Apostasy After the Time of the Apostles
By John Fast
For in the case of those who have once been enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance, since they again crucify to themselves the Son of God, and put Him to open shame. – Hebrews 6:4-6 (NASB)
The New Testament repeatedly warns that men and women who seek to corrupt and destroy the gospel and to pervert, redefine, and deny the essential doctrines of Christianity come from two sources, namely, from outside the church and from inside the church. Of these two, those who make up the latter are by far the most pernicious, dangerous, deceptive, and destructive. They disguise themselves as servants of righteousness, but are really servants of the devil (2 Cor 11:15). They are of their father the devil; therefore, they continually and habitually want, will, and desire to always be doing the desires of their father (Jn 8:44). They themselves are deceived, therefore they speak as deceptively as their spiritual father, and like him they twist and distort the Scriptures to their own destruction (2 Pt 3:16); “They are from the world; therefore they speak as from the world, and the world listens to them” (1 Jn 4:5). They blur the difference, or make no distinction between true and false doctrine, biblical and unbiblical teaching, truth and almost truth, or Christian and almost Christian (Ezk 22:26). They ignore the antithesis between the regenerate and unregenerate and try to convince us, contrary to the plain teaching of Scripture, that the difference between the Christian and non-Christian is not all that great, serious, or obvious (1 Jn 3:9, 10). The first century church was, as I showed in the last study, prone to being deceived and led astray by both of these dangers, and, in many instances, were led into a condition of partial apostasy from the truths, principles, and doctrines of the gospel – a condition from which they were, in some cases, only partially and temporarily recovered by the faithful, diligent, loving, courageous, patient, and dogmatic response of apostolic authority and wisdom.
In all ages of the church there have been men and women who are masters at teaching false doctrine, false gospels, and false Christs in a way that makes them appear biblical, orthodox, reasonable, and attractive, especially to the undiscerning, worldly, and unregenerate mind. Historically, false teachers have often been received and treated by the church with an unfaithful gentleness, tolerance, and false charity, thereby allowing them to continue to “deceive the hearts of the unsuspecting” (Rm 16:18); “For you bear with” (anechomai – put up with; willingly hear and listen to) “anyone if he enslaves you, if he devours you” (katesthio – completely exploits), “if he takes advantage of you” (lambanei – exploit, entrap, ensnare, take advantage of by deceit, fraud, and trickery; cf. 2 Cor 12:16), “if he exalts himself, if he hits you in the face” (i.e. abuses their authority and uses it to bully, intimidate, manipulate, and humiliate into submission – 2 Cor 11:20). In other words, false teachers are bent on having their own way, gratifying their own lusts, and justify using any means to achieve their own ends. What they cannot accomplish through deceit, fraud, trickery, flattery, fleshly enticements, and psychological and emotional manipulation, they seek to accomplish by means of intimidation, humiliation, and coercion. Like Diotrephes, a false teacher may be orthodox in their doctrine, but their self-serving, deceitful, exploitive, and abusive practices indicate a spiritual blindness to God and His Word (3 Jn 9, 10). Yet in spite of this, historically it has been the false, not the faithful teachers of which all men speak well, “for in the same way their fathers used to treat the false prophets” (Lk 6:26).
If the apostolic churches were plagued by threats from false teachers, false apostles, and false doctrines, and if these churches were prone to apostatizing from essential doctrines of the gospel, just as the New Testament clearly teaches that they were, then what was the state of the churches after the close of the canon of Scripture and the death of the apostles? There are some today who would have us believe that all was well, at least for many centuries. All that was believed and practiced by them, we are told, must be regarded almost as authoritative as Scripture itself, and ought to be made a part of our faith and worship. It seems that somehow those churches which were founded by the apostles, and which were so prone to error, straying, and defecting from the most essential doctrines of the gospel, and to following the craftiness and deceitful scheming of false teachers, all while they were under the watchful eye of the apostles, were all of a sudden so transformed that they strayed not one bit from the truths and doctrines of the gospel. Sadly, history proves otherwise. What the apostles foretold would take place among these churches was soon realized.
Savage Wolves
The apostle Paul warned the elders in the church of Ephesus, “I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock;” (Ac 20:29). Paul compares these deceivers to savage wolves, not because they will be vicious persecutors of the church; to the contrary, these predators will appear to be its friend. The phrase, “will come in among you”, indicates these wolves gained their admission into the fellowship of the church under the pretense of believing the same truths and doctrines of the gospel. If they had openly opposed or denied the doctrines of the gospel, they would never have been allowed to “come in among” the church. It seems that the church in Ephesus took Paul’s warning seriously, for even when Jesus rebuked them for having left their first love (Rev 2:4), He commended them for not enduring “evil men, and you put to the test those who call themselves apostles, and they are not, and you found them to be false;” (Rev 2:2). These wolves are really heretics, frauds, schemers, and seducers who lie in wait for an opportunity to deceive by means of various twists, distortions, trickery, redefinitions, and manipulations of the text of Scripture, and cunning craftiness. Like their father the devil, they wait, oftentimes for years, “until an opportune time” (Lk 4:13), before they show their true wolfish nature. Whatever they pretend, however impressive their credentials, and no matter how evangelical they seemed to be, they are not true Christians, they are not children of God, they have never been born again, they have never received a love of the truth, but are savage wolves in sheep’s clothing who seek to undermine, lead astray, tear to shreds, and devour the truths and doctrines of the gospel and the souls of their victims, all while pretending to teach and believe the Bible and to be Christian.
Peter warned his readers of the same kind of persons whom he called, “false teachers”, who would “secretly introduce destructive heresies”, that is, ideologies, schools of thought, and practices from outside the Bible (2 Pt 2:1). They do so “secretly”, craftily; not openly and all at once, but incrementally and over time they introduce, integrate, and assimilate into Scripture and into the life and worship of the church human opinions, teachings, and ideologies from outside the Bible; they use biblical terminology, but give it new and different meanings; they cast doubt and dispersions on the true, literal, historical-grammatical, and plain meaning of Scripture and its doctrines; they justify their deceptions with claims of extra-biblical revelation; they tell us we must ‘rethink’ the historic teachings and doctrines of the Bible; they work to undermine, redefine, cast doubt on, and deny the inerrancy, authority, and sufficiency of Scripture; they “entice by fleshly desires, by sensuality,” (2 Pet 2:18); they desire to be a friend of the world; they devise and implement new, subtle, and subjective principles of interpretation that allow them to read into Scripture the meaning they want it to have based on their own desires, experiences, and presuppositions. It is this “appropriation of new hermeneutical principles that now characterizes evangelical hermeneutics in general, principles ruled by preunderstanding that, …. leads to subjectivism, dehistorizing tendencies, using narrative literature as a basis for theology, meanings assigned by readers, multiple meanings for a single passage, application that controls interpretation, and an intolerance for Spirit-led common sense”[1]; that is, it never fails to lead the mind astray from the truths and doctrines of the gospel.
