Other Causes of the Apostasy Which Make a Season Difficult
By John Fast
“But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come.” – 2 Timothy 3:1
The past several years have yielded report after scandalous report of widespread abuse and victimization of people at the hands of Catholic priests, creating a crisis of trust and integrity within Roman Catholicism. Within the culture at large there is now a heightened awareness and increased willingness on the part of those who have been wronged by wicked people to speak out. However, in the midst of all the allegations and calls for justice and reform, what is conspicuously absent is the identification of the root causes of all this evil, which are the beliefs, philosophies, values, and practices that have produced a culture and society in which people have so little restraint that these things can take place on such a massive scale, and then be exploited by other wicked people for their own self-interests. At the same time that many are calling for the church to be a safe place where people who have been scarred by these abuses can come to be cared for, we are hearing from many church leaders that to create this safe environment, Christians need to set aside their theological differences and focus on the gospel.
On the surface this may sound very compassionate and magnanimous but it reveals a traitorous heart. Can the gospel be separated from the theological truths on which it rests? How can the church be the pillar and support of the truth if it minimizes the importance of theological precision and accuracy? Is there no such thing as false gospels? What else besides theological truth distinguishes between the true gospel and the plethora of counterfeits that abound today? Is contending for the truth, ALL the truth once delivered to the saints, now to be defined as creating a hostile environment injurious to the cause and gospel of Jesus Christ? What does the church have to offer to anyone besides the truth that cannot also be found in the world? Rather than making the church a safe place, such deceptive philosophies and practices have succeeded in making the mass of professing churches the most spiritually dangerous places on earth.
Every Christian and especially every minister who claims to love Jesus Christ, who has any zeal for their Master’s honor, or love for the eternal souls of men and women, ought to exert themselves in these days of apostasy and blasphemy to reclaim and recover the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ and the holiness of His church. Upon reading this, most will be inclined to dismiss it as just another attempt to offer simplistic solutions to complex problems. However, such an effort is not simply another attempt to address the evil of our day, but it is the only approach inspired by the Holy Spirit, instituted by the apostles, authoritatively taught by Scripture, and that offers the only true hope for mankind. There has been much emphasis and zeal of late for many of the circumstantials of Christianity – church growth, church planting and revitalization, doing church, church government and leadership, apologetics, counseling, humanitarianism, parachurch, worship styles and formats, programs, activities, etc. – but the weightier provisions of the gospel have, for the most part, been ignored, neglected, adulterated, and redefined (Mt 23:23). When has there ever been a season since before the Reformation that has experienced less holiness, spiritual-mindedness, self-denial, separation from the world, and obedience to the commands of the gospel, and more biblical ignorance, forms of godliness, carnal worship, self-indulgence in worldly desires, open immorality, and the peddling and making a trade of Christianity and the church, than in this degenerate, apostate, and truth-despising age?
We are sunk into the very dregs of the latter times of which the Bible foretold and in which sin and apostasy would abound and make a season perilous. Is it not obvious to every unprejudiced observer that this world, its people, its institutions, and even the mass of churches, its guides and teachers, and the people who belong to them are totally corrupt, both in their morals and in their fundamental principles? Is it not evident that our society, and especially our youth have gone deep into depravity and are self-destructing? It is far too evident a truth to be denied that not only our nation in general, but the mass of churches and the people who belong to them have departed from the fundamental principles of Scripture, all while keeping up a form of godliness and a profession of being Christian. Today the mass of professing Christians easily tolerate the adulteration of God’s word and the commercialization of Christianity as long as their guides and leaders pander to their pride, affirm their self-image, validate their self-interests, and do not tamper with their lusts and idols and expose them for what they really are. However, they will not long endure sound doctrine and having their sin, worldliness, and carnal forms of Christianity called by their right names. They will easily relinquish all that the gospel commands, but fight tooth-and-nail for the right to practice what it forbids, and to preserve their own opinions, preferences, and traditions.
No sooner does someone speak out on and expose these errors and apostasies than they are branded with the name of extremist, pietist, fanatic, divisive, antiquarian, legalist, bitter, mean-spirited, and narrow-minded separatist, even though all they have declared is what the Bible clearly teaches and what the Reformers, the Puritans, and the preachers of The Great Awakening declared to their respective generations, and for which they were scorned, driven out, imprisoned, exiled, and reproached. It is nothing more than what faithful men like J.C. Ryle, Charles Spurgeon, B.B Warfield, J. Gresham Machen, A.W. Tozer, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, and A.W. Pink declared in their times, and for which they received similar ill-treatment. The only difference is that the apostasy is now much deeper, diversified, and engrained than in the times when these men lived and preached. Therefore, I find myself in the best of company when I depart from the ways, thinking, and practices which dominate the bulk of professing Christendom today.
Too Few Fools for Christ
I know full well it is never popular to warn people of the danger which the times pose to their immortal souls, much less attempt to identify the causes which make a season dangerous. Except in extraordinary seasons where God has poured out His Spirit to awaken people to their danger, such a message is unlikely to grow a church’s membership roll. And in a season such as ours, one that abounds with churches, guides, teachers, and leaders that specialize in inventing strange, worldly, and fleshly enticements and respectable ways to justify integrating, assimilating, accommodating, and compromising with the culture, and one in which the mass of professing Christians will no longer endure sound doctrine, it is almost certain to substantially reduce it. In a dangerous season sermons and exhortations that call to repentance, faith, self-denial, separation from the world, and gospel obedience will not generate the excitement, enthusiasm, and numbers of people as will programs, activities, accommodations, antics, entertainments, and self-affirmations. It is almost certainly to be viewed unfavorably, especially when the causes include the churches and the guides, leaders, beliefs, practices, and lifestyles which tragically most professing Christians now belong to, follow, choose for themselves, engage in, support, and cling to. Why is it that those who contend against hostile and destructive foreign powers to defend their country are admired, praised, and applauded, while those who would contend for Christ and His cause against all that would weaken, undermine, redefine, desecrate, despoil, plunder, and pillage them are considered troublers of Israel (1 Kgs 18:17)? We consider them heroes, as we should, who have lost their lives while serving their community and country, but those who would sacrifice everything in this world for the cause of Christ are generally considered fools.
