The Holiness of God vs. Jungle Jazz

The following statement by M.R. DeHaan, M.D., was written in 1955 at the dawn of the corruption of "evangelicalism" by the neo-ites and pragmatists. What would he say today? The corruption of evangelical and fundamentalist Christianity in America has produced the whirlwind of moral degradation and judgment of God we are witnessing today. The reason America doesn't fear God is because the vast majority of churches do not preach the fear of God. Now to the statement by the late M.R. DeHaan, a statement that reproves the very organization that he founded--the Radio Bible Class. "No man can understand the atonement nor become the recipient of its salvation until he knows something of the awful holiness of God, and His terrible hatred for sin. God is first of all infinitely righteous, just and holy, so holy, in fact, that even though He is also infinite compassion, love, mercy and grace, He cannot and will not allow a single sin to go unpunished. This is basic in the plan of salvation. God is so holy, He hates sin with such a perfect hatred, that He will never permit or allow a single being in His presence without an atonement being made for all of his sin. It is a sad fact, indeed, that we hear so little in these days about the HOLINESS of God. We hear a great deal of his love and compassion, and his mercy, but very, very little of his holiness and justice and righteousness. As a result of this silence concerning God's holiness, we have formed a mean, a low, and a cheap conception of God, and fail to respect His holiness ... How regrettable that in this age there is so much of this frothy, light and irreverent handling of the holy things of God, making our services a carnival and an entertainment, rather than a place of deep reverential worship of God and the study of His Word. Even in our Christian music today we have sunk too often to the level of jungle jazz ... We have lost, I say, much of the reverence for holy things, because of the introduction of much of this shallow entertainment" (DeHaan, The Tabernacle, 1955).

(Friday Church News Notes, December 13, 2013, www.wayoflife.org, [email protected], 866-295-4143)

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