Calling All Soldiers

"Too long have we been waiting for one another to begin!  The time for waiting is past!  The hour of God has struck!  War is declared!  In God's holy name let us arise and build!  'The God of Heaven, He will fight for us,' as we for Him.  We will not build on the sand, but on the bedrock of the sayings of Christ, and the gates and minions of hell shall not prevail against us....Before the whole world, aye, before the sleepy, lukewarm, faithless, namby-pamby Christian world. we will dare to trust our God, we will venture our all for Him, we will live and we will die for Him, and we will do it with His joy unspeakable singing aloud in our hearts."  (Biography of pioneer missionary C.T. Studd, written by his son-in-law Norman Grubb, p. 120)

This is calling all soldiers, to arms.  Too long have we waited!  The war awaits, and it more and more approaches our doorstep, while we wait and sleep and sing and enjoy our sermons and bookstores and prayer meetings.  Fighting is not an option; we must fight or die.  The West has been assaulted by secular humanism, atheism, political correctness, rationality, and into the religious vacuum created has poured the religion of Islam, the alluring caresses of the eastern religions and Buddhism, and our Christian culture has shrunk into the pockets of the South, Midwest, and Southwest.

The demise of Christian culture has its pros and cons, and some celebrate its departure.  But one advantage it brought was the freedom to believe and speak as we chose, and the freedom from persecution.  As our interactions with the world become more stark, and the contrast between lightness and dark more clear, the war that our brothers and sisters in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East have fought for so long will come to our doorstep.  To arms!  To prayer, the Word, fasting, obedience, Christian love, and evangelism!

And my God shall abundantly supply all your needs according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus.