Preparation For Suffering
Another Cause of a Difficult Season
By John Fast
“But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come.” – 2 Timothy 3:1
In our last study I began to describe some of the causes which make a season difficult. The first cause I mentioned was that given by the Apostle Paul in 2 Timothy 3:2-5, “For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God; holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power;”. It is a season in which professing Christians live securely in the open and unashamed practice of blatant sin, carnality, pleasure seeking, self-indulgence, and worldliness; where they give different meanings to biblical words, truths, and doctrines, adulterate God’s word, His gospel, and His worship by introducing and integrating human wisdom into them, all occurring over a period of time to where, little by little, a form of godliness is substituted for true godliness. These various forms of religion then become the only Christianity that most professing Christians will accept, because they are the ones they are accustomed to. It is the form they were raised and indoctrinated in, or it is the one they prefer. It is the form that accommodates, appeals to, and panders to their own ego and desires, and affirms their own natural conceptions of God and Jesus Christ.
Today, growing numbers of professing Christians are denying that the only way to heaven is in and through a saving faith in Jesus Christ. Today, a substantial and growing percentage of professing Christians, prominent preachers, and Bible colleges and seminaries are openly renouncing what the Apostle Peter declared, “And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men, by which we must be saved” (Ac 4:12). More and more professing Christians are affirming that other religions provide their adherents an equally valid way to heaven, and in the process they call God a liar, “the one who does not believe God has made Him a liar, because he has not believed in the witness that God has borne concerning His Son” (1 Jn 5:10). Call these people what you will, but do not call them Christians, and do not call the form of godliness they embrace Christianity. Such people are guilty of the sin for which there remains no more sacrifice, that of trampling underfoot the Son of God, regarding His blood as having no more value than that of a pagan deity or human martyr, and insulting the Spirit of grace (Hb 10:29). Such people and such forms can only be called Christian by those who have no idea what it is to be a Christian. More and more people who maintain a belief in God are quick to add that the god in which they believe is, “just not the God of the Bible”, thereby inventing their own individual god and their own forms and conceptions of godliness. Today we call this form of godliness “religious pluralism”, and all sorts of elaborate philosophical and psychological reasons have been put forth to account for it, but it is simply the same old rejection of and hostility toward the one true God – the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ – that is the natural state of mankind. All this takes place under a profession of faith and belief in God. This makes a season dangerous.
The difference between regeneration and religious indoctrination is, regeneration, or the new birth, always produces a love for the truth so as to be saved, whereas indoctrination will cling to its form of godliness and continue to believe what is false, no matter how bizarre, superstitious, and contradictory their false beliefs are to the truth as it is found in Jesus Christ. Christian education and indoctrination can produce a common knowledge of biblical truth, it can even inform and train the conscience to a certain extent, but it cannot produce a love for the truth so as to be saved. The change produced by the Holy Spirit in regeneration is just like the opening of the eyes of the man born blind. Doubtless he had heard of Jesus and this new life of grace which He preached, but he never saw it until the Spirit of revelation and the knowledge of Christ came and opened the eyes of his understanding to where he could say, “Lord, I believe” (Jn 9:38), and worship Jesus Christ as Lord. Indoctrination may instill a form of religion and inculcate some biblical facts which a person can profess, but unless the Spirit of God works through the word and gives a new birth, a person remains just as blind to a true spiritual understanding of the truth as it is in Christ Jesus as were the Pharisees who asked, “We are not blind too, are we?” (Jn 9:40).
No doubt there are many forms of godliness which profess to be Christian that produce great outward effects on people, that gather together a great number of adherents into large congregations, achieve great popularity with the masses, and by means of music, entertainment, programs, emotional and mystical experiences, accommodation to the culture, rituals, and by a general pandering to the flesh and human wisdom, make a great show of religion. It is all to be found today, and I am not surprised. It is exactly what a study of human nature by the light of the Bible would lead me to expect. It is precisely what we should expect when mere forms of godliness come to dominate professing Christianity. The church only turns to forms of godliness – to gimmicks, flattery, programs, fleshly enticements, entertainment, and appeals to the senses and human reason – when it no longer holds to the power of the gospel and to true godliness. To the degree that these various forms borrow from Christian terminology they obtain influence and popularity, but they are nothing more than forms of godliness without its power. They may generate a lot of outward religious and humanitarian activity, but they produce no true inward effect on the heart and mind.
