A Peace Time Mentality in War Time

“The crying need of the hour is to put churches on a wartime footing. Mission leaders are crying out ‘Where is the church’s concept of militancy, of a mighty army willing to suffer? Where is the risk-taking, the launching out on God alone?’ The answer is it has been swallowed up in a peacetime mentality. Thousands of Christians do not hear the diabolic bombs dropping and the bullets zinging. They don’t smell the hellish Agent Orange in the whitened harvest of the world. They don’t cringe or weep at the thousands who perish every week. They don’t reckon with the spiritual hosts of wickedness of this present darkness. In fact it is not dark at all they say. It is bright and comfortable and cheery – just look at my home and car and office and cabin and boat” (John Piper in Pleasures of God; thanks to Nadi Tadros for the quote).