The Comfort of a Persevering Faith
By John Fast
“But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come.” – 2 Timothy 3:1
Anyone who has been observing the current state of professing Christendom and the drift of the church, and who is not totally apathetic to the spiritual and moral decay of our times, cannot help but notice that we live in an age when uncertainty, conciliation, and compromise in matters of faith and doctrine is considered more Christian than dogmatism, exposing error, persevering in the truth, and contending earnestly for the faith once for all delivered to the saints (Jude 3). To compromise is ‘Christian’; to be unwavering and dogmatic is to be merely ‘religious’ in the worst possible sense of the word. ‘Respect’ for other views, beliefs, and opinions, no matter how heretical, unbiblical, or destructive to the authority, inerrancy, and sufficiency of Scripture and to true Christianity is now considered by most to be a virtue, even when that ‘respect’ has the practical effect of negating the truth which is professed and canceling out any affirmation of the Bible’s authority. We have forgotten that ‘respect’ for error is disrespectful, dishonoring, and hostile toward God and His Word (2 Chr 19:2; Jm 4:4). The Bible does not call for us to be ‘compassionate’, ‘understanding’, and to have an open mind when it comes to the defection from and denial of the authority, sufficiency, clarity, inerrancy, and finality of God’s Word and sound doctrine. Instead we are commanded to be of a sound mind and to think so as to “be of sound judgment and sober spirit” (1 Pt 4:7), which is nothing less than judging, examining, and comparing everything with sound doctrine, and rejecting, exposing, and avoiding, not ‘respecting’, everything that does not conform to it, “But examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good; abstain from every form of evil” (1 Th 5:21, 22).
The Bible does not call for ‘respect’, discussion, polite debate, or to seek an understanding and common ground with error, but for avoiding, exposing, warning, and opposing error, no matter the source (1 Tm 6:20, 21). As we pointed out in an earlier study, one of the things that makes a season dangerous is when some “fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and the doctrines of demons,” (1 Tm 4:1). The verb translated “paying attention to” (prosechontes) has the meaning of “to devote oneself to”; “to pay close attention to”; “to give careful consideration to”, and is the means by which some apostatize from the faith. It is this pseudo-scholarly desire to interact with ‘new’ ideas and ‘rethink’ the historic understandings of Scripture, which are not really ‘new’ understandings but the denial of Scripture’s true meaning, all while promising a ‘better’ understanding of the Bible, a more ‘authentic’ Christianity, and represented as being consistent with evangelical Christianity. The gospel is still professed but it is not the Gospel of historic Christianity. The main reason this unprecedented tolerance for error has today gained such ascendancy is that its ethos coincides more readily with the new mood of the culture than does the older convictions and more narrow, historical-grammatical, and dogmatic understanding of the Bible. When any error in belief and practice gains speedy and widespread popularity in the church it is almost always because there is something in it that is agreeable with the spirit of the age. In this nation that spirit is primarily a spirit of ‘democracy’ that views progress and success as accepting change and innovation in every sphere of life, and a reaction against everything that is old and ‘obsolete’.
The real influence behind this shift, however, is not to gain a ‘better’ and more modern understanding of the Bible, but a disbelief in the Bible as the Word of God. As it turns out, only parts of the Bible are to be believed and it is now in the hands of ‘scholars’, and up to each individual church, group, and person to determine which parts are to be believed and which can be ignored, amended, edited, compromised, or dismissed as no longer ‘relevant’ for today. No part of Scripture is inherently authoritative; all must first pass through the sieve of modern thought, ‘scholarship’, and even personal preference, experience, and emotion. When, as is the case today, the Christian ministry is dominated by people whose zeal, ambition, pragmatism, charisma, demagoguery, and natural talents far exceed their biblical knowledge and understanding, and when men and women who are untaught in the Bible are left to decide its meaning for themselves, this cannot help but lead to drifting away from biblical Christianity. This loose, democratic, and cavalier approach to the Bible is the most spiritually suicidal act any denomination, church, group, or person could commit. Such people, while claiming the Bible as their authority, can all too easily be led astray into beliefs and practices which not only have no support from Scripture, but are contrary to it. And while they may think that they are following the Bible and their own judgment, the fact is they are deceived by their own heart and led astray by demagogues who know how to manipulate emotion, the Bible, and populist opinion. The dangers of ignorance and error increase rather than decrease when they are coupled with fervent professions of belief in the Bible and the low levels of doctrinal teaching and knowledge so prevalent today. Ideas and teachings popularized by the spirit of the age and populist preachers become too engrained to be countered by the all too few faithful and discerning pastors. Only when professing Christians put the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ and His Word first can the world begin to see the distinction between those who are Christ’s and those who are of this world.
We now live in a world where the means of disseminating opinion-molding ideas and information has never been easier and more prolific. New ideas can now travel from one part of the world to another virtually instantaneously. When these ‘new’ ideas are represented as being consistent with historic Christianity, and are advanced by ostensibly creditable people in a season when the mass of professing Christians are woefully ill-taught, biblically illiterate, but technologically proficient, then the consequences for historic Christianity are ruinous. These ‘new’ ideas, techniques, methods, beliefs, and practices soon transcend all denominational boundaries and are legitimized and generally accepted based merely on the extent to which they prove ‘successful’. Soon a generation of professing Christians arises, inheriting all the deviations of their past leaders in addition to those of more recent ones, not knowing that the Christianity which they profess bears no relation to that taught by the New Testament, or that true Christianity ever did or can exist without all of their ‘new’ innovations. These ‘new’ ideas and practices come to assume a degree of importance as an indispensable and necessary part of Christianity, and a means of growth, conversion, and sanctification. Satan recognizes no generational boundaries and limitations. He is quite willing to ply his temptations slowly and incrementally over several generations, gradually leading the mind astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ, until a generation finally arises that will no longer endure sound doctrine. Much of the error and compromise that has now become part of the fabric of what is today considered evangelical Christianity is but feeble reproductions of the rejected errors of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Historic Christianity or Historical Compromise?
What modern innovators consider to be a ‘new’ discovery and scheme calculated to bring new and more people into the church, upon closer examination is found to be nothing other than some old heresy clothed in new garb. When these innovations are exposed for what they are, then those who expose them are accused of being divisive and causing controversy and confusion. This is like a poacher complaining of the havoc caused by a game warden. The reason given by Jesus for why darkness hates the light was, “lest his deeds should be exposed” (Jn 3:20). The success of the caricature is made easier by the profound biblical, theological, and historical ignorance of the mass of professing Christians.
Many leaders who now criticize and warn against all the recently introduced compromises and innovations also accept, use, and defend older and more established ones, not realizing that it is these older and more accepted compromises and innovations that have paved the way for the more recent. This is merely to quibble over the kind and extent of compromises and innovations that are to be accepted and employed. It is not a question of being for or against compromise, ‘new’ innovations, methods, and techniques, but of adopting means other than those few given by God, namely preaching and prayer, to grow God’s church, induce excitement and interest, and elicit a response from those who hear the gospel. Virtually all of the innovations introduced in the past two-hundred years, everything from the invitation system to entertainment-driven worship, have been deliberately calculated to have this effect. When one innovation begins to lose steam, then a ‘new’ one is sure to take its place. Whatever form they may take, they all inevitably confuse the excitement, interest, and response that can be humanly manufactured with a true work of the Holy Spirit. The entire process seems to be designed not to increase true conversions, promote genuine Christianity, and equip the saints, but to increase numbers, promote false conversions, instill false hopes, and propagate spurious Christianity.