The apostles never directed believers to listen to all opinions and viewpoints with an ‘open mind’; rather they were instructed to “test the spirits to see whether they are from God;” (1 Jn 4:1). There are “deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons” (1 Tim 4:1); men and women who advocate “a different doctrine”, and who do “not agree with sound words, those of our Lord Jesus Christ, and with the doctrine conforming to godliness” (1 Tim 6:3); false teachers who “by their smooth and flattering speech they deceive the hearts of the unsuspecting” (Rm 16:18), and who “secretly introduce destructive heresies” (2 Pt 2:1). Jude warned that this same kind of persons had infiltrated themselves into the church, “For certain persons have crept in unnoticed,” (Jud 4). These were “ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ” (Jud 4), and who “speak arrogantly, flattering people for the sake of gaining an advantage” (Jud 16). Apostasy begins in the pulpit and from there spreads to the people, “For those who guide this people are leading them astray, and those who are guided by them are brought to confusion” (Is 9:16).
In his warning to the Ephesian elders, Paul further added, “and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them” (Ac 20:30). Like the Jewish false prophet Elymas, they “are full of all deceit and fraud”, and they never “cease to make crooked” (diastrepho – pervert) “the straight ways of the Lord” (Ac 13:10). The purpose of their “perverse” speech (diastrepho – crooked, misleading, distorted, twisted interpretations) is to turn the hearts and minds of people away from “the faith” (Ac 13:8), and to “draw away the disciples after them” (Ac 20:30). They endeavor to get people to follow them and their distorted interpretations, their brand of ‘Christianity’, their false gospels, doctrines, and practices, their ‘new’ revelations, their political and social agendas, and not Jesus Christ and His inerrant, authoritative, and all-sufficient Word. In other words, it is the perennial age-old question; is the basis of our faith and doctrine to be what the Bible plainly teaches, or what men teach. Is it to be the one, true, and clear historical-grammatical meaning of Scripture, or a meaning derived from forcing on the text our own preferences, prejudices, experiences, ideologies, reasonings, and preconceived ideas in order to derive a meaning which we like better? We have forgotten that wrong belief is just as dangerous as unbelief, and trusting in another Jesus and another gospel is just as damning as believing in no Jesus and no gospel.
Whether or not Paul intended to include these particular elders who were present with him, or he was referring to others who would arise in the near future after his departure, is irrelevant to the force of the warning. The point is, men would arise from within the leadership of the church who would twist, distort, deny, and pervert the Scripture, and who would teach things which, to one degree or another, contained apostasy from the doctrines of the gospel. They redefine salvation, the gospel, and what it is to be Christian. That they were successful in doing so, and that the church was eventually infected and leavened by them, and fell away from its original devotion to Christ, is evident from the accusation and warning which Jesus Himself pronounced against this same church about forty-years later, “But I have this against you, that you have left your first love. Remember therefore from where you have fallen, and repent and do the deeds you did at first; or else I am coming to you and will remove your lampstand out of its place – unless you repent” (Rev 2:4, 5).
In the same way, Paul warned Timothy that a season would soon come in which professing Christians “will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires;” (2 Tim 4:3). In doing so, they “will turn away their ears from the truth, and will turn aside to myths” (2 Tim 4:4). That this defection from the truths, doctrines, and principles of the gospel did in fact befall the post-apostolic church is a matter of historical record. That such a defection would certainly occur was a fact made explicitly clear to the apostles by the Holy Spirit, “But the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith,” (1 Tim 4:1). Notice, Paul does not say they would fall away from faith in general, or from a form of godliness, or from a false and worldly form of ‘Christianity’, but from “the faith”, namely, the one true gospel of Jesus Christ. They fall away because they are, “paying attention to” (prosechontes – to pay close attention to; to consider carefully; to continue to believe and cling to) “deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons,” – that is, error and false doctrines which are propagated “by means of the hypocrisy of liars seared in their own consciences as with a branding iron,” (1 Tim 4:1, 2). In other words, they fall away from “the faith”, that is, the one true gospel, and substitute other doctrines and different gospels in its place – different doctrines and gospels that always have immense and devastating consequences. It does not matter what form they take or by what name they are called; it does not matter if they arise in the first or the twenty-first century; their source is the same, namely, demonic. They are the means by which “the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving, that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Cor 4:4). In this way Satan wreaks havoc within churches, by filling the minds of men and women with contrary opinions and prejudices against the truth, and turning them from it to myths.
It was the uniform warning of all the apostles to the churches that after the gospel had been received, established, and professed for a while, there would come times and seasons of apostasy from the truths, doctrines, and worship of the gospel. Jude told his readers that they “ought to remember the words that were spoken beforehand by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ, that they were saying to you, ‘In the last time there shall be mockers, following after their own ungodly lusts” (Jude 17, 18). These are people who are “worldly-minded, devoid of the Spirit” (Jude 19). Peter warned of the same thing, “Know this first of all, that in the last days mockers will come with their mocking, following after their own lusts” (2 Pet 3:3). These mockers arise from within the church. They mock and ridicule biblical truths and doctrines which run contrary to their own lusts and human reasoning. It is their own worldly and carnal lusts, desires, and ambitions, their own human wisdom and majority opinion, not sound principles of interpretation, that dictate their interpretations of Scripture. The apostle John stated it this way in his first Epistle, “and this is the spirit of antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world” (1 Jn 4:3), and in his second Epistle he warned, “For many deceivers have gone out into the world,” (2 Jn 7). This being the uniform testimony of the Holy Spirit in the days of the apostles, namely, that much of the visible church would fall away from the faith, one of the principle means used by Satan to lead the minds of people astray was introducing new and contradictory revelations, interpretations, doctrines, and principles into the church. By this means he succeeded in eradicating out of the minds of men all the warnings and exhortations given by the apostles, thereby instilling in them a false security and neutralizing the purpose of those apostolic warnings. In doing so, Satan not only led the minds of people astray into apostasy, but by means of false teachers and blind guides he rendered them oblivious to their apostasy and unshakable in their belief that the errors and false doctrines they had been taught and had embraced were true. The warnings of the apostles were ignored and neglected while at the same time their faith was being subverted by scores of deceptions resulting in their apostasy. Such people do not abandon religion altogether, but attempt to compensate for their lack of inward Christianity by an increasingly excessive amount of outward show, good works, self-reform, religious zeal and activity, emotional and mystical experiences, and counterfeit spirituality which, in the end, do them no good. They have no inward joy and peace, and are secretly conscious that something is terribly wrong, but do not know why.