There are two great evils that have always marred and weakened the visible church. The first is a multitude of professors in a fair season, and the second is a multitude of apostasies in a difficult season. It has long been thought that it is a sign of the blessing of God, and a credit to the gospel of Jesus Christ, to have great multitudes who profess to be believers in Christ flooding into the visible church. But the scandal and reproach which their worldly and carnal lives inflict on the cause of Christ, and the horrible apostasies and errors which they introduce and spread have the opposite result, thereby culminating in a dangerous season. A fair season will multiply and fill the visible church with false professors, who, when a storm comes, are blown away like chaff in the wind. Oh, that God would awaken us to repentance, humiliation, and prayer. Allow me to give you a second cause that makes a season dangerous and judge for yourself whether or not we now live in such a season.
A Second Cause of a Dangerous Season
A second cause which makes any season dangerous (and which very few are not effected by) is when people are prone to forsake the truth, and false teachers and seducers abound to gather them up. These two things always go together, and they occur in this order. “For the time will come when they (i.e. professing Christians) will no longer endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance with their own desires; and will turn away their ears from the truth, and will turn aside to myths” (2 Tm 4:3, 4). Notice reader, Paul does say that a time will come when people in general will no longer be willing to listen to sound doctrine. He does not say people will persecute, hunt down, kill, and seek to destroy those who teach sound doctrine. He does not say people will rise up in mass and call for the abolition of religious freedom and insist that sound doctrine be banned and silenced. He does not say people will stop going to church and that churches would become empty. He does not say they will renounce all religion and become atheists. But what does he say? …”they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance with their own desires; and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths.”
The word translated “accumulate” is found only here in the entire New Testament. It is a very strong and descriptive word. The Holy Spirit chose it on purpose. The basic meaning is “to heap up into piles; to accumulate in piles; to accumulate in great numbers”. It describes the significant increase in and amassing of something in excessive numbers. In this case it is false teachers; teachers whose doctrines, teaching, and lifestyles are in accordance with the desires of those who accumulate them. This exposes the superficiality of their profession of faith and the spurious nature of their desire for truth. They do this “for themselves”. It is not an accident, but intentional and purposeful. They actively and intentionally seek out, choose, and over time, heap up an excessive number of these kinds of teachers and teachings; those whose teachings are in accordance with their own particular lusts, prejudices, presuppositions, way of thinking, and desires, not those whose teaching is in accordance with sound doctrine. In so doing, they actively and intentionally “turn away their ears from the truth and turn aside to myths”. This is what all false gospels, false doctrines, and forms of godliness are; nothing but myths.
In other words, in a dangerous season false Christians, false teachers and teachings, and false churches and false systems of religion, all professing to be Christian, do not shrink, rather they multiply to an excessive number. Multitudes of people who previously avoided any place where sound doctrine is taught are now encouraged to pick from the vast selection of teachers, churches, and ministries that continually pander to their own particular preferences and seek to accommodate their various lusts and desires. Consequently, “many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of truth will be maligned” (2 Pt 2:2). It is the way of truth and sound doctrine, not the excessive forms of false Christianity that is increasing maligned, shunned, disparaged, ridiculed, disliked, misrepresented, slandered, adulterated, and belittled by those who are no longer willing to listen to it. Consequently, forms of godliness and those who hold to them multiply, increase, and thrive, while the number of true Christians who are willing to listen to sound doctrine, and the number of churches that are willing to teach and hold to sound doctrine, progressively shrinks. The degree to which the false multiplies to the same degree the true shrinks. This makes a season dangerous.
The accumulation and abundance of false teachers, false churches, false doctrines, and false forms of Christianity is not the cause, but the consequence of people turning away their ears from the truth and turning aside to myths (2 Tm 4:4). It is because professing Christians will no longer endure sound doctrine that they “accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance with their own desires” (2 Tm 4:3). Those who make no profession of faith in Christ; who make no pretense of being a Christian; who never darken the door of a church; who never read their Bible, never listen to sermons, and never read Christian literature; these have no interest in or reason for accumulating for themselves false teachers. This is a practice unique to false Christians. No season in the history of the church can compare with the one we are currently living in for the sheer number of forms of godliness which call themselves by the name of “Christian”, and to which the mass of professing Christians now hold to. Likewise, no season can match the one in which we now live for its accumulation, dissemination, and popularity of false teachers, false doctrines, and false systems of religion. Some of these are more obvious than others. It would be an exercise in futility to try and name them all, and then I could only name the most prominent and popular ones while overlooking those teachers and systems that have been influenced by and pattern themselves after them and their methods.
