the Fourth Week after Easter
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Daily Devotionals
Morning and Evening with A.W. Tozer
Tozer in the Morning
Crossless Chrisianity
About 300 B.C. a Greek king named Pyrrhus fought a battle with the Romans at Heraclea. Pyrrhus won the battle but in doing so he suffered such appalling losses as to more than offset his gains.
Thus a victory that costs too much is often called a Pyrrhic victory.
. . .
For years I have watched misled Christians in their unholy effort to make friends with the enemy and to render the cross socially acceptable. A few prophets have written and preached against this outrageous sellout, but their words have gone unheeded. The leadership of the popular Christian movements has been and still is in the hands of persons who are blind to the meaning of the cross. That darkness and light cannot mingle never so much as occurs to them. They are busily engaged copying the world and trying to be like it as far as they dare. To be a Christian one need only "accept" Christ. That brings "peace of mind" and assurance of heaven. After that the cross has no meaning and Christ no authority. Compromise and collaboration are now the distinguishing marks of religion. To be relaxed and well adjusted to society is more important than to keep the commandments of Christ. The fawning, ingratiating spirit is the modern badge of saintliness. Between the world and the Christian there is no longer any great difference. And that not by accident. They planned it that way.
Yes, we have won a victory over the atheists. They no longer cause us any trouble. But subsequent developments will show that our triumph has cost us too much. It is a Pyrrhic victory.
Tozer in the Evening
Spirit Taught
Always the decisive conflict in religion will be where important concepts are joined in opposition, concepts so vital that they are capable of saving or wrecking the Christian faith in any given generation. At this critical juncture in church history, the real conflict is between those who hold to an objective Christianity capable of being grasped in its entirety by the human intellect and those who believe that there are far-in areas of religious experience so highly spiritual, so removed from and exalted above mere reason, that it takes a special anointing of the Holy Spirit to make them understood by the human heart. The difference is not academic merely. Should the advocates of religious intellectualism succeed in setting the direction for the church in this generation, the next generation of Christians will become helpless victims of dead orthodoxy.
In conversation with one of the better-known devotees of neo-intellectualism in evangelical circles, I asked the question bluntly, "Do you actually believe that everything essential in the Christian faith may be grasped by the human intellect?" The answer was immediate--"If I did not, I would be on my way toward agnosticism." I did not say, but might properly have said, "And if you do, you are on your way toward rationalism." For such indeed is the truth.