Apostasy does not occur all at once, but rather by degrees. Like a ship that breaks loose from its mooring, it begins with an almost imperceptible drift away from the historic truths and doctrines of Scripture. It is a process which usually begins with an ‘open but cautious’ attitude towards false doctrines and false teachers, especially if those doctrines and practices produce any measure of ‘success’. Success, not divine revelation, becomes the only test of truth. All it takes for a person or a local church or a denomination or Christian college or seminary to become apostate is for them to tolerate and become sympathetic toward some perversion of Scripture, some error, some false doctrine, and over time, they will eventually fall away from the faith. A little leaven will eventually leaven the whole lump of dough. The surest way to promote an intolerance for sound doctrine is to minimize and pass over the importance of sound doctrine while showing sympathy and tolerance for error. Thus, the necessity for Paul’s exhortation to Timothy, “O, Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to you, avoiding worldly and empty chatter” (i.e. that which corrupts the truth) “and the opposing arguments of what is falsely called ‘knowledge’” (i.e. that which denies the truth) “which some have professed and thus gone astray from the faith” (1 Tim 6:20, 21). In other words, they become apostates. Thus, the reason for the warning issued by the author of Hebrews, “For this reason we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard lest we drift away from it” (Hb 2:1), and for Peter’s warning to his readers, “be on your guard, lest being carried away by the error of unprincipled men, you fall from your own steadfastness,” (2 Pet 3:17), and John’s in his second epistle, “Watch yourselves, that you might not lose what we have accomplished,” (2 Jn 8), and Jesus’ to the church in Smyrna, “Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life” (Rev 2:10).
There is nothing harmless or indifferent when it comes to errors in the doctrines, truths, and principles of the gospel; rather all are fatal. Jesus nor the apostles minimized the danger of error just because it happened to be mixed with much truth. There are words that “will spread like gangrene” (2 Tim 2:17). There are many who are not far from the kingdom of God (Mk 12:34), and who in the end “come short of it” (Heb 4:1). Many who now say to Jesus, ‘Lord, Lord’, will not enter the kingdom of heaven (Mt 7:21-23). Many enter by the wide and broad gate the leads to destruction, while few find the small and narrow gate that leads to eternal life (Mt 7:13, 14). It was the spiritual leaders, the religious elite, and the Bible scholars of His day that Jesus condemned as blind guides, and to whom He declared, “how shall you escape the sentence of hell” (Mt 23:33). As one Puritan pastor stated, those who come the closest to heaven will sink the deepest into hell, because they fall from the greatest height. It only takes a little leaven to leaven the entire lump of dough. Poison administered in small doses and mixed with healthy food is just as deadly as a large dose in its raw form. The effect of one is slower and less obvious, but just as fatal. It is not charitable, ‘open-minded’, scholarly, tolerant, or loving to say that errors in doctrine are not hurtful, but the greatest deception and cruelty. We would be more discerning and diligent in guarding truth and in detecting and exposing error and the unfruitful deeds of darkness if we correctly understood the power of error as an instrument of Satan to lead the mind astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ (2 Cor 11:3; Eph 6:12).
Neglect of the truth, and a failure to guard the truth will always result in the corruption of and apostasy from the truths and doctrines of the gospel. When truth is neglected and corrupted it is not replaced by a different kind of truth, but the leaven of error rushes in to take its place. What else comes in but darkness when the light of day recedes? When people will no longer endure sound doctrine, they do not turn to a different kind of truth; rather, they turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to and willingly believe in myths and doctrines of demons, intentionally accumulate for themselves teachers whose teachings validate their own desires, false opinions, twisted interpretations, the myths and errors they believe, and their worldly lives and thinking. They shut their ears to the truth of God, but eagerly listen to and believe the lies of Satan. Because “men loved the darkness rather than the light;” (Jn 3:19), when they are exposed to the light of truth they willfully close their eyes until judicially blinded by God and hardened to both His Word and His providences. Such was the state of much of the post-apostolic church, and such is the state of the bulk of modern evangelicalism. Very few people today, even among professing Christians, believe in the existence of Satan and hell. Fewer still think they could ever be deceived by the devil and blinded by him to spiritual truths, or led astray by him into apostasy. Most are blind to the reality that there is a cunning devil that can lead people around by the nose in the midst of all their counterfeit religion and blind them to the truths of Scripture. The truth is, people can be used to teach error and mislead others without ever being aware that they are doing so, because they themselves are deceived (2 Tim 3:13). The devil is a master of disguise and the ultimate counterfeiter, as the great eighteenth century British pastor and hymn writer John Newton once described,
“he is always dangerous, but never more so than when he pleads for Gospel doctrines in order to abuse them, and when he tries to pass his counterfeit humility, zeal, and sanctity upon us for pure gold. No coiner can equal him for imitation. Where Christ has a church, he will have a synagogue; where the Spirit produces any graces, he, like the magicians of Egypt, will do something as like it, and yet as unlike it as possible. He has something that comes so near the Gospel, that it is called by St. Paul another gospel, and yet in reality it is no gospel at all. He deals much in half convictions, and almost Christians, but does not like thorough work. He will let people talk about grace as much as they please, and commend them for it, provided talking will satisfy them …. He will preach free grace when he finds people willing to receive the notion, as an excuse and cloak for idleness. But let him look and talk as he list, he is Satan still; and those who are experienced and watchful may discern his cloven foot hanging down below his fine garment of light; and he is never more a devil than when he looks most like an angel. Let us beware of him; for many wise have been deceived, and many strong have been cast down by him.”[2]
Horatius Bonar, a nineteenth century Scottish pastor, hymn writer, and friend of Robert Murray M’cheyne, once described the devil in this way,
“Let us mark how, in these days of ours, he works, and temps, and rages: –
He comes as an angel of light, to mislead, yet pretending to lead; to blind, yet professing to open the eye; to obscure and bewilder, yet professing to illuminate and guide. He approaches us with fair words upon his lips: liberality, progress, culture, freedom, expansion, elevation, science, literature, benevolence, – nay, and religion too. He seeks to make his own out of these; to give the world as much of these as suits his purpose, as much as will make them content without God, and without Christ, and without the Holy Ghost….
