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Do Not Disturb!

ON THE door of a sickroom often appears the sign “Do Not Disturb.” On the door of most professed Christians appears the same sign. It is time they know it. Few do. You can tell it though; the average churchgoer does not want to be bothered with the good news of God’s kingdom. When Jehovah’s witnesses call at the door of a do-not-disturb Christian, he often says: “Don’t bother me; I go to church.” Now what happens when he goes to church?

Discussing this point, Simeon Stylites, in The Christian Century of February 13, 1957, said: “Sometimes we seem to get the motto for our church life from the barber shop: ‘Once over lightly.’ And do we hit it lightly! As a musical composer said, ‘No one who plays the piano with a feather duster, instead of driving down for the music that is in the depths, can ever become a concert artist.’ That is what too many of us do. Being a member of the church ought to be a very disturbing thing, for it really disturbs absolutely everything about us. But we often make it like joining a country club, with this one difference, it doesn’t cost as much.”

“There is something lacking in my church,” writes Alex Robertson in the same issue of The Christian Century: “There is a ‘do not disturb’ atmosphere about us. It was E. Stanley Jones, I believe, who said, ‘Christianity which does not begin with the individual does not begin; and Christianity which ends with the individual ends.’ It seems to me that this is the heart of the matter.

“At our church we begin with the individual, as we should; but we make no vigorous attempt to guide individual Christians to a world view which honors God and brings us, as individuals, to that telos, that maturity, which is the inheritance of the children of God. . . . Last summer a young preacher came from Princeton and preached about turning the world upside down. He was careful not to explain why such a procedure was desirable. . . . He did not set pagan and Christian side by side for comparison. He made no reference to the earth-shaking wars and revolutions of our time. He seemed completely unaware of the signs of the times. And when this young preacher had finished turning the world upside down in half an hour, we all went home to our roast beef and afternoon naps.”

Do-not-disturb Christians are asleep; worse than that they are spiritually sick. Such slumbering, spiritually sick persons should benefit now by the warning advice: “Jehovah’s day is coming exactly as a thief in the night. So, then, let us not sleep on as the rest do.”—1 Thess. 5:2, 6, NW.