At the heart of all this lies a compromised and different doctrine of regeneration, conversion, and what it means to be a Christian. A ‘new’ theology of conversion will inevitably be accompanied by a ‘new’ evangelism. All that is needed in this system for someone to be a Christian is to make the right choice, not to be made a new creature; a ‘decision’ of the will, not a radical change of nature. Regeneration is to be effected by getting people to respond to an invitation, pray a prayer, make a decision, enticing the ‘unchurched’ to become ‘churched’, and to make some sort of profession of faith. If the objective is to gain interest, increase numbers, and provoke a response, then there must be something ‘new’, and these ‘new’ methods, practices, and techniques must be defended on the basis of a new and compromised theology of regeneration and conversion, and a new conception of what it is to be a Christian. What this ‘new’ theology of conversion and its accompanying evangelism has done is to spread a counterfeit system of religion far more destructive to historical Christianity than any ancient heresy ever was. This new theology of regeneration and conversion has in fact been, since the late 19th century, the national religion of this nation, especially in the so-called Bible belt of the South. It is so well-established and entrenched that very few know of the existence of any other theology, and no wonder. The bulk of preaching has been historically devoid of exposition and doctrinal instruction of any kind; rather it has consisted exclusively of exhortation, morality, flattery, and story-telling.
If the case in favor of ‘new’ innovations, practices, methods, and beliefs were founded on the express teaching of Scripture or the testimony of church history, the likelihood of the arguments and propaganda in their favor being convincing would be slim to none, but these are not what the proponents of ‘new’ methods and beliefs have ever depended upon for their defense. The proof for them is said to be self-evident. Their ‘success’ speaks for itself. The argument from success is all the proof needed to convince that they must be of God.
A Fatal Attraction
Today we find ourselves in the unpopular position of having to contend with a lamentable decline and defection from the truth of the gospel and what it means to be a Christian not only from within erstwhile Protestant denominations, but from the growing and flourishing host of entrepreneurial non-denominational entities. It is a season in which every theological peddler, showman, and demagogue may find a ready and willing audience and do a thriving business, and where calls to ‘rethink’ everything from worship to what it is to be a Christian meet with hardy approval. Some of these are close enough to the truth to be able to attract nominal and undiscerning professors without their defection from the doctrines of historic Christianity being too obvious. But fellowship between truth and error and between faith and unbelief will always, sooner or later, be fatal to truth and faith. We may ‘engage the culture’, we may flirt with uncertainty, ‘respect’ error, toy with unbelief and disobedience, and invent ‘new’ means to our heart’s content, but the outcome will always be the defection from and denial of sound doctrine. We have forgotten that error and unbelief are sins, that truth does not change with the times and can never be harmonized with anything that deviates in the least from it, “because no lie is of the truth” (1 Jn 2:21). This is what makes a true and unshakeable faith in the Word of God as the Word of God indispensable for true Christianity to exist. Yet for the past two-hundred years the emphasis in the majority of evangelism has been on getting people to ‘accept’ Jesus, ‘invite’ Jesus, and ‘make’ Jesus Lord, not on trusting, repenting, submitting to, loving, and obeying Jesus and His Word, thereby filling the professing church with people who have never undergone a new birth and who have no faith in the Word of God as the Word of God, and lack a true persevering faith.
The way in which people typically acquire a false faith, hope, and assurance is this: they are first convinced that they have been reconciled to God because, they are told, God loves them just the way they are, or He would not have made them as they are, and that Christ’s sacrifice has reconciled them to God, but not necessarily changed their nature. It is on the basis of this persuasion that God loves them and is reconciled to them that they are reconciled to God. But if they ever come to think that God is still displeased with them, and intends to punish them, then their old hatred and hostility to God will soon return. Their God would never do such a thing. The true Christian, however, is reconciled because they recognize the holiness of the God whose holy law they have violated, and God’s justice in condemning them. They then condemn themselves, siding with God against themselves, and submit to God knowing and agreeing they fully deserve to be condemned. They sink down at His feet ashamed and broken hearted, and the more Christ stoops to embrace them, the lower they sink and the more humbled they become. They are reconciled because they are delighted with the holy nature of God; the false convert, because they believe that God is pleased and delighted with them.
If the new birth is, as most seem to believe, the result of faith rather than the cause of faith, and if ‘faith’ is equated with a ‘decision’, an emotional experience, and a visible action, then the new birth is merely a question of making the right decision, being emotionally moved, and performing the required action, not a sovereign supernatural work of the Holy Spirit that transforms our minds and creates in us a new nature. If salvation is available simply for the asking, and if it can be gained as easily as making the right ‘decision’, then ‘success’ and growth is merely a matter of getting the greatest possible number to ask and make the right decision – purely a matter of persuasion, manipulation, and salesmanship – and whatever means provoke people to make this ‘decision’ must be good and right, and to oppose these means is the equivalent of opposing the work of God. But to urge people who are under the conviction of sin to ‘come forward’ or to perform any external act as a sign or aid to faith and conversion, if not the act of faith and conversion, is to ignore the radical nature of the spiritual transformation that calls a person from darkness to light. All those whom God regenerates will repent, believe, and confess Christ as Lord and Savior, but for a preacher to give instructions that lead people to associate regeneration with a visible physical action to be performed at the issuing of an ‘invitation’ by the preacher, can only mislead, promote, and proliferate false religious experience. As theology grows weaker and shallower, then the more technique, programs, showmanship, and allurements come to dominate. Spectators rarely make devout, serious, obedient, and faithful Christians. To equate excitement, high emotions, and physical actions with a spiritual experience is to leave oneself wide open to self-deception. If one of Israel’s preeminent teachers and theologians did not understand the nature and necessity of the new birth (Jn 3:10), why are we surprised if the bulk of professing Christian’s understanding is just as defective, especially when for generations they have been taught a different theology of regeneration by their leaders.
To be born again is to possess a new nature that loves holiness, godliness, the law of God, and conformity to Him (Eph 5:1), which exhibits itself visibly in a radical break with the principles of sin and self-interest that dominates and controls the natural unregenerate person. To identify and represent anything as true conversion and the work of the Holy Spirit that does not first manifest itself in holiness, submission, obedience, and purity of life is to misrepresent and undermine the real meaning of what it is to be a Christian. A Christianity that does not make visible and obvious the assertion of Paul, “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), and of John, “And by this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments” (1 Jn 2:3), is merely a form of godliness that denies its life transforming power.
In identifying one of the primary contributors to the decay of American Christianity and the rise of a superficial and spurious Christianity, especially in the South, which came out of the camp meetings in Kentucky and Tennessee during the Second Great Awakening in the early 19th century, Iain Murray writes,
“To this attempt to secure a speedy knowledge of conversions among the American Methodists before 1800, a new practice now came to be commonly added. The excitement of the camp meetings had brought much attention to the visible….Certainly, if the response to gospel preaching could be made instantly visible, there would be a far readier way of assessing success….Something else was needed and it was found in what became known as ‘the invitation to the altar’….The initial justification for the new practice was that by bringing individuals to identify themselves publicly it was possible for them to be prayed with and to be given instruction. Nobody, at first, claimed to regard it as a means of conversion. But very soon, and inevitably, answering the call to the altar came to be confused with being converted….As the idea gained ground that coming forward was the alternative to being lost, results and successes on an unprecedented scale were witnessed….In particular, their idea that men cannot repent and believe unless they have the ability to do so seemed logical and reasonable to the common man….If the immediate and visible were to be the tests then the Methodist novelties had the advantage, and any theology that took an opposing view, it was said, was hostile to evangelism and revival …. Apparent success added weight to the case. The numbers who made a public response were held up as unanswerable proof, and many preachers whose beliefs had not previously been Arminian were carried away.”[1]
The same criteria, the immediate and visible, remains the tests by which virtually all teaching, methods, practices, and ministries are currently assessed, and their ‘success’, or lack thereof, is the standard that determines whether or not they are of God. Their legitimacy is verified by the numbers that flock to their ministry and sadly the minds of most professing Christians have been carried away and led astray in the process. Emotion coupled with numbers, loud raucous music, mass singing, dramatic lighting, and populist preaching is virtually guaranteed to draw a crowd and produce a response. Faithful pastors, on the other hand, using only their Bibles rather than any knowledge of human psychology, marketing, and cultural trends, know from Scripture that no method or technique can produce true believers. Instead, such things have just the opposite effect. The use of means, methods, and techniques other than those given by God are guaranteed to confuse and corrupt the real meaning of what it is to be a Christian.
