These are different days from the days of the 1859 Revival or the Welsh Revival; we must be tolerant and we must try to accommodate. In order to do that it is necessary at times to lower our standard and seek the co-operation of those who do not accept the position that we hold relative to evangelical truth.
The secret of power is separation from all that is unclean, for me there is nothing so unclean as the liberal views held by some today. We dare not touch them. I am stating what to me is a deep-seated conviction:
Come out from among them and be ye separate . . . and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, and will be a Father unto you.” (2 Corinthians 6:17)
Yes, we must seek power even at the expense of influence. Think again of the great Apostle Paul. What an opportunity he had of gaining influence with Felix, had he but flattered him a little in his sin. He could have made a great impression and I believe he could have gotten a handsome donation for his missionary effort by being tolerant and accommodating the situation.
Paul chose power before influence and he reasoned of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment. Let Felix say what he will, let Drusilla think as she chooses to think, I must be true to my conscience and to my inner convictions and declare the whole counsel of God and take my stand on the solid ground of separation unto God.
Now the person who will take his stand on that ground will not be popular, he will not be popular with some preachers of today who declare that we must soft-pedal in order to capture and captivate.
Here I would quote from the saintly Finney: “Away with your milk and water preaching of the love of Christ that has no holiness or moral discrimination in it; away with preaching a Christ not crucified for sin.” Such a collapse of moral conscience in this land could never have happened if the Puritan element in our preaching had not, in a great measure, fallen out. Here is the quotation from a Highland minister preaching on this very truth. He cried:
Bring me a God of mercy but not just, bring me a God of all love but not righteous, and I will have no scruples in calling Him an idiot of your imagination.
Strong words, but I say words that I would sound throughout our land today in this age of desperate apostasy, forsaking all the fundamental truths of Scripture. Here you have the Apostles proclaiming a message that was profoundly disturbing.
We are afraid of disturbing people today. You must not have their emotions stirred, you must not have people weeping in a meeting, you must not have people rolling on the floor under conviction of sin; keep things orderly. May God help us, may God have mercy upon us.
Who are we to dictate to Almighty God as to how He is going to work? If God chooses to move in that way, if God chooses to so convict men and women of their sin that they will be about to lose their reason, I say, God move on until we can see again what was witnessed in the Edwards Revival, in the Finney Revival, in the Fifty-nine Revival, in the Welsh Revival, and, praise God, today in the Hebrides Revival — God moving in supernatural reality.
