Living In Dangerous Times – Part 20

Encouragement for Perseverance

By John Fast

“But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come.” – 2 Timothy 3:1

As I commence working on this final study in ‘Living in Dangerous Times’, three days have passed since the devastating tornadoes ripped through my home state of Tennessee in the early hours of March 2, 2020, claiming the lives of twenty-four people and leaving hundreds without a home or possessions. All who have seen the horrible destruction firsthand have commented that had this tornado struck during the daytime instead of shortly after midnight, the loss of life would have been much, much greater. There has been an outpouring of voluntary humanitarian aid assisting in clean up and providing the necessities of life to those who have lost homes, belongings, and loved ones, voluntary aid and assistance which is a credit to the people of the Volunteer State. Sadly, what has been conspicuous by its absence – an absence that is all too consistent with the nature of the season in which we live – is the willingness to see these tornados, or any so-called ‘natural’ disaster, as a divine call to repentance from the spiritual and moral abyss into which we have sunk, and in which we have too long lived, leaving people blind to their real danger and unpreparedness to meet their God.

The same can be said concerning the response of this and other nations to the current COVID-19 outbreak. People fear the potential danger to themselves posed by an infectious virus, but they do not fear nor show even a fraction of the concern for the danger posed to their eternal soul from the real and present epidemic of apostasy from the authority of Scripture that now infects the mass of professing evangelicalism. The first can only, at worse, kill the body, but the other destroys our eternal soul. People have shown they are willing to submit to and take extreme measures to prevent contracting and spreading a natural virus, but they are unwilling to recognize, admit, and repent of their spiritual disease. They respond in panic, hoarding, and self-preservation to the threat of a virus, but they do not feel, see, or repent of their spiritual disease. People are exhibiting great fear, anxiety, and panic over a virus and the threat which it poses to their livelihood and to their comfort and false sense of security, but where is the man or woman who fears sin and is troubled by it more than any affliction, and who guards themselves against and runs from it as if from a deadly pestilence, and who see and feel there to be more evil in sin and in the defection from God’s Word than in any outward trouble in the world. They fear that which can only kill the body, but not Him who can destroy both soul and body in hell (Mt 10:28). They are fanatical about preserving their life in this world, as people are whose life, minds, hopes, joys, and security are fixated on this world, but completely unconcerned about being prepared to meet a holy and offended God whose Word they continue to revolt against. They fear a virus and ‘natural’ disasters, but they do not fear God; they do not resent the wrongs done to Him and His Word, the profaning of His worship, the adulteration of His gospel, the revolt against His moral law, the injuries done to Him in His office of Prophet, Priest, and King, the pollution of His church, the commercialization of Christianity, the redefining of words like ‘Christian’, ‘church’, and ‘evangelical’, the blasphemy against His holy nature, and are not touched by the treacherous defection from the authority of His Word.

Ministers for the most part are silent out of fear of offending and appearing cold, heartless, and insensitive, or ignorant, superstitious, and unscientific. They are quick to offer words of comfort and support but baulk at issuing words of warning and calls for self-examination and repentance. We are told evangelicalism needs ‘spiritual renewal’ and ‘reconciliation’, but not humble repentance for its wholesale defection from God’s Word. It was Jesus Himself who used the occasion of a tragic event not to console people with words of comfort and with false assurances that those who had died were in a ‘better place’, but to warn and call to repentance, “Or do you suppose that those eighteen on whom the tower of Siloam fell and killed them, were worse culprits than all the men who live in Jerusalem? I tell you, no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.” (Lk 13:4, 5). We have forgotten, “That there is no one besides Me, I am the Lord, and there is no other, the One forming light and creating darkness, causing well-being and creating calamity: I am the Lord who does all these” (Is 45:7), and, “Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that both good and ill go forth?” (Lam 3:38), and again, “If a calamity occurs in a city has not the Lord done it?” (Am 3:6). God’s nature does not change. He still hates and punishes sin, the abuse of His grace, ungratefulness for His blessings, and the willful corruption of and rebellion and defection from His Word. These verses and others like them are meant to serve as warnings, and to convince people that they have cause for alarm, as their willful revolt and monstrous sins call down the general judgment and wrath of God.  We have forgotten that it profits neither a man nor the church anything to gain the whole world and, in the process, forfeit their soul (Mk 8:36). The people of Nineveh repented at the warning of Jonah (Mt 12:41), but despite all of the marks of the season and all of the warnings from God, this generation refuses to repent of its apostasy from the authority of Scripture.

In spite of Scripture’s clear teaching, people in general are not alarmed; rather they scoff at and are offended by the notion that such things have their origin with God and are a warning from Him. They forget, deny, or sneer at the fact that it was God who destroyed the earth with a flood, who sent the plagues on Egypt, who warned Israel “If you are not careful to observe all the words of this law which are written in this book, to fear this honored and awesome name, the Lord your God, then the Lord will bring extraordinary plagues on you and your descendants, even severe and lasting plagues, and miserable and chronic sicknesses” (Dt 28:58, 59), or who, because of their refusal to repent of their apostasy, told the inhabitants of Jerusalem through the prophet Jeremiah, “I shall strike down the inhabitants of this city, both man and beast; they will die of a great pestilence” (Jer 21:6), and who in the future will send unprecedented plagues upon the earth (Rev 6-16). It was because of their apostasy from the authority of God’s Word that Israel became a weak, fragile, frightened, and timid nation, “And the sound of a driven leaf will chase them and even when no one is pursuing, they will flee as though from the sword,” (Lev 26:36). We have forgotten that God can consume a nation’s wealth and prosperity as easily as He gives it, “With reproofs You chasten a man for iniquity; You consume as a moth what is precious to him” (Ps 39:11). It is just as foolish to deny, ignore, and scoff at the hand of God in these things as it is to ignore and scoff at the warnings, advice, and recommendations of those who warn us of dangerous storms and those of modern medicine and public health officials.

Still, most people do not take God’s warnings to heart, but go on secure in the ways of sin and living in a false security, as if no such terrible providence could befall them, and even if it does, they deny the hand of God in it notwithstanding the clear teaching of Scripture. They fortify themselves in their security by numerous absurd and unbiblical beliefs and opinions, such as that of one tornado survivor who, when interviewed by local media stated, “God didn’t do this. Mother nature maybe, but not God.” They credit God with sparing them from it, but refuse to see His hand and purpose in sending it. Scientists and meteorologists can give a natural and scientific explanation, and attribute such things to impersonal second causes, but they often deny the First Cause on whom they all depend. If we take no warning from such events, then we are the greater sinners for it. If neither the goodness of God in sparing untold lives can soften our hearts, nor his judgments awaken and alarm us, then we may fear that we who would not repent and cry for mercy at such a time as this, shall receive judgment without mercy. The failure to heed lesser warnings only brings greater judgment. Even though the hand of God is visible in His warnings, yet people take no heed. To continue in sin after experiencing God’s undeserved common grace and patience is to invite greater wrath, “Behold, you have become well; do not sin anymore, so that nothing worse may befall you” (Jn 5:14). Yet, like those who are not killed by God’s horrible judgments during the Tribulation, most today will “not repent of the works of their hands, so as not to worship demons, and the idols of gold and of silver and of brass and of stone and of wood, which can neither see nor hear nor walk; and they did not repent of their murders nor of their sorceries nor of their immorality nor of their thefts” (Rev 9:20, 21). In other words, nothing is able to shake them out of and bring them to repent from their false beliefs, worship, religion, security, assurances, idolatrous love for this world, and their sinful lifestyles.