Only recommend the plainest passages of Scripture, appeal to the historical doctrines of Christianity, call upon faithful and godly men from the past whose teachings and writings have withstood the tests of time and the Bible, state obvious facts and naked truths, call things by their right names, and you cannot avoid being branded with some hard name. If you think to avoid this because you do not deserve it, you will find yourself sorely mistaken. I made the same mistake, and thought myself quite safe while I had the plain, honest truths of Scripture, the hard-won historical doctrines of Christianity for which the martyrs gave their lives, and hundreds of years of consistent teaching by godly men on my side. But then I found out that the mass of churches and professing Christians are not only woefully ignorant and indifferent towards these things, but hostile to them. Such things are not favorable to them or their beliefs, doctrines, thinking, practices, lifestyles, and self-interests, but testify against them. Instead of accommodating and blindly following these newly coined trends, terms, practices, and beliefs, I rather insisted on the absolute authority, sufficiency, and inerrancy of Scripture, the total depravity and corruption of man’s nature by the fall, his total inability to effect his own salvation by any means whatsoever, his being by nature a child of wrath, the freeness and fullness of Christ’s redemption, the necessity of a work of the Holy Spirit to change the heart, transform the mind, subdue and cause the will to repent and receive and trust in the blood of Christ for forgiveness and in His righteousness for justification, and to empower to live a holy Christian life, separate from the world, in sincere obedience to the truth, and to all the commands of the gospel. If those who subscribe to and abide by the clear teachings of Scripture and the historic doctrines of Christianity can be defined and dismissed with hard names, then they who neglect, redefine, adulterate, peddle, depart from, and deny them must be much worse (Ps 125:5; Jn 15:22; 2 Pt 2:21).
O, what fools they must have been, the prophets, apostles, early Christians, and other holy martyrs who have sealed the truth with their blood, if they might have escaped their sufferings, made their lives easier, and increased their adherents simply by compromising on some small point of truth. They must be the most self-deceived and wicked people indeed who, for the sake of worldly success, and to avoid the censure, disrepute, shame, and reproach of man for the truth’s sake, pretend such vagueness for the truth, invent such blasphemes against it, and coin such respectable names for sin and evil, all under the name of church and Christianity. It is to their eternal shame that so many of Christ’s servants cannot bring themselves to part with even a little of their worldly honors, reputations, ease, comforts, securities, and pleasures for the sake of Christ, His bride, and His truth. If truth can be sold at such a cheap price, who will hold to it when the cost may be their life? Praise God it has not yet come to this for most Christians. For most, the cost is not yet that high. There is, however, and always has been a spirit of persecution in the hearts of the ungodly. Cain is always ready to kill Abel (1 Jn 3:12). All that is needed is for Satan to fan the spark into a flame. He is always looking for an opportunity.
We are already more than halfway there. Satan first comes as a beguiling serpent and an angel of light with a spirit of error, and then as a dragon with a spirit of persecution. He first corrupts people’s minds with error, and then enrages their hearts with wrath against all who would expose them and their unfruitful deeds of darkness with the truth for what they really are. It is impossible that error should not eventually erupt into anger and devilment; otherwise they would not be like their father the devil. That which is from the father of lies, as is all error, cannot be pure, true, or peaceable. The longer, greater, and deeper the error and apostasy runs, and the more a people’s self-interests are wed to them, the greater will be the persecution when they are exposed for what they really are (2 Tm 3:12). How far God has allowed this spirit of error and apostasy to go, spread, and grow virtually unchecked in this present time is so notorious that even the most plain truths are now denied, open heretics are the most popular preachers, the mass of churches have apostatized from the commands of the gospel, and the most abominable sins are now virtues. If you cannot love unfashionable truths, you will never stomach being unfashionable for the truth. If you cannot love rejected truths, you will never endure being rejected for the truth. If you cannot love despised truth, you will never persevere when you are despised for the truth.
Not everyone that now professes and applauds the truth will follow it when it becomes personally costly. It is one thing when upholding the truth is a matter for gain, applause, praise, honors, and admiration, and another when it is a cause for loss, deprivation, and danger. When Paul reminded Timothy that because of his imprisonment “all who are in Asia turned away from me”, he made a point of mentioning two of them by name to their eternal disgrace, “among whom are Phygelus and Hermogenes” (2 Tm 1:15), as if to say, “even these two turned away”. Not everyone who will preach for the truth and argue for it is willing to suffer for it. Arguments and insults are, for the most part, harmless things. They are blunt weapons. They inflict no wounds and draw no blood. But when we must suffer for the truth, then our commitment to it is tested by sharp weapons and trials (1 Pt 1:7; 3:17). This requires something more than philosophical arguments, a logical mind, impressive credentials, powerful connections, political shrewdness, a charming personality, and a clever wit. Where will be the wise man, the apologist, the scholar, and the popular preacher in that day? Sadly, if we are to judge by how many have already defected from the truth in these times of ease and accommodation, how many more will become like cowardly soldiers who put up a good fight in training when there is no actual enemy in the field, but who yield, surrender, or flee at the first sign of harm to their self-interests. God has chosen the foolish to shame the wise in this matter of faithful service. It is for the humble Christian, by their faith, patience, endurance, and love for the truth, to shame those of high standing but who have no love for the truth in their hearts.
Love for truth in the heart will enforce obedience to the truth it loves, “For we can do nothing against the truth, but only for the truth” (2 Cor 13:8). Where truth has no command and exercises no rule in the life, there can be no love for truth in the heart. Rather, the person who does not obey the truth is so far from loving it, that they work to corrupt, adulterate, redefine, and prostitute it. A Judas will kiss Christ, but not love Christ or His truth, much less trust, obey, or suffer any hardship for it. Demons believe that Jesus is the eternal Son of God (Mk 1:24, 34), that He died on the cross and rose from the dead, but they do not love, trust, or obey Him.
If the bulk of churches, their guides and leaders, and the people who belong to them have defected from and redefined the plain truths of Scripture and historic doctrines of Christianity, is that any reason for the rest to join them? Why should those who refuse to defect, redefine, and adopt their ways, beliefs, and practices be thought the worst of? Why should they be considered the ones who are strange, bizarre, and out of touch? Why should they be reproached, blamed, censured, condemned, and ridiculed for calling things by their right names, exposing the unfruitful deeds of darkness, and striving to recover the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ? Yet, nothing else is to be expected in a dangerous season, so we must learn to bear it, walk by faith in the pure word of God, in full dependence on the power of the Holy Spirit, and practice the command of Scripture to “gird your minds for action, keep sober in spirit, fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance, but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves in all your behavior; because it is written, ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy’ “(1 Pt 1:13-15).
Those few churches, ministers, guides, leaders, and believers who still endeavor to preach and live, in full dependence on the Holy Spirit, the doctrine conforming to godliness (1 Tm 6:3) and the obedience which the commands of the gospel require, will be forced more and more to live by faith in the promises of God and less by sight. Particularly as the number of professing Christians that will endure and support sound doctrine continue to dwindle, and as the open opposition and hostility to the commands of the gospel escalate, and the pressure to accommodate the church and the message with which it has been entrusted to the times and season in which we live intensify. This will require great faith and endurance, the faith and endurance that are the gift of the Holy Spirit, if they are to persevere until the end, not shrink back to destruction, to be found faithful to the One whose name and cause they represent, and not risk their eternal salvation for any present popularity and temporal security, success, or honor. In short, it will require being counted a fool not only in the world’s estimation, but also by the mass of churches and professing Christians, because most have learned, adopted, and now judge by the world’s standard of measure.