To place any significance on outward signs of emotion and excitement, such as hand-waving, tears, and coming forward, is the surest way to guarantee that the natural is first confused and then substituted for the spiritual. When people who have been affected merely by the shallow, superficial, exciting, and emotional are urged to a premature profession of ‘faith’, and then are affirmed in it, then it is inevitable that serious, destructive, and long term consequences will follow. The fruit of genuine regeneration will be scorned, Christianity redefined, and the reputation of true evangelical Christianity will be sullied and discredited; “because of them the way of truth will be maligned” (2 Pt 2:2). It is a spurious Christianity that intentionally aims at producing emotion and excitement. The reasons that motivate many to attend any place of Christian worship and involve themselves in its programs, events, and activities are not necessarily spiritual, but carnal and worldly. The appeal is not to the soul of people hungering and thirsting after righteousness, but to the carnal nature seeking after entertainment, fun, excitement, convenience, self-importance, affirmation, acceptance, ‘community’, and solace from the pressures of life. Innovations that are intentionally designed to appeal to the carnal, fleshly nature of man are in direct violation of Peter’s urging “to abstain from fleshly lusts” (1 Pt 2:11), thereby marking them out not only as unbiblical, but hostile to a true work of the Holy Spirit because they “wage war against the soul” (1 Pt 2:11).
It is truly astounding to hear truths and doctrines that have been defended and taught by the greatest and most godly theologians and pastors for centuries, being denied and condemned as ‘bad doctrine’, ‘irrelevant’, ‘outdated’, and ‘unchristian’, especially when that denial comes from people who have never in their lives studied theology, church history, or read any work or system of theology, and in most cases, do not know one end of their Bible from the other. In an age in which we continue to see more and more high-profile, popular, and ‘successful’ pastors, teachers, and leaders deny and defect from the Word of God, promote counterfeit forms of Christianity, and the bulk of professing Christians unwilling to endure sound doctrine, we need a faith that will persevere and “let God be found true, though every man be found a liar,” (Rm 3:4).
Herein lies the cause of all apostasy. To idolize ‘success’, preachers, ‘scholarship’, ‘tolerance’, methods, programs, or the church itself is to depart from faith in Jesus Christ as Lord. The present terrible decline and decay of professing Christianity, along with the horrible moral and societal degeneration, should be no mystery. Nothing is more common than for the increase of wealth, comfort, pleasure, and liberty to produce a decline in real faith and holiness (Dt 8:11-14). With increased liberty, worldliness, and ease of sinning comes leanness of soul. What the great theologian J. Gresham Machen once wrote concerning liberal theology in particular is now true of professing Christianity in general,
“In the sphere of religion, in particular, the present time is a time of conflict; the great redemptive religion which has always been known as Christianity is battling against a totally diverse type of religious belief, which is only the more destructive of the Christian faith because it makes use of traditional Christian terminology….In such an age, it is obvious that every inheritance from the past must be subject to searching criticism; and as a matter of fact some convictions of the human race have crumbled to pieces in the test. Indeed, dependence of any institution upon the past is now sometimes even regarded as furnishing a presumption, not in favor of it, but against it. So many convictions have had to be abandoned that men have sometimes come to believe that all convictions must go. If such an attitude be justified, then no institution is faced by a stronger hostile presumption than the institution of the Christian religion, for no institution has based itself more squarely upon the authority of a by-gone age….In trying to remove from Christianity everything that could possibly be objected to…, in trying to bribe off the enemy by those concessions which the enemy most desires, the apologist has really abandoned what he started out to defend. Here as in many other departments of life it appears that the things that are sometimes thought to be hardest to defend are also the things that are the most worth defending.”[2]
Crumbling to Pieces
So then, the apostasy which makes the season in which we live so exceedingly dangerous should come as no surprise. Gospel truths, for the most part, are no longer considered worth defending, especially if defending them is counterproductive to self-interest, popular opinion, and ‘church growth’. Instead compromise, uncertainty, ‘respect’, and open-mindedness are the ‘new’ Christian values and virtues. A seemingly endless string of concessions have been made, concessions which the enemy most desires – concessions to feminism, egalitarianism, liberalism, humanism, ecumenicalism, pragmatism, Arminianism, antinomianism, modernism, evolution, psychology, worldliness, immorality, immodesty, and now ultimately to the perversions of the LGBTQ contingency. One is left to wonder if there are any biblical truths and doctrines of the gospel that remain to be compromised. The warnings given by Jesus and the writers of the New Testament have been so long ignored and disregarded, resulting in the abandonment and crumbling to pieces of human convictions and institutions as fundamental as marriage and gender. The abandonment and decay of such rudimentary natural human institutions is clear evidence of how intense, formidable, and institutionalized the hostility has become, even among professing Christians, towards sound doctrine, and of the extent to which true Christianity and its doctrines have been relinquished, rejected, and forsaken for another gospel. Jesus warned His disciples, “Take care what you listen to” (Mk 4:24); “Beware of false prophets” (Mt 7:15); “Beware of men” (Mt 10:17); “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees” (Mt 16:11); “Beware, and be on your guard against every form of greed” (Lk 12:15). The Apostle Paul warned, “that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and the doctrines of demons,” (1 Tm 4:1). He wrote of the Jews, that they “were broken off for their unbelief” (Rm 11:20), and he applies the same warning to every professing Christian and church (Rm 11:21), as does Jesus (Rv 2:5, 16, 20; 3:3, 16). The Apostle John warned, “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world” (1 Jn 4:1).
With ideas such as those propagated by antinomianism, Arminianism, feminism, psychology, evolution, Charismatic theology, and a hodgepodge of other worldly influences, and urged on by everything from public education and social media, to religious charlatans, parachurch organizations, seminaries, and even entire denominations, it is no wonder that professing Christendom is a maelstrom of confusion and suffers from an almost total lack of discernment. Some are fixed upon one error and some on another without any apparent ability to come to the knowledge of the truth (2 Tim 3:7). Many are prepared to receive any ‘new’ teaching and method provided it is presented in an attractive and novel enough package, agreeable with the spirit of the age, and produces the desired effects, and to criticize anyone as narrow, cold, stale, and dead who does not share their enthusiasm or who shines the light of truth on their error. Those who have enough biblical sense, however, do not accept nor are they swayed by this criticism, faulty reasoning, or apparent ‘success’, nor by the description of those who try to label them as schismatic, narrow, antiquated, unloving, ignorant, intolerant, and irrelevant.
The doctrines that “upset the world” (Ac 17:6) were the doctrines of human depravity and inability, sin and its wages, the wrath to come, regeneration, repentance, justification by faith in the righteousness of Christ alone, sanctification as conformity to the Law of God, the grace of God in sending His Son to be the propitiation for our sins, the assurance of salvation, the blessed hope of a bodily resurrection unto eternal life. These are the truths for which multitudes of Christians throughout history have been willing to suffer the most severe trials and persecutions (2 Th 1:5). These are the truths that at one time filled churches and transformed entire nations. They are the truths that motivated people to walk twenty miles or more, one way, to hear these truths preached in a barn or open field. They are the truths that compelled pioneer missionaries to suffer and endure unimaginable hardships, dangers, deprivations, and years of no visible success in order to carry these truths to those who had never heard them.