The Worst Sign

The worst sign and warning of all is the present decay and defection from the authority of Scripture. This renders the rest more terrible. People remain fixed upon their sins, pleasures, and errors. The false and unfounded hopes and beliefs to which many are clinging, and the erroneous conceptions of God being espoused even by professing Christians simply reveals the enormous gulf that separates the bulk of modern evangelicalism from the Christianity taught by the Bible, and the extent to which it has defected from the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the message conforming to godliness. People for the most part are trusting in a god that does not exist; a god of their own invention, not the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is evident by their continued unwillingness to submit their hearts, minds, and lives to the authority of God’s Word and by their enmity against, instead of love for the truth. It was to biblically literate Jews, Jews who diligently searched the Scriptures, not to pagans, that Jesus said, “and you are unwilling to come to Me, that you might have life” (Jn 5:40). They were unwilling to repent of their apostasy, false beliefs, hopes, and securities, and of their self-righteousness. In times of crisis people discover the emptiness and impotence of a shallow, carnal, worldly, theoretical, and superficial faith and form of godliness to support, strengthen, encourage, and deliver them from the fears that characterize those who have no living faith in the true and living God. They discover the uselessness of a religion whose hopes and joys are tied to life in this world. This well, being so shallow, soon runs dry. They discover the impotence of their idols of self, the world, government, money, and science to alleviate their fears, and so, like apostate Israel, “in the time of their trouble they will say, ‘Arise and save us.’” (Jer 2:27), to which God may justly respond, “But where are your gods which you made for yourself? Let them arise, if they can save you in the time of your trouble;” (Jer 2:28). People are looking to government and medicine to save them and pacify their fears, but where do we see even a fraction of these numbers turning to God in humble repentance and trust?

We have, for all practical purposes, abandoned the truth that there is a Power far above all earthy power, and an obligation to that Power which supersedes every other obligation, interest, comfort, and earthly good. Wherever this attitude toward God and His Word once existed, but has been abandoned or supplanted by a desire for and devotion to anything else, there you have apostasy. In the proportion to which the church has sought to make itself acceptable to the world, in the same proportion it has lost its spiritual power and become impotent in its battle against the world, the flesh, and the devil. If we hope to have the blessing of God and know the power of the gospel, we must demonstrate our love to God not just in word, but in deed; not merely by good works and humanitarian and benevolent actions in response to disasters and times of crisis, but by abandoning all our errors and idols, by a humble submission, trust in, and obedience to all of God’s Word, and preferring Christ and His Word above all our chief joys, desires, and pleasures. The reason why the ungodly have their minds deceived and eternally perish is not because they never professed to be Christians but, “because they did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved” (2 Thes 2:10). It is not so much that they oppose truth as that they ignore it. It is not by open assault that evangelical truth suffers, but by a steady process of sapping and undermining the authority of Scripture, a process which eventually leads to widespread thoughts and attitudes such as that expressed by one elderly lifelong church-goer in response to hearing the Apostle Paul quoted, “Well, Paul could have been wrong”. This is much deadlier, and should be feared much more than any virus or ‘natural’ disaster.

The recoil against evangelical doctrine which began over a century ago, and the disposition to modify and redefine the gospel of grace has in our day come to full expression in a general apostasy from the authority of Scripture. The nineteenth century Scottish pastor and theologian William Garden Blaikie, in tracing the decline of evangelical truth in Scotland noted,

“Men who have never felt the burden of sin in their own hearts, cannot be expected to appreciate the doctrine of atonement or the doctrine of regeneration; not feeling the need of atonement or regeneration, they cannot see the importance of a divine Saviour to atone, and a divine Spirit to renew. Of necessity, Jesus Christ must come down from the place of supremacy and vital influence which He holds in the teaching and preaching of those to whom the sense of sin is the most awful experience of life. The supernatural features of the Gospel must pass away, as things do pass away that are not needed, and that which remains can be little other than an intensified naturalism – natural religion brightened up by the reflection of Christianity. Men cannot help in these circumstances inclining to Deism or Socinianism. And not believing in the change of heart and change of taste which regeneration implies, they cannot but regard earnest religion as something of a sham, nor can they be expected to call on men very earnestly to renounce the world in order to follow Christ. They consider that in point of fact your high-flying men do injustice to the world – it is not such a bad world after all: it can be made a very tolerable world; there are many pleasures in life which are perfectly harmless, but which you fanatics condemn; and so it becomes one of their objects as preachers to recover back for enjoyment as much of the world as they can decently reconcile with a Christian profession. This seems to have been the chief cause of the great change which the eighteenth century witnessed in the Scottish church. The natural man recovered himself, and strove hard to bring the Church into harmony with his tastes and interests; and the force of evangelical life around him was not strong enough to keep him down.”[1]

 We live in a season in which so much of the world has been reconciled with a Christian profession that what remains of true Christianity is, for the most part, nothing more than the name, a “natural religion brightened up by the reflection of Christianity”, and a Christianity in which the natural man has “recovered himself” and brought the church “into harmony with his tastes and interests”. Such a Christianity may provide some solace, security, and comfort in the normal trials of life and in a time of ease, prosperity, and plenty, but it soon proves useless when trials, troubles, and afflictions are unusual, prolonged, and worsening, since it has no depth of root. The great question therefore is, is the religion of the mass of contemporary evangelicalism biblical Christianity? It certainly has many of the most outwardly attractive features of Christianity, but does it have its spirit, its life, its truth, and its soul? It does many good, charitable, beneficial, and humanitarian works for its fellowman in the name of Jesus, it assures people that God loves them, and it demonstrates in many ways a concern for improving the temporal well-being of mankind, and a willingness to self-sacrificially work to alleviate human suffering, but does it love God and His Word? Does it express this love by obeying His commandments (Jn 14:15, 21, 23)? Does it endeavor to keep itself unstained by the world (Jm 1:27)? Does it strive to cleanse itself “from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.” (2 Cor 7:1)? Does it handle accurately the word of truth (2 Tim 2:15)? A religion that has no message of the total depravity of man, of the horrible effects of sin on his mind, reason, desires, and nature, that overlooks his willful rebellion and enmity against the law of God and his guilt before a just, holy, and offended God, the eternal torments of hell, the demands of God’s holy law, the obedience which the gospel requires, and that dispenses salvation as easily as a politician scatters empty promises and spends money; a religion that seeks to reconcile and harmonize as much of the world as possible with a profession of Christianity, that ignores, negates, and redefines those portions of God’s Word that it deems objectionable and inconsistent with its own desires, wisdom, opinions, and agenda; a religion that conceals the necessity and nature of regeneration and sanctification, that allows the culture to determine the meaning of Scripture – a religion that undertakes all this without the satisfaction of divine wrath, without divine regeneration, without sovereign grace, and without submission to the authority of God’s Word, may be very attractive, very congenial, very popular, and very self-gratifying to the pride and intellect of natural man, but it is not the gospel of Jesus Christ, nor is it the Christianity of the Bible, and we can only confer on it the name of ‘Christian’, and call the message it preaches ‘the gospel’, if we too have apostatized from the authority of Scripture.

The Cause of Defection

To what shall we attribute this defection from the truth of Scripture? Certainly not persecution. Persecution is rarely the cause of widespread defection and apostasy from true Christianity; rather affliction and persecution usually have a cleansing, purifying, and strengthening effect on the genuine children of God. As the same author observed,

“Persecution…has a wonderful sifting power. It tears away all disguises, shams, falsehoods, and formalities; it compels men to look the stern realities of life and death right in the face; it sweeps away the refuges of lies, and leaves only those truths to cling to which will sustain them in the agony of conflict.”[2]

It is ease, compromise, comfort, accommodation, security, and self-interest that fills the church with false ‘Christians’, but persecution and afflictions drives them from it. They winnow the wheat from the chaff and those who are willing to compromise and abandon the authority of Scripture from those who cling to truth like a drowning man. There are always those stony ground ‘believers’ who “when affliction or persecution arises because of the word,” (Mt 13:21) fall away because they have no depth of root. The primary cause of apostasy has always been the corruption, adulteration, and misrepresentation of sacred truth, coupled with an abysmal lack of discernment on the part of professing Christians. Most of modern evangelicalism has, more or less, acted on the principle of accommodating themselves to the spirit of the age and necessities of the times. Such people cannot be comfortable or content in a church or with a message that is devoted to the authority of Scripture. Even if they are able to justify their compromise to the satisfaction of their own consciences they must feel that leanness of soul that comes from preferring the appeal of external attractions and numbers, and the way of worldly peace, comfort, and self-gratification to the way of self-denial, commitment to the authority of Scripture, and of simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ. Many assume that apostasy is a total rejection and repudiation of the Christian faith by someone who once professed it, but that is not what the word meant in the first century. Apostasy is not so much a rejection but a defection, a rebellion, and revolt. Very few apostates renounce Christianity altogether; rather they apostatize from truth to error, from righteousness to unrighteousness, and from love to God and His Word to love for this present world. Many are pastors and many are in positions of leadership. Entire denominations today are apostate. They continue to hold to a form of godliness, but deny its power (2 Tim 3:5). Sound doctrine they will no longer “endure” (anechomai – 2 Tim 4:3), but if someone preaches another Jesus or a different gospel, “you bear (anechomai – “show tolerance for”; “accept”; “patient with”; “endure”) this beautifully” (2 Cor 11:4).