Truth is loved and valued only by those who truly know it, and the more it is truly known, then the more it is truly loved and valued. But to have it, and corrupt it, and not desire to know it, or to pretend it is unknowable or unimportant, is to despise it as much as knowing it and rejecting it. To the spiritually blind and/or biblically ignorant person, truth and error are both alike. Both are on his side. To him they are one and the same. He can make no clear distinction. To him there is no difference. They can coexist. They can sit side by side on the bookstore shelf. They can air back to back on the same radio station. They can be mingled together in a single book, sermon, or song. Protestant or Catholic, biblical or unbiblical, orthodox or heretical, historical or novel, obedient or disobedient, pure or corrupted, the mind set on the Spirit or the mind set on the flesh, the wisdom of God or the wisdom of this world, self-denial or self-indulgence, the doctrines of God or the traditions of man, worldly and carnal or spiritual and holy, man-centered or Christ-centered, to him they are all the same. Both alike can serve his purposes. To a blind man, light and dark and clean and unclean are all the same.
“But all things become visible when they are exposed by the light,” (Eph 5:13), because the light shows things in their true colors, it reveals things as they really are, and calls things by their right names. Those who are in the light, and desire to practice the light, come to the light (Jn 3:21), while the rest skulk about in the shadow of error, cloaking their sin and error with respectable and justifying names. Darkness always attempts to hide and conceal the true nature of evil. Satan disguises himself as an angel of light, and his servants disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. Judas deviously concealed his greedy ulterior motives with a bogus moral outrage and a pretended concern for the poor (Jn 12:6). It is not possible to call evil good and good evil, to substitute error for truth, to make no distinction between the clean and unclean, to have no love for the truth, and yet have any sincere concern for anything other than what benefits self-interest. Wolves come in sheep’s clothing. The world dresses itself up in all its paint, pleasures, and false promises. Error and falsehood come disguised as truth and tradition. Sin comes cloaked in respectable, justifying, and legitimate names. Respectable names come cloaked in a false love and compassion. The light peals away all these layers of darkness to expose things as they really are. It exposes even the thoughts and intentions of the heart (Hb 4:12). Hence the reason why darkness hates the light, because sooner or later the light will expose what the darkness has been working so hard to conceal. When someone’s beliefs, practices, thinking, reasoning, and lifestyles cannot stand up to the scrutiny of the light, then they will not come to the light to be examined in and by the light, lest those things be exposed for what they really are (Jn 3:20). So people who love the darkness choose for themselves guides, leaders, teachers and churches that will call things by different names so as to shield them from the light and not expose things for what they really are, and thereby, over time, apostatize from the commands of the gospel and the obedience they require. This makes a season dangerous.
A Consistent Pattern
Old Testament Israel bristled at being told by the prophets sent by God that their hope was a false hope and that the blind guides and leaders which they admired and trusted had made them trust in a lie, “the Lord has not sent you, and you have made this people trust in a lie” (Jer 28:15). Israel eventually reached the point where “she heeded no voice; she accepted no instruction. She did not trust in the Lord; she did not draw near to her God” (Zeph 3:2). And what brought about this apostasy? “Her prophets are reckless, treacherous men; her priests have profaned the sanctuary. They have done violence to the law” (Zeph 3:4). Yet it was these same false guides and leaders that the people admired and adored (Lk 6:26), while rejecting and killing the true prophets sent to them by God (Lk 11:47, 48). The Jews of Jesus’ day became incensed when Jesus shined the light of truth on all their vain and misplaced hopes, beliefs, and practices, “Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father; the one who accuses you is Moses, in whom you have set your hope” (Jn 5:45); “You hypocrites, rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you, saying, ‘This people honors Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me. But in vain do they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men’ ” (Mt 15:7-9). They stoned Steven for telling them the same thing (Ac 7:51-60). It enraged the pagan world when they were told by the apostles that all their idols and false religion in which they trusted, and on which their self-interests depended, were worthless and offered a vain hope, “We…preach the gospel to you in order that you should turn from these vain things to a living God” (Ac 14:15); “when they heard this and were filled with rage, they began crying out, saying, ‘Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!’” (Ac 19:28). The Church of Rome did not like the Reformers shining the light of Scripture on its doctrines, its practices, its Pope, and its priests, thereby exposing them as corrupt, corrupting, and apostate, so it hunted down and murdered them and those who sided with them. The world always has and always will hate those who testify that its deeds are evil (Jn 7:7; 1 Jn 3:13).
Such a message has never been popular, but it is very needful, and never more so than in a season such as ours where nothing but bright, positive, uplifting, self-affirming, weightless, and encouraging messages are tolerated by the mass of professing Christians, and everything negative is frowned upon. What makes the present season so dangerous and alarming is that so very few churches and the people who belong to them seem to be alarmed by the signs of the times. The general public along with the mass of professing Christians are thoughtless and secure as if the times posed no danger to their souls. They live as if no danger were near them, even though, for certain, we are now under some of God’s heaviest judgments which call for the loudest and most drastic repentance.
Even when some seem to be aware of, and complain of the danger of the season, so very few of these seem to be truly humbled, so few are truly alarmed, so few are willing to forsake their worldliness, materialism, self-indulgence, pursuit of pleasure, and forms of godliness, and flee to Christ and plead with Him for the mercy which the necessity of the times require. So very few seem willing to pay the price which a recovery of the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ calls for. Instead, things grow darker and darker. More and more churches and the people who belong to them fall deeper and deeper into apostasy, clinging ever tighter to their forms of godliness and to the causes that make a season dangerous. Like Old Testament Israel all over again, the mass of churches and the people who belong to them seem “eager to corrupt all their deeds” (Zeph 3:7) by mixing and mingling with the culture in which they live, adopting its causes, tastes, fads, fashions, ways, values, speech, thinking, and lifestyles, and to spend the bulk of their life “indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind” (Eph 2:3), all while wearing the name of Christian, redefining and justifying their sin, and bemoaning the growing darkness because it can no longer be ignored. Like the rest of the world, they live by, trust in, and form their judgments according to sense, feeling, emotion, experience, and their own understanding, not by faith.