He sets himself against God and the things of God in every way. He can deny the gospel; or he can dilute the gospel; or he can obscure the gospel; or he can neutralize the gospel; – just as suits his purpose, or the persons with whom he has to do. His object in regard to the gospel is to take out of it all that makes it glad tidings to the sinner; and oftentimes this modified or mutilated gospel, which looks so like the real, serves his end best; for it throws men off their guard, making them suppose that they have received Christ’s gospel, even though they have not found in it the good news which it contains.
He rages against the true God, – sometimes openly and coarsely, at other times calmly and politely, – making men believe that he is the friend of the truth, but an enemy to its perversion. Progress, progress, progress, is his watchword now, by means of which he hopes to allure men away from the old anchorages, under the pretext of giving them wider, fuller, more genial teachings…. He distinguishes, too, between theology and religion, warmly advocating the latter in order to induce men to abandon the former. He rages against the divine accuracy of the Bible, and cunningly subverts its inspiration by elevating every true poet and philosopher to the same inspired position. So successfully has he wrought in disintegrating and undermining the truth, that there is hardly a portion of it left firm. The ground underneath us is hollow; and the crust on which we tread ready to give way, and precipitate us into the abyss of unbelief.”[3]
The church of Sardis believed they were alive, and as a result were blind to the reality that they were spiritually dead (Rev 3:1). It was their belief that they were “rich…and have need of nothing”, that blinded the Laodiceans to the reality that they were lukewarm and “wretched and miserable and blind and naked” (Rev 3:15-17). Today multitudes who profess to be Christian are blinded to the fact that, “If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth;” (1 Jn 1:6); rather they see no inconsistency between their profession of faith and their walking in darkness to scriptural truths, doctrines, and principles on the one hand, and their sinful, lawless, disobedient, and worldly lifestyles on the other. If this is not self-deception and being blinded by the god of this world to spiritual truth and realities, I do not know what it is. As Iain Murray once noted,
“The idea that Christianity stands chiefly in danger from the forces of materialism, or from secular philosophy, or from pagan religions, is not the teaching of the New Testament. The greatest danger comes rather from temptations within and from those who, using the name of Christ, are instruments of Satan to lead men to believe a lie and to worship what in reality belongs to the demonic (2 Thess. 2:3-9; Rev 13:11).”[4]
Satan disguises himself as an angel of light; his human instruments disguise themselves as servants of righteousness (2 Cor 11:14, 15); false gospels come couched in biblical terms; grace is turned into license; works are added to grace; repentance is ignored or denied; the necessity and nature of the new birth are passed over; different Jesus’ are invented; love is defined as accepting anything and anyone; natural gifts, talents, humanitarianism, and mystical experiences pretend to be the fruit of the Spirit; carnal entertainment and a ‘worship experience’ is substituted for worshiping God in Spirit and in truth; the inerrancy, authority, and sufficiency of Scripture are undermined, scoffed at, and denied; the interests, thinking, and priorities of modern culture come to be mirrored in the church. The greatest environmental threat is not ‘man-made’ climate change, but human beings living in sin and rebellion to God and His Word, “For it is on account of these things that the wrath of God will come,” (Col 3:6). There is no more effective means of blinding the minds of men and women to true Christianity than by teaching them to invincibly adhere to and defend a form of false Christianity, a different gospel, and a different Jesus.
The Post-Apostolic Church
We have in the writings of Eusebius (c. 265-340 A.D.), who is regarded The Father of Church History, a general account of the state of the church after the death of the apostles. Strange doctrines concerning the person of Jesus Christ began to infiltrate the church. One such heresy was that of the Ebionites, so called because they held low and beggarly views of Jesus Christ and Scripture. According to Eusebius,
“they considered [Jesus] a plain and common man, who was justified only because of his superior virtue …. There were others, however, besides them, that were of the same name, but avoided the strange and absurd beliefs of the former, and did not deny that the Lord was born of a virgin and of the Holy Spirit. But, nevertheless, in as much as they refused to acknowledge that he pre-existed, being God, Word, and Wisdom, they turned aside to the impiety of the former, especially when they, like them, endeavored to observe strictly the bodily worship of the law. These men, moreover, thought it was necessary to reject all the epistles of the apostle, whom they called apostate from the law; and they used only the so-called Gospel according to the Hebrews and made small account of the rest”.[5]
Eusebius also refers to the writings of Hegesippus, a second century Christian who lived immediately after the time of the apostles, and whose writings are now totally lost except for eight extracts concerning church history quoted by Eusebius. In recounting the martyrdom of Symeon, the son of Clopas, under the reign of the Roman Emperor Trajan (98-117 A.D.), Eucebius cites Hegesippus as recording,
“that the Church up to that time had remained a pure and uncorrupted virgin, since, if there were any that attempted to corrupt the sound norm of the preaching of salvation, they lay until then concealed in obscure darkness. But when the sacred college of apostles had suffered death in various forms, and the generation of those that had been deemed worthy to hear the inspired wisdom with their own ears had passed away, then the league of godless error took its rise as a result of the folly of heretical teachers, who, because none of the apostles was still living, attempted henceforth, with a bold face, to proclaim in opposition to the preaching of the truth, the ‘knowledge which is falsely so-called.’”[6]
Cyprian (c. 200-258), Bishop of Carthage, wrote in the third-century,
“Light had come to the gentiles and the lamp of salvation was shining for the deliverance of mankind, so that the deaf began to hearken to the Spirit’s call of grace, the blind to open their eyes upon the Lord, the sick to recover their health unto eternity, the lame to make speed to the Church and the dumb to raise their voice aloud in prayer. Thereupon the Enemy, seeing his idols abandoned and his temples and haunts deserted by the ever growing numbers of the faithful, devised a fresh deceit, using the Christian name itself to misled the unwary. He invented heresies and schisms so as to undermine the faith, to corrupt the truth, to sunder our unity. Those whom he failed to keep in the blindness of their own ways he beguiles, and leads them up a new road of illusions.”[7]
We have seen that in the days of the apostles themselves there were many drifts and declines in the first century church. The apostles, however, being jealous over the church with a godly jealousy (2 Cor 11:2), and knowing themselves to be “stewards of the mysteries of God” (1 Cor 4:1), they were faithful and diligent to guard and contend for gospel truths, doctrines, and principles so they might be found trustworthy stewards, guarding the church against all ways and means by which “as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds should be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ” (2 Cor 11:3), by the teaching of other gospels, other doctrines, and other Christs which they had not received from the apostles. It was by their diligence, faithfulness, perseverance, watchfulness, and godly wisdom which the early church, for the most part, was rescued and recovered from their errors. This is why Hegessipus declared the church during the days of the apostles to be a ‘pure and uncorrupted virgin’, that is, in comparison to what she so quickly became under the influence and infestation of false doctrines and teachers, becoming instead corrupted and defiled and “led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ” (2 Cor 11:3).
