The following is a chapter out of a book titled "Sodom had no Bible". It was written by an English Evangelist named Leonard Ravenhill. It was first published in 1971.
"We Christians are debtors to all men at all times in all places. Men are blind--we must lead them. Men are bound--we must free them. Sinful men are spiritually diseased--we must heal them. Godless men are spiritually dead--we must raise them from the dead by the Holy Spirit's power.
But we Christians are so willfully smug to the lostness of men! We are chronically lazy and callously indifferent! As lax, loose, lustful, and lazy Laodiceans, we are challenging God to spew us out of His mouth (Rev. 3:14-19). God pity us, or smite us! Have we a Moses to stand in the gap if God decided to liquidate this sinning age?
Would we stand idly by with smug indifference if we beheld a blind man walking to the edge of a great cliff, if we knew that his slip over the edge would mean certain death? Any person, I am sure, would make a brave effort to pluck that man from disaster.
Why are our feet so leaden in moving to the rescue of those who move relentlessly by to the edge of eternity, and whose one step into it will seal their doom? Why is there at present among us this criminal indifference to the lostness of men? And criminal it is!
Have we nothing to communicate? Is our living so inconsistent with our telling? Are we pitiably unsure of the truth of the Bible concerning the lost? Are we so stony hearted that neither God's promises nor God's threats disturb us? What octopus has us in its grip? Where will our spiritual polio, our slovenly attention to divine truth land us--and others?
'The church is dying on its feet,' writes a British unbeliever blatantly. If that is true, and it seems indisputable on its face value, then the reason is that the church is not living on her knees. False cult addicts spread like pernicious parasites as they unwearyingly mill among the millions, parading their evil wears. They hang like barnacles on our doorsteps as they trade dross for gold, error for truth, disease for health, blindness for sight, bondage for liberty, curse for blessing and death for life. Their zeal is wonderful. Their dope is detestable.
We believers rush a score of miles to a religious breakfast or to a gospel banquet, yet in so doing are not aware that a hundred times we have passed the doorsteps of our perishing neighbors. We spend so much time on hairdo's and how-do's that the cultured lost around us are forgotten!
I met a fine party of young Russian Christians in Australia recently. They had escaped from the Soviet Eden via Shanghai and Hong Kong. After their hectic experiences, Australia is paradise.
There is one old lady of the group who is trying to get back to Russia. Is she homesick? No! she is just worship sick. In her new freedom, she does not find the same spirit of worship that she knew with the Russian Christians in Russia. She prefers the rigors of the old country and the compensation of uninhibited worship there to that of present creature comforts and religious stiffness.
We Christians would be restless to bring souls into the rest which the rest-giving Saviour offers them if all of us had the same infatuation for Christ and the same soul-adoration of Christ!
Our condemnation is that we know how to live better than we are living. We could be livelier than we are, and should be. We are suspicious of ourselves that our zeal is not according to knowledge. We are short when it comes to love, and long when it comes to excuses.
Some wit has said that our churches are full of empty people. Maybe they are half full of half-empty people. We have life, but not fullness of life; power, but not fullness of power; concern, but not activating concern; fashion, but not passion; interest, but not inspiration; ability, but not availability. We are not expendable to God for our fellow man. Hear, oh hear, what another said: 'If God does not judge the sin of this nation, He will have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah.' Frightful words, but only because they are true!
The Cuban situation has kept America on her toes but not on her knees. We tremble for our skins but not for our sins. We feared the mighty midget--Khrushchev--but not the Almighty God.
D. L. Moody said, 'I would rather wake a sleeping church than a sleeping world.' Our indulgences condemn us! We have slept to long, eaten to much, spent more time than we have needed to--on things that did not matter, at prices we could not afford.
The Bible parable says that while men slept, the enemy sowed tares among the wheat. A boy who rises at 4:30 in the morning to deliver papers is considered a go-getter and will get a place in the sun. But to urge our young people to rise at 5:30 to pray is considered fanaticism.
A woman who is doing the rounds -- golf, bridge parties, dancing -- can give seven to eight hours a day to these testy trivialities. But a woman giving the same hours to prayer and tract distribution is talked about as religiously off-balance.
The man who clips thirty dollars a week out of his budget for cigarettes, drinks, and gambling is considered a sport and worldy-wise-man. But the brother who, in love for his Lord and for lost men, tithes the same amount, not only hears whispers that he is being milked by the lazy preachers, but is looked upon as a fool by his workmates. No wonder somebody has written:
'I dreamed that somehow I had come
To dwell in Topsy-Turveydom,
Where vice is vurtue, vurtue vice;
Where nice is nasty, nasty nice;
Where right is wrong, and wrong is right;
Where white is black, and black is white.'
Our whole sense of values must be revolutionized. Before we stand in judgment at the bar of God, we need to stand in judgment of ourselves (I Cor. 11:31). We need to redirect our talents before they are everlastingly taken away from us. This is the hour! Tomorrow may not be ours.
Men in Berlin are feverishly digging tunnels to escape the curse of Russia. All men are racing to beat the atom bombs. Yet they stagger on blindly without one chance here or hereafter to escape the fiery wrath of God, who is unchangeable in His holiness and in His anger!
I ask again, Why then this suffocating indifference to the lostness of our cultured heathen who sleep away their few sabbath's in their garden seats, or laze by their swimming pools with a peace that is merely moral palsy?
The Bishop of Montana says, 'The Church must realize that unless every congregation sets out to do something about its own conditions first, and then about its own community, foreign missions are ridiculous even though they commanded.'
Wind of God, come and blow upon this suffocating indifference that chokes the channel of service to lost men!"