It is the word of God alone, found only in the Bible, which determines any teaching, practice, teacher, and system of religion as true or false. It is the Bible alone which is the standard against which everything else must be measured. But when people will no longer endure sound doctrine they are left with nothing but myths with which to judge the soundness of any doctrine or practice, or the soundness of those who teach it. When professing Christians turn away from truth and turn aside to myths they cut themselves off from the only means ordained by God for equipping them for every good work and building up the body of Christ (1 Tm 3:16; Eph 4:12). They are left with no other standard but the prevailing humanistic opinions of those around them and their various forms of godliness. They are left with nothing by which their senses may be trained so as to be able to discern good and evil (Hb 5:14). As a result they cannot help but be “tossed here and there by waves, and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming” (Eph 4:14). They are easy prey for every new theological fad, for every subtle sleight of hand, misdirection, emotional argument, redefinition, and deception that the mind of man and deceit of Satan can devise.
The word translated “craftiness” in Ephesians 4:14 conveys the meaning of, “a willingness to do or say anything”. It was by his craftiness that Satan deceived Eve and by which he stealthily and incrementally leads the mind astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ (2 Cor 11:3). People have a natural desire to be healthy and prosperous, so they accumulate teachers who are willing to tell them that God wants them to be healthy and rich. People naturally love themselves, so they heap up teachers who are willing to affirm them and boost their self-esteem. People naturally desire to have some autonomy, so they accumulate teachers who are willing to tell them they have the ability to do something to affect their own salvation; that God is not sovereign over every detail of their life. People have their own natural human conceptions of fairness, love, grace, faith, justice, mercy, God, so they accumulate teachers who are willing to affirm their own natural but erroneous conceptions of spiritual things. People love to indulge their worldly desires, so they accumulate teachers who are willing to tell them they can be Christians and still be carnal and indulge their sins and worldly pleasures. People are naturally hostile to the truth of God, so they accumulate teachers who are willing to tell them that not all of God’s word is true for today; that it contains historical, scientific, and doctrinal inaccuracies, that it must change and adjust to accommodate the prevailing opinions of the culture, that the Jesus of the Bible is not the historical Jesus, but an invention of His first followers. People are naturally religious, so they accumulate teachers and systems of religion that are willing to provide them with a form of religion while denying the necessity and nature of its transforming power. This makes a season dangerous.
This tendency on the part of professing Christians to depart from the truth is the greatest evidence that God has withdrawn His Spirit from the bulk of the professing church. I do not say that He has withdrawn from true believers. This can never be. But when professing Christians will no longer endure sound doctrine, when they turn away from the truth to myths, when they have accumulated teachers according to their own desires and hold to a form of godliness without its power, and the visible church becomes just another human institution and commercial enterprise, then the Holy Spirit is not to be found in such a place and among such a people. This was the condition of the visible church for a thousand years prior to the Reformation. This was the condition of the visible church prior to the Great Awakening. This is the state of the visible church today. The Holy Spirit was promised by Jesus Christ for this end, “He will guide you into all the truth;” (Jn 16:13). He is called “the Spirit of truth” (Jn 14:16). Where the efficacy of truth begins to decay, where God’s word no longer carries any weight, where truth has little to no impact on the lives of professing Christians and where they encourage and harden one another in their sin and forms of godliness, and where truth no longer transforms the minds of those who profess to believe it, this is a great evidence for the withdrawing and departing of the Holy Spirit from the mass of the professing church. This makes a season dangerous.
Do you see false teachers and seducers abound? You can be sure it is because there is a tendency in the minds of professing Christians to forsake the truth. It is the law of supply and demand. There is a robust and thriving market for falsehood and forms of godliness, and where the demand is high, it will never lack those who are willing to supply and profit from the demand and lead the minds of people astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ. Commercial Christianity is, for the most part, dependent upon for its success the reluctance of the mass of professing Christians to endure sound doctrine, and on their insatiable demand for teaching that is in accordance with their own desires. The Apostle Paul describes this in 1Timothy 4:1, “But the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons,”.
