'Church' entertainment entails spiritual loss upon the church, by destroying the lines and distinctions which God has drawn between it and the world.

God wants his church to be a perfect contrast to the world -- as clear and distinct indeed as light from darkness. In that separation and difference will be the beauty, strength and glory of his people. I hardly need to say that if a pure woman would lift up a fallen creature of her own sex, she will never do it by becoming corrupt herself. It takes purity to lift up purity. If the church is ever to make the world better and help it into godliness, she will never do it by becoming like the world. There is a fearful picture drawn by one of the prophets where a certain powerful and wicked king had died and as his soul descended to perdition, the Book says all hell was stirred and rose up to meet him at his coming. They cried out at the same time: "O, thou son of the morning, how hast thou fallen, and become like unto us!" Do we realize what the world is saying today about us?

The judgment passed on the church by thousands is that she has become worldly. In many cases you cannot tell a church member from a man of the world. If we would listen, we would hear the world laughing at us. We would endure the laugh if we were innocent. I hear much of it as I go about. It is the same derisive, horrible laugh, the same fearful welcoming cry that rose up from hell: "How hast thou fallen, O thou church of God, thou child of the morning, thou hast become like unto us!"

Within 'church' entertainment, we lower the approaches, rub out lines and demarcations and put the gap low. "Come in," we say to the world; "how much alike we are, after all! You thought I was so holy, but I am not holy. I am just like you, only come in and see how much alike we are!" And so, through the low gap the world comes in. Alas for us, something goes out from us that is indescribable, and the loss of which is irreparable. That beautiful, heavenly grace, that wondrous force and spiritual power that comes to the church from spotlessness, unbending integrity, separation from the spirit and ways of the world — that goes and leaves us poor indeed. Would it not be strange if it did not occur to the farmer, that when he set his gap low in order that his neighbors sheep might come in and be appropriated, that through that same gap he might lose his own?

There was a certain minister of another religious denomination who determined to set his gap very low. He determined that as the world would not come up to the church, he would bring the church down to the world. In a sermon preached in his pulpit a few months ago, he stated to his hearers that after coming to the morning service and worshipping, that they were free to spend the rest of the Sabbath as they would — in sailing, riding, baseball, and other ways of relaxation and recreation. To his amazement, he failed to get a single worldly man to join his church by this religion-made-easy plan. The fact is, men do not take to such a church. When they change, they want something different. There is no sense in Going from the world to the world. So it was that he gained no one by his low gap.

On the contrary, he lost one of his most valuable members. Naturally, that member was shocked and pained at such teachings, and so immediately left that fold and sought another flock and preacher where he could hear doctrines more in accord with the sentiment of his heart and the truth of the Bible. The conclusion is that there is nothing to be gained but everything lost by any compromise with, or approximation to, the world.

When we come into any relation with the world, except such as is taught and allowed in God’s Word, it means loss of members, loss of respect and loss of the virtue and power by which we alone can uplift and save men. In 'church' entertainment, we are called upon to notice a very remarkable fellowship. Here are people who hate God, hate the Sabbath, hate the church, deny the Bible and refuse to believe in the divinity of the Lord, mingling and working with Christians. A certain lady was expatiating to me in glowing terms upon this intimacy! "Oh," she said, "we have such beautiful Christian fellowship!" "Christian fellowship," I said. "Do you call this affinity you have made with people who say that your Savior is a fraud, liar and impostor — do you call that Christian fellowship?"

I remember something in the Old Testament of a similar nature where a certain king, who knew and served God, made affinity with a king who hated God and served him not. He had hardly begun the strange, unnatural intimacy when suddenly a prophet sent of God stood before him, and with solemn face and more solemn words said, "Thus saith the Lord, Do ye love them that hate the Lord? Therefore, evil is come upon thee from the Lord!"

In the Book of Genesis appears another remarkable fellowship. "It came to pass," says the Bible, "that the sons of God saw the daughters of men, and took them wives of all which they chose." My only remark, here, is that it was just after this that God repented that he had made man, and grieved at the universal wickedness, sent a deluge to destroy the entire race. We have nothing to expect from any kind of affinity or amalgamation with the world but the loss of God’s favor, and our own final overthrow and ruin. May heaven keep us far and forever from it! Certainly when we see the church and the world socially and morally one -- when they can work side by side in a common religious, or rather irreligious, enterprise -- it means, that history is repeating itself and that the people of God and of the world have amalgamated. It means they are at peace and that any day we may look for the sweeping judgments of the Head of the Church.

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