The word apostasia, from which we get our word ‘apostasy’, means “a revolt; rebellion; abandonment; an open defiance of authority; to act in opposition to authority”. This defiance and revolt against authority may be political, military, civil, or religious, but the sphere in which it is expressed does not alter the original meaning of the word. Apostasy from the authority of Scripture begins like a little cloud the size of a man’s hand that in the next century darkens the entire sky. This is what characterizes not only our society, but more troubling, this is what has darkened the sky of contemporary evangelicalism, namely, the abandonment and rejection of the authority of Scripture, an abandonment that began over a century ago, and therefore, rebellion against the authority of God Himself. It is to turn away from the truth and turn aside to myths (2 Tim 4:4). The Jewish leaders and multitudes who opposed Jesus had apostatized from the authority of Scripture, not from Judaism. They considered themselves true and devout Jews, children of Abraham (Jn 8:39), and set their hope on the law of Moses (Jn 5:45). But Jesus charged them with not believing Moses (Jn 5:47), elevating their own opinions over the authority of Scripture (Mt 15:9), inventing their own form of worship (Mk 7:7), and invalidating the Word of God for the sake of their tradition (Mt 15:6). As a result, they lacked any spiritual and moral discernment. They had no ability to discern between truth and error or good and evil, which was evident by their attributing the work of the Holy Spirit to Satan (Mk 3:22), and accusing Jesus, who was the embodiment of all truth and good, of being possessed by a demon and an evildoer (Jn 7:20; 8:48, 52; 18:30). It is hard to imagine a greater lack of discernment than that.

It is the failure to heed the Holy Spirit’s warning to, “Abhor what is evil; cling to what is good” (Rm 12:9) that has resulted in the widespread inability on the part of professing Christians to discern between good and evil, leaving the bulk of modern evangelicalism woefully unprepared for a dangerous season. Discerning between good and evil requires the willingness and ability to think in terms of absolutes, especially in an age when the vast majority of people have been trained to think in relativistic terms. The Bible is a Book of absolutes; it dogmatically affirms truth in terms of black and white, right and wrong, good and evil, light and dark, true and false, holy and unholy, clean and unclean. People who have had their mind, thinking, and reasoning trained by and conformed to this world will not consent to thinking in terms of absolutes; rather they think in terms of innumerable shades of gray. This is evident by the fact that today we are being told that there are at least five different kinds of evangelicalism. It is virtually impossible to introduce discernment into an environment that will not endure distinctions between true and false, and that has chosen tradition, pragmatism, expediency, appeasement, error, uncertainty, conventional wisdom, earthly pleasures, and public opinion over doctrinal precision and purity. In examining the causes of the horrible apostasy that was rampant in his own time, the seventeenth century Puritan genius John Owen wrote,

“There is yet another consideration rendering the present state of Christian religion in the world yet more deplorable. The only principle of evangelical obedience is sacred truth, and our faith therein. That alone is “the doctrine which is according to godliness;” and all acceptable obedience unto God is “the obedience of faith.” Whatever men do or pretend unto in a way of duty unto Him, where the truth of the gospel is not the spring and measure, which is not guided and animated thereby, it is not what God at present requires, nor what He will eternally reward…But if this truth itself be corrupted or deserted, if its glorious mysteries are abused or despised, if its most important doctrines be impeached of error and falsehood, and if the vain imaginations and carnal reasonings of the serpentine wits of men be substituted in their place or exalted above them, what hope is there of recovery? The breach will grow like the sea until there be none to heal it. If the fountains of the waters of the sanctuary be poisoned in their first rising, they will not heal the nations unto whom they come. Where the doctrine of truth is corrupted, the hearts of men will not be changed by it nor their lives reformed.”[3]

It is no exaggeration to say that the adulteration of truth and absence of spiritual and moral discernment has done much more harm to Christianity, the church, the cause of Christ, and the souls of men than disaster, disease, or persecution ever has. Jesus and the writers of the New Testament repeatedly warned people not of the dangers posed by persecution, ‘natural’ disasters, or infectious diseases, but of the danger of being misled and deceived by false teaching and teachers (Mt 24:4; Ac 20:28-30; 2 Pt 2:1; 1 Jn 4:1; 2 Jn 7; Jude 4). The primary purpose of Paul’s second letter to the church in Thessalonica was to refute and correct a false teaching that had taken root in the church (2 Thes 2:2). The seriousness of this deception was compounded by the fact that it was concerning a subject in which the church had already been well taught, namely, the day of the Lord (1 Thes 5:1, 2; 2 Thes 2:5). The point I wish to stress is Paul’s command to the church, “Let no one in any way deceive you,” (2 Thes 2:3). This is a sweeping, unambiguous command. It is a clear call to the duty of spiritual, moral, and doctrinal discernment. By “no one” Paul means absolutely no one, regardless of name, position, title, popularity, or credentials. In fact, in his letter to the Galatians Paul twice pronounces an anathema, that is eternal damnation, on anyone, including himself and angels, if they taught anything that was contrary to the apostolic message they had already received, “But even though we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to that which we have preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to that which you received, let him be accursed” (Gal 1:8, 9). Obviously, the Holy Spirit takes the corruption of His Word very seriously even if the mass of contemporary evangelicalism does not.

Not only are we to not be deceived by any one, but we are commanded to not let ourselves be deceived in any way, that is, in any way in addition to the three ways already mentioned by Paul, namely, “by a spirit” (i.e. an allegedly Spirit-inspired prophetic utterance) “or a message or a letter as if from us,” (2 Thes 2:2). There are countless ways of being deceived and no end to deceivers. Paul understood the irresistible attraction that many have to the ‘new’, the ‘novel’, the popular, the ‘successful’, the mystical, the emotional, and the fantastic. He understood that people’s thinking is influenced more by appearances, circumstances, and emotion than by truth, as the panic-stricken response of multitudes to the Coronavirus clearly proves. It is amazing to witness how gullible professing Christians are to fall for every new theological fad, to believe the most outlandish and unsubstantiated claims of the mystical and miraculous, to believe claims of extra-biblical revelation, the flattering speech of false teachers, the sinful behaviors and desires they are willing to accept as being consistent with true Christianity, the lies which they attempt to harmonize with the truth of Scripture, and what they are willing to believe even when what they believe is explicitly contradicted by Scripture.

