to interest us in a glorious tomorrow and we are settling for an inglorious today. We are bogged down in local interests and have lost sight of eternal purposes. We improvise and muddle along, hoping for heaven at last but showing no eagerness to get there, correct in doctrine but weary of prayer and bored with God. 

 

------------