No Explosion

In the book Like a Mighty Army Halford E. Luccock writes of Christendom’s churches: “Did you happen to notice in the public prints not long ago that there was a violent explosion in a church in New York state—unfortunately not in the pulpit but in the boiler room? . . . The New Testament explodes all over the place. Here are a few . . . words which the Apostle Paul used to people who were blocking the path of the gospel: ‘You son of the devil, you enemy of all righteousness, you whitewashed wall.’ Definitely not the language recommended by Robert’s Rules of Order. Perhaps that is what is the matter with us. Could it be that we are taking our cue from the wrong textbook? It would be a shock in many places to displace Robert’s Rules of Order by the New Testament, but it might be exciting . . . Think of explosion in pew and pulpit over muddled thinking, over mouselike trepidation before Caesar and Mammon, over festoons of ecclesiastical red tape.”