Where these truths are still taught but without similar results, it is usually assumed that something ‘new’, ‘innovative’, and ‘modern’ is needed, ushering in calls for change and in a persuasion that something more than ‘mere doctrine’ is needed. ‘Change or die’, has become a maxim for much of modern Christianity. What these advocates of change have failed to appreciate is that there is nothing ‘mere’ about sound doctrine, and that all their changes, instead of arresting and reversing this indifference to sound doctrine, have actually accelerated it to the extent that most professing Christians will no longer endure it. All that these changes have succeeded in accomplishing is to convince people that the Bible is not the ultimate authority, sound doctrine is not sufficient, and that faith in the Word of God as the Word of God is unnecessary for true Christianity to exist, thereby filling the church with unbelievers that will not endure sound doctrine, yet are convinced that they are true Christians.
When the truths of the Bible become ‘irrelevant’ and are no longer endured, when faith in the Word of God as the Word of God is abandoned, and when its truths no longer move, edify, convict, or excite, it is because they are no longer rightly believed. What is at the bottom of all these calls for change – change in methods of evangelism, preaching, worship, the church, ministry, the gospel, the Bible, and in what it means to be a Christian – is a disbelief in the Word of God as the Word of God, notwithstanding any profession to the contrary. What is professed in principle is denied in practice, “They profess to know God, but by their deeds they deny Him,” (Tit 2:16); that is, they deny God as He has revealed Himself in His Word and in His Son. More specifically, the calls for change and the introduction of ‘new’ innovations and techniques deny that Scripture is sufficient and authoritative, and that God is faithful to bless the only means that He has appointed to regenerate sinners, sanctify believers, and grow His church. To deny God one or more of His attributes, or to ascribe to God attributes that are inconsistent with and contrary to His revealed nature, are the same thing as denying God absolutely. It is ingrained in the nature of unregenerate mankind to think that God is other than He is; typically bearing an uncanny resemblance to themselves, “you thought I was just like you;” (Ps 50:21). Every idol, whether ancient or modern, pagan or pseudo-Christian, is simply what the unregenerate mind of man imagines God to be like, including the idol of ‘success’. It appears that most have either forgotten or chosen to ignore the fact of, “that which is highly esteemed among men is detestable in the sight of God” (Lk 16:15).
True conversion is not assisted, simplified, or multiplied by ‘new’ innovations and bypassing the conviction of sin and God’s wrath, hiding the truth of mankind’s incurable natural depravity and inability, denying the fact that sinners cannot go from darkness to light and from hostility to holiness at their own discretion, and that a person must first feel themselves to be so deeply wicked and hopelessly lost before they see that their only hope is the sovereign grace and mercy of God in Jesus Christ. Any denial of mankind’s actual and total depravity, and to substitute in its place a nominal, superficial brokenness, is to not only deny the clear testimony of Scripture and obvious evidence, but to undermine the entire plan of salvation and the necessity of a new birth. The true gospel has for the most part been substituted with a different gospel that downplays God’s holiness and justice and man’s depravity, sinfulness, and need, and that emphasizes, almost to the exclusion of all His other attributes, the love of God. Is it not the least bit curious that in the book of the Bible that records the spread of the gospel and the growth of the early church, the Book of Acts, that the word ‘love’ is not used even once, but the words ‘faith’ and ‘believe’ are found twenty-four times, ‘repent’ and ‘repentance’ eleven times, and ‘obey’ twice?
Today, most church growth requires no supernatural explanation, but can be attributed solely to something ‘new’, ‘innovative’, ‘exciting’, and ‘up-to-date’, or to the outstanding natural gifts of some person. If these changes for a time result in larger numbers and greater growth than that produced by ‘mere doctrine’, it is only the growth of weeds and tares that will not endure sound doctrine nor stand firm in a dangerous season, not the growth of well-rooted fruitful trees of the Lord. The astounding fact is that the proponents of these ‘new’ views and methods, whose books, teachings, and models have come to dominate and govern evangelical thought and practice, seem to believe that they represent authentic biblical Christianity. They promote and endorse the fallacious idea that their changes and ‘new’ innovations constitute no real departure from all that characterizes true faith, worship, salvation, and Christianity, nor amount to a practical denial of the authority, sufficiency, and finality of Scripture. They scarcely mention the magnitude of the difference that exists between the old and the ‘new’, and the historical and the ‘modern’.
What characterizes a true work of God is not that which results from the employment of ‘new’, ‘innovative’, and unusual means to stir up and maintain excitement. To do so, and then attribute that excitement to a work of God, is a grave and dangerous error. The presence of God and the extent of His working are not to be judged by such things, but by the deep and lasting impact made on people by the power of divine truth, and their willingness to not only endure it, but to desire, love, obey, defend, sacrifice, and suffer for it. It must be by no other means than those few appointed by God, namely the clear exposition of divine truth and earnest prayer; nothing but pure and sober truth that works in the heart, mind, and conscience through which God does His true work. This work is not noisy, popular, irrational, disorderly, flippant, flamboyant, and temporary, but deep, solemn, quiet, rational, personal, permanent, and maturing. It is reverence, humility, and quiet submission, not noise, bedlam, and excitement that marks the sense of God’s presence with His people. Excitement and emotion can be humanly incited and manufactured, but reverence, humility, and awe cannot. When people are truly conscious of the presence of God, like Job and John, they become silent, serious, submissive, and humble (Job 42:1-6; Rev 1:17). Those in whom God’s Word performs its work (1 Thes 2:13) come to see and believe that everything in the Bible is true, and that they are totally sinful and in the hands of an almighty, all-knowing, and sovereign God. It is no mere ‘decision’, emotion, and feeling of religious euphoria that produces faith in the Bible, deep conviction, self-denial, obedience, puts an end to unbelief, changes and transforms the heart, mind, life, values, and moral character, and makes someone a servant of Christ; rather it is a sovereign work of the Holy Spirit working through the Word preached and earnest prayer.
The faithful preaching of God’s Word always has some effect on those who hear it at the time (Is 55:11), but it is the sovereign prerogative of God to produce the effect He pleases, which may be different in different times and in different people. In some the preached Word may harden them in a false faith as did the preaching of Jeremiah (Jer 44:16, 17). In some it may produce initial joy, but later they fall away (Mt 13:20, 21). In some it may produce conviction and fear, but not conversion, like Paul’s preaching to Felix (Ac 24:25). In some it may produce anger, as did Steven’s preaching to the Jews (Ac 7:54). In some it may produce offence (Mt 13:57). In some it may produce indifference (Mt 22:5). In some it may produce scoffing and ridicule, or intellectual curiosity and ‘scholarship’ (Ac 17:32). In some it may produce a false faith and assurance (Rv 3:17). In some it may produce self-centered desires and carnal ambitions (Ac 8:18, 19). And in some it may be the means used of God to grant a new birth and bring a sinner from darkness to light (1 Cor 1:21). All these and more were the effects of the preaching of the Old Testament prophets, John the Baptist, Jesus, and the apostles. Their duty was to faithfully preach the Word, but the effect it produced was the sovereign prerogative of God. No ‘new’ innovations, techniques, and methods were ever introduced in order to gain a ‘better’ response and wider receptivity. A tree is known by its fruit, and it takes time for fruit to appear. Only a small percentage of the blossoms on a tree yield fruit, and some fruit will drop off before it ripens, or it becomes diseased and rots. That is why only those who have a faith that perseveres until the end will be saved (Mt 24:13; 2 Tm 2:12; Jm 1:12).
It is by means of a sovereign work of God alone that His people are given a praying spirit and a lively, self-denying, persevering faith. It is the sovereign work of the Holy Spirit who makes the same means more effective in some seasons than in others, and there are no ‘different’, ‘better’, or ‘newer’ means and methods that may be developed and employed to produce supposedly greater results. The results produced by these other means are all forms of godliness without its life transforming power. The only explanation for times of both great spiritual blessing and its effect on morality and society, and for times when that blessing is withheld along with the attending spiritual defection, moral degeneration, and societal decay is the Spirit of God, which like the wind “blows where it wishes” (Jn 3:8). In the work of God’s sovereign grace there is no definite time between sowing and reaping. The Holy Spirit does not work on our timetable. The time between seasons of God’s blessing, their length, place, and extent, and the duration of times of great spiritual and moral decay and darkness, are known only to the One to whom “one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (2 Pt 3:8; cf. Ps 90:4). It is God who sovereignly determines places and times, and He does so in such a way that His sovereign work can by no means be attributed to any human agency or activity.
