Playground or Battleground?
"Prophet" is a title applied loosely these days. For many it is a title of aggrandizement. When it is used to describe AW Tozer, the proof is in his writing. He passed away in 1963, yet what he foresaw coming upon the American Church, reads like it was penned yesterday.
His books are still published and widely read. Below is an excerpt from one of his messages titled...
This World: Playground or Battleground?
A Call to the Real World of the Spiritual
"Going no further back than the times of the founding of our country, we are able to see the wide gulf between our modern attitudes and those of our forefathers. In the early days, when Christianity exercised a dominant influence over American thinking, men conceived the world to be a battleground. Our forefathers believed in sin, the devil and hell as constituting one force, and God, righteousness and heaven as the other. These were forever opposed to each in a deep, grave, irreconcilable hostility.
Man, so our fathers held, had to choose sides; he could not be neutral. For him it must be life or death, heaven or hell. If he chose to come out on God’s side, he could expect open war with God’s enemies. The fight would be real and deadly and would last a lifetime. Men looked forward to heaven like soldier returning from the war; a laying down of the sword to enjoy in peace the home prepared for them.
Sermons and songs in those days often had a martial quality to them. Even a trace of homesickness. The Christian soldier thought of home, rest and reunion. His voice grew plaintive as he sang of battle ended and victory won. But whether he was charging into enemy guns or dreaming of war’s end, he never forgot what kind of world he lived in. It was a battleground, and many were the wounded and the slain.
That view of things is unquestionably the Scriptural one... a solid Bible doctrine that tremendous spiritual forces are present in the world. Man, because of his spiritual nature, is caught in the middle. The evil powers are bent upon destroying him, while Christ is present to save him through the power of the Gospel. To obtain deliverance he must come out on God’s side, in faith and obedience. That in brief is what our fathers thought; and is what the Bible teaches.
Today, the facts remain the same, but the interpretation has completely changed. Men think of the world, not as a battleground but as a playground. We are not here to fight; we are here to frolic. We are not in a foreign land; we are at home.
We are not getting ready to live, we are already living; and the best we can do is to rid ourselves of our inhibitions and our frustrations and live this life to the full. This, we believe, is a fair summary of the religious philosophy of modern man, openly professed by millions, and tacitly held by more multiplied millions, even if they never give verbal expression to it.
This changed attitude toward the world has had and is having its effect upon Christians. Even gospel Christians who profess the faith of the Bible, by a curious juggling of the figures, manage to add up the column of life wrongly; yet claim to have the right answer. It sounds fantastic but it is true.
That this world is a playground instead of a battleground has now been accepted in practice by most evangelical Christians. They might hedge around the question if they were asked bluntly to declare their position, but their conduct gives them away. They are facing both ways. They enjoy Christ and the world; gleefully telling everyone that accepting Jesus does not require them to give up their fun; that Christianity is just the jolliest thing imaginable.
The “worship” growing out of such a view of life is as far off as the view itself. A sort of sanctified night clubbing, without the champagne and the dressed-up drunks.
This whole thing has grown to be so serious of late that it now becomes the bounden duty of every Christian to reexamine his spiritual philosophy in the light of the Bible.
A right view of God and the world to come, requires that we have also a right view of the world in which we live and our relation to it. So much depends upon this that we cannot afford to be careless about it."