It is the same with us. In so many difficult situations, trials, problems, persecutions of different types, even in soul winning – how shall we go about it? – we need to beware of human solutions, the voice of the flesh. The disciples, eleven of them, ask, ‘Shall we smite them? It's the only thing we can think of.’ But there must be no violence; no smiting; no carnal fleshly solutions. We depend on prayer and the power of God for everything.
This is a lesson that rings down the ages. Obviously in the Christian church, there will be no violence. There has been violence in church history. What does it tell you? Violence by Christians? Well, most of the time it tells you they were not really Christians. Consider the Crusades. Yes, they named the name of Christ, but they were not saved people. They were not people of the Bible. There were people of Catholic-style faith, works faith, nominal people, without true conversion. Because if they had been true converts, and truly the Lord's, and truly men and women of the Bible, they would have known that the kingdom of heaven cannot advance by force. You can't extend the kingdom of God or defend the kingdom of God by carnal means. Only by love, by prayer, by the message of Calvary, by the winning of souls and the transformation of hearts.
Nor is there to be any violence in other forms, because there are forms of violence beyond physical force. For instance, sometimes you find preachers using emotional violence, emotional manipulation – raising their voices and issuing great shouts. Of course, the preacher is bound to get excited sometimes, because of his message. He wants to communicate; he wants to enforce its power and value, but he mustn't engage in emotional manipulation. Sometimes the old-fashioned evangelists used to get into this, and they would tell heartrending sob stories, and then make an altar call, and people who were moved might run to the front in order to be assured they were saved. Maybe some were, but maybe they weren’t. Maybe they hadn't come under conviction of sin, and they weren't really repenting of their sin. But because they have walked to the front, they are assured that by that act, they are saved. So the church is filled up with even more nominal believers, who aren't really saved.
You have to be careful with what we call apologetics also: powerful reasoning, which shows that evolution is false and creation is true. You convince people that the faith is reasonable and compelling, and many people may be convinced, and become notional Christians in their minds, but they have never come under conviction of sin. The apologetic speaker did his job beautifully, but he didn't tell them about Calvary, and about condemnation, and he didn't draw them to Christ for forgiveness and remission of sin, so they weren't really saved. Violence can be intellectual violence. Yes, apologetics is useful. It may open eyes, make people begin to think, that the things that they've always assumed have been proven, haven't been proven at all. But it won't save them without the gospel.