If God does not bless the clear, accurate, and prayerful exposition of His Word it is because He has no intention of displaying His sovereign grace. In the providence of God some Christians are called to labor in a season of great spiritual blessing and harvest, while other’s labors coincide with a season of great spiritual darkness, decay, and corruption, and a time of superficial spirituality, spurious Christianity, and atheistical fanaticism that rocks the very foundations of society. Some labor in a time when the fields are ripe for harvest, and others when the fields are full of weeds, tares, and stony ground professors; some when professing Christians are moved, excited, convicted, and thrilled by God’s Word alone, and some when the mass of professing Christians will not endure sound doctrine.
Therefore, in such seasons of spiritual decay, counterfeits that are intentionally designed to manipulate emotion, instill a sense of excitement, and elicit a response are introduced, then come to be associated with true conversion and Christianity. The fanning of excitement and the repeated urgings for those who feel little conviction to do something and to make some sort of profession is now the all-consuming objective. Representing a counterfeit faith as genuine, and a form of godliness as the work of the Holy Spirit will, more than anything else, hinder a genuine work of the Holy Spirit. It is clear that the mass of professing Christians, churches, and their leaders, have not yet realized enough of the horrible consequences of all their innovations to fully appreciate the extent of the harm already done, and they cannot avoid experiencing more of these consequences before they will finally take a decided stand, renounce their deviations, and work to recover the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ and what it truly means to be born again and a new creature in Christ. As things now stand, the greater portion are, on the one hand, through ignorance or error, openly prejudiced against the true nature of regeneration and faith, or, on the other hand, are so committed to incorrect, unbiblical, and erroneous principles, techniques, methods, and practices, and that from a profound willful ignorance and distrust of the only means appointed by God, until all that the Bible warns and threatens as the inevitable result of adopting erroneous principles and practices, calculated to sow to the flesh, are inflicted upon them and realized in the ruined and corrupted Christianity of this nation. Even if many did make an effort to abandon their unbiblical innovations, the decline in their ‘success’ would move them to resort again to the same or ‘newer’ methods rather than persevere in faith in God’s appointed means. Their ‘new’ means and methods are defended as being the very essence of Christianity, despite having no biblical command, principle, pattern, example, or justification other than their apparent ‘success’. Like Old Testament Israel, “Their deeds will not allow them to return to their God” (Hos 5:4).
The question posed to Jesus by those hostile to Him can well be asked of our modern proponents of change, “By what authority are You doing these things, or who gave You this authority to do these things?” (Mk 11:28). Whoever gave the authority to any person, church, denomination, or system of religion to declare that some teachings, doctrines, and even whole portions of the Bible are to be ‘rethought’ and relegated to the dustbin of theology and are no longer to be considered inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness (2 Tm 3:16)? When did anyone receive the authority to nullify and countermand God’s clear commands, prohibitions, warnings, threats, accounts, and explanations? From where did the authority come to condone what God condemns and permit what God forbids? By what authority does anyone supplement God’s word and worship with their own impressions, opinions, inventions, preferences, forms, and imaginations? What presumption! What unmitigated arrogance! What blindness! What an embodiment of foolishness! What a provocation for divine judgment and withholding of the Spirit’s blessing! When people who profess to be Christians refuse to submit to any authority other than that of their own mind, the result will always be a superficial and spurious Christianity that denies in practice what it professes to believe in principle. Like Israel, “they have rejected the law of the Lord of hosts, and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel” (Is 5:24). And what was the consequence? “On this account the anger of the Lord has burned against His people, and He has stretched out His hand against them and struck them down” (Is 5:25).
No Guarantee
In this season, genuine and faithful Christians must labor to recover the true nature of sound doctrine and what it really means to be a Christian from before the time their entire meaning became so thoroughly confused. This is by no means quick or easy to do. It must begin with a determination on the part of faithful men, in total dependence upon the Holy Spirit, to persevere in preaching and living sound doctrine, no matter how out of season, and despite the lack of any visible ‘success’ and positive results, and in the full conviction that God is always faithful to His Word. One American pastor of the 19th century, Gardiner Spring, spoke truly when he said, “There is one grace you cannot counterfeit…and that is the grace of perseverance”. It is not those who are good and successful, or good and popular, or good and famous, or good and ‘scholarly’, or good and moral, or good and innovative, or good and talented, or good and spiritual, or good and sincere who will hear those marvelous words “well done”, but only those servants of Christ who are good and faithful (Mt 25:21, 23). Strict, faithful, uncompromising, and persevering adherence to the Bible and sound doctrine is the only safeguard against the deceits of the devil, the error of unprincipled men, and what may wrongly be attributed to a work of the Holy Spirit (2 Pt 3:17, 18).
In pursuing this goal, it is important that we keep in mind an essential truth if we are to persevere and “not lose heart in doing good” (Gal 6:9). No human activity, whether done by few or by many, even when done in faith and in obedience to God’s Word, can guarantee results (Rm 9:18). Prayer and the preached Word have no inherent power in themselves to change or accomplish anything. God is sovereign in all His actions. The size and extent of the blessing which God is pleased to give, or not to give as the case may be, in our lifetime through the use of His appointed means is completely in His own hands and according to the counsel of His own will. He has never promised earthly blessings, rewards, and results proportional to the labor and sacrifice devoted to His cause. If He did we would not need all the biblical commands, warnings, and admonitions to persevere, endure, wait on the Lord, and not grow weary. In fact, just the opposite has often been the case. Noah preached for 120 years to no effect. Jeremiah and Ezekiel were warned upfront that their preaching would have no visible or positive results (Jer 1:19; Ezk 2:7). All the prophets sent by God to His people were persecuted (Ac 7:52). Paul was warned that he must suffer much for the cause of Christ (Ac 9:16). No labor for the cause of Christ prospers by meeting certain ‘conditions’ or by simply following biblical prescriptions and patterns, any more than the conversion of any person can be attributed to any human agency or action. When tangible results become the motive and goal of ministry, then whatever means that produce those results will be the means employed, even when those means deny in practice what is professed in principle, namely the sufficiency, authority, inerrancy, and finality of Scripture, and faith in the Word of God as the Word of God.
Differing results of the same message and doctrines, not only in different periods of church history, but in different locations in the same season, shows the necessity of divine power to make them effective. “Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit,” says the Lord of hosts (Zech 4:6), is true in every age. “Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it;” (Ps 127:1). One plants, another waters, but it is God who causes the growth (1 Cor 3:6, 7). At times the simple reading of a verse of Scripture has been the means the Holy Spirit has used to convict and convert secure and careless sinners, while at other times the most convicting, powerful and biblical preaching has been in vain. The difference is to be attributed solely to divine grace. In a season when God in judgment withholds this special grace because it has been abused, corrupted, counterfeited, or disbelieved, or because people will no longer endure the means through which the Holy Spirit works, namely sound doctrine and earnest prayer, and where faith in the Word of God as the Word of God has been abandoned, then ‘results’ and ‘success’ must be produced artificially by other means, falsely attributed to a work of the Holy Spirit, and then represented as exemplifying true conversion and Christianity, when in reality it is merely a form devoid of any biblical evidence of its life transforming power and that exhibits a spirit that cannot be harmonized with the spirit that the Bible declares characterizes a child of God and biblical Christianity.