The verb translated “paying attention to”, has the idea of “being devoted to; holding, cleaving to; willing to listen to and believe”, some belief, teaching, or idea. Professing Christians are willing to pay attention to what is patently false, and even ridiculous, because they have grown weary of, forsaken, and are no longer willing to listen to the truth. Both the hand of God and the hand of Satan are in this affair. When God sees people who profess to believe the truth, growing weary with and forsaking the truth, and not receiving the love of the truth, God will judicially leave them and give them over to their own lusts and to believe what is false (2 Th 2:10, 11). Satan then seizes upon the opportunity to raise up and elevate seducers who will supply the demand for teaching that is more in keeping with a people’s own desires, natural wisdom, and false beliefs. Jude exhorted those to whom he wrote, “to remember the words that were spoken beforehand by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ, that they were saying to you, “In the last time there shall be mockers, following after their own ungodly lusts” (Jude 17, 18). The teaching of the New Testament is clear; there are seasons in which, because of the tendency of professing Christians to turn away from the truth, that the number of true Christians shrinks, the number of false professors multiplies, and an excessive number of false teachers are accumulated, until very little of true Christianity remains and only mere forms of godliness make up the religion of the bulk of professing Christians and the visible church. This makes a season dangerous because it is a season which will draw people away from the truth and into eternal destruction.
Every person who denies God’s threats and warnings of judgment for sin, for rejecting and corrupting His word and gospel, for living secure in their sin and worldliness, for holding to a form of godliness and denying its power, calls God a liar. There is no promise of judgment that will fall short of its fulfillment any more than one of God’s promises for blessing can fail. How are we to know if we are in such a season, a season where the minds of professing Christians are inclined to depart from the truth, thereby incurring the judgment of God? Judgment has gone forth. The evidence is all around us, and if there is no turning from sin, from love of the world, and from forms of godliness, judgment will not only continue, but it will grow worse. This makes a season dangerous. Allow me to suggest some indications, drawn from Scripture, by which you may judge for yourself if the season in which we now live is not one in which the mass of professing Christians are inclined to forsake the truth.
Some Indications that People are Inclined to Forsake Truth
The first indication is one that I have already alluded to, that mentioned in 2 Timothy 4:3, 4, “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance with their own desires; and will turn away their ears from the truth, and will turn aside to myths.” When people receive the love of the truth so as to be saved, they turn “to God from idols to serve a living and true God,” (1 Thes 1:9). They turn away from believing what is false and cling to what is true. But when people turn away from the truth, they do not turn to a different kind of truth. Once someone turns away from the truth all they have left to turn to are falsehoods, myths, and idols. They are left with no other alternatives. Turning away from the truth implies at the very minimum of having been exposed to the truth. Their turning away from the truth is not by accident, but from a willful, active, and conscious rejection of the truth. Their ignorance of the truth is a willful and deliberate ignorance. When the truth is turned away from, the only things left which anyone can turn to and believe in are myths, to that which is false, to forms of godliness that are in accordance with their own desires, beliefs, preferences, traditions, and opinions. When light is rejected it is not replaced by a different kind of light, but darkness rushes in to take its place. What else but darkness comes when the light of day recedes?
When sound doctrine becomes too plain, too narrow, too hard, too high, too dull, too burdensome, too demanding, too self-denying, too humbling, too convicting, or too anything that chafes, annoys, restricts, and offends them, then they demand to hear something new and novel, something that is more in accordance with their own desires. Because they can no longer bear to listen to sound doctrine, they heap up teachers who will tell them what they want to hear, who will assuage their conscience, and who will affirm, pander to, and legitimize their own desires. All this is cloaked in Christian terminology of course, and made to appear oh-so spiritual, compassionate, and superior to the sound doctrine of which they have grown weary, find so offensive, and no longer accept as valid and relevant for their life and for the times in which they now live. As a result they are swept up and carried away by every error of the times.