This is the danger posed by deception. The word used by Paul in this passage, translated “deceive” (exapatao), means “to mislead”, “cheat”, “to cause to think differently”, “to have misleading and erroneous views regarding the truth”. Another word often translated as “deceive”, planao, means, “to cause to wander”; “mislead”; “to lead astray”. This is how Satan deceived the mind of Eve, he led her mind astray so that she thought differently about the forbidden fruit, and about God, His Word, and sin (2 Cor 11:3). By her own admission she had been deceived, “The serpent deceived me”, which led to her revolt and sinful action, “and I ate” (Gn 3:13; cf. 1 Tim 2:14). Deception has reference to the mind, but always results in the practical abandonment of the authority of Scripture. Deceivers are always looking for a way to lead the mind astray, to craftily seduce the mind into thinking and holding erroneous thoughts about God, sin, and truth, to reason from fleshly and fallen human wisdom, emotional arguments, to think and reason in ways that are not biblical, all with the goal of leading people into a practical defection from the authority of Scripture. This was the danger facing the Colossians, “See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ” (Col 2:8). It was because Manasseh “misled Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem” that they did “more evil than the nations whom the Lord destroyed before the sons of Israel” (2 Chr 33:9). It was the false prophets of Israel who “misled My people by saying, ‘Peace!’ when there is no peace” (Ezk 13:10). “See to it that no one misleads you” (Mt 24:4), is a command that was often repeated by Jesus. We have forgotten that “many deceivers have gone out into the world” (2 Jn 7), and that the spirit of antichrist is already in the world (1 Jn 4:3). Behind every deceiver and deception is the evil one himself, who, while now being restrained, and therefore has not yet reached his full expression, is nevertheless already actively and continuously at work (2 Thes 2:7; 1 Pt 5:8). Again, deception has reference to the mind; therefore, the success of deceivers lies in getting people to trust in their own or someone else’s sin-corrupted human reasoning and understanding, and to make the fallen human mind, not Scripture, the ultimate authority and test of truth.

One of the reasons given by the Apostle John for writing his first epistle to the churches of Asia under his care was, “These things I have written to you concerning those who are trying” (present tense – habitually, constantly) “to deceive you” (1 Jn 2:26). False and deceptive teachers never stop trying to make their deceptions seem plausible, appealing, rational, and legitimate. It is the nature of sin to present itself to the mind as something other than what it really is so that people will receive a lie for truth and evil for good. Its sole purpose is to mislead. The only defense against the constant and crafty attempts at deception is discernment, and discernment only comes from being well-grounded in the truth illumined by the Holy Spirit. It is something that must be sought from and taught by God, “Make your ear attentive to wisdom, incline your heart to understanding; for if you cry for discernment, lift your voice for understanding; if you seek her as silver, and search for her as for hidden treasures; then you will discern the fear of the Lord, and discover the knowledge of God. For the Lord gives wisdom; from His mouth come knowledge and understanding” (Pv 2:2-6). It is the corruption, rejection, and defection from the truth and authority of Scripture, and a corresponding lack of discernment that makes greater deception possible and that never fails to lead to apostasy, as John Owen knew all too well,

“No instance can be given of any church or nation in the world, that ever received the profession of the gospel, that did not, sooner or later, either totally or in some considerable degrees, fall off from the doctrines which it reveals and the obedience which it requires. Men only deceive themselves who suppose that the purity of religion will be preserved in confessions and canons, while some make it their business to corrupt its truth, and few or none make it their business to preserve its power. And, therefore, at this day, on one account or other, the defection is almost [universal]; for it is vain for any to pretend that the present general visible profession of Christianity does in any tolerable measure answer the original pattern of it in the Scriptures, or that of the first primitive believers”[4]

The bulk of modern evangelicalism has long ago abandoned any commitment to truth, the authority of Scripture, and doctrinal purity; therefore, what is represented as Christianity today bears no relation to the Christianity of the Bible, yet most are unable or unwilling to acknowledge this obvious fact. Instead, words like ‘Christian’, ‘church’, ‘evangelical’, and ‘gospel’ are given new meanings – meanings so broad that they include the most antiscriptural and antichristian beliefs, practices, teachers, and behaviors, and that are designed to conform these words to their present adulterated expression instead of their biblical significance. Our minds have been led astray into thinking that “the present general visible profession of Christianity” does in fact “answer the original pattern of it in the Scriptures”, as is evident by the fact that so few know the true import and impact of the word ‘Christian’. The typical modern evangelical church simply will not endure sound doctrine; they will not tolerate having their mistakes and errors in doctrine and practice, and defection from the authority of Scripture rectified and corrected by the pure Word of God. They will not endure having their erroneous conceptions of salvation and what it is to be a Christian challenged and corrected by the doctrines of Scripture. They have turned their ears away from the truth and turned aside to myths (2 Tim 4:4). The effects of this adulteration of truth and its deadening impact on discernment can have only one outcome, the description of which we can once again turn to John Owen, namely, a redefining of sin, the nature of God, salvation, the gospel, and Christianity,

“And no man can express a greater enmity unto or malice against the gospel, than he that should assert or maintain that the faith, profession, lives, ways, and walkings of the generality of Christians are a just representation of its truth and holiness.”[5]

The same thought is true today; there can be no greater insult, animosity, misrepresentation, and adulteration made against the Word of God than to think and teach that the mass of modern evangelicalism is even remotely consistent with the gospel taught by the New Testament and lived by faithful saints throughout history. Whatever else it has become, modern evangelicalism is decidedly man-centered and humanitarian, not Christ-centered and redemptive. Its mind and heart is firmly set on the things of this world, not on the things above. To represent and affirm as Christians people who live in rebellion and sin, who are totally ignorant of and have no hunger for the doctrines of Scripture, who choose tradition, pragmatism, error, expediency, and appeasement over doctrinal purity, who will not endure sound doctrine, who habitually teach and condone error, who adulterate and deny the doctrines of Scripture, who avoid all doctrines and truth that are ‘too controversial’, who rebel and revolt against the inerrancy, inspiration, authority, and sufficiency of Scripture, who only believe parts of the Bible, who snub the command to come out from the world and be separate, who scoff at the idea of God’s wrath and judgment, and who refuse to teach the difference between the clean and the unclean, this cannot help but lead to a general apostasy from true Christianity. All attacks against the Bible, be they attacks against its inerrancy, inspiration, sufficiency, clarity, historicity, or authenticity, and be they ever so subtle and veiled, are ultimately attacks and a revolt against its authority, as the great Princeton theologian B.B. Warfield once made abundantly clear,

“Wherever five “advanced thinkers” assemble at least six theories as to inspiration are likely to be ventilated. They differ in every conceivable point, or in every conceivable point save one. They agree that inspiration is less pervasive and less determinative than has heretofore been thought, or than is still thought in less enlightened circles. They agree that there is less of the truth of God and more of the error of man in the Bible than Christians have been wont to believe. They agree accordingly that the teaching of the Bible may be, in this, that, or the other, – here, there, or elsewhere, – safely neglected or openly repudiated.”[6]

In other words, attacks on the Bible’s inspiration, as do attacks on the Bible’s other attributes, always leads to a defection from and revolt against the authority of Scripture; all or parts of the Bible may be “safely neglected or repudiated”. People then feel free to invent their own forms of godliness and call them ‘Christian’. This is nothing less than apostasy. All the attempts to conceal its true nature are nothing more than self-deception. Like the Edomites, “The arrogance of your heart has deceived you” (Ob 3), and like the remnant of Judah who, in a time of crisis, requested Jeremiah to make known to them the will of God, even solemnly promising, “Whether it is pleasant or unpleasant, we will listen to the voice of the Lord our God to whom we are sending you, in order that it may go well with us when we listen to the voice of the Lord our God” (Jer 42:6). But they were horribly self-deceived, “For you have only deceived yourselves; for it is you who sent me to the Lord your God saying, ‘Pray for us to the Lord our God; and whatever the Lord our God says, tell us so, and we will do it.’ So, I have told you today, but you have not obeyed the Lord your God, even in whatever He has sent me to tell you” (Jer 42:20, 21). Despite their promises to obey God’s revealed will, they revolted against the authority of God’s Word and will when it conflicted with their own lusts, desires, beliefs, opinions, and what they perceived to be in their own best self-interest, “As for the message that you have spoken to us in the name of the Lord, we are not going to listen to you. But rather we will certainly carry out every word that has proceeded from our mouths,” (Jer 44:16, 17; cf. Ezk 33:30-32). Despite the obvious fact that their trusting in their own wisdom and understanding, and their habitual refusal to heed all the gracious warnings of God had led to their utter ruin and destruction as a nation, they still refused to submit themselves in humble trust, repentance, and obedience to the authority of God’s Word. They still insisted that they would carry out their own plans and stubbornly cling to their own false ways and beliefs, as if what had led to their ruin would now be able to deliver them in their time of crisis.