The glory of the church does not consist in its size or in the number and person of ‘converts’, but in the faithfulness and obedience with which they serve the Lord and glorify Him with their lives. In times of great spiritual blessing the attention is always on the Builder of the church, whereas in times of great spiritual decay the attention is always on the institution of the church, its people, and their life in this world. This must always be the case where the minds of professing Christians have been led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ. How rare in this age of social media, celebrities, personalities, branding, self-promotion, self-importance, and self-gratification is the spirit of John the Baptist, “He must increase, but I must decrease” (Jn 3:30). For the person with such a heart and love for Christ to seek and promote their own honor, reputation, cause, party, and popularity at the expense of Christ’s, His word, His gospel, and His glory would be the farthest thing from their mind and their greatest sorrow. This spirit that desires and seeks after name recognition, popularity, a following, vainglory, book sales, and self-supremacy is a sin that above all others undermines both the gospel and the gospel ministry which is the restoration and exaltation of God, His commands, His word, and His kingdom as the supreme rule and authority in every sphere of life.
This is what makes experimental knowledge of gospel truths superior to all other knowledge, because gospel truths cannot be truly understood until they are experienced spiritually and felt in the heart (1 Cor 2:14). For instance, the doctrine that a true Christian always has a newfound desire to obey and submit to all the Word of God as the Word of God, to Jesus Christ as Lord, to purify themselves, just as He is pure (1 Jn 3:3), and will submit and obey (1 Jn 5:3), not perfectly, but sincerely, and will persevere until the end, is only accepted by those who have felt and experienced this new desire in their own heart and life. Those who have never had or experienced this longing and desire will deny that such unconditional obedience, spiritual hunger and growth, and perseverance are indispensable evidence of being a true Christian. Instead, they will invent and be content with superficial and counterfeit forms of Christianity for which obedience is selective and holiness is optional, and in which becoming a Christian is more dependent on a human decision, emotional experience, or on being baptized, than on any evidence of a sovereign regenerating work of God in the heart and mind. Only those who have an unconditional and unwavering faith in the Word of God as the authoritative, sufficient, and final Word of God can ever know and feel the comfort and hope that comes from “the encouragement of Scripture” (Rm 15:4).
Churches today want a pastor who can attract people and increase numbers by whatever means have proven ‘successful’ for other churches. If those means happen to include avoiding ‘controversial’ doctrines, watering down the truth, and implementing generally accepted compromises and innovations, as long as they produce growth, and the pretense of preaching and believing the Bible is kept up, then all is well. But if not, they will ask him to resign. After all, what has proven ‘successful’ for one man should be successful for another and what one man has done another man can and could do, and if not, then find someone who can and will. Ambition is always a close and natural companion of pragmatism and expediency. There is an all too pervasive willingness to allow beliefs, practices, and convictions to be influenced by considerations other than the Word of God, thereby leading the mind astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ.
Christian unity is a spiritual unity and is only possible among those who have the same faith as Abraham and are possessed by the same conception of Christianity. They believe in a gospel which must be felt and seen in its transforming power, in a faith that perseveres against all the temptations to redefine, deny, and defect from it, in the Word of God as the Word of God, and in the Holy Spirit on whose activity all success depends. They not only know, but mostly they have experienced and feel the plan of salvation. This produces the only faith that will comfort, relieve, uphold, unburden the soul, and persevere in an age when not only the most basic of natural human convictions and institutions continue to be abandoned and crumble into the dust, but also the very nature of faith, true Christianity, and what it means to be born again; the clear description of which, given by B.B. Warfield, meets today with little reception and much opposition:
“At the root of all lies an act seen by God alone, and mediated by nothing, a direct creative act of the Spirit, the new birth. This new birth pushes itself into man’s own consciousness through the call of the Word, responded to under the persuasive movements of the Spirit; his conscious possession of it is thus mediated by the Word. It becomes visible to his fellow-men only in a turning to God in external obedience, under the constant leading of the indwelling Spirit (Rm viii. 14). A man must be born again by the Spirit to become God’s son. He must be born again by the Spirit and Word to become consciously God’s son. He must manifest his new spiritual life in Spirit-led activities accordant with the new heart which he has received and which is ever renewed afresh by the Spirit, to be recognized by his fellow-men as God’s son. It is the entirety of this process, viewed as the work of God on the soul, which the Scriptures designate “renewal”.[3]
The natural man unhumbled under the mighty hand of God and under the influence of the ‘democratic’ spirit of the age believes that God has no right to give to anyone what He will not give equally to all. He believes that salvation and church growth are a matter of marketing and salesmanship. The enmity which the natural man has against the sovereignty of the grace of God in salvation and against the authority, sufficiency, and finality of His Word has so far prevailed in our day that no effort is spared in trying to put another sense on the words of Scripture other than the clear meaning which God intended to reveal, even to the point of attempting to deny the obvious fact that God created people male and female (Gn 1:27; Mt 19:4).
Persevering Faith
When the Apostle Paul and Silas first brought the gospel to Thessalonica, the enemies of the gospel organized a mob to oppose them and turn public opinion against them (Ac 17:5), eventually driving them out of the city (1 Thes 2:15). They were forced to leave behind a small body of believers who had “become imitators of us and of the Lord, having received the word in much tribulation with the joy of the Holy Spirit” (1 Th 1:6), and who had “turned to God from idols to serve a living and true God” (1:9), and had accepted the word of God’s message “for what it really is, the word of God, which also preforms its work in you who believe” (2:13). Yet Paul was driven out and forced to leave these new converts before he was able to ground and root them in sound doctrine. These new believers were left without any strong, knowledgeable, or mature spiritual leadership to uphold and encourage them to endure the suffering inflicted on them by the hands of their own countrymen (2:14). Very little if any of this suffering involved physical persecution; rather it took the form of attempts by enemies of Paul and the gospel to undermine their faith in the messengers and thereby the message they preached. They were not enemies of the Thessalonians, but of the gospel. Their goal was not to destroy these new believers, but to destroy their faith and to cause them to compromise and defect from their new faith in Christ. Paul himself made numerous attempts to return to Thessalonica in order to strengthen and encourage them in their faith, but he was repeatedly thwarted by the activity of Satan (2:18). Therefore, he did the next best thing, and that was to send Timothy with a two-fold mission. Timothy’s primary mission was to “strengthen and encourage you as to your faith” (3:2), which would in turn fulfill his secondary purpose, “so that no man may be disturbed by these afflictions” (3:3), but then Paul adds this astonishing reminder, “for you yourselves know that we have been destined for this” (3:3). Two words in this passage are particularly germane to the subject of this paper and bear closer scrutiny, especially in light of the season in which we now live, and those two words are “disturbed” and “destined”.
The first of these words (saino), translated “disturbed”, appears only here in the entire Bible. It was originally used to describe a dog wagging its tail, from which it derived its more common usage of, “to fawn or flatter”; “to shake”; “to deceive”. The deception endangering these believers was one coming from sincere, well-meaning family and friends, that they could escape the cultural hostility, marginalization, scorn, opposition, ridicule, and persecution by simply making a few compromises with respect to their faith. They were friendly, flattering appeals and temptations to compromise not just with popular opinion in general, but in particular with the false religion from which they had turned away; a false religion that was part of their rich cultural heritage and national identity as the ‘superior’ people of Greece. Thessalonica after all was named after the sister of Alexander the Great. To turn to God from their idols involved not just a change in religion, but a total repudiation of the heritage and culture in which they and their ancestors had been raised. People who could not be moved by threats and intimidations have been led astray by the emotional arguments, false reasonings, and sincere but wrong and misguided appeals of well-meaning family and friends. Satan is never more like a devil than when he appears as an angel of light. He is never more against the gospel than when he appears to be for it. He is never more active and successful in corrupting the Bible and leading the mind astray than when he is quoting and professing to believe the Bible (Mt 4:6; 2 Cor 2:17; 4:2; 2 Pt 2:1-3; 1 Jn 4:1-6).