The degree to which professing Christians are prone to forsake the truth can be easily gauged by the number of teachers that have been accumulated who craft their teaching so as to be in accordance with a people’s own desires, opinions, preferences, and felt needs. False Christians attract false teachers like a magnet and vise-versa, teachers who are willing to say and do anything to accommodate a people’s own desires, teachers whose teaching is tailored to the latest theological fad currently in vogue with the mass of professing Christians. They are in tune with all the latest cultural and religious trends and church growth strategies. They adopt and champion the latest social agendas that are in the forefront, and exploit people’s natural insecurities and their desire to be accepted by their peers. They affirm unbiblical thinking, beliefs, and practices for fear of being considered too narrow-minded, insensitive to the opinions of others, backward, unscholarly, and intolerant of alternative views. Every season has some of these teachers, but in a dangerous season such teachers abound because the tendency to forsake the truth is so pervasive among professing Christians.
Professing Christians grow weary of the sound doctrine concerning parenting and the discipline of children, so they accumulate alternative teachings more in keeping with those of the culture in which they live. God’s teachings concerning the distinctive roles of men and women, concerning marriage and divorce, the danger of the world, the deceitfulness of riches, the sinfulness and depravity of mankind, the deceptiveness of the human heart, the subtlety and craftiness of Satan, the reality of hell and eternal torment, the holy wrath of an angry and offended God, true repentance and the nature and necessity of the new birth, the narrowness of the way to heaven, the inspiration, inerrancy, and sufficiency of the Bible; these doctrines become unbearable, so they amass teachers who will accommodate the prevailing wisdom of the culture in which they live, and whose teachings are in accordance with their own desires and preferences, whatever those may be. Whenever they hear any command, principle, precept, and doctrine of Scripture that conflicts with their own lusts and desires, they will turn away their ears from it and search high and low to find a teacher and a church that is willing to affirm and accommodate them, their lusts, their preferences, and their beliefs and opinions.
Sound doctrine concerning justification by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone; sound doctrine concerning sovereign election, sanctification, holiness, obedience, separation from the world, sin, hell, judgment, righteousness, being reconciled to a holy and offended God, and so much more, becomes insufferable because sound doctrine is totally irreconcilable with their own desires and self-interests. The more professing Christians decay spiritually, the less sound doctrine they will endure, the more truth they are inclined to forsake, and the more false teachers who are willing to teach in accordance with their own desires will be accumulated by them. If our minds were truly set on the things above (Col 3:2), and our hearts were set on heaven, it would be our greatest joy and delight to hear its doctrines and the way to heaven. We would relish the teaching that proclaims sound doctrine, and the truth that sanctifies us (Jn 17:17), and that is in accordance with sound words, “those of our Lord Jesus Christ, and with the doctrine conforming to godliness” (1 Tm 6:3). But a heart and mind set on the flesh and this world only wants to hear about this world and their life in it. They will not endure sound doctrine because they have no love for the truth. Instead they turn away from truth to myths. If they go to the Bible at all it is simply to find justification for their own desires and forms of godliness to which they cling. They desire a minister who provides more entertainment value than truth, one who will assuage their conscience rather than convict it, one who will make them feel good about themselves, not exalt Jesus Christ, and one who has more talents than doctrine. It is a good thing such people never saw the devil because he has more talents, skills, and flattery than all the ministers in the world. If they saw him they would fall in love with him since they have more regard for myths, entertainment, and talents than for the truth.
Such is the woeful, miserable, and lamentable state of the mass of professing Christianity today for which I mourn. When people harden themselves to truth and grow worse in sin under God’s judgments, this is a forerunner of even more severe and devastating judgments, and what is even worse; it is itself a part of the judgment. What does this say of the season in which we live? What can be worse than for God to give people over to their own lusts and desires, to leave them to themselves and their own forms of godliness? They are given up to blindness and hardness of heart. They have eyes to see, but do not see. There is no fear of God before their eyes. They cling to their myths. Their ruin and destruction are certain. There is not a word in the Bible so awful which, in my view, I now see being fulfilled, “Ephraim is joined to idols; let him alone” (Hos 4:17).