Modern evangelicalism is in a time of crisis, yet it is preoccupied and consumed with attempts to arrest its declining numbers and influence, not its spiritual and moral apostasy. It is obsessed with making itself more attractive to young people, not with being more faithful and obedient to God’s Word. It is paranoid of offending the world and appearing to be unsympathetic with popular opinion, not with disbelieving and offending God and being unfaithful to His Word. In addition, the adulteration and loss of virtually all doctrinal distinctions, principles, and convictions, instead of being seen as a defection from biblical Christianity, is now the basis for ‘unity’ and ecumenical cooperation. Faced with the reality of dwindling numbers, the disregard for doctrine and discernment, and the adoption of ‘new’ methods and messages, seems to offer a promising solution and the best way to make some numerical progress. Doctrine and discernment become viewed as a hindrance to growth, ‘unity’, and ‘success’. When churches become method and program-driven in their lust for numbers and ‘success’, they no longer provide any spiritual usefulness, much less foster and teach spiritual and moral discernment. The New Testament places much more emphasis upon the Christian’s walk, character, life-style, personal holiness, doctrinal purity, knowledge and understanding, faithfulness, perseverance, and discernment than it does upon their impact and outreach to society. One discerning nineteenth century pastor observed, “It is one of Satan’s deep devices to call off the attention of the church from its own state, to the condition of the world without and around her.”[7]  A ‘Christianity’ that is more concerned with humanitarianism, self-esteem, personal fulfillment, public opinion, numbers, its own agenda, and rectifying social ills and inequities than with exposing error, convicting of sin, warning people of their danger, promoting doctrinal purity, and guarding and teaching biblical truth and holiness of life is blind to its deplorable condition and to its greatest need. It has forgotten that real usefulness in the world is the effect and consequence of truth and doctrinal purity and its transforming impact on the heart and mind, and that only when its life is right and it is holy, obedient, separate, distinct, and set apart from the world can the church fulfill its calling in the world.

The position to which the human mind has always been inclined and exhibited such a habitual proclivity is that of personal autonomy and independence from the authority of God and His Word. It is the notion that eternal joy depends on our own goodness, and the good news of the gospel is that God now accepts a modified instead of a perfect obedience, and that we are saved by our own faith rather than the perfect righteousness of Christ. The desire today seems to be for less seriousness, less exposition of the Word of God, less distinguishing between truth and error, less prayer, less dogmatism, and for more programs, more amusements, more entertainment, more winsomeness, more inclusivity, more tolerance of other views, more humanitarianism, more mysticism, more subjectivism, more emotionalism, and more of the world. Let all this be provided and people will flock to the church, but offer only the in-depth exposition of the Word of God and teach the difference between the clean and the unclean and there will be little or no response.

Let the church substitute whatever it will for doctrinal purity and spiritual discernment, it will not be long until ‘Ichabod’ (i.e. “the Lord has departed” – 1 Sm 4:21) will be found written above its doors. Like Samson, they will not know that the Lord has departed from them (Jg 16:20). We can go on feeding the hungry, drilling wells in Africa, paying off people’s medical bills, caring for the homeless, advocating for social justice, providing disaster relief, working to ban abortion, protest against immorality, lament the decay of Christianity, help in times of crisis, contend for religious liberties, engage in benevolent and humanitarian works, evangelize the lost; we might attract crowds with light, encouraging, and amusing preaching, entertain them with the best of music; we may do all of this and more – but if the Holy Spirit is not honored, but rather dishonored and grieved by the corruption, adulteration, neglect, and distrust of His Word, then all we have accomplished is becoming “a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal” (1 Cor 13:1). If the church is unfaithful to the Bible, if the bulk of professing Christians no longer declare with Christ, “Thy word is truth” (Jn 17:17), if those entrusted with the gospel preach as pleasing men, not God (1 Th 2:4), if they fail to teach the difference between the clean and the unclean, if they teach and witness a modified gospel of grace, and when they honor God with their lips but deny Him by their actions (Tit 1:16), then it is certain that the Holy Spirit will not set His seal upon their willful ignorance of His truth, the adulteration of His Word, the blurring of the distinction between truth and error, the deliberate ignoring and violation of His commands, warnings, and doctrines, and their unbelief.

The Holy Spirit is grieved and quenched by all forms of godliness that deny His life transforming power. He is grieved and quenched by all forms of disobedience, with all attempts to integrate human wisdom with divine truth, and by having unbiblical, wicked, sinful, blasphemous, and unrighteous corruptions of Scripture ascribed to His influence and attributed to His presence, and by having His nature distorted and misrepresented. In the midst of the hostility, afflictions, and persecutions from a lost and antagonistic world, the early church could say, “And we are witnesses…and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey Him” (Ac 5:32), not to those who rebel against His authority, adulterate His Word, and redefine what it is to be a Christian. These early Christians, as have all faithful and discerning Christians ever since (because it is impossible to be faithful unless we are discerning) realized that Christianity is most evangelistic when it is least concerned with impressing the world and increasing its numbers, and most concerned with faithfulness to Christ and His Word, and holiness of life. The first need is always to be faithful to Christ and His Word, and this can only be done by discerning and distinguishing between truth and error, right and wrong, light and dark, clean and unclean, biblical and unbiblical, and between good and evil.

When faithfulness is the principle motive, instead of striving to boost the church’s numbers by inventing ways to lure the world into the church, renaming and minimizing sin and its guilt, devising its own worship, watering down doctrine, ignoring Scripture’s warnings, and redefining what it is to be a Christian, faithful Christians will be diligent to “Guard through the Holy Spirit who dwells in us the treasure which has been entrusted to you” (2 Tim 1:14), to “Retain the standard of sound words” (2 Tim 1:13), to “Be diligent to present yourself approved by God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, handling accurately the word of truth” (2 Tim 2:15), to discern truth from error, and be concerned that the church faithfully represents Christ, His Gospel, and His Word. It is, “In pointing out these things to the brethren,” (i.e. the things mentioned in 4:1-5, namely, the practices of those who have fallen away from biblical Christianity) “you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, constantly nourished on the words of the faith” (the faith from which some had fallen away) “and of the sound doctrine which you have been following” (1 Tim 4:6). Only as Christians stand apart from and distinct from the world, and love their life of holiness and obedience will they see that life imparted to others. It was when “the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria” were “going on in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit” that it “continued to increase” (Ac 9:31). To ignore this principle, and to minimize, disparage, and abandon discernment is to insure spiritual and moral decay and deception, and to make certain that the ‘Christianity’, Jesus Christ, and ‘gospel’ in which most people trust and have placed their hope is not the Jesus Christ, Gospel, and Christianity taught by the Bible. It makes it inevitable that multitudes who think they are Christians, and have been told they are Christians, and who thought that what they believed was the gospel, and who followed teachers and teachings that they assumed were Christian will hear those dreadful words, “Depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness” (Mt 7:23). This is the dominant characteristic of contemporary Christianity; it is a very humanitarian Christianity, a very tolerant Christianity, a very nonjudgmental Christianity, a very accepting and inclusive Christianity, a very charitable and benevolent Christianity, but in spite of all of its apparent and outwardly good qualities, it is a ‘Christianity’ that practices lawlessness; it has abandoned the authority of Scripture. Wherever Christianity and the gospel is separated from the obedience it demands and the life-transforming power it imparts to the hearts and minds of people, when it represents sin as merely a weakness or a disease and disorder and sinners as its broken victims, when it produces nothing more than an outward and dead profession of faith, and when it serves no other purpose than the worldly and secular interests of its professors and the betterment of their life in this world, it will not long survive the assault and opposition to which it is continually exposed. Such a ‘Christianity’ cannot help but result in a deceived not a discerning mind; it cannot help but deaden, not develop and strengthen people’s discernment. To once again quote William Garden Blaikie,

