Aiden Wilson Tozer (April 21, 1897 – May 12, 1963) was an American Christian pastor, preacher, author, magazine editor, and spiritual mentor.[1] For his work, he received two honorary doctorate degrees. Though he is dead, yet he still speaks.

 The civilized man is surrounded by his lately invented and noisy gadgets back in his heart (even with) the centuries of “progress” (when all is stripped away) becomes again a terrified, whimpering thing desperately in need of a Saviour.

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 Because this is true, any evangelism which by appeal to common interests and chatter about current events seeks to establish common ground where the sinner can feel at home is as false as the altars of Baal ever were. Every effort to smooth out the road for men and to take away the guilt and the embarrassment is worse than wasted; it is evil and dangerous to the souls of men.

 One of the most popular current errors, and the one out of which springs most of the noisy , blusterimg religious activity being carried on in evangelical circles these days, is the notion that as times change the church must change with them. Christians must adapt their methods by the demands of the people.

 If they want ten minute sermons, give them ten minute sermons. If they want truth in capsule form, give it to them.If they want pictures,give them plenty of pictures.If they like stories,tell them stories. If they pefer to absorb their religious instruction through the drama,go along with them – give them what they want.

 “The message is the same, only the method changes”, say the advocates of compromise.

 “Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad,” the old greeks said, and they were wiser than thay knew.

 The mentality which mistakes Sodom for Jerusalem, and Hollywood for the Holy City is too gravely astray to be explained otherwise than as a judicial madness visited upon professed Christians for affronts committed against the Spirit of God.

 Isaiah 6:9-10

And he said, Go, and tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but understand not;and see ye indeed, but perceive not. Make the heart of this people fat,and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes,and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and convert, and be healed.

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 If modern evangelism is geared to the tumult and the agitation of the times, why should anyone complain ?

 Does it not represent an honest effort to be all things to all men that by any means some should be saved?

 The answer is that the soul of man does not change fundamentally, no matter how exernal the conditions may change.The aborigine in the hut, the college professor in his study,the truck driver in the bedlam of city traffic have all the same basic needs: to be rid of their sins, to obtain eternal life and to be brought into communion with God.

Civilized noises and activities are surface phenomena, a temporary rash on the epidermis of the human race.

To attribute sound values to them, and then to try to bring religion into harmony with them is to commit a moral blunder so huge as to stagger the imagination, and one for which we shall surely be paying long after this frenetic extravaganza we call civilization has ended in tragedy and everlasting grief.

 What certain religious leaders fail to understand is that true Christian experience takes place in the human spirit, far in and beneath the changing surface of things.

 Its only the surface that responds to noise and agitation.

 Popular Christianity parrots the language of the New Testament theology, but it accepts the world’s opinion  of itself, and sedulously apes its ways (except for a few evil practices which even the world admits are wrong).

 Then Christ is offered as something added, a ‘Friend Up There’, a Guarantor against the time when the tumult and shouting dies and we are called in from the playground and forced to go to sleep.

Source:
 [An exerpt from the book “God tells the man who cares” – Chapter 3 We must be still to know  –  Pages 11,12,13 A W Tozer ]