If only a small portion were true of what is proclaimed in the bright and optimistic reports of spiritual growth and progress by the fundraising activities of many parachurch organizations, televangelists, and mission agencies, we would not be witnessing the unprecedented level of spiritual decay, immorality, lawlessness, worldliness, and out-and-out heathenism as we are seeing today, all of which are a consequence of professing Christian’s willingness to forsake the truth. This makes a season dangerous. I do not write these things as your enemy, but as one who is a lover of truth and of souls. You do not consider someone your enemy who inflicts a painful medical treatment to save your life. You do not consider someone an enemy who warns you of an imminent danger. Will you consider me an enemy because I tell you strong truths for the sake of your precious and immortal soul?
Today we are told that people will not respond to such reproofs. We will be called “legalistic” and “negative”. We will be accused of being divisive, judgmental, narrow-minded, and unloving. Darkness still hates being exposed by the light (Jn 3:20). Tell me reader, is it unloving to show someone that how they live and what they believe is inconsistent with the truth as it is found in Christ Jesus? Is it negative to warn people that what they believe and how they live can only lead to their eternal torment in hell? Is it loving to tell someone who will not endure sound doctrine that they are a Christian and will go to heaven when they die? Is it narrow-minded to say what the Bible says and expose and condemn unbiblical opinions and practices, errors, different gospels, false teachers, and false hopes of salvation? If this is what you think, then you believe a myth. If this is what you think, then you must also believe that Jesus and all the New Testament writers were unloving, because they did all this and more. No one was more narrow-minded than Jesus. It was He who proclaimed that the way to heaven was a narrow way.
No, the charge of being unloving does not lie at the door of those who speak the truth with love. We are told we must be more soft-spoken and use more pleasant, affirming, positive, and flattering words. But those who take this course are ignoring the fact that it is this passivity toward, and tolerance for public sins and forms of godliness that is the cause of all the hardness to truth we see today. “Smooth and flattering speech” is a characteristic of teachers who are willing to forego teaching sound doctrine in order to pander to people’s own desires (Rm 16:18). Some say there are people who have never heard the gospel of Jesus Christ, or have never heard there is such a person as Jesus Christ. No doubt that is true. But will such people be brought to a saving faith in Jesus Christ by a corrupted gospel? Will they believe, trust, obey, and live the truths of a Bible that they are told cannot be believed in its entirety, a Bible whose doctrines must be adjusted to the times, a Bible whose truths are not universally true for all people, in all places, and in all times? Such passivity and tolerance toward sin and falsehood will bring multitudes into a form of godliness, but it will save no one from hell. All the evil we are seeing today is not from an absence of truth or from an innocent ignorance of truth, rather it is from the turning away from, the repudiation of, and the corruption of known truth by those who profess to believe and teach it. It is from a willful and deliberate ignorance of truth, all so they can give “themselves over to sensuality, for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness” (Eph 4:19). This makes a season perilous.
A person must be hopelessly blind and willingly ignorant not to see that we now live in such a time. It is a season in which the bulk of professing Christians will no longer endure sound doctrine. It is a season in which an unprecedented number of false teachers have been accumulated. It is a season in which the truth has been forsaken for myths by the mass of professing Christians. When professing Christians turn away from the truth to myths, it is because they have never received the love of the truth so as to be saved. Instead they cling to a form of godliness without its power and amass teachers whose teachings are in accordance with their own lusts, desires, and various forms of godliness that pander to their desires. These forms eventually become the only ones which the bulk of professing Christians will endure, so they accumulate, spread, and multiply, until they dominate professing Christendom. They may be called by the name “Christian”, they may use Christian terminology, but they are in reality a different gospel and another system and form of religion that cannot save anyone from hell.
I know we live in a corrupt day in which the fundamental truths of the gospel are distorted and opposed, where a cold, heartless, flippant, and irreverent skepticism of all the leading truths and principles of Christianity prevails, where truths and principles that the modern mind finds objectionable are scoffed at as archaic, and where the person of Jesus Christ is wickedly blasphemed, even by the mass of professing Christians. Even in those who have no intention of utterly forsaking the truth, such a season will promote and work an indifference to truth and sound doctrine in the minds of professing Christians. There is a careless indifference to the doctrine of God’s eternal election, the irresistibility of sovereign grace, the hopeless condition of fallen mankind, justification by the imputed righteousness of Christ, the work and fruit of the Holy Spirit in conversion and sanctification, personal holiness and separation from the world, the inerrancy, inspiration, authority, and sufficiency of Scripture. Toward all these things and more professing Christians for the most part have become indifferent. They see no need to “contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3). After all, don’t we all believe basically the same thing? Don’t we all worship the same God in our own way? Why stir up a fuss? Such contending takes too much effort, is so unpopular, will place us in the minority, alienate us from friends and family, and is bound to brand us with an undesirable label. It requires our making a distinction between what is true and what is false, and who are we to say that what someone believes is wrong.
