If you want a place with singing, celebration, joy and feasting, then live for the place where you get all those things forever. Christ welcomes you to that eternal home. He goes ahead of you to prepare a place for His disciples. He will take you by the hand and lead you into the promised land.

But you have to leave Babylon to get there.

“Come out of her, my people,” says the Lord, “lest you take part in her sins, lest you share in her plagues” (Revelation 18:4).

Dabney warns that governments are often eager to lean on the church to do its bidding and that if we are not careful the energies of the church will be subsumed under the aims of the state. The establishment of the church by the state almost always turns out better for the state than the church.

Boniface lived a remarkable life (accomplishing much for the gospel) and died a triumphant martyr’s death. It would fall to later generations to convert the heathen peoples of Germany, but the memory of Boniface inspired those efforts. We might say his principal work was reformation and revitalization. He was constantly enmeshed in organizational questions and issues of power-politics. Nevertheless, Boniface bore witness to Christ wherever he could—even at the cost of his life.

In the end, for as much as Boniface is chiefly remembered for his axe, it was the many decades of sharing the gospel, discipling Christians, building monasteries and bishoprics, cultivating personal holiness, navigating conflict, and keeping his hand to the plow that made Boniface successful. That is the option Boniface chose for his life and ministry, and that is the option open to all of us.