Four Categories
These historical accounts, and many more could be added, all bear witness to the truth and accuracy of what was foretold by the apostles concerning the future falling away from the power, purity, and simplicity of the gospel. Nevertheless, whatever is described by these early writers, it must be regarded as only the beginning of an ever- increasing defection and apostasy from the truths, doctrines, and principles of the gospel. Paul warned that “evil men and impostors will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived” (2 Tim 3:13). These apostolic warnings and predictions might be reduced to four main categories:
First, “savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock” (Ac 20:29).
Second, “from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them” (Ac 20:30).
Third, weariness of the truth, “the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine;” (2 Tim 4:3); rather, they will “turn away their ears from the truth, and will turn aside to myths” (2 Tim 4:4).
Fourth, a gradual and imperceptible drift into a general apostasy by the entire professing church.
It is undeniable that many of the principle leaders and teachers of the second century church, many of whom personally knew one or more of the apostles, did in fact introduce, embrace, and teach various things which were foreign to Scripture and to the mysteries of the gospel which were committed to them. Too much of their thinking and teaching became influenced by the integration and assimilation of Greek philosophy with Scripture and by fanciful allegorical interpretations. Numerous examples could be cited from the writings of Ignatius, Irenaeus, Papias, Clement of Rome, Polycarp, Clement of Alexandria, Justin Martyr and others to this effect. However, we must remember that the early church did not possess a full canon of Scripture to guide them, nor were there any living apostles who could settle theological differences. By and large these men defended and taught the fundamental doctrines and principles of the gospel, but by their philosophical speculations, their allegorical expositions of Scripture, and by opinions which were contradictory to the teaching of Scripture, they introduced an approach to Scripture, namely, philosophical and allegorical, which over time led the minds of professing Christians astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ, resulting in the gradual corruption and denial of the pure and simple doctrine of Jesus and His apostles, and culminating in a general apostasy of the entire professing church. Nevertheless, these early church Fathers were not the “savage wolves” foretold by Paul; rather they unwittingly provided the method and opened the door which enabled these “savage wolves” to come in among the church.
These “savage wolves” who would not spare the flock were heretics and false teachers of various kinds. The degree of success they achieved in deceiving the minds of multitudes, and luring them away from the truths and doctrines of the gospel after it had been preached to them and professed by them, stands as a full confirmation of what the apostles predicted. All these various heresies fall under two general types, and many have their modern-day counterparts, just cloaked with different names. In fact, virtually every modern false teaching and heresy can be traced to one or more ancient heresy. First, there are those who, in an open, reckless, and defiant contempt of the gospel they once professed, fell away into foolish speculations, mystical experiences, esoteric ‘new’ knowledge, twisted interpretations, endless fantasies, denials and corruptions of Scripture, accompanied by ungodly, worldly, and pagan practices, and even though they sought to retain the name of ‘Christian’, they completely fell away from Christ and His gospel. These were all the various forms of Gnosticism, the Marcionites, the Manichees, the Ebionites, and a multitude of others. The more ungodly and unchristian they were, the more wild, irrational, unbiblical, twisted, worldly, and wicked were their teachings and practices.
When we consider the multitudes that paid attention to these doctrines of demons, and were led astray and fell away by them, it only proves what the Bible teaches concerning the heart and mind of unsaved men and women. If there was not an overwhelming tendency in the minds of men and women to grow weary of and relinquish the plain truths and doctrines of the gospel, and were this tendency not promoted by an irrational and inbred enmity against the truth, would it have been possible that so early in the history of the church such strange, unchristian, unbiblical, unapostolic, and foolish teachings and doctrines should find such a large following among professing Christians, many of which were highly educated, and by doing so would openly renounce the truths and doctrines they once professed to believe? As it was then, so it is now within modern evangelicalism, “and because of them the way of truth will be maligned;” (2 Pet 2:2).