Whether or not a claim, belief, teaching, opinion, or practice is supported or condemned by Scripture is irrelevant to the bulk of professing Christians, no matter how outlandish they may be. In the outward and more ostentatious displays, activities, and forms of Christianity they may take great delight, but they show no signs of taking any real interest in its doctrines. A simple glance at the “Christian” bestseller list is enough to confirm this observation. They care little if the pastor preaches the true gospel and sound doctrine or not, especially if the numbers are increasing. As long as the sermon is “uplifting and positive” and stays under thirty-minutes, as long as the music is entertaining and there are activities to occupy and amuse their children, then they are satisfied. They care little if they hear a biblical sermon or not, just as long as they can fellowship with their friends. In short, with them the truth of God is not the one thing necessary (Lk 10:42). Their “desires for other things” (Mk 4:19) take priority and precedence over the pure word of God. Their minds and conversations are set on earthly things (Phil 3:19). Their treasure is on earth.
It is against this indifference to spiritual truths which the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews issues such a severe warning, “For if the word spoken through angels proved unalterable, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense, how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?” (Hb 2:2, 3). The true sense of the word “neglect” in the original lies in this; not in an out-and- out rejection of and hostility to the truth, not in utterly forsaking the truth, but in a careless indifference, disregard, and inappropriate response to the truth. If what you hear from the word of God does not provoke many thoughts and transform your mind, if it does not lead you into all the truth, if it does not sanctify your heart and life, produce a life of increasing holiness, hatred of sin, love for God and for the truth as it is in Christ Jesus, and separation from the world, then you have received the grace of God in vain. Tragically, this is how the bulk of professing Christians respond to the truth, “they paid no attention and went their way, one to his own farm, another to his business” (Mt 22:5). Even when the Bible speaks clearly and unmistakably, if it conflicts with their own desires and self-interests, they will not receive it, but will turn their ears away from it. We live in a season where most people, even most professing Christians, have become so afraid of intolerance that they have few, if any, convictions left at all. Very few today have much concern for the truth and sound doctrine. Rather the bulk of professing Christians show a clear tendency to forsake and neglect the truth for myths.
This indifference to truth is a far cry from the faith and devotion to the truth displayed by those who, at times and seasons in the past, have contended earnestly for it, men and women of whom the world was not worthy, and of whom the overwhelming majority of professing Christians are willingly ignorant of and indifferent to. What sort of faith were they of? Were they half Arminian and half Calvinists, half Evolutionist and half Creationist, half Papists and half Protestant, half Christian and half I do not know what? Did they believe, trust, and teach only half a Bible? Was their faith merely a form of godliness without its power? Their sufferings, trials, and afflictions were a consequence of their zeal for the truth, and from their contending for the truth, whereas our trials and afflictions (if they even deserve to be called so) are from a lukewarmness to truth, and from a turning away from the truth to myths. Let us study to be like them, to pray like them, and to live like them in going about our Master’s work (Phil 3:17; 2 Tm 3:10-12), then we may have some rational ground to hope that God will bless our labors as He did theirs. Learn how zealous they were for the truth, what they sacrificed for the sake of the truth, and how little they would have tolerated the public defections from and corruption of the truth which we now see all around us, and do not mourn over, but are totally indifferent to in the season in which we now live. Look around and see if any of the myths and various forms of godliness today has produced a new holiness, a greater spiritual-mindedness, and a higher devotion to and love for the truth that exceeds theirs. Where is the conviction and abhorrence of sin, where is the repentance, the humiliation, the mourning, and the saltiness which their lives and zeal for the truth produced? This tendency to forsake the truth is an abomination for which God has and will send His judgments. This makes a season dangerous.
In our next study we will examine another cause which makes a season dangerous, and that is when professing Christians mix themselves with the world and learn and adopt their ways and methods.