Faith v. Sense
Faith and sense are two separate things and result in two separate and distinct ways of life, and two very different eternal states. Faith rests exclusively on the inerrant word of God. It is by the hearing of it that faith comes (Rm 10:17). It is upon this which faith is built, by which it is strengthened and nourished, by which the mind is transformed and the life sanctified, and by which we grow up into the fullness of Christ. Sense judges by and acts on what it sees, feels, experiences, and understands, and the inferences, assumptions, presuppositions, and conclusions which it draws from these things. Sense and feeling often mislead the understanding and report things contrary to what they really are, and then work to justify its faulty conclusions. Sense looks at things as they are outwardly (2 Cor 10:7). According to sense the Pharisees outwardly appeared righteous to men when in reality they were full of hypocrisy and lawlessness (Mt 23:28). According to sense the Laodiceans believed themselves to be rich and to have need of nothing when in reality they were spiritually “wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked” (Rv 3:17). According to sense Israel concluded “because the Lord hates us, He has brought us out of the land of Egypt to deliver us into the hand of the Amorites to destroy us” (Dt 1:27). According to sense Job’s friends assumed all of his suffering was the result of some deep, dark, hidden sin and failure on his part (Job 4:7, 8). According to sense it was impossible for Abraham and Sarah to have a child, especially given the fact that he was “as good as dead since he was about a hundred years old, and the deadness of Sarah’s womb;” (Rm 4:19). But by faith in the infallible word of God’s promise Abraham hoped against hope, and so do all who are of the same faith as Abraham, the faith that is a gift and fruit of the Holy Spirit.
Sense is pragmatic and forms its judgments and conclusions in its own favor and self-interests, whereas faith denies self and sense, and does not lean on the understandings of sense (Pv 3:5; Jer 17:5). Sense works to mold God’s word and redefine its terminology, both its virtues and sins, its commands and prohibitions, its promises and warnings, to its own perceptions, ideas, preferences, and conclusions, whereas faith will conform all to the true meaning of God’s word, as well as to its promises, warnings, commands, principles, and its account of things (Rm 12:2). Faith forms its judgments not by what is seen, but by what is unseen, a practice which is utter foolishness to sense (1 Cor 2:14). In general, sense will not believe what faith must, and faith usually judges the very opposite of what sense thinks and does because faith accepts what the Bible says about sense (Jer 17:9). Faith will not trust and believe in what sense perceives and understands. Faith looks to the word of God and by it is usually forced to contradict sense. Sense looks to self, appearances, and the world and by them is usually forced to contradict the word of God. The perception Lot’s wife had of Sodom totally contradicted the one revealed by God. Her heart was ruled by her sense, not by the word of God. She loved Sodom, but God hated it. She had become accustomed to its wickedness, but God abhorred it.
By their sense the Jews accused Jesus of having a demon (Lk 7:20), but Jesus warned them, “Do not judge by appearance, but judge with righteous judgment” (Lk 7:24), which is always based on and consistent with God’s word. By sense Joshua and the leaders of Israel were deceived into making a covenant with the pagan Gibeonites in direct violation to the command of God (Josh 9:1-15). Sense is usually always wrong because the natural man’s thinking is futile, his powers of reasoning are darkened by sin, and it is easily deceived by self, the world, and the deceitfulness of sin (Eph 4:17, 18). How often did Jesus warn the disciples, and how often did the writers of the New Testament warn believers against being deceived by sense and outward appearances (Mk 4:24; Lk 8:18; Hb 2:1; 1Jn 4:1)? Once sin had full dominion, but in the life of a believer it is destroyed by the Spirit of Christ, “But we have the mind of Christ” (1 Cor 2:16). Not destroyed entirely, but destroyed as to its dominion, “sin shall not be master over you” (Rm 6:14).
Sin is dethroned in the sense and judgment so that sin and the world are seen in their true colors as exceedingly sinful, evil, and dangerous. It is dethroned in the will so that faith says “not my will but Yours be done”. It is dethroned in the heart and mind so that His commandments are not burdensome, but the joy and delight of the heart. It is dethroned in the life which is crucified with its lusts, desires, and affections by the power of the cross of Jesus. It is not quite dead, but it dies a lingering death as by faith it is crucified daily. Sense judges from what it sees and feels whereas faith judges by what God says. Sense is governed by appearances and perceptions whereas faith is governed by what God has declared and promised. Sense is deluded by persuasive arguments, philosophy, and the elementary principles of this world (Col 2:4, 8), whereas faith believes, trusts, clings to, and lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God (Dt 8:3; Mt 4:4). Sense is changeable and varies with the circumstances, so a person who walks by sight and not by faith will be unstable in all their ways and cannot expect to receive anything from the Lord (Jm 1:6-8).
Sense will cause people to form their judgment of the season based on their circumstances, not the infallible marks given in God’s word, and is usually wrong and unreliable. When circumstances are good and favorable, then they are a good and sincere believer and all is well with them. But when they walk in darkness and everything seems to point against them, when all their earthly props and supports are removed, when they are left with nothing but the word of God in which to trust, and they must wait for the fulfillment of God’s promises in which He has caused them to hope, this puts the sincerity of their faith to the test to see if it is the faith of which Christ is the author, or only a fair-weather faith fit only for times of ease, pleasure, accommodation, and prosperity, not a dangerous season. When multitudes were coming to be baptized by John the Baptist, he could boldly testify of Jesus that He is the Lamb of God (Jn 1:29). But when John was imprisoned for calling sin by its right name (Mk 6:17, 18), he sent his disciples to ask Jesus if He was “the Expected One, or shall we wait for another” (Mt 11:2, 3). Jesus did not allay John’s doubts and fears by answering him with a definitive yes and no; yes, I am the Expected One, and no, you should not wait for another. Rather Jesus appealed to the signs and marks given in Scripture that would accompany and characterize the times and work of the Messiah, and left it to John to either accept them and walk by faith, or to stumble over the person of Jesus because to sense He did not fit the traditional Jewish conception and expectations of the Messiah (Mt 11:4-6). The only other Messiah John and others could possibly wait for would be one of their own imaginations, not the One received by faith.
Sense can be, and usually is, sincerely wrong. A person can be sincere without the truth, and even against it, but one will do no good without the other. Many will follow their sense into error and falsehood in the sincerity of their heart and do much harm to themselves and others when they mean well. Good intentions do not make good actions. Hell will be full of people who were good intenders, but wrong practitioners. Sincerity does not change the nature of sin. A weed is still a weed regardless of where it grows. It is inconsistent with God’s holiness and the power of the gospel to pretend that God indulges sin done sincerely instead of willfully and maliciously. No doubt Peter’s intentions were sincere when he attempted to rebuke Jesus, but Jesus quickly let Peter know that his intentions were satanically inspired (Mt 16:22, 23), because they set his mind on man’s self-interests, not on the interests and will of God. No matter how sincere his motivations, they were man-centered, not God-centered. In fact, they were contrary to the revealed will and word of God (Lk 24:25, 26). The only true sincerity is a godly sincerity. The Apostle Paul makes a sharp distinction between a godly sincerity and that which is of the flesh, “that in holiness and godly sincerity, not in fleshly wisdom but in the grace of God, we have conducted ourselves in the world,” (2 Cor 1:12). Godly sincerity and fleshly wisdom are polar opposites. The word translated “sincerity”, eilikrineia, describes testing and examining something by the light of the sun, by which any flaw or defect is discovered.