Paul sent Timothy with a specific purpose, and that was to “strengthen and encourage them”, that is, to ground, establish, fix, and to be unwavering in that which concerned the faith. Paul knew firsthand from his experience with the church in Galatia how easily people can be persuaded to compromise with error and be moved away and led astray by a different gospel that is more congenial to a person’s self-interest, natural understandings, and spirit of the age (Gal 1:6, 3:1). Paul and Silas had been driven out before they could observe how these new believers, whose initial response to the gospel had been very enthusiastic, would respond to sound doctrine and the satanically inspired temptations to compromise in order to avoid suffering afflictions. Were they true converts or merely stony ground hearers? Paul did not consider an initial enthusiastic reception of the gospel to be evidence of a true work of the Holy Spirit. Something more was needed, and that something else was perseverance. An untested faith is an unsure faith. Timothy was to provide the necessary doctrinal support needed to prevent them from being deceived, and thereby compromising and defecting from the faith.
What made these appeals to compromise so attractive was their “afflictions” that were a direct result of their new faith. It was not the afflictions themselves that posed the threat to their faith; rather their afflictions produced the conditions which made the arguments and temptations to compromise seem so attractive and plausible. “Why do you insist on clinging to this teaching, especially when all your afflictions are a clear indication that the gods are angry with you for turning away from them to serve another God? If this new teaching were true wouldn’t your new God be blessing you instead of allowing you to suffer? Why not compromise? Why not serve both? Why be so dogmatic, so narrow? Why not acknowledge the Jesus in our ‘story’? Why continue to alienate yourself from all who love and care about you? Respect and accept our beliefs and we will respect and accept yours. Be more inclusive. How will you be able to convince others of your core beliefs, which by the way are very noble and virtuous in their own way, if you are unwilling to compromise on things that are not essential to your faith and make some allowances for differences of opinion and cultural background? If you insist on maintaining these narrow views you will be blackballed at work, maybe even lose your job, then how will you provide for your family? If you remain so dogmatic and unwavering in your convictions then your ministry will not have the success that others have enjoyed. We only have your best interest at heart.” It was fawning, flattering, and deceptive arguments such as these that Timothy was sent to counter by grounding these new converts in sound doctrine.
In times of ease, prosperity, accommodation, and shared common values such appeals and temptations to defect and compromise are rarely heard, and if they are they hold little sway and have no attraction. But when those beliefs and convictions are no longer shared by family and friends, are incompatible with the new spirit of the age, and come under assault by the culture and false religion, all of a sudden these arguments become very attractive and easy to rationalize and justify, especially when so many other prominent and professing Christians, and even entire denominations, have already compromised to one extent or another in order to avoid being labeled as ‘irrelevant’ and ‘intolerant’, becoming unpopular, and suffering for their faith. Today more and more professing Christians and churches are succumbing to the pressure to not only affirm immoral, wicked, and degenerate lifestyles, to condone what the Bible condemns, and to permit what the Bible forbids, but to actually affirm that these beliefs, practices, behaviors, and lifestyles are consistent with the new birth and what it means to be a Christian, thereby totally contradicting and denying the clear teaching of the Bible “that those who practice such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God” (Gal 5:21; cf. 1 Cor 6:9, 10).
We did not get to this point overnight. This is the result of decades of compromise, integration, assimilation, and innovations, many of which were initially done with the best of intentions, but whose long term consequences were totally unforeseen and unimagined by those who first introduced them. Satan has no shortage of justifications to offer, all cloaked with flattering, syrupy, and seemingly loving, spiritual, and noble language and motives, and designed to lead the mind astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ. Paul’s constant concern for these new converts was that “the tempter might have tempted you, and our labor should be in vain” (1 Thes 3:5). Satan seeks to destroy the work of God not so much by opposing it, but by corrupting it with compromise. He does not try to stop the stream, but to dilute and poison it. He does not attempt to annihilate Christianity, but to counterfeit the genuine article and substitute it with forms that are spurious and more palatable to the carnal nature of fallen man. Paul’s primary concern for these new believers was not for their temporal, physical, emotional, or psychological well-being, but for their spiritual and eternal. He knew how vulnerable they were to being “disturbed” in their afflictions and having their minds led astray, rather than persevering in the faith, as long as they were not firmly rooted and grounded in sound doctrine (Eph 4:11-16).
This leads to the second word (keimai), translated “destined”. Webster’s defines the word “destine” as, “to decree beforehand; predetermine; to set apart for a specific purpose”, and the word “destiny” as, “something to which a person or thing is destined; a predetermined course of events”. The Greek word has a similar meaning, “to be appointed,; established; reason for existence”. It is obvious that a person’s destiny is not something they determine for themselves, but is in the hands of an outside power. There is much talk today in some religious circles of a Christian’s ‘destiny’. This ‘destiny’ is said to include, among other earthly advantages and blessings, a sense of self-importance, personal empowerment, and self-fulfillment. This, however, is not the “destiny” of which Paul had forewarned the Thessalonians was to be the lot of all true Christians – far from it. Instead, true believers are destined to be disturbed, suffer affliction, and be the subject of the tempters temptations to gain ‘success’ and worldly comfort through compromise, assimilation, dilution, and corruption of the true faith. The word translated “affliction” or “persecution” in 3:4 is in the present tense, passive voice and means “to press together; to afflict by applying pressure from without”. In other words, it is the destiny of every believer that they will be continuously and repeatedly subject to pressure exerted by outside agents; pressure to compromise with error, and to shrink back in order to avoid and alleviate this pressure, and to yield to the plausible but deceptive and erroneous arguments and allurements to compromise in order to gain greater ‘success’, the approval of man, and gratify the flesh. Depending on the season this pressure may be more or less intense. In a dangerous season it will be intense as is evident by the extent to which most professing Christians have already succumbed and compromised. Being subject to this pressure is part of God’s plan for all who are His children.
The world being what it is, and false religion being what it is, and the heart of fallen man being what it is, and the devil being who he is, such afflictions and suffering are an unavoidable and necessary part of true Christianity. They are part of the terms for being a Christian (Ac 14:22). As their destiny these afflictions and deceitful pressures are not just an unfortunate side effect of being a Christian, but part of God’s sovereign plan and purpose for all His true children, they are part of the purpose for which they have been called and set apart from the rest of mankind (1 Pt 2:20, 21). They make a distinction between those who are truly born again and those whose profession of faith is just that, merely a profession; a form of godliness without its power; the product of a different theology of regeneration. While Paul was still with the Thessalonians he repeatedly warned these new converts of this impending affliction (3:4). His prediction was not from some supernatural prophetic insight, but simply from an awareness of the natural response of the unregenerate heart to the true gospel. It required no more insight to predict their sufferings than it does to predict the success of those methods, innovations, techniques, and teachings that are more congenial to self-interest, the natural understandings of unregenerate men, the spirit of the age, and that appeal to his carnal, fleshly, and self-righteous nature. In fact, the inventors of these ‘new’ innovations not only predict their success, but virtually guarantee it.
To fulfill this destiny, and avoid being deceived by the temptations of the tempter, requires being rooted and grounded in sound doctrine, something that is rarely found in a dangerous season when the minds of the mass of professing Christians have already been led astray and when they will no longer endure sound doctrine. It will not be found in the bulk of so-called Christian literature published today, or in what makes up the preponderance of that found on Christian radio and television, or from the greater part of parachurch organizations, internet ministries, and in the blogs and podcasts in which we are inundated. It requires a faith that will persevere and not compromise in the face of all the pressure brought to bear by not only a hostile culture, false Christians, and counterfeit Christianity, but by well-meaning yet misguided friends and family and the cunning, alluring, plausible, and deceptive temptations of the tempter – a persevering faith that is rooted and grounded in sound, not corrupted and compromised, doctrine.