“Preachers trying to charm men with such strains may seem to succeed for a time, because they trade with the capital of their fathers; they deal with men and women who, though not sharing the faith of their ancestors, are unconsciously affected by it, retain somewhat of their reverence for divine things, and are still willing to put themselves to some trouble about religion. But what will be the effect on the next generation? The spirit of religion must die out very rapidly in any community if it be not constantly recruited from the deep springs of a living faith. The spirit of the world is more than a match for it, and all experience shows how rapidly under worldly influences religion dries up and withers away….Can it be supposed that in an age of abounding worldliness, the spirit of religion will survive and triumph if it have no stronger nourishment than the influences of modern thought? no deeper view of sin than as a pardonable weakness, an ugly blot, an unfortunate dislocation of the symmetry of the soul? no mightier impulse to do the will of God than the desire to advance that evolution of goodness and beauty which is for ever to carry the human species onward and upward and nearer the goal?….He is surely a blind preacher who does not find himself in these times face to face with a great and serious problem: How to reach to the depth of the human heart, and how to turn its strongest energies from the idolatries of the world to the service of the living God.”[8]

Wherever the truth of the gospel is adulterated or ignored, modified or silenced, godliness decreases, morality degenerates, society decays, and apostasy grows apace. It is not extraordinary gifts, abilities, organization, marketing, and measures, but extraordinary diligence, faithfulness, discernment, and perseverance that are needed today. We are not to aim at popularity and numerical growth, but at faithfulness, discernment, and usefulness. To lay bare the true nature of man, to show that in spite of all his humanitarianism, good deeds, and professions of belief in God, he has a heart that is desperately sick and deceitfully wicked above all else; to expose his inbred hatred of God and His Word, and to declare to him his guilty, hopeless, and helpless condition before a holy and just God, his need for and the nature of regeneration, to reveal that the God in which he believes is not the God of the Bible and the gospel in which he trusts is not the gospel of Jesus Christ and the doctrine conforming to godliness, would be strange subjects for anyone who is bent on popularity and impressing and attracting the world. It remains just as true today as when Paul first wrote, “If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a bond-servant of Christ” (Gal 1:10). But these are the only truths which make people see and feel their need for a Savior, and that will turn their “strongest energies from the idolatries of the world to the service of the living God”.

How to Gain Discernment

So where are we to obtain this discernment that is so essential if we are to be faithful to Christ and His Word in a dangerous season? Certainly not from the world or the people of the world, “Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?” (1 Cor 1:20). Not from so-called ‘Christian’ media. How can that which makes no distinction between the holy and profane and blurs the distinction between truth and error be the source of discernment? How can that which does not practice discernment be a source for discernment? Not from the mass of contemporary evangelicalism or the bulk of its leaders. They themselves are suffering from an appalling lack of discernment, and often disparage discernment as is evident by their wishy-washy treatment of doctrinal error, their partnering with and endorsement of unfaithful teachers, their desire to be winsome rather than biblical, their minimization of sin and its guilt, their infatuation with numerical growth, by their lack of dogmatism in distinguishing between good and evil and truth and error, and by their stigmatizing those who do make clear distinctions between truth and error and who do expose the unfruitful deeds of darkness as ‘divisive’, ‘bigoted’, ‘intolerant’, and ‘narrow’. It is often true that those who disparage discernment and who brand an uncompromising and unwavering commitment to the authority of Scripture as ‘close-minded’, are in fact probably the most closed-minded of all. Their mind is open to all kinds of innovations, compromises, and deceptions but it is closed to the authority of Scripture. Such ‘open-minded’ churches and leaders confuse and confound the truth, they muddle the truth; they promote uncertainty, not clarity; they facilitate ignorance, gullibility, indifference, and deceit, not discernment. As I stated earlier, this discernment is wisdom that must come from above, “But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God” (Jm 1:5); “I have more insight than all my teachers, for Your testimonies are my meditation” (Ps 119:99).

If we think that discernment is something that can be gained overnight, or that we can wait to seek discernment until we are called upon to exercise it, we will never have discernment, “Because I called, and you refused; I stretched out my hand, and no one paid attention; and you neglected all my counsel, and did not want my reproof; I will even laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your dread comes, when your dread comes like a storm, and your calamity comes like a whirlwind, when distress and anguish come upon you. Then they will call on me, but I will not answer; they will seek me diligently, but they shall not find me, because they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the Lord. They would not accept my counsel, they spurned all my reproof” (Pv 1:24-30). Knowledge of the Bible alone, no matter how scholarly and academic, will not provide discernment. The Pharisees knew their Old Testament, but Jesus said they were better at discerning the signs of the weather than the true meaning of Scripture (Mt 16:3). Their weather forecasting was crude, but they were better at that than at discerning, submitting to, and obeying the true meaning of Scripture. Despite their ability to quote the words of Scripture they were blind to the true meaning of Scripture; they were blind guides of the blind only fit to guide others who were blind to the truths of Scripture. Jesus warned His disciples to beware of the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees (Mt 16:12), that is, their misinterpretations, corruptions, distortions, and mishandling of Scripture.

True knowledge and understanding of God’s Word are not gained by an academic and scholarly pursuit, it is not the effect of an emotional or subjective mystical experience, it is not the result of some extra-biblical revelation; rather study of Scripture must be coupled with sound principles of interpretation, prayer for illumination, and total dependence on the Holy Spirit to lead us into all truth. True knowledge of Scripture is a spiritual knowledge because “the things of the Spirit of God…are spiritually appraised” (1 Cor 2:14). Therefore, discernment is spiritual not natural discernment and wisdom which must be sought from God alone, and the only means which He has given for obtaining it is the diligent, accurate, prayerful, submissive, and obedient devotion to His Word found only in the Bible, and being in fellowship with other Christians who are devoted to truth and the authority of Scripture. If we neglect the means God has ordained, we will be defenseless against the schemes of the devil, the distortions of his servants, the lies of the world, and the self-deception of our own fallen and sin-corrupted hearts, wisdom, reasoning, and understanding, all of which work tirelessly to deceive us and lead our minds astray from the authority of Scripture. In a time of widespread apostasy from the authority of Scripture it is no ordinary bracing that is required to keep the mind steadfast and immovable in the truth and cause of Christ, whatever the cost. The one truth which alone is fit to gird the mind for this purpose is because Jesus Christ is so glorious a King and so gracious a Savior and so just a Judge that it is so horrendous to neglect, compromise, and adulterate His Word and so wicked to apostatize from it.

Those who cling tenaciously to the truth and refuse to compromise one jot or tittle of God’s authoritative Word, and who resist trying to impress the world, accommodate popular opinion, or allow the culture to dictate the meaning of Scripture will of course be looked on by those who have apostatized from Scripture’s authority as obstinate miscreants or antiquated fundamentalists who are jeopardizing the growth and ‘success’ of ‘Christianity’ and the ‘church’, and dooming it to a future of irrelevancy. Nevertheless, there may be those who will be convicted and struck by this profound faithfulness, loyalty, fear, and regard for God and His Word. Whatever else they may be accused of, faithful and discerning Christians cannot be accused of not believing and trusting in the Word of God as the Word of God; they cannot be accused of being unwilling to suffer for the cause of Christ; they cannot be accused of not having prepared their hearts nor girded their minds to make themselves ready for sufferings.

I wish to direct the rest of this final study to those souls who, while they may not be able to say with the confidence of the Apostle Paul, “I am ready” (Ac 21:13), yet they desire and are daily striving to prepare their own hearts and minds by all the means ordained by God to subdue and overcome all the temptations, deceits, corruptions, and fears that would hinder them, and promote and increase all the graces in which this preparedness mainly consists. I want to encourage you with the truth that in whatever spiritual deficiency you may find yourself, and however unprepared you may feel in your heart to be, and no matter how much you might fear that you will shrink back to destruction and apostatize when your trials and afflictions reach their height, you are safe. If God has caused you to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, then you “are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time” (1 Pt 1:3-5). It is God alone “who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to make you stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy” (Jude 24). Rather than responding to trials, afflictions, disasters, persecutions, and crisis’ as the world does, with fear, anxiety, panic, hoarding, and uncertainty, we can respond in faith, hope, joy, and confident expectation  in the promises and nature of God who has promised to never desert or forsake us (Hb 13:5, 6), to work all things for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose (Rm 8:28), and to supply all our needs, both physical and spiritual, in Christ Jesus our Lord (Phil 4:19).

