The professing Church has boasted that it would convert the world. To accomplish this aim, it has sought to "popularize" religion. Innumerable devices have been employed to attract the ungodly, many of which even a sense of propriety should have suppressed!
The result has been that the world has converted the professing Church!
But notwithstanding this, it still remains true that the world hates the true followers of the Lamb. And nowhere is this more plainly evident than those who belong to what we may term the religious world!
If you resolve that by Divine Grace you will live godly in Christ Jesus, then know you that persecution must be your portion. And that persecution will come upon you not from atheists and infidels but from those bearing the name of Christians.
It will issue from those who still keep up a form (or semblance) of godliness, but who are strangers to its living power. It will come to you from empty professors whose compromising ways are condemned by your refusal to conform thereto; whose worldliness and carnality is rebuked by your spirituality.
Remember, it was the religious leaders who hounded the Savior to His death!
[A. W. Pink]
1 John 2:15 ... Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
1 John 3:13 ... Marvel not, my brethren, if the world hate you.
Romans 12:2 ... And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.❤
