“The urge comes on me at times to write in scathing terms articles for these piddling little magazines of ‘comfort and kind words for God’s little flock.’ Baloney! When are we going to rise like men and face the world squarely? This driveling nonsense which condones inactivity because of the apostasy of the day needs a little fire to show up the downright ungodliness it hides. We cuddle around the Lord’s table as though it were the last coal of God’s altar, and warm our hands, thinking that will appease the wrath of the indignant Christ when He charges us with the unmet, unchallenged, untaught generation of heathen now doing their Christmas shopping. It makes me boil when I think of the power we profess and utter impotency of our action. Believers who know one-tenth as much as we do are doing one hundred times more for God, with His blessing and our criticism. Oh if I could write it, preach it, say it, paint it, anything at all, if only God’s power would become known among us! ICHABOD!”

– Jim Elliott

1927 – 1956

“Further, J. says, ‘The worship service is most satisfying to me as an individual.’ What in all eternity has that got to do with it? Have her personal likes and dislikes any right to dictate method in the holy church of God? It is this attitude that has brought hopeless confusion into our present order, for holy rolling, and snake-handling are most satisfying to some folks as individuals. Let God be true and every man a liar. Is it His way? Then let my personal likes be filed in the waste-can. Let me follow by afforded grace. It is neither J.s job nor mine to commend or condemn any system of gathering. It is the responsibility of both of us to search the Scriptural principles, find the all-important Thus saith the Lord.”

–Jim Elliott, 1927-1956

American believers have sold their lives to the service of Mammon, and God has His rightful way of dealing with those who succumb to the spirit of Laodicea.

– Jim Elliot

1927 – 1956

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UPDATE on this post: According to Mark Driscoll’s Facebook page, the episode of Hour of Power will be airing August 23rd. That is probably when it will be available on the internet as well.

“I think there is nothing so startling in all the graces of God as His quietness. When men have raged untruths in His name, when they have used the assumed authority of the Son of God to put to death His real children, when they have with calloused art twisted the Scriptures into fables and lies, when they have explained the order of His creation in unfounded theories while boasting the support of rational science, when they have virtually talked Him right out of His universe, when they, using powers He grants them, calm universal autonomy and independence, He, this great Silent God, says nothing. His tolerance and love for His creature is such that, having spoken in Christ, in conscience, in code of law, He waits for men to leave off their bawling and turn for a moment to listen to His still, small voice of Spirit.

Now, after so long a time of restrained voice, bearing in Almighty meekness the blasphemies of His self-destroying creatures, now – how shall break upon the ears, consciousnesses, hearts, and minds of reprobate man the Voice of one so long silent? It shall thunder with the force of offended righteousness, strike with lightning bolts upon the seared consciences; roar as the long-crouched lion upon dallying prey; leap upon, batter, destroy and utterly consume the vain reasonings of proud human kind, ring as the battle shout of a strong, triumphant, victory-tasting warrior; strike terror and gravity to souls more forcefully than tortured screams in the dead of night. O God, what shall be the first tones of that voice again on earth? And what their effect? Wonder and fear, denizens of dust, for the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a battle cry, with the voice of the archangel and the trumpet blast of God Himself, made more terrible, if that could be, by the longsuffering of His silence.”

—Jim Elliott, 1950