When we see so many who have and who continue to fall away, we may be tempted to fear that we might also; to fear that we will never be able to persevere if faced with similar temptations or worse trials and afflictions. To this I would say that it is good that we suspect our own hearts, “Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become foolish that he may become wise” (1 Cor 3:18); “Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall” (1 Cor 10:12). This fear is a good fear which the world cannot know. This is a fear which we should never desire or attempt to alleviate. This fear will keep us awake, alert, and watchful at all times (Lk 21:36) while others are self-assured, negligent, and securely sleeping. Those who are afraid of sinning will never sin out of fear of suffering. Those who are afraid of being deceived will never be easily deceived. Those who are afraid their lamps may run out of oil will be careful to take extra oil (Mt 25:4). Those who are afraid of being found unprepared will be diligent to make themselves ready and prepared; we can say with Paul, “but I discipline my body and make it my slave, lest possibly, after I have preached to others, I myself should be disqualified” (1 Cor 9:27). God provides the armor, but we must put it on and keep it on if we are to resist and stand firm in the evil day (Eph 6:10-17). All ten of the virgins in Jesus’ parable became drowsy and fell asleep, but only five were wise enough to be prepared (Mt 25:4, 5). A true Christian may flinch in the face of temptation, as did Peter and all the disciples, but they can never fall away; they can never totally apostatize from the authority of God’s Word; they can never shrink back to destruction.  Of this we may be abundantly certain based on the following considerations.

First, from God’s immutable and eternal electing love, by which “He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved” (Eph 1:4-6). It is “because God has chosen you from the beginning for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and faith in the truth” (2 Thes 2:13). God’s electing love and purpose for us is immutable and is based in the kind intention of His will and not in anything either actual or foreseen in us. This is why Paul could say to the Philippians, “For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began the good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus” (Phil 1:6). In expounding the sovereignty of God in salvation, the Apostle Paul quotes Exodus 33:19, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion” (Rm 9:15), from which Paul deduced, “So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy” (Rm 9:16). And from God’s dealings with evil Pharaoh (Rm 9:17), Paul inferred, “So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires” (Rm 9:18), so that Paul clearly identified the sovereign will and pleasure of God as the fixed and firm foundation of all the counsels of God concerning the eternal state of men’s souls. God’s election is always in love, a love that has no cause but the will of the One who chose to love, and no purpose other than that He might be glorified for all eternity by the objects of His love for His free, infinite, gracious, and everlasting love and grace that He freely chose to bestow on us by giving us to Christ to be redeemed by Him (Eph 1:4-6).

An obvious fact overlooked by many people who cling to a foreknowledge view of God’s election unto salvation, that is, that God elects those whom He foreknows will of their own free will choose Him, is that it fails to preserve their cherished but erroneous conception of human freewill. If God’s election is based on His foreknowledge of their free choice to believe in Christ for salvation, then they have no other choice but to believe, otherwise God would have been wrong in His foreknowledge. So, in what sense does this preserve their freewill? The only way to avoid this obvious dilemma is to ignore it (which is what most choose to do) or to deny that God knows the future perfectly, which is precisely what the heresy of Open Theism does. This foreknowledge view of God’s election bases a person’s election on something God knew they would do rather than on what God willed to do in eternity past. It makes a person’s foreseen decision the basis and grounds of their justification, not the perfect righteousness of Christ. It makes them the author of their own salvation, not the sovereign grace of God. It makes their love for God, not His love for them the basis for their election. They elect God before God elects them. This is not the gospel of Jesus Christ. Whatever anyone might believe regarding a universal atonement, a universal election is a contradiction in terms. Election must be of certain individuals and of a fixed and determined number. There are no elect if there are no non-elect. If all are chosen then none are elect. If all are saved, then none are chosen. A salvation that is dependent on an act of the fallen human will is a salvation that is dependent on that same fallen and sin-depraved will to sustain and preserve it. But a salvation, the cause of which is nothing but the sovereign grace and power of God, is a salvation that is sustained, kept, and preserved by that same power. He is both the author and perfecter of faith (Heb 12:2). There is no explanation for God’s grace apart from His sovereignty. There are no chance Christians any more than there are chance events, “But He does according to His will in the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and no one can ward off His hand or say to Him, ‘What have you done?’” (Dan 4:35); “Whatever the Lord pleases, He does, in heaven and in earth, in the seas and in all deeps” (Ps 135:6). Every Christian is the product of a sovereign, divine, personal, and effectual call unto salvation.

The Bible clearly teaches that God knows the future perfectly because He has determined it, “For I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is no one like Me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things which have not been done, saying, ’My purpose will be established, and I will accomplish all My good pleasure’;” (Is 46:9, 10); “For truly in this city there were gathered together against Your holy servant Jesus, whom You did anoint, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever Your hand and Your purpose predestined to occur” (Ac 4:27, 28). No one is a Christian because they chose to be a Christian. Every Christian is the result of a personal and individual sovereign call of God (Rm 8:30). In eternity past they were given individually to the Son by the Father to be a people for His own possession (Jn 6:37, 65; Tit 2:14), and these same individuals are regenerated in time by the Holy Spirit. They are “born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God” (Jn 1:13); “He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit,” (Tit 3:5). No one is able to snatch the sheep which the Father has given to the Son out of the Son’s hand (Jn 10:28), and “My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand” (Jn 10:29). For this reason, Jesus could promise that even in a time of unprecedented deception when “false Christs and false prophets will arise, and will show signs and wonders, in order, if possible, to lead the elect astray” (Mk 13:22), that the elect will not be led astray, because, being kept by the power of God, it is not possible, “And it was for this that He called you through our gospel, that you may gain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Thes 2:14). Such an assurance, far from being the grounds for spiritual laziness, complacency, and antinomianism, is in all true believers the Spirit-given and divinely created motivation for watchfulness, discernment, and loving trust, joy, hope, patience, perseverance, and obedience toward such a loving and gracious God, “So then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught, whether by word of mouth or by letter from us” (2 Thes 2:15)..

Second, from the real and intimate union that exists between Christ and all true believers; therefore, it is impossible that we should be separated from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Rm 8:38, 39). “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rm 8:1).This union with the person of Jesus insures that we have a constant supply of His grace and strength to sustain us in every trial, temptation, and affliction we might encounter, “but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life” (Jn 4:14). All our graces have an Almighty and everlasting spring that does not originate from anything intrinsic in us, but from the One in whom we are united. It is because all true Christians have been divinely called “to His eternal glory in Christ,” that God Himself will “perfect, confirm, strengthen, and establish you” (1 Pet 5:10). He will “perfect”, that is, bring to completion the process He Himself has already begun (cf. Phil 1:6). God will not allow the work He has begun to come short of His perfecting grace. He does this by His promise to “confirm” us, that is, to make firm, stabilize, make strong. It is the promise that in the midst of all our trials, sufferings, afflictions, and temptations from the world, the flesh, and the devil that God will provide the strength to make us stand firm, immovable, steadfast, always abounding in the work of the Lord (1 Cor 15:58), “strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience; joyously giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light” (Col 1:11, 12). He perfects us by His promise to “strengthen” us, that is, to impart and provide the strength to resist the temptations and deceits of the devil, and to hold our ground and stand firm in our faith in the evil day. And He prefects us by His promise to “establish” us, that is, to place us and our faith on a firm foundation so we will not be swept away by false teaching, persecution, afflictions, and deceptions.