A true godly sincerity is one that is not only willing, but desirous to have all their thoughts, opinions, beliefs, affections, judgments, and practices held up to and examined by the light of God’s pure and unadulterated word. If these can be looked on by the light of the word, and not be put to shame by it, then the sincere believer can go on with confidence and courage. No danger, defamation, or apparent lack of success will stop, deter, or dissuade him. But if any of these will not come to the light, not being able to stand its trial, but instead appeal to sense, emotion, mystical impressions, and fleshly human wisdom to justify it, then they expose themselves as being of darkness, not of the light. A sincere faith is that which labors to take the measure and standard of all its actions and affections by nothing other than the pure and unadulterated word of God. God does not consider the sincerity of those who, while thinking they are offering service to God, devote themselves to corrupting, adulterating, misrepresenting, peddling, and pillaging His word, His gospel, His worship, and His church, or who immerse themselves in the defense of some erroneous belief, practice, and lifestyle, trying to shield it from the light, and thereby making their error their god (Jn 16:2).The light exposes, convicts, converts, and conforms, not extenuates, conceals, or confuses.
How often did Jesus expose and explode the erroneous beliefs and practices of Israel’s guides and leaders? Yet how very few were ever convinced or recovered. How often did the Reformers expose and refute the doctrines and practices of Roman Catholicism? How much of the current beliefs and practices of present day churches, many of which have only been introduced within the last two or three generations, and most with the sincerest of intentions, are indefensible from Scripture? How hard it is to convince someone who is immersed in defending an erroneous belief, practice, and lifestyle! It is not enough to have truth in our head if it is not also in our hearts. Any truth that is under dispute in the mind cannot be held in the heart. If there is any doubt in the mind as to the truth of any doctrine, promise, command, or warning of Scripture, it cannot be loved in the heart and become practical and practiced in the life. It will remain theoretical at best. The reason people could call Jesus Lord, Lord, and yet not do what He says is because they never had any firm conviction of the truth that He is Lord of lords and King of kings (Lk 6:46). Jesus Christ and His word never change and are always true, always inerrant, always authoritative, always sufficient, and always trustworthy.
The business of the day, therefore, lies with true believers who by faith recognize the danger of the season in which we live, and whom God has humbled under His mighty hand to seek the Lord, to come out from the world and be separate (2 Cor 6:17), and to plead with Him to once again pour out His Spirit to convict the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment, and to recover Christianity from the horrible apostasy into which it has currently fallen, and which makes the season so very dangerous. It is up to them (for it is certain that no one else will) to pray against infidelity, worldliness, self, and sin, both our own and this nation’s, with all of its abominable and noxious fruits, and that God would not allow our apostasy to be our ruin. We are as ripe today for God’s judgment as were Israel, Judah, and Jerusalem. Even more so because we have sinned against greater light and grace, corrupted, peddled, and adulterated greater truths, and been led astray and fallen away from greater commands and promises.
No judgment of God is tolerable, but it will be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah than for what constitutes the mass of professing Christianity today unless there is a sound, drastic, sincere, and thorough repentance and a return to the truth as it is found in Christ Jesus. Just as it required a drastic and painful repentance for the men of Israel to put away their foreign wives in the days of Nehemiah, and to be purified from everything that was foreign (Neh 13:23-30), so it will require a drastic repentance to be recovered from the apostasy, worldliness, and carnal beliefs, practices, and lifestyles to which the self-interests of the bulk of churches and those who belong to them are now wed, and which are not only foreign to Scripture, but condemned by it. We can only hope and pray that like the reforms of good king Josiah, they are not too little, too late. A ruined vessel can be remade as long as the clay remains soft (Jer 18:1-4), but once it becomes hardened in its sin, error, worldliness, and apostasy it can only be shattered and broken (Jer 19:10, 11).
We have great reason to mourn before the Lord and to pray that He would rescue His church and His gospel from the blind guides, teachers, leaders, worldliness, carnality, and false worship and practices that now dominate it, and which make the season in which we live so dangerous. We have great reason to pray that God would raise up men who would be shepherds after His own heart. Men who will preach and teach the whole counsel of God and the unadulterated gospel of Jesus Christ, which is the gospel according to godliness, along with all its commands, both positive and negative, and the obedience which they require. Men who will preach not as pleasing men so as to retain and generate more church members, but God who examines our hearts. Any church or ministry, along with its guides and leaders, that is striving to be friends with the world and pleasing to the generality of people cannot be bond-servants of Christ (Gal 1:10), no matter how much they disguise themselves as, and outwardly appear to be servants of righteousness. To sense they may outwardly appear to be sheep, but according to the tests of God’s word, inwardly they are ravenous wolves (Mt 7:15). We have every reason to pray the prayer of Habakkuk, “Lord, I have heard the report about You, and I fear. O Lord, revive Your work in the midst of the years, in the midst of the years make it known; in wrath remember mercy” (Hab 3:2).
Other Causes of the Present Apostasy
There are other causes that have led to the present apostasy other than the ones I have already considered in prior studies, and which makes the season in which we live especially dangerous. One of the most pernicious is one I have already hinted at in previous studies and in this paper, and that is the age-old, widespread, and pervasive practice of renaming sin and appropriating respectable, psychologized, and justifying names and titles for every form of sin and evil imaginable, thereby causing people to form their judgments of sin’s sinfulness based on its false names and titles. To the degree by which sin is divested of its guilt and sinfulness, to the same degree God’s just and justly deserved wrath against it will be seen as unreasonable, unwarranted, unprovoked, undeserved, unnecessary, and uncalled-for. The more that evil is justified, and the less sin is considered sinful, then the less people will endure being defined as vile, wicked, and hopeless sinners, the less they will see their need for a Savior, and the more Jesus, His gospel, and His church are repackaged as the means toward self-fulfillment, a positive self-image, and social equality.
This was the ultimate downfall of Saul, when he redefined and justified his disobedience by calling it obedience and worship (1 Sm 15:19-23). This was one of the principle means by which Old Testament Israel was hardened in their idolatries, false worship, evil practices, worldliness, and openly lecherous lifestyles (Jer 14:13, 14). Isaiah warned against the habit of the people to call evil good and good evil (Is 5:20), a habit they obviously never overcame (Mt 12:10-12), and a practice that embodies the season in which we now live. The prophet Malachi condemned the priests of Israel for teaching and saying, “Everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the Lord, and He delights in them” (Mal 2:17). In other words, it was the equivalent of the modern day practice of turning sin into a virtue, even heroic, and the message that God loves everybody.
