There is war upon us…Satan has canceled all leave and is running a 24/7 operation. He knows his time is short….but we are still utilizing our time and resources as if we are at peace…
The Queen Mary, lying in the harbor at Long Beach, California is a fascinating museum of the past. It was used both as a luxury liner in peacetime and a troop transport during the Second World War. Now she is a museum showing the contrast between the lifestyles appropriate in peace and war.
On one side of a partition, you see the dining room reconstructed to depict the peacetime table setting that was appropriate to the wealthy patrons with fine china and an array of knives and forks for each course of the meal. On the other side of the partition, the evidence of wartime austerities are a sharp contrast. One metal tray with indentations replaces fifteen plates and saucers. Bunks eight tiers high explain how the peacetime capacity of 3000 passengers gave way to 15,000 troops on board in wartime.Two men shared each bunk (sleeping in shifts) on the Queen Mary as it steamed across the Atlantic in World War II.
This transformation took a national emergency. The survival of a nation depended upon it. The essence of the Great Commission today is that the survival of many millions of people depends on its fulfillment. She was set apart for a wartime purpose…
So we are set apart …consecrated…“setting apart of things for a holy use.” Are we set apart for wartime troopship conditions or are we still trying to be a cruise ship
Ours is a save-yourself society if there ever was one. Underdeveloped societies suffer from one set of diseases: tuberculosis, malnutrition, pneumonia, parasites, typhoid, cholera, and so on. Affluent North America has virtually invented a whole new set of diseases: obesity, heart disease, strokes, lung cancer, venereal diseases, cirrhosis of the liver, etc.
And we’re more than ever plagued with the social diseases of drug addiction, alcoholism, divorce, abused children, suicide, murder. Our divorce courts, prisons, psychiatric offices and mental institutions are flooded. In saving ourselves, we have nearly lost ourselves.
The decks and staterooms and dining facilities of the Queen Mary spoke of luxury and comfort and ease. Travelers could relax and be served anything their heart desired, at any time of night and day.
The coming of war changed all that as she was pressed into a wartime role…..Luxury Liner became troopship. Staterooms that slept 2 now slept 8. Dining facilities that fed 3000 now fed 15,000. It was not pretty or comfortable ….but the survival of Britain and Europe depended on it.
On August 30, 1939, the Queen Mary departed on her last peacetime voyage. The following day the Nazis invaded Poland and for safety reasons, the Queen Mary was ordered to run a zigzag course under blackout conditions.
She was called “The Grey Ghost” and she transported 765,429 troops during the war. Adolph Hitler offered $250,000 and the Iron Cross to any U-boat Captain that could sink the Queen Mary. She resumed peacetime cruises on July 31, 1947. Winston Churchill traveled on the Queen Mary three times during WWII and considered it his headquarters at sea. In fact, he even signed the D-Day Declaration onboard.
The church is a cruise ship of leisure and luxury when we were commissioned to be a life raft and a troopship …Like the bounty put on the Queen Mary – the apostle, Paul was known in Hell. Acts 19 v 15 the evil spirit answered, “Jesus I know, and Paul I know, but who are you?”
We remain anonymous in hell and ineffective…
It is a time we ripped out the comfort and the leisure and gird ourselves for war… If the church is going to finish the great commission it is not going to be as a cruise ship….it may be as a troop ship.
J.B.Phillips, who gave us the Phillips New Testament, said of the first chapters of Acts:
- “This is the church of Jesus Christ before it became fat and out of breath by prosperity.
- This is the church of Jesus Christ before it became muscle-bound by over organization.
- This is the church of Jesus Christ where they didn’t gather together a group of intellectuals to study phycho-sematic medicine, they just healed the sick.
Leonard Ravenhill said…
- The church used to be a lightning bolt, now it’s a cruise ship.
- We are not marching to Zion – we are sailing there with ease.
- In the apostolic church it says they were all amazed – In our churches, everybody wants to be amused.
- The church began in the upper room with a bunch of men agonizing, and it’s ending in the supper room with a bunch of people organizing.
- We mistake rattle for revival, and commotion for creation, and action for unction.
I think this is a critical hour in history, the most critical hour in history; the prestige of this nation we love has gone down, and we face insurmountable problems. As someone said, “We live in a theater of the absurd.”
We have complete Bibles and stunning technological devices but we are dying as we try and save ourselves. If we transformed ourselves by giving up a lifestyle of comfort for a lifestyle of service, we will save others and so save ourselves...Luke 9 v 24 For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it.