All this comes to us by virtue of our union with Christ. He is the Vine, we are the branches, and as such we partake of all those graces that flow from the true Vine. “For of His fulness we have all received, and grace upon grace” (Jn 1:16), and this by virtue of our being united to Christ just as the branch is united to the vine. This union with Christ is a mystical union that is wholly supernatural and accomplished by the sovereign power and will of God, “But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus,” (1 Cor 1:30); therefore, we are to know that “it is not you who supports the root, but the root supports you” (Rm 10:18). We can no more incorporate ourselves into Christ than a scion can graft itself into a root stock. As the great Puritan John Flavel explained,

“There are only two ligaments or bands of union between Christ and the soul, namely, the Spirit on his part, and faith on ours. But when we say faith is the band of union on our part, the meaning is not, that it is so our own act, as that it springs naturally from us, or is educed from the mere power of our own wills; no, for the apostle expressly contradicts it: “Not of yourselves, it is the gift of God.” Eph 2:8. But we are the subjects of it, and though the act on that account be ours, yet the power enabling us to believe is God’s. Eph 1:19, 20.”[9]

Apart from Christ we can do nothing, but as long as there is life and power in the Vine, it will ascend into the branches that abide in Him by faith. All our trials and afflictions are simply God’s means of pruning, cleansing, and purifying the true branches so that they might bear more fruit for His glory. A life that is united to Christ is a life in which the Word and will of God is the supreme authority over self-will and over every situation, circumstance, and facet of life, for not even Jesus came to do His own will, “but the will of Him who sent Me” (Jn 5:30). “For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me” (Jn 6:38), and such is the desire of all who are truly united to Christ, having as their “ambition,…to be pleasing to Him” (2 Cor 5:9). The Father and the Son are one by nature and essence, but we are one with Christ by regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit so that now, “our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ” (1 Jn 1:3), not with darkness (2 Cor 6:14). As a result, we now “walk in the light as He Himself is in the light” (1 Jn 1:7), knowing that “If we say we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth;” (1 Jn 1:6).

Third, from the truth that Jesus Christ is always interceding on behalf of all whom the Father has given to Him, “Hence, also, He is able to save forever those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them” (Heb 7:25). We have a most pregnant example of the efficacy of Jesus’ intercession in the case of Peter, “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has demanded permission to sift you” (second person plural – all of you, the disciples) “like wheat; but I have prayed for you,” (second person singular (sps) – you Peter) “that your faith” (sps) “may not fail; and you,” (sps) “when once you” (sps) “have turned again, strengthen your brothers” (Lk 22:31, 32). We have a divine Advocate with the Father, “Jesus Christ the righteous;” (1 Jn 2:1). The mercies and graces that He prays for on our behalf are mercies and graces that He has purchased and paid for; “He Himself is the propitiation for our sins;” (1 Jn 2:2). What Christ prays for as our High Priest is in perfect harmony with the will of the Father because the will of the Son does not clash with the will of the Father, and Jesus prayed in His High Priestly prayer, “Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, in order that they may behold My glory, which You have given Me; for You have loved Me before the foundation of the world” (Jn 17:24). As the great Puritan pastor Robert Traill said in his exposition of this passage,

“Christ here gives us a copy and pattern of his intercession in heaven…. Christ’s intercession in heaven, is a kind and powerful remembrance of his people, and of their concerns, managed with state and majesty; not as a supplicant at the footstool, but as a crowned prince on the throne, at the right hand of the Father. …This I will is but an echo to the known will of His Father. It doth not become us to say in our prayers, I will, because we do not perfectly know God’s will; and when our desires clash with his will, we do but dash against a rock. But Christ knew perfectly, that the thing he prays for, was the will of His Father, John vi. 38, 39, 40.”[10]

We as sinners redeemed by grace have God’s promise, “that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests which we have from Him” (1 Jn 5:14, 15). How much more when those prayers come from His Son who knows the Father’s will perfectly, and to whom it was promised, “Ask of Me, and I will surely give the nations as Your inheritance, and the very ends of the earth as Your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron, You shall shatter them like earthenware” (Ps 2:8).

Fourth, from the indwelling of the Holy Spirit that abides in us, and has begun His saving and sanctifying work in us. I emphasize the word “saving”, otherwise this would provide no argument for our perseverance. The Spirit’s common works of grace of which even the unregenerate are beneficiaries come to nothing, but in true believers His saving work cannot fail. He is not a foolish builder who cannot finish the work He has begun. Such a notion would make the perfect and finished work of the Father and the Son null and void, which can never be, because we have the testimony of Scripture that He who began the good work in us will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus (Phil 1:6). “The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ,” yet, like many of God’s promises, this comes with an “if”, “if indeed we suffer with Him in order that we may also be glorified with Him” (Rm 8:16, 17). The work that the Holy Spirit has already performed in every true believer is further assurance of our preservation by the Spirit, which “is given as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God’s own possession, to the praise of His glory” (Eph 1:14). “Now He who establishes us with you in Christ and anointed us is God, who also sealed us and gave us the Spirit in our hearts as a pledge” (2 Cor 1:21, 22).

Finally, from all the passages of Scripture that declare the faithfulness, mercy, power, and sovereignty of God, and from all the promises of God that run like rich veins of pure gold through the pages of Scripture, and like so many streams from the love of God to refresh the weary soul. To try and list them all would be superfluous for they jump out at us from almost every page of Scripture, and all designed to prove the permanence and true nature of saving grace in all the saints in all times and places. This should strengthen, embolden, and refresh your soul, and make you gird up the loins of your mind, to set your mind completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ, and to stand firm in the evil day, knowing that you are protected by the power of God, and secure from apostasy from the authority of Scripture, even in a season when the mass of modern evangelicalism has had their minds led astray and has drifted away from the authority of Scripture and the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ. Let us be certain, however, that our lives match the character of those to whom God’s promises are made. Too many futilely trust in promises that were not made to them.

Certainly there is an evil, a darkness, and a deception in sin that is beyond what even the greatest and most spiritually enlightened human mind can comprehend. It is so evil that it can never be punished enough, which is evident from the eternal torment inflicted upon all “those who do not know God and to those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus” (2 Thes 1:8), and on all “who did not believe the truth, but took pleasure in wickedness” (2 Thes 2:12). In these studies on ‘Living in Dangerous Times’, I have sought to illumine and warn of the danger of the season in which we live; to awaken the sleepy and careless, to disturb the comfortable and complacent, and to encourage the faithful to watchfulness and perseverance. I understand human nature well enough to know that few will take the time to read them, and even fewer will take them to heart. But I do not trust in human nature, but the power and providence of God to make them bear fruit for the glory of God. If the Lord has used these studies to awaken, convict, convert, and turn even one sinner from the error of their ways, this will overpay all the effort which went into their writing. If you, reader, have benefited by them, I only ask that you return all praise and glory to the One to whom they belong, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I will say no more, but only pray that the Lord would carry home these truths by His Spirit to many who, in God’s providence, are exposed to them, and that a divine impression may be made on the heart and mind as to the danger of the season, and that you may, out of love to God and His Word, fear and hate sin now and flee to Christ so that you may never suffer the wages of sin hereafter.

The next series of studies, Lord willing, will be based on Hebrews 6:4-6 and will examine a subject that could not be more relevant for the days in which we live, namely, the nature and causes of apostasy from the gospel, and will utilize, among other resources, the work of Puritan genius John Owen by the same title.

[1]William Garden Blaikie, The Preachers of Scotland from the Sixth to the Nineteenth Century (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1888), 217, 218.

[2] Ibid, 158.

[3] John Owen, The Works of John Owen, vol. 7 (Reprint, Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1965), 4. Emphasis added

[4] Ibid, 7.

[5] Ibid, 3.

[6]B. B. Warfield, ‘The Inspiration of the Bible’ in The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield, vol 1 (Reprint, Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2003), 51.

[7] Quoted in Iain Murray, Australian Christian Life from 1788: An Introduction and an Anthology (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1988), 346.

[8] William Garden Blaikie, The Preachers of Scotland from the Sixth to the Nineteenth Century (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1888), 136.

[9] John Flavel, The Method of Grace: How the Holy Spirit Works (Rapidan, VA: Hartland Publications, 1997), 34.

[10] Robert Trial, ‘Sermons Concerning the Lord’s Prayer’ in The Works of Robert Traill, Vol. 2 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, Reprint 1975), 13, 14.

Donation
1.005.0010.0015.0020.0025.0035.0050.0075.00100.00