The Blessing of a Persevering Faith
There are two things that sink a person’s spirit when under the pressure of distresses and affliction: the first is the intensity of the pressure, and the second is the weakness of the soul to bear-up and persevere under them. Faith relieves the soul of both by making crushing pressures light, and by strengthening and encouraging the weak soul. This is why Paul engaged in earnest, desperate prayer, night and day, to be able to return to Thessalonica so that he might “complete what is lacking in your faith” (1 Thes 3:10). Just because these new converts had persevered thus far against the pressures to compromise and the repeated temptations of the tempter, Paul did not think his job was done, nor did he leave them with a false assurance that they had arrived. He did not mitigate and ignore their danger with “once saved, always saved.” There is a vast difference between the biblical doctrine of the perseverance of the saints and its counterfeit of “once saved, always saved” that is based on a ‘new’ theology of conversion and altered understanding of what it means to be a Christian. There are other marks of true conversion other than perseverance; there is also growth and maturity. All living things grow. Their faith was not defective, but it was deficient and incomplete. They were still vulnerable to being “tossed here and there by waves, and carried about by every wind of doctrine and trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming” (Eph 4:14), and to “being carried away by the error of unprincipled men” and falling from their own steadfastness (2 Pt 3:17).
First, faith lightens a Christian’s afflictions and pressures by taking away both their heaviness and their horror, and it does this in several ways. It does so by “casting all our anxiety upon Him, because He cares for you” (1 Pt 5:7). “Do not be afraid any longer, only believe” (Mk 5:36). What weighs us down in times of trouble, affliction, and distress is not so much the outward distress itself, but the inward thoughts, worries, uncertainties, speculations, and imaginings. In other words, it is because we are trusting in our own understanding and not trusting in the Lord with all our heart (Pv 3:5, 6). But by committing the matter to God, trusting in His promises, His nature, and His sovereignty, our soul is soon brought to a state of peace, “Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives, do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful” (Jn 14:27). “In peace I will both lie down and sleep, for You alone, O Lord, make me to dwell in safety” (Ps 4:8).
Second, by finding the good in all our afflictions, “It was good for me that I was afflicted, that I may learn Your statutes” (Ps 119:71). The more present good which faith finds in our afflictions, the easier they are to bear. Because we are God’s children, they are all designed for our ultimate good. They are not simply evils and afflictions as are the afflictions of the wicked, but they also contain much good (Hb 12:10). If Satan had not succeeded in thwarting Paul’s efforts to return to Thessalonica, we might not have his letter that not only instructed and enriched the Thessalonians, but all believers down through the centuries.
Third, by comparing our afflictions and suffering with the afflictions of others, especially those of Jesus, “For consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you may not grow weary and lose heart” (Hb 12:3). If Jesus could humble Himself and obey even to the point of death on a cross, how much more should we His servants be willing to suffer affliction and the hostility of sinners for the cause of Christ? “A slave is not greater than his master. If they persecuted Me, they will persecute you” (Jn 15:20). One reason I love to read the biographies of other faithful Christians is because the afflictions which they endured and persevered in make my own afflictions pale in comparison, and shames me out of any self-pity and doubts of God’s faithfulness, “As an example, brethren of suffering and patience, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. Behold, we count those blessed who endured” (Jm 5:10, 11); “Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance, and the sin that so easily entangles us,” (which is the sin of unbelief and compromise) “and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,” (Hb 12:1). Faith knows that God is no respecter of persons, and that what God has done in the past and in the life of other faithful saints, He can still do today. Persevering faith trusts in and waits on the Lord.
Not only does persevering faith lighten the burden of afflictions, but it also makes a weak soul strong by strengthening the soul to endure, persevere, bear up under them, and “hold fast the beginning of our assurance firm until the end “ (Hb 3:14), and “continue in the faith firmly established and steadfast, and not moved away from the hope of the gospel that you have heard” (Col 1:23), rather than compromise and shrink back to destruction. Faith does this in several ways: First, by casting out the tyrants of fear and guilt that weaken and enfeeble the soul, “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love” (1 Jn 4:18). As faith in God and His Word increases, so fear decreases. As the fear of God gains ascendency over the soul, so the fear of man decreases and vanishes (Mt 10:28), and likewise, to the extent that the soul is deficient in faith, to that extent it is filled with fear, “Why are you timid, you men of little faith?” (Mt 8:26). In times of wholesale compromise and when people live in such fear that they scatter at the sound of anything that sounds like a gunshot, it is an unspeakable blessing to have a faith that frees the soul from what the rest of society and spurious Christianity fears, “And you are not to fear what they fear, nor be in dread of it. It is the Lord of hosts whom you should regard as holy. And He shall be your fear, and He shall be your dread” (Is 8:12, 13); “And you, son of man, neither fear them nor fear their words, though thistles and thorns are with you and you sit on scorpions; neither fear their words nor be dismayed at their presence, for they are a rebellious house” (Ezk 2:6); “And do not fear their intimidation, and do not be troubled,” (1 Pt 3:14).
Second, faith strengthens the soul to persevere by turning itself and looking to Christ to be “strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience;” (Col 1:11). The strength which Christ provides is proportional to the intensity of the affliction to be endured, and since He is omnipotent, there is no affliction that can exceed His power to strengthen us. Has God removed all the earthly props on which we trusted, and left us with nothing visible and tangible to support us? In this condition faith rests on the Word, promises, and faithfulness of God (Hab 3:17-19), and is strengthened to persevere. Do temptations work to discourage us from trusting in God and His promises, and to keep us resting in our own understanding? Then faith resolves to trust in God with all our heart, which is not a one-time resolution. Jesus “kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously” (1 Pt 2:24), and so must we in faith, thereby overcoming all discouragements. Have we been praying long for deliverance from some trial, affliction, and trouble, but still there seems to be no answer from God, but only silence, and instead of an answer we are assaulted by more temptations to compromise, give up, shrink back, innovate, and try to deliver ourselves? Then faith waits upon God, “Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; yes, wait for the Lord” (Ps 27:14). This waiting is opposed to that sinful impatience and unwillingness to endure hardships which so easily entangles us. Has the Lord called us to some difficult service to which the flesh is averse, and carnal, natural, human wisdom and reason disputes against? Faith then trusts and obeys, walks by the Spirit and does not carry out the desires of the flesh (Gal 5:16), and walks by faith, not by sight and sense (2 Cor 5:7). Faith strengthens the soul to obey not just by urging upon us God’s will and command, but by trusting in the certainty of the promises of God and to look to the reward (Hb 11:24-26).
These and many more are the blessings of a persevering faith. Its benefits are principally spiritual, not material and temporal, which is why a faith that is not the fruit of a new birth, but the product of a different theology of regeneration, cannot understand it. It is foolishness to them when all that it takes to succeed and avoid the afflictions inherent to true Christianity are a few compromises and innovations; compromises and innovations whose accumulated effects and consequences have now resulted in a dangerous season from which only the faithful preaching of God’s word, prayer, repentance, and the power of the Holy Spirit can deliver us.
I realize this study is longer than most in this series, but in a season in which compromise, innovation, and shrinking back is rampant and faithfulness, endurance, and perseverance are very rare, I believed this topic required it, even at the risk of wearying the reader.
In the next study we will consider the necessity and usefulness of Christian endurance and perseverance under afflictions and trials inherent in a dangerous season, as well as its nature and the means for attaining it.
[1] Iain H. Murray, Revival and Revivalism: The Making and Marring of American Evangelicalism 1750-1858 (Edinburgh, Banner of Truth Trust, 1994), 185-188.
[2] J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism (Grand Rapids, Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1923), 2, 4, 7, 8.
[3] B.B. Warfield, ‘The Biblical Notion of Renewal’ in Biblical Doctrines (Grand Rapids: Baker House, 2003), 457.