This was the prejudice which John the Baptist had to contend with when he came calling the people to repentance. They felt secure in themselves because they were the children of Abraham (Mt 3:9), and therefore by virtue of being Abrahams physical decedents, were automatically heirs of all of God’s promises to Abraham, regardless of what they were in themselves. Jesus had to contend with the Jewish leaders who justified their love of money in the sight of men (Lk 16:14, 15), a justification still widely practiced today. These examples, and many more could be cited, should make it abundantly evident that the closer people and churches are to a general apostasy, and to destruction itself, the more prepared they are to trust in, cling to, and comfort themselves in their outward condition, forms of godliness, and their own perceived righteousness, since they have nothing else in which to trust. They do not see themselves as the guilty, vile sinners and children of wrath that the Bible declares all to be (Rm 3:23; Eph 2:3), and under the just condemnation of a holy and offended God.
Like the Jews they invent justifying names for their sin, and outwardly respectable forms of worship and forms of godliness by which they may justify to themselves their invalidating the word of God (Mt 15:6). In fact just like the Jews, many guides, leaders, and churches “are experts at setting aside the commandments of God,” (Mk 7:9). They specialize in this and have developed it into an art form. They call their sins by respectable names thereby smearing them with whitewash, eradicating their sinfulness, desensitizing their consciences to their evil, and emancipating themselves from their judgments. Today, people are not guilty perpetrators, but victims of their sin. Sin is no longer sin but a disorder. It is no longer an abomination, but an alternative lifestyle. People are not totally depraved and by nature children of God’s wrath because of the fall, incapable of doing anything to make themselves beloved children of God, but rather they are merely broken. Entertainment is worship. Accommodating the world is evangelism. Pandering to the flesh is church growth. Exposing sin as sin is unloving. Dark is light and light is dark. If people were able to justify themselves and their sin under the unique and exceptional ministry of the prophets, John the Baptist, and even Jesus Christ, who sought to expose their misleading teachings, elaborate justifications, false securities, and hidden agendas by calling them by their proper names, and calling people to repentance and obedience to the commands of the gospel, how much more will people be able to shield themselves from the sinfulness of sin when their guides, teachers, and leaders not only teach them to do so, but also provide them with the justifying names for their sin! This makes a season dangerous.
When people who have “given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness” (Eph 4:19) – because there are many kinds and forms of impurity, most of which have been given respectable names and are more culturally acceptable than others, and which people cannot get enough of – to where their lives become indistinguishable from the generality of the people and culture in which they live, yet they are regarded as being Christians by the churches to which they belong, and are made partakers of all its privileges, it cannot help but heighten their security in their sin and worldliness, and severely undermine the means of their recovery and restoration. True salvation is rare, but for those who are deceived into thinking they are Christians by their guides, leaders, and the churches to which they belong, and have lived under this delusion for a period of time, true salvation is even more rare. Likewise, when others who have not so entangled themselves in worldliness, sensuality, impurities, self-indulgence, and sin see that they might still be considered Christians and have all the blessings promised to the children of God, even if they were to run in the same excess of dissipation with others, this cannot help but weaken their diligence to guard their heart and mind, and make them more susceptible to the temptations from the world, the flesh, and the devil. It encourages and teaches them to give respectable names to their sin, especially when their sin is not as explicitly wicked as the sin of others, and in spite of which, they are still considered and counted to be Christians. There are very few who desire to be more pure, holy, spiritually-minded, self-denying, and separate from the world than they think is absolutely necessary to be regarded a legitimate Christian by other professing Christians. When the church of Sardis was really dead, the primary means of keeping it in that condition was its outward appearance and the reputation that it had for being alive (Rv 3:1).
Is this the purpose for which Christ founded His church, gave it His commands, and instituted its ordinances, so that they could be used by its guides and leaders to affirm a dead faith and encourage people in a neglect, and even into a contempt and hatred of holiness, self-denial, separation from the world, and gospel obedience? If the church of Jesus Christ is the exclusive object of God’s special electing love and grace in the world, and if participation in it and its ordinances is meant to confirm someone’s being in Christ by grace through faith and heirs of the promise of eternal life, then no better way can be contrived whereby the world and its lusts are increasingly accommodated within the church, and facilitate its apostasy from the commands of the gospel, than by giving sin respectable and justifying names and actively seeking and admitting people into it while they are living in an open and flagrant disregard and disobedience to the commands of the gospel. No better scheme can be contrived whereby the drawing of clear distinctions between the clean and unclean, good and evil, true and false, biblical and unbiblical practices, sound and unsound doctrine, and the true believer and false professor becomes intolerable to the mass of churches and those who belong to them. No more effective means can be devised whereby people will no longer tolerate having sin, evil, and worldliness called by their true names. Such a church and people are not the bride of Christ, but a system of religion invented by the mind of man and the devil himself.
Do not all true Christians love Jesus Christ? Do not all who love Jesus Christ, and who are children of light, and walk as children of light also hate darkness and expose its unfruitful deeds by calling them by their right names (Eph 5:7-12)? Do not those who love God also hate evil and every false way (Ps 97:10; 119;104, 128)? The fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness, and truth, and truth calls things by their right names. Truth makes clear distinctions between light and dark, clean and unclean, and true and false. Children of light increasingly see the world in its true colors so as to come out from among the world and be separate from it. Those who practice the truth come to the light, not shield themselves from it; not corrupt, adulterate, and peddle it (Jn 3:21). They do not substitute dark for light and bitter for sweet (Is 5:20), and act as if there is some debate or confusion as to which is which. Despite the wishes of the popular culture, light and dark cannot coexist. Those who truly love Christ also love ALL of His word and ALL of His commandments, and desire with all their heart to keep and practice them. It ought to be beyond any dispute that Jesus Christ has made the growing, increasing, and habitual pattern of obedience to the commands and precepts of the gospel the only indispensable condition and inviolable rule for participation in His church and being a member of His body (1 Jn 3:6-12; 5:1-3).
Gospel obedience is the only outward evidence given by the Bible by which anyone can know whether or not they are truly in Christ, “These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, in order that you may know that you have eternal life” (1 Jn 5:13); “Therefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come” (2 Cor 5:17); “if you are living according to the flesh, you must die; but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body you will live” (Rm 8:13). Paul rejoiced in what Jesus Christ “has accomplished through me, resulting in the obedience of the Gentiles by word and deed” (Rm 15:18). Therefore, when people realize on what easy terms they can be accounted a Christian and a member of Christ’s body, and that by simply making a profession of faith and complying with some outward forms and rituals they can secure their title and be exempt from any doubt as to the legitimacy of their faith or exclusion from Christ’s church, even by the most flagrant and openly disobedient, immoral, carnal, worldly, profane, self-indulgent, promiscuous, and licentious course of life, then what is left to restrain them from indulging in all the lusts and worldly desires that the culture will condone, their desensitized conscience will permit, and their income will allow?
