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THE CAUSE – WHY IS A MANUAL LIKE THIS NEEDED? It is evident to the discerning Christian that an undercurrent of deep uneasiness is washing beneath the waters of Christendom today. Confusion, complacency and compromise mark the average congregation. Evangelical churches are rocking from the challenges of rationalism, the occult, and mass media that has suddenly exposed the young to a “global village” of other faiths. Never before has the Bride of Christ been faced with so much stress within and without. It is with concern for an end-time work of God that this manual has been formulated. Why have we become so complacent? What fresh emphasis does the church need to prepare for the vast upheavals she is beginning to face? Early believers looked with joy to the return of the Master. Today, we know the time is even more “close at hand.” They used this truth to generate a converting compassion driving out to reach the lost masses. But we have often made it an excuse for complacency. Persecution was the womb of the early church. Born in the power of the Holy Spirit and the challenge of secularized religions co-operating with the political powers of the day, it thrived under bitter opposition. In an environment of tension and danger, the men and women God used to represent Christ to the world bore a faith that flamed. Stand beside them in the record, the Scriptures that set our pattern. They pray because they must. They give because they love. They speak, for they cannot be silent. Whenever the Church has prospered materially, the black angel of complacency has reaped a deadly harvest. Invariably, spiritual desolation has followed rampant materialism. The flame of dedication has flickered and smouldered – and into the vacuum of carnality and compromise, the Enemy always floods. Whenever the pleas of God for His church to return to first love have been shrugged off or rejected, judgment has always struck. It has been so in history. It will be so again, unless we do something