“The Church is a perpetually defeated thing that always outlives her conquerers.” ― Hilaire Belloc
Those who seek to bury the Church always fail to understand the power of the resurrection. The Church is a seed. If you bury it, it grows and produces more fruit with more seeds. You can bury the seed, but your cannot bury the orchard. You can cut down the tree, but you cannot keep the ground from producing more trees. The gates of Hell will not prevail. The Church is built by Christ and it will never stay down even if it appears to have gone down.
"The one perfectly divine thing, the one glimpse of God's paradise given on earth, is to fight a losing battle - and not lose it." — G.K. Chesterton
The Church always appears to be on the defensive. It always seems to have been reduced to a ghetto somewhere, but it only seems that way. It is, like leaven through a lump, growing and spreading. The gates of Hell are not offensive. They are defensive. Gates don't go anywhere. They stay still and try to keep other things out. The Church is the battering ram of God. It will never stop banging on that door and for those who bang, the door will be broken. Hell will be pillaged of all its good and many souls will be rescued and saved.
"The Christian faith lives in the light of eternity, and can afford to be patient." — Christopher Dawson
This will not happen overnight. The Bride of Christ is anxious to get to the end of the aisle so that the wedding can be completed, but she has too much dignity and decorum to rush down the aisle. Slow and steady with dignified grace he walks down the aisle. This is the history of the world: a patient, poised, persevering bridal processional.
“Men have spoken too soon in claiming that the world has now entered a post-Christian era and we have been fools to believe them.” — Iain Murray, The Puritan Hope
The coroners of the world are always too quick to pronounce the body of Christ to be dead. They want a shot gun funeral where the Church is buried alive. But Christ is risen. We live in a world where a man has risen from the dead. There is no going back. Nothing will ever be post-Christ because He is not only the beginning of all things, but their end.
“Strictly speaking, there will never be a post-Christian era, because there will never be an era post-Christ.“ — Toby Sumpter
If Jesus were just the Alpha, the world could try to find a different Omega, but He is both the first and the last, the beginning and the end, the First Word and the Last Word.
“Christendom has had a series of revolutions and in each one of them Christianity has died. Christianity has died many times and risen again; for it had a God who knew the way out of the grave.” — G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
As Johnny Cash proclaimed, "There ain't no grave can hold my body down." The world imagines that it is a better executioner than it really is. It boasts of kills it cannot keep down. Christ is risen and out of its reach at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. His Church will not trip on her way down the aisle. She may have to step over the bodies of endless egalitarians isms like feminism, socialism, and secularism, but she will keep marching and the bride will reach the altar and fulfill her vows to her Husband there.
The Church will always outlive her murderers.
No comments:
Post a Comment