This was the means which promoted the first great general apostasy in the world, authored by the Church of Rome, and which came upon all its members and adherents. First, innumerable multitudes were brought into the church and a profession of Christianity, not by a true conversion and the experience of its truth, power, and gospel obedience, but in compliance with the rituals and edicts of their rulers and their own worldly interests. Then, once being made a part of the church on very easy terms, all concern for the necessity of obedience to the commands of the gospel was soon eradicated and replaced with rituals, professions, and superstitions. Even though they lived in all the sins which should never be associated with saints, and on account of which the wrath of God always comes (Eph 5:3-6), yet they alone were the church of Christ. Under these circumstances why should the people be troubled with denying self and the world, and pursuing holiness of life and purity of heart and mind? Why should they not live as if their being in the church freed them from the commands of the gospel and the obedience they require? Under the name of Christianity and the church, Christ and the true gospel were almost totally lost until recovered by the Reformers.
But even after the recovery of the true gospel by the Reformation, the bride of Christ came to be defined as including everyone who lived within the sound of a church bell. Parents brought their infants to the church to be christened, by which act they were then considered to be a member of the church and a partaker in all its privileges. When some Christians began to insist that the proper definition of the church was not everyone in town, but only those people who showed evidence of a new birth by becoming obedient from the heart to the commands of the gospel in both word and deed (Rm 6:17), these were branded with the name of Anabaptists, and sadly, were severely persecuted by many of the Reformers. In this way, the churches and the people who belonged to them increasingly became indistinguishable from the people and culture in which they lived. Anyone could be honored with the name of Christian simply because they were born in a certain place, attended a place of worship, and performed some religious ceremonies, without any evidence of their being in any way different from the generality of people and the culture in which they lived in their speech, thinking, values, habits, tastes, and lifestyles. This led to the degeneracy and apostasy which characterized the generality of the church and society prior to The Great Awakening.
What grounds is there for expecting any less of an apostasy today when the church and Christianity have been so redefined to where they bear no relation to the church and Christianity of the Bible; when the mass of churches and professing Christians have been taught by their guides and leaders that they can be Christians and part of the church on similarly easy terms? That they can be Christians, not because they have received the love of the truth for its own sake, with a firm resolve to forsake all things in this world rather than forsake or redefine its commands and doctrines, but because they made a profession and submitted to a religious ceremony. If the causes are the same, why should we expect different effects? To suppose that the true gospel of Jesus Christ in any way supports such a redefinition of Christianity is to exercise the highest contempt imaginable against it. It is easier to become a member of most churches than it is to become a member of many civic organizations. As long as nothing more than being born in a certain nation, or going through a religious ceremony, or praying a prayer, or making a profession, or following certain popular preachers is required to make someone a Christian; as long as Christianity is defined with no relation to the commands of the gospel and the obedience they require, we can expect nothing else but a dangerous season. A season in which people can live and revel in their sin and evil, give it respectable names, despise all who would call it by its right names, grow worse and worse, and still think they will go to heaven when they die. In such a season true Christians must be content to live by faith and not by sight and sense, and to endure ill-treatment with the people of God rather than enjoy the passing pleasures of sin, no matter how much they are justified and redefined. Call them what you will, give them whatever justifying names you want, it is still “because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience” (Eph 5:6). Do not be deceived with empty words, changing their names does not change God’s wrath against them, rather it always leads to the apostasy which makes a season dangerous.
Another Cause
Another cause of the apostasy which makes a season dangerous is when people who advocate strange, heretical, and unbiblical teachings, doctrines, and practices, or who promote and support those who do, are elevated to positions of prominence, influence, and notoriety within professing Christendom. This is what has always led to the degeneration of once strong Christian institutions. This is what happened to Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, all of which are now hotbeds of atheism. This is what happened when those who held to and promoted the dogmas of Higher Criticism infiltrated seminaries and entire denominations. These ungodly doctrines then filtered down into the churches through the pastors trained under these people, resulting in their total apostasy from the truths and commands of the gospel. The same can be said for the pernicious Carnal Christian doctrine, so-called, which, by means of the teaching of prominent and influential men, has succeeded in convincing most churches and professing Christians that a Christian can live in a way that is indistinguishable from an unbeliever. Such is the case with the invitation system, introduced and practiced by popular and famous men, that equates “making a decision” or “accepting Jesus” with true conversion. Also, in this way the ungodly theories of evolution, psychology, and the ruinous philosophies of feminism have been surreptitiously integrated into the doctrines and practices of Christianity. The ecumenicalism that treats Catholicism as just another Christian denomination rather than a false religion was legitimized in this way. Various forms of a false social justice gospel are now being spread by leaders of various institutions, parachurch organizations, and denominations. Today the most popular preachers are those who are also the most conspicuously greedy, profligate, and worldly and the greatest inventors and conveyors of false teaching, false worship, and false practices imaginable.
It is not possible that a heart and mind set on the things of this earth can love the things that are heavenly. It is not possible for a carnal mind to love heavenly truth. You will spend your life on what has your love, either on the things of this world or on the things above that are not of this world. An earthly mind will spend its life taking heavenly truths and adulterating, corrupting, redefining, and denying them for earthly and carnal purposes. It will turn grace into license, love into liberalism, faith into sense, the Bible into just another book, sin into a virtue, worship into entertainment, a divine new birth into a human decision, sovereign grace into freewill, redemptive into humanitarian, the gospel into universalism, hell into a myth, church into a business, ministry into a career, obedience into legalism, divine wrath against sin into a fiction, the cross into paganism, Christian into a brand name, Christianity into whatever suits its self-interests, and Christ into someone just like them.
It is incredible how quickly an entire age and generation of churches and professing Christians will be influenced, corrupted, and led astray in this way, “They turned aside quickly from the way in which their fathers had walked in obeying the commandments of the Lord;” (Jug 2:17); “I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel;” (Gal 1:6). When I hear of anyone who once held to any truth of Scripture – truths such as original sin, total depravity of man’s entire nature, the necessity and nature of a new birth, holiness as conformity to the law of God, sanctification as active obedience to the commands of the gospel and separation from the world, eternal torment of all unbelievers in a real hell, the inerrancy, authority, and sufficiency of Scripture – but now redefines, denies, and distances themselves from them, I cannot help but believe they never received the love of these truths in their heart (2 Th 2:10), or through neglect, weariness, and love of ease, the approval of man, and self-interest lost the efficacy of the truth in their heart before they lost it in their judgment.
Many other examples could be mentioned in which the mass of churches and professing Christians have defected from the truths and principles once held and practiced by the primitive Christians and historic Christianity. Long before they cast off their old principles in their judgments, they had already lost their love for them in their hearts. Would it not be better to labor to recover this first love for the truth than to continue to depart from it upon such weak arguments and evidences that are brought against it? At present, the world, including the mass of churches and professing Christians, is in such a hurry and headstrong in a course of sin, worldliness, and apostasy, that the best of examples and doctrine are not able in any measure to noticeably stem or restrict its torrents, “For from the prophets of Jerusalem pollution has gone forth into all the land” (Jer 23:15). If any famous and celebrated persons provide examples in sinning and help to further remove any remaining restraints of fear, shame, punishment, and reputation, then we get the season in which we now live where the lack of restraint in sinning rises to an exorbitant, uncontrollable, outrageous and dangerous level, and all who would expose it for what it really is by the light of Scripture are considered at best a bit strange.
