In reality, it is the sign of increasingly desperate defensive manoeuvres by an enemy who knows he is defeated and running out of time, Cleansing the Heavenlies, p165. Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you. The great apostasy is for any church, in an introverted mood, to imagine that it is the final goal of the purpose of God. The church exists in the world as a means to the end of proclamation. It, too, is meant to be the light of the world .
Holy proclamation is always to be by both deed and word.
What you do by way of humble service to others should always be consistent with what you say about the good news. A generation of Christians reared among push buttons and automatic machines is impatient of slower and less direct methods of reaching their goals. We have been trying to apply machine-age methods to our relations with God. We read our chapter, have our short devotions, and rush away, hoping to make up for our deep inward bankruptcy by attending another gospel meeting or listening to another thrilling story told by a religious adventurer lately returned from afar. The tragic results of this spirit are all about us.