‘These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth’ (Hebrews 11.13).

God blesses us with discernment and understanding if we live as pilgrims, but these faculties, like many other blessings, are conditional upon us so living. This is the message of the famous eleventh chapter of Hebrews – the annals of faith and pilgrimage. The pilgrim spirit brings us rich spiritual experience, together with instrumentality and usefulness. Our own trust in God increases mightily, because we prove him so much. We develop in holiness by his grace and power, and gain an ever clearer heavenly view. We must not linger, looking longingly at material things, or fame in this world. We should think often of the journey’s end, and check everything with the question – ‘How does this affect my pilgrimage?’

It is very sad that there is this movement among Christians, already referred to, to throw away the pilgrim attitude. The so-called emerging and missional churches – or most of them – recommend extraordinary things. They want believers to give up traditional church (many say give up preaching also), and be entirely informal.

They believe that to win people to God we must be like them. So we must go to all the films they watch (even with them), so that we can talk about them. Do the same things, they say, going to dances, clubs and pubs, for normality is vital. Just mix, mix, mix, and live like worldlings. They don’t exactly put it this way, but this is what it amounts to. We are to be more like worldlings, acting like worldlings, and mixing with worldlings in their activities and delights. The more we do so, the more we will influence them.

Liberal churches who reject the Gospel started this line of thought and action, and the missional authors have adopted it. But this policy is the exact opposite of what Bible-believing Christians have believed for centuries, and contrary to the Word of God.

Yet nowadays one may go to any one of a number of evangelical Bible colleges in the UK and obtain a degree in ‘doing church’ this new way. C H Spurgeon had a phrase, ‘We never know what we are going to hear next: we shall die of astonishment.’

Some of the things we hear today are so incredible, so anti-biblical, and so wrong, we are jolted when we hear them. We must never lose hold of the fact that our Saviour has called us out of the world. We should be full of sympathy for lost souls and labour for their salvation. But we cannot do that by rejecting the pilgrim concept and grieving the Holy Spirit of God.

Says the apostle, ‘I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus’ (Philippians 3.14). We press forward as pilgrims, a people distinct from this fallen and doomed world, having been called out of it, and winning souls from it by the power of the Spirit. Our task is to call them out, not to seal them in. This is the only valid attitude to Christian living and Christian service: to live as pilgrims.