Here’s a good devotional from A.W. Tozer. In it he encourages us not to become discouraged by the increasing number of people around us who are simply looking for ways to find fault. In these last days as we near the end of something–whether the Age of Grace itself or a phase of God’s dealings with rebellious mankind–you may be sure that negativity will be on the increase.

Frankly, this is exactly why the Emerging Hollow Men like Brian McLaren and Rob Bell have left the Body of Christ in order to draw away disgruntled disciples after themselves. Men and women, make no mistake this whole Emergent Church–the new cult of liberal theology–is not tolerant at all. It is a smug centered on the self arrogance which has rebelled against the final authority of the Word of God.

But still beloved of God we take heart that true Christians have always been persecuted for their faith. Jesus Himself tells us:

If the world hate you, ye know that it hated Me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.

Remember the Word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted Me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept My saying, they will keep yours also. (John 15:18-20, KJV)

And we also praise God that our Great Shepherd has sent us wonderful teachers through the years such as A.W. Tozer. Real men of God who have sat at the Master’s feet and then faithfully told us what the Lord has said:

But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed. (2 Corinthians 4:7-9)

Nowhere else in the entire New Testament is the humanity of the great apostle [Paul] seen so clearly as when he staggers under the cruel attacks of the anti-Paul bloc in the Corinthian church. His sufferings are there the most poignant and nearest to the sufferings of Christ because they are inward and of the soul. For always the soul can suffer as the body cannot….

But from Paul and his afflictions we may learn much truth, some of it depressing and some altogether elevating and wonderful. We may learn, for instance, that malice needs nothing to live on; it can feed on itself. A contentious spirit will find something to quarrel about. A faultfinder will find occasion to accuse a Christian even if his life is as chaste as an icicle and pure as snow.

A man of ill will does not hesitate to attack, even if the object of his hatred be a prophet or the very Son of God Himself. If John comes fasting, he says he has a devil; if Christ comes eating and drinking, he says He is a winebibber and a glutton. Good men are made to appear evil by the simple trick of dredging up from his own heart the evil that is there and attributing it to them. WTA, 079,080

“Deliver me today from faultfinders and those of a contentious spirit. Silence them today, for Your glory. Amen.”