There were other types of heresies that like the first were a real apostasy from the truths and doctrines of the gospel, and, as with the first type, the authors and followers of these heresies pretended to be Christians. These were the various heresies that corrupted or denied the true nature of Jesus Christ. A second heresy of this type were those that denied or corrupted the atonement of Christ and the nature of salvation. Among the first sort were those who denied the deity of Christ, of which the Arians were the most pronounced. Others, such as Docetism, denied the humanity of Christ, while others, like Apollinarianism, Nestorianism, Monophysitism (also known as Eutychianism), and Subordinationism confused, corrupted, and confounded the two natures of Christ, and Modalism, which denies that Jesus Christ is a distinct person from the person of the Father and the person of the Holy Spirit. Of the second kind, namely, those which denied or corrupted the atonement of Christ, the true nature of man, and the true nature of salvation, Pelagianism opposed Christ’s substitutionary atonement, His imputed righteousness, original sin, and salvation by grace through faith alone. All of these, but especially Arianism and Pelagianism, spread among the church like a cancer, eating away the vital truths and doctrines of Jesus Christ and His apostles. In Arianism, we have plain and tragic evidence of the instability of professing Christians, and of their readiness to turn their ears away from the truth regarding the person of Jesus Christ taught by the apostles. In just a little over fifty years after it was first taught by Arius (c.256-336), a Bishop of Alexandria, it became the dominant view among professing Christians in the world. Bishops, priests, and people succumbed to its deceptive power, and in their public confessions renounced and denied the deity of the Son of God, affirming instead that there was a time when the Son did not exist, and that He was created by the Father. Having gained the support of some Roman Emperors, particularly Constantine and Flavius Valens, along with the majority of bishops who jointly and enthusiastically promoted this heresy, often by force and always by fraud, almost the entire Christian world was, for a time, led into this apostasy. It was Athanasius of Alexandria who, at the Council of Nicea, stood virtually alone to defend the deity of Christ against the heresy of Arianism, so much so that the phrase, “Athanasius against the world”, was coined to describe his faithful and steadfast perseverance in the true doctrine of Jesus Christ. Even after Arius and his views were condemned at the Council of Nicea in 325 A.D., they persisted to be taught and believed for ages, and are still with us today in the form of various cults like Jehovah’s Witness, Mormonism, and Unitarianism. As for Pelagianism, its teachings stealthily, subtly, slowly, and incrementally insinuated themselves into the doctrines of salvation taught by the church, so that, in one form or another, they continue to be no small part of the ‘Christianity’ which most ‘Christians’ today profess, as B.B. Warfield noted over one-hundred years ago,
“It is a Pelagianism, you see, that out-pelagianizes Pelagius. For Pelagius had some recognition of the guilt of sin, and gave some acknowledgement of the atoning work of Christ in making expiation for guilt, And this theology does neither. With no real sense of guilt, and without the least feeling for the disabilities which come from sin, it completely puts God’s forgiveness at the disposal of whosoever will deign to take it from his hands. The view of God which is involved, some one has not inaptly if a little bitingly called “the domestic animal conception of God.” As you keep sheep to give you wool, and cows to give you milk, so you keep God to give you forgiveness…. That’s what God is for! It is thus that our modern Liberal theology thinks of God. He has but one function and comes into contact with man at but one point: he exists to forgive sins.”[8]
Today this conception of God is not confined to Liberal theology, but characterizes the bulk of modern evangelicalism. The doctrine of salvation and gospel which prevails among modern evangelicalism is, like Pelagianism, one form or another of self-salvation which requires no new birth, no new nature, and no regeneration. Like Pelagianism, its view of man is that by nature he is basically good, albeit somewhat ‘broken’, not “by nature children of wrath” (Eph 2:3). The wounds inflicted by Pelagianism and its various offshoots upon the truths, doctrines, and principles of the gospel have not been healed to this day. This is the first and second way which the apostasy of professing Christians foretold by the apostles came to pass so soon after the death of the apostles, and they and others like them continue to this day.
A third way foretold by the Holy Spirit was that professing Christians would grow tired of, and no longer willing to “endure sound doctrine” (2 Tim 4:3); therefore, they would “turn away their ears from the truth, and turn aside to myths” (2 Tim 4:4). In this way, the mass of professing Christians outwardly expressed their inward enmity to the truths and doctrines of the gospel. During the third century, and especially the fourth, monastic teachings began to be introduced into the church by leaders such as Basil the Great (c.330-379), and his brothers Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory of Nazianzus, who collectively are known as the Cappadocian Fathers. Instead of the gospel doctrines of man’s guilt, corruption, and total inability and his being under the condemnation of God, the doctrine of justification by grace through faith in the substitutionary atonement and perfect righteousness of Christ, of regeneration, repentance, faith, sanctification, and a new life of walking in obedience to the law of God and the commands of the gospel – doctrines which men and women had become tired of and were no longer willing to endure – men arose who filled their minds and tickled their ears with stories of dreams, visions, extra-biblical revelations, self-invented devotions and worship, of acetic and uncommanded “self-abasement and severe treatment of the body” (Col 2:23), man-made rituals and practices, philosophical speculations, and a myriad of other foolish superstitions. By such myths innumerable souls were led astray from the simplicity and purity of the gospel, and came to despise all sound doctrine that exposed their myths for the falsehoods and fables they really were, along with instilling a contempt for the true person and gospel of Jesus Christ and His apostles. It is this of which the apostle Paul specifically foretold in 1 Tim 4:1-3, namely, that “by means of the hypocrisy of liars seared in their own conscience as with a branding iron”, and by the fanciful myths, tales, and doctrines of demons propagated by them and eagerly listened to by professing Christians, the mass of professing Christendom was so leavened and infested with the acceptance and belief in myths and the practice of foolish superstitions that little or none of the body of Christians remained sound and healthy; rather, what Isaiah wrote concerning Israel was true of the church in general, “the whole head is sick, and the whole heart is faint. From the sole of the foot even to the head, there is nothing sound in it” (Is 1;5, 6).
Finally, by all these various defections, corruptions, additions, myths, and means which the deceit and subtly of Satan made use of, and which the minds of men and women were led astray by, and which their fleshly and worldly lusts and hearts turned aside to, brought about that general apostasy by which the Christian world at that time was plunged into a thousand years of darkness and ruin under the domination of what came to be Roman Catholicism and the Papacy. The rise and progress of the defection of Catholicism, its success, advance, and eventual domination of professing Christendom, and the growth of its power, abuses, lies, and superstitious false teachings have been so well documented and exposed throughout the centuries, there is no need to repeat them here. In brief, the truths, doctrines, and principles of the gospel were by it so neglected and corrupted, its worship and doctrines became so polluted by the assimilation of pagan beliefs and practices, and its leaders were so consumed with greed, ambition, and lust for power that instead of being the body of Christ and the pillar and support of the truth, it became synonymous with the spirit of antichrist, and personified the people in the parable taught by Jesus in Luke 19:12-27 who declared, “We do not want this man to reign over us” (Lk 19:14). Its gospel, as are all false gospels in one degree or another, is one of self-salvation by human effort and merit, not the gospel of salvation by grace alone and through faith alone in the perfect blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ. As the nineteenth century Scottish theologian William Garden Blaikie once wrote in tracing the history of preaching in Scotland from the sixth to the nineteenth century,
“A Gospel which has no doctrine of salvation from guilt and condemnation at its heart is no Gospel at all. But if this doctrine of salvation for the individual be the heart of the Gospel, it is not the whole. ‘The whole counsel of God’ which St. Paul did not shun to declare to the Ephesians embraced much more. In the case of the Scottish Reformers, one of their chief objects was to defend the doctrine of salvation from all that seemed likely to impair its efficacy, first from the Church of Rome, and then from attempts to interfere with the Scriptural constitution and free action of the Church. To originate the divine life in the individual soul, through living faith in Christ; to develop that life, mainly on its divine side, through the power of the Holy Spirit applying the written Word; and to maintain pure and effective the machinery through which these objects were to be gained, was the great aim of the preachers of the Reformation, and of those who followed in their steps.”[9]
Until the Protestant Reformation, professing Christianity gradually sank deeper and deeper into a thousand-year abyss of spiritual and moral darkness in which true Christianity and its truths and doctrines were hounded, persecuted, and driven into the wilderness, so to speak, where it was sustained and nourished by the Holy Spirit working through the written Word of God. The few faithful witnesses who remained to preach gospel truths and doctrines, men such as the Lollards, went about preaching the truth, often impoverished, usually persecuted, and sometimes sealing their testimony with their own blood, until the time when God in His grace would again send His Spirit to convict the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment by sending men which He raised up, gifted, enabled, and sustained to successfully carry out a work of Reformation in many nations and churches. It is true that these Reformers never recovered the spiritual purity, peace, and unity of the apostolic churches, nor was it something that many of them tried to achieve. It is also true that some continued to hold and defend erroneous doctrines such as baptismal regeneration, and that some held anti-Semitic views and opinions. They were by no means perfect men, and they were products of the age in which they lived. Their primary focus was to reclaim the doctrine of salvation by sovereign grace alone through faith alone from its corruption by Catholicism. Their theological differences regarding worship and various doctrines soon manifested themselves, and proved to be the primary cause of hindering and limiting the progress of their work. But despite their imperfections, incomplete knowledge, and often petty and caustic disagreements and divisions, God used these men to bring about a blessed and fruitful recovery from the errors, superstitions, abuses, heresies, idolatries, and apostasy which the entire professing church at this time had fallen into. That the Protestant Reformation was a true work of God manifested itself in several ways:
First, the gospel and doctrine of salvation taught by them was the gospel and doctrine taught by Scripture, namely, the gospel of sovereign grace, and which they forcefully and effectively defended from Scripture, thereby refuting and exposing the abuses, corruptions, and apostasy from it by Rome and the Papacy, and freeing the churches from open idolatry.
