(Ed. Note. The following is reprinted by permission from INTEREST, Box 294, Wheaton, 111.
It may be that some of our readers will regard this article as overly severe. Perhaps it is in certain
respects. Yet, may each of us search our hearts before the Lord to see if there is anything in this
article which applies to us; and if so, may we seek grace to act upon it.)

Spiritually we are in a shocking condition. The status of many local fellowships is bad news, and
deteriorating by the minute.

We have become materialists to the core. Supposing that gain is godliness, we have degraded
ourselves to the worship of money.

We have become more proud of the number of successful businessmen in our churches than of
the number of men of God. The dollar has become our master. The claims of the business world
have been given more place than the claims of Christ. The corporation counts more with us than
the Church. Our condemnation is found in the words of Samuel Johnson, "The lust of gold,
unfeeling and remorseless, is the last corruption of degenerate man."

We have become a status-seeking people. We sacrifice everything for prestige jobs, prestige
homes and prestige cars. And we have prestige ambitions for our children.

Truth is that in our mad desire to see them successful and comfortable in the world, we are
causing many of them to pass through the fire in this life, and to suffer the pains of hell in the
next.

Too often we are living double lives. Outwardly there is an appearance of piety and respectability.
But in business there are bribery, shady deals, dishonesty and numberless forms of compromise.
And in our personal lives there are coldness, bitterness, strife, gossip, backbiting and impurity.
We are living a lie.

Many of our children . . . have become rebels and apostates. We have lived to see the fruit of our
permissiveness and indulgence. But are we broken before the Lord?

We have become thoroughly worldly, living for the love of passing things. We have been
enraptured victims of the idiot tube, and lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. Most
willingly have we been poured into the mold of the world, its fashions, amusements and ideals.

The sin of prayerlessness has been all too apparent. In our abounding wealth and self-sufficiency,
we have not had any strong inward necessity driving us to prayer. Many of our prayer meetings
need closing down.

And finally there is our pride and impenitence. Rather than admit our low spiritual condition, we
endeavor to hide sin, to sweep it under the carpet where no one can see it. After all, we muse,
time heals all things.

But does it? Are we getting away with it? Or are we reaping the fruit of our backsliding in more
ways than we care to admit?

When will we realize that God is speaking to us through sickness and tragedy? It is true that there
is always a certain amount of sickness, sorrow and accidents. But when they come in unusual
volume, and under most unusual circumstances, we should not be insensible to the fact that the
Lord is trying to get through to us.

There are other results of our departure from God. Many of our children hate their parents, and
wish they were a million miles from home. The heavens are brass above our heads_our canned
prayers never seem to get through. God has punctured our bags with holes; we work and scrimp
and save, but never seem to get off the treadmill. Because we wouldn’t tithe to the Lord, we tithe
to the doctor, the dentist, and the garage mechanic.

We are suffering a famine of the Word of God. The ministry lacks unction. Too often it is a
rehash of the obvious. How seldom in meetings are we conscious that the Spirit of God has spoken
to us in power? We live on a diet of pablum. And don’t put all the blame on the preachers! It is
God’s judgment on us for our sin.

The worship meetings are often dead. Dull, awkward pauses are the fruit of prolonged occupation
with the never-never land of T.V.* The evangelistic meetings are an exercise in futility_fishing
in a bathtub where there are no fish. Years pass without the conversion of one single person.

*Ed. Note. More generally, we would say that the dull, awkward pauses in our worship meetings
are the result of lack of occupation with Christ and the Scriptures, whatever else may occupy us
in their place.

If we cannot see that God is dealing with us in all these judgments, what more can He do to wake
us up? We are like the people in Isaiah 1, beaten from head to foot, yet still too dull, too obtuse
to realize that God is speaking.

"Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters:
they have forsaken the Lord, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger, they are gone
away backward.

"Why should ye be stricken any more? ye will revolt more and more:the whole head is sick, and
the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but
wounds, and bruises, and putrefying sores:they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither
mollified with ointment.

"Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire:your land, strangers devour it in your
presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers.

"And the daughter of Zion is left as a cottage in a vineyard, as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers,
as a besieged city" (Isaiah 1:4-8).

We need some prophet, some man of God to lead us to repentance! That is the need of the
hour_TO REPENT_ to break at the foot of the Cross and sob out the confession so hard to come
by, "We have sinned."

We need to repent in our individual lives_to confess and forsake the sins that have brought us into
this place of spiritual barrenness. We need to make right personal feuds and animosities, asking
forgiveness from those we have wronged.

And we need to repent as assemblies of God’s people. Never in the memory of most of us has a
meeting been called for the express purpose of repentance. And seldom in any of our meetings
has confession ever been mentioned. But we need to do it. We desperately need to do it.

The time has come. O for spiritual leadership that will bring us to our knees quickly before we
are consumed by God’s awful wrath! We need to eat the sin offering like Daniel, making the sins
of others our own (Dan. 9:5). We need to lay hold of God’s promise in 2 Chron. 7:14:"If my
people which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and
turn from their wicked ways; then will 1 hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will
heal their land."

We have been a proud people, boasting in our heritage of renowned evangelists and Bible
teachers. We have claimed a special corner on scriptural knowledge and on church order. We
have looked down our theological noses at other believers. Now the Lord has stained our pride.
If we only knew it, our halo is shattered.

There is only one hope! "In returning and rest shall ye be saved" (Isa. 30:15). The way to renewal
and revival is to confess the awful truth about ourselves, to make right the wrongs of the past, to
forsake our sins, and to get desperate with God about a perishing world and a powerless Church.