Preface
Preface
This book has grown out of four talks that I gave at a conference in 1991. This conference was sponsored by the Alliance for Faith and Renewal, an interdenominational organization that seeks to empower pastors and other Christian leaders in building the kingdom of God and in strengthening those they serve in the Christian life. The shape this book has taken reflects my belief that there is need to blow the whistle on the sidelining of personal holiness that has been a general trend among Bible-centered Western Christians during my years of ministry.
It is not a trend that one would have expected, since Scripture insists so strongly that Christians are called to holiness, that God is pleased with holiness but outraged by unholiness, and that without holiness none will see the Lord. But the shift of Christian interest away from the pursuit of holiness to focus on fun and fulfillment, ego massage and techniques for present success, and public issues that carry no challenge to one’s personal morals, is a fact. To my mind it is a sad and scandalous fact, and one that needs to be reversed.
With the fading of interest in supernatural holiness, interest has grown in supernatural healing and in the supernatural powers of evil with which Christians must battle. My hope is that this heightened awareness of the reality of the supernatural will soon reconnect with what Walter Marshall, the Puritan, long ago called the “gospel mystery of sanctification.” If this book helps in that reconnection, I shall think myself fully rewarded.
This second edition of the book includes a new afterword titled “Holiness in the Dark: The Case of Mother Teresa,” which deals with the issue of spiritual desertion using, as the title suggests, the much-discussed case of Mother Teresa. Also included in this new edition is a study guide for use in exploring the principles discussed in this book.
I am enormously grateful to my daughter Naomi, who labored at some inconvenience to herself to put the book on computer, and to my wife, Kit, who was willing to be neglected for a time so that it might be born.