Second, the consciences of men and women which had been bound by superstitious fears, foolish speculations, false teachings, and threatenings from Pope, bishops, cardinals, and priests, and who had been deprived of gospel truths by blind guides of every sort, and even forbidden by them under penalty of death of even owning a Bible, and by whom they were kept in darkness, exploited, and abused in order to satisfy their own carnal lusts and self-interests under the pretext of rendering service to God, these poor, abused, and deceived souls were set free from the lies and abuses of Catholicism by the truth of the gospel and led into the paths of gospel obedience.
Third, multitudes of men and women were “granted for Christ’s sake, not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for His sake” (Phil 1:29), resulting in untold numbers that persevered in the faith and did not love their life even to death, choosing cruel torture and a painful death at the hands of those who sought to gain and retain the favor of the present apostasy rather than renounce the least truth and doctrine of the gospel.
Fourth, the fruit which it produced in the real conversion and transformation of not only many people, but of whole nations by bringing multitudes to true saving faith in Christ, and who by their transformed and holy lives had a purifying and edifying effect on the society in which they lived, is evidence that this was a true work of the Holy Spirit.
The Post-Reformation Church
That the Reformation brought about great positive change to those nations in which it took root cannot be denied, nor can it be denied that multitudes of people were rescued from the power of that mortal disease and apostasy they had been living under for a thousand years. It might have been expected that this recovery of spiritual life, health, and truth would have grown and progressed, and that every effort would have been exerted to prevent a relapse, which if such a thing should happen, would make the last error worse than the first, “For it would be better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than having known it, to turn away from the holy commandment delivered to them” (2 Pt 2:21). Sadly though, this was the case, as the seventeenth century Puritan John Owen records,
“that not only the work hath received little or no improvement among themselves, in the increase of light, truth, and holiness, nor been progressive or successful in the world towards others, but hath visibly and apparently lost its force, and gone backwards on all accounts.”[10]
During Owen’s day many were deserting Protestantism and returning to Roman Catholicism. Many others were being seduced by and falling away into the then popular heresy of Socinianism which denied the pre-existence of Christ before His birth, the doctrine of original sin, and the unlimited omniscience of God, the latter being the principle tenet of the modern heresy of Open Theism. Numerous others were paying attention to a relatively new system of doctrines which took their name from their author, the Dutch theologian Jacob Arminius, namely, Arminianism. Here we have more evidence of the tendency of all sorts of people to fall away from the truths and doctrines of the gospel after they have professed them and been instructed in them. By the end of the seventeenth and well into the eighteenth century most of the nations that had been impacted by the Reformation had once again drifted into a general apostasy from the truths, doctrines, and principles of the gospel. In Germany, Lutheranism, under Luther’s successor Melanchthon, had made friends with Roman Catholicism. In England numerous attempts were made by apostate church leaders, men like Archbishop William Laud (1573-1645), to reunite the Monarchy and the Church of England with the Papacy. In describing the condition of Christianity in England at the beginning of the eighteenth century, the great nineteenth century British pastor and author J.C. Ryle records,
“From the year 1700 till about the era of the French Revolution, England seemed barren of all that is really good. How such a state of things can have arisen in a land of free Bibles and professing Protestantism is almost beyond comprehension. Christianity seemed to lie as one dead, insomuch that you might have said “she is dead.” Morality, however much exalted in the pulpits, was thoroughly trampled under foot in the streets…. Natural theology, without a single distinctive doctrine of Christianity, cold morality, or barren orthodoxy, formed the staple of teaching both in church and chapel, Sermons everywhere were little better than miserable moral essays, utterly devoid of anything likely to awaken, convert, or save souls…. When such was the state of things in churches and chapels, it can surprise no one to learn the land was deluged with infidelity and skepticism. The prince of this world made good use of his opportunity. His agents were active and zealous in promulgating every kind of strange and blasphemous opinion…. The celebrated lawyer, Blackstone, had the curiosity in the reign of George III, to go church to church and hear every clergyman of note in London. He says that he did not hear a single discourse which had more Christianity in it than the writings of Cicero, and that it would have been impossible for him to discover, from what he heard, whether the preacher were a follower of Confucius, of Mahomet, or of Christ.”[11]
In the darkest days of this general apostacy in England, God in His grace was raising up men like George Whitefield, John and Charles Wesley, John Cennick, Daniel Rowland and Howell Harris in Wales, Jonathan Edwards and Gilbert Tennent in America, along with many others, who would be His instruments for bringing about a great spiritual awakening that was sustained in strength for more than fifty years, the effects of which were described by one historian in these words,
“… a religious revival burst forth … which changed in a few years the whole temper of English society. The Church was restored to life and activity. Religion carried to the hearts of the people a fresh spirit of moral zeal, while it purified our literature and our manners. A new philanthropy reformed our prisons, infused clemency and wisdom into our penal laws, abolished the slave trade, and gave the first impulse to popular education.”[12]
It was towards the middle and end of the eighteenth century, however, that another noticeable drift away from the truths of the gospel began to infiltrate professing Christianity. The Rationalism spawned by the Enlightenment insinuated itself into the church, along with the faith and Scripture destroying methods and ideologies of German Higher Criticism and the Liberal theology which it bred. Both of these doctrines of demons were the means of leading multitudes of people, churches, and even entire denominations to turn their ears away from the truth and to turn aside to myths. The latter rejected the inerrancy, historicity, and inspiration of the Bible, while the former saw no need for a divine revelation at all to arrive at truth about God. Today all of Europe is once again immersed in a thick spiritual and moral darkness and fallen into yet another general apostasy from the truths and doctrines of the gospel. Our own nation is currently wallowing in a pigsty of gross moral and spiritual darkness, a darkness that might be felt, and seems determined to sink deeper into unrestrained wickedness and glaring apostasy from the gospel.
