Holy Churches

Image:  Kafue RBC, Zambia

Most people nowadays seem to think that the only power needed by the Christian Church is the power to attract; but they are wrong. They cannot see the difference between a Gideon’s “three thousand” and a mob. The modern drive after numbers needs reconsideration. Bulk can never be a substitute for power. Growth is never the same as obesity. Some of the biggest bodies are the sickest. The Church needs the power to repel if it is to maintain that holy separation in which alone the Holy Spirit can do His God-glorifying work. Our local churches today need to recover that separateness, that holiness, that overshadowing divine presence which creates God-conscious awe and strikes fear into the insincere. Our churches need again the power to repel. They need again that holy flame which scorches the hypocritical fraternizer; that awesome presence which scares away the “mixed multitude” of compromisers—Satan’s quislings and the world’s plausible Judases.

J. Sidlow Baxter as quoted in the Bible League Quarterly (April-June 2011): pp. 44-45.