Another Cause
Another cause of the apostasy which makes a season dangerous is the failure to guard against national and cultural errors, sins, and vices. There are some errors and vices, that for one reason or another, are peculiar to a particular nation and/or culture and that flourish in them. Their general acceptance within the culture gives these errors and sins a great advantage over the minds of people, causing their practice to be easily insinuated and assimilated. Because people are constantly surrounded by them, their commonness takes away the sense of their sinfulness and guilt. We call it desensitization. That which in one nation or culture would be considered the most wicked act imaginable, in another, by convention, does not even raise an eyebrow. In fact, criticizing it would bring down the harshest criticism. That which most people in this nation dub entertainment is in many nations regarded as subversive to public morality. Sins which this nation has legalized and legitimized, in another nation are looked upon with the greatest disgust and abhorrence.
By this we can gauge the influence of the gospel in any nation, and that is by the effect it has against known national and culturally accepted sins and errors. If these are not substantially weakened and reduced by the gospel, if the minds and affections of people are not estranged from them and made watchful against them, if they are not exposed in their true colors so that their sinfulness and guilt appear stark naked, unconcealed by the respectable names and commonness with which they have been cloaked, then whatever profession is made of the gospel, it is vain and useless. What kind of gospel and church must they be that are not only powerless in subduing national and cultural sins and errors, but ones under which they thrive, flourish, and increase to outrageous heights, and are openly practiced without any shame or restraint? It can only be a different gospel and church that has lost its saltiness, apostatized from the true, and degenerated into mere forms of godliness without its power.
Jew and Gentile alike had cultural sins and errors that a true faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ and obedience to its commands require they be renounced and forsaken. The Apostle Paul instructed Titus that there was a national tendency toward moral laxity and laziness among the Cretans for which Titus was to “reprove them severely that they may be sound in the faith, not paying attention to Jewish myths and commandments of men who turn away from the truth” (Tit 1:13, 14). Whatever their profession of faith might have been, if they were not delivered by the power of the gospel from the influence and practice of their customary cultural sins and errors, then their soundness in the faith or fruitfulness in obedience would be short-lived. The Jews became infamous for their persistent and obstinate refusal to forsake their cultural and national sins and errors to which they tenaciously clung generation after generation, “This wicked people, who refuse to listen to My words, who walk in the stubbornness of their hearts and have gone after other gods to serve them and to bow down to them, let them be just like this waistband, which is totally worthless” (Jer 13:10).
It is the most conclusive evidence of a degenerate people and church when they not only abound in their own national and cultural sins and errors, but also adopt and naturalize the errors, false religions, philosophies, and vices of other peoples and cultures that live among them, yet have no desire to imitate any virtues which they may possess. The highest level of degeneracy and apostasy that can be reached is when a nation and church export their sins and errors, thereby corrupting another nation both morally and spiritually, “Also Judah did not keep the commandments of the Lord their God, but walked in the customs which Israel had introduced” (2 Kgs 17:19). Where national and cultural sins have become commonplace, it is easier for a person to keep from catching the most infectious and lethal disease than to keep from being infected, to one degree or another, by them. It is astonishing how easily they will insinuate and infiltrate themselves into the minds and lives of a nation and church, until, over two or three generations, they come to be accepted as the norm, culminating in a dangerous season. This is why pure and undefiled religion consists in keeping and guarding oneself from becoming tainted in any way by the world and its errors, sins, vices, values, thinking, fashions, trends, reasoning, speech, and practices (Jm 1:27). There is no defense against them accept to be thoroughly covered in the full armor of God (Eph 6:10-17); something which very few even understand, much less apply to themselves. It is impossible, by any other means, for any single believer to triumph in such a season, a season in which the mass of churches, their guides, teachers, and leaders, and the people who belong to them, have allied themselves with the world in an ungodly confederacy, and by whom the apostasy of which I speak is so openly, visibly, greedily, and enthusiastically promoted and embraced.
So, it has come to pass that the mass of professing Christianity is, once again, by one means or another, apostatized from the commands of the gospel and sunk down into little more than heathenism, and the power of it drowned out by common national sins and errors, leaving little but the outward form of it in the world. Wherever the gospel fails to turn people from vain idols to serve a living and true God (1 Th 1:9), and cause them “to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously, and godly in this present age,” (Tit 2:12), either the gospel never truly reigned among them, or they have fallen away from it into forms without its power. And where people who keep up a profession of Christianity still do expose, denounce, and condemn such national sins, errors, and vices, if these things are publically condoned, defended, and promoted, they provide the occasion for new individual apostasies every day. Finding it too costly, and being unwilling to hold out against these national and cultural sins and errors, they can find no relief but in abandoning the doctrines and religion that exposes and condemns them, for some form of it that accommodates and justifies them.
In this way the mass of churches today have apostatized from the Bible’s teachings and principles concerning creation, judgment, the nature of man, the nature of saving faith, the biblical roles of men and women, divorce, modesty, morality, sin, worldliness, worship, godly parenting and child discipline, holiness of life and separation from the world, and many other commands of the gospel. No more is needed to produce this apostasy than for national sins and errors, once suppressed by the power of the gospel, to once again spring up, multiply, and overgrow the generality of the people, thereby choking out all the effects of the true gospel, and making a season highly dangerous. The seeds of this apostasy began being sown long ago and now they are bearing their bitter fruit. We have sown to the flesh and are now reaping the corruption. Here is infidelity with its natural effects. Only the grace and power of God and a recovery of the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ can put a stop to these pernicious effects. May we repent and be spared. I am praying, preaching, writing, and exhorting all that I can in this truth-despising age to try and awaken people to the danger of the season in which we live, and to try and put a stop to the horrible madness and apostasy of our times. If these things can be used of God to turn one person from the error of their ways to a simple and pure devotion to Christ, I will have received my reward, but I pray that God will use them to reach many others. In times such as ours, most of this may be in vain, but my reward is with my God. I wish to be innocent of any man’s blood. I pray the same can be said of all whom the Lord in His province brings to read these studies.
I have attempted to identify some of the principle causes taught by the Bible which make a season perilous. There are more, such as persecution and gross biblical ignorance and gullibility, which I could have enlarged upon. Any one of these causes by itself is sufficient to make a season dangerous, but when they are all present at the same time, and are so pervasive, unchecked, and exorbitant as they are today, then this cannot help but make a season dangerous in the extreme. In the next study I will begin to address how true Christians are to live for the glory of Christ and persevere in times such as these. May God keep, guard, and guide us through them.