Several factors have, to one degree or another, contributed to this general apostasy by modern evangelicalism. There is the popularization of a shallow, Arminian, decisionistic form of evangelism that equates a human response with saving faith, and the introduction and acceptance of the leprosy of charismatic theology, a theology that in practice denies the authority and sufficiency of Scripture, into mainstream evangelicalism, which, once it has been secretly introduced into the church cannot be scraped out. The dominant characteristic of Arminianism is that it is non-theological. Its arguments are based on human reason and emotion, not Scripture. This is why most churches and denominations today are non-theological, because they are at their core Arminian. Couple this with the influence of the modern charismatic movement and its insistence that God is still giving new revelation today, and the wholesale abandonment of the ministry of the Word for entertainment and motivational messages, then the apostasy that is always the inevitable result of abandoning the authority and sufficiency of Scripture and the doctrines, truths, and principles of the gospel should come as no surprise. Add to this the infiltration of a pragmatic and worldly mindset that measures success in terms of numbers, influence, popularity, and profits, the proliferation of new subjective systems of hermeneutics that integrate knowledge from secular disciplines and a person’s own experiences and preconceptions into the meaning of Scripture, and the plethora of different gospels and antinomian theologies introduced in the last seventy-five years which have been more concerned with ‘relevance’ and dealing with the social and cultural problems of the present than in teaching and preaching the timeless truths and doctrines of the gospel. In other words, modern evangelicalism in general has grown tired of and has no patience for sound doctrine, and has turned its ears away from the truth and has turned aside to myths. In this way multitudes of professing Christians, when they have grown weary of sound doctrine, embrace some form of apostate Christianity as a substitute for the true faith that they have abandoned and fallen away from, or as an alternative to no Christianity at all.
So, how does any church or nation recover from such a state of apostasy and its terrible spiritual and moral consequences? Certainly not by any human effort, method, gimmicks, or means; not by watered down doctrines and false gospels; not by false theologies of regeneration and redefining what it is to be Christian; not by denying, either in word or practice, the inerrancy, inspiration, historicity, authority, immutability, perspicuity, and sufficiency of Scripture; not by motivational messages and worldly, man-centered churches; not by the church seeking to attract and make friends with the world. Such a recovery has only happened when the great Head of the Church raises up men (not women) who will preach the timeless truths, doctrines, and principles of the gospel which God has always used to bring people out of darkness into His marvelous light. The gospel taught and preached by the apostles did not change or transform apostate Judaism, it brought people out of it. The gospel of sovereign grace preached by the Reformers did not transform the Church of Rome, it delivered people from its darkness. The gospel preached by the men God raised up during the Great Awakening did not change apostate Christianity, it awakened people out of their spiritual slumber. Apostate modern evangelicalism will not be delivered from its apostasy because it can no longer endure sound doctrine; it has turned its ears away from the truth, and continues to cling to its myths. As we have already shown, apostasy from the truths, doctrines, and principles of the gospel is irreversible. But Jesus Christ will bring His true people out of it by the same means He has always used to bring people out of spiritual darkness into His marvelous light, and that is by raising up men who will once again teach the whole counsel of God, are able to expose and refute error, and who are not ashamed to preach the truths, doctrines and principles of the gospel which alone is the power of God unto salvation (Rm 1:16). What sort of men will they be? In the words of Arnold Dallimore,
“Men mighty in the Scriptures, their lives dominated by a sense of the greatness, the majesty and holiness of God, and their minds and hearts aglow with the great truths of the doctrines of grace. They will be men who have learned what it is to die to self, to human aims and personal ambitions; men who are willing to be ‘fools for Christ’s sake’, who will bear reproach and falsehood, who will labour and suffer, and whose supreme desire will be, not to gain earth’s accolades, but to win the Master’s approbation when they appear before His awesome judgment seat.”[13]
I trust that the truth which we first proposed regarding the tendency and willingness of men and women to surrender and fall away from the truths, doctrines, and principles of the gospel, after it has been announced to them and received by them, has been sufficiently demonstrated. That such a defection and apostasy has been and is at this time in the world, should be glaringly obvious to all who have eyes to see. In the next study I will examine the reasons and causes of apostasy from the truths and doctrines of the gospel, as well as the reasons and causes for this tendency among all sorts of people in all ages.
[1] Robert L. Thomas, ‘The Hermeneutics of Noncessationism’, The Master’s Seminary Journal 14/2 (Fall 2003): 310.
[2]John Newton, Letters of John Newton (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2007), 64.
[3] Horatius Bonar, God’s Morning: or, Thoughts on Genesis (London: Nisbet, 1875), 365-366.
[4] Iain Murray, Evangelicalism Divided (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2000), 259.
[5] Eucebius, Book 3, chapter 32.
[6] Ibid.
[7] St. Cyprian, trans., M. Bevenot (New York: Newman Press, 1956), 43, 45.
[8] Benjamin B. Warfield, The Plan of Salvation (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, Reprint 2000), 42.
[9] William Garden Blaikie, The Preachers of Scotland from the sixth to the nineteenth century (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1888), 6.
[10] John Owen, The Works of John Owen, Vol 7 (Edinburgh: Reprint, Banner of Truth Trust, 1965), 72.
[11] J.C. Ryle, Christian Leaders of the 18th Century (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, Reprint 1978), 14-15.
[12] J.R. Green, A Short History of the English People (Harper ed, 1899), 736-737.
[13] Arnold Dallimore, George Whitefield: The life and times of the great evangelist of the 18th century revival, Vol 1 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1970), 16.