God’s Means of Promoting and Preserving the Gospel
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)
Charles Spurgeon’s successor, Archibald G. Brown (1844-1922), once told a group of young people that they would witness a time “when a faithful man will be so scarce that you will have to hunt for him, and there shall be an apostasy on the right hand and apostasy on the left.”[1] We now live in such a time. What the majority of modern evangelicalism considers to be progress and success is, by any biblical definition and criteria, apostasy from the truths, doctrines, principles, authority, and sufficiency of Scripture. Brown’s biographer Iain Murray explained the basis for Brown’s prediction,
“The thinking that led him to this conclusion was straightforward. The truth of Christianity as revelation from God rests upon Scripture as the Word of God. Once the authenticity of all Scripture is questioned, no definite doctrine can be grounded on it. When the foundation is gone, an uncertain message has to be the result.”[2]
In the previous study we discovered that the first cause of defection and apostasy from the truths, doctrines, and principles of the gospel is the rooted enmity to God and His Word and the natural love for darkness remaining unchanged in the heart and mind under a profession of the gospel, or, as Jesus stated, “men loved the darkness rather than the light;” (Jn 3:19). In this study we will discover the only true and effective ways and means established by God for the preservation and promotion of true Christianity in any place and among any people where it has once been known and professed, especially in a time when darkness and deceptions abound and the pressure, temptations, instances, and opportunities for defection are epidemic. Only the love of the truth and the experience of its regenerating and life-transforming power in the hearts and minds of men and women will produce this persevering faithfulness to God, His gospel, His doctrines, and His Word. Wherever these have been lacking, all other means and methods, wherever they have been tried, have always failed, and they will continue to fail wherever and whenever they are tried. Only God’s means can accomplish God’s ends. Christianity in general might be protected by laws, tolerated and professed by government officials, taught in schools, be the dominant religion professed by the culture, and become so engrained on the minds of men and women so that the vast majority of people profess to be Christian. Such people, however, are Christian by tradition, habit, education, culture, and birth, not by a new birth. All these other things provide no safeguard against apostasy where the love of the truth is absent, and where the inbred and natural hostility to God and His Word remains unchanged.
Convictions, culture, education, and traditions may, for a season, provide some moral consensus, restraint, and stability, but where the heart and mind remain unchanged and in their natural state, and there is no love of the truth, every temptation to defect from and reject the plain truths of Scripture will find multitudes ready and willing to exchange the truth of God for a lie (Rm 1:25), and to “turn away their ears from the truth, and will turn aside to myths” (2 Tim 4:4). In the place of true regeneration and its fruits, various forms of counterfeit Christianity will be substituted; forms which corrupt or deny, either in word or practice, essential truths and principles of the gospel; truths such as the inspiration, inerrancy, sufficiency, and authority of Scripture, the necessity and nature of regeneration and its radical life transforming power, along with many others. If it were not so with most people, would it have been possible that, in less than one generation, and after the truth had for so long been taught and professed among them, almost all of professing Christianity in the fourth century would come to embrace the heresy of Arianism, which denies the deity and eternality of Jesus Christ and the doctrine of the Trinity? If it were not so, would it have been possible, after the truths of the gospel were recovered by the Reformation, that the bulk of Christianity in Europe would relapse back into Roman Catholicism? If this were not the case, could the mass of modern evangelicalism have come to be seduced and led astray by, and willingly embraced the erroneous and often absurd ideologies and methods of Higher Criticism, liberalism, relativism, feminism, egalitarianism, materialism, commercialism, progressivism, pragmatism, evolution, Marxism, charismatic theology, the various liberation theologies, and the innumerable false teachings and teachers which yield to, integrate, and assimilate into Christianity the predominate lusts, opinions, values, and ideologies of the day? If there is one trait that characterizes modern evangelicalism it is unfaithfulness to God and His Word, and as the apostle John wrote, “Anyone who goes too far and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God; the one who abides in the teaching, he has both the Father and the Son” (2 Jn 9). It is painfully obvious that modern evangelicalism not only “does not abide in the teaching of Christ”, but is scandalously ignorant of and openly hostile toward the teaching of Christ. The great Puritan Steven Charnock echoed this truth when he wrote,
“A steadfast obedience is encouraged by an unchangeable God to reward it (1 Cor 15:58): “Be steadfast and immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor shall not be in vain in the Lord.” Unsteadfastness is the note of a hypocrite (Ps 78:37): steadfastness in that which is good is the mark of a saint; it is the character of a righteous person to “keep the truth” (Isa 26:2).”[3]
Truth Abandoned Ruins
Modern evangelicalism not only does not keep the truth, but it has utterly abandoned the truth, and in its place preaches and teaches a different Jesus, a different gospel, and a different Christianity than that of the Bible, all while still professing to be Christian. The often-quoted words of A.W. Tozer are still true, “What comes to our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.”[4] What is true of the individual is true of evangelicalism in general, as Tozer also stated,
“Always the most revealing thing about the Church is her idea of God, just as her most significant message is what she says about Him or leaves unsaid, for her silence is often more eloquent than her speech. She can never escape the self-discloser of her witness concerning God.”[5]
The question is, what is to inform, govern, and dictate what comes to our minds when we think about God; what is to inform and govern our idea of God? Certainly not fallible science, nor psychology, nor philosophy, nor the culture, nor the world, nor our own opinions, traditions, and experiences. Certainly not false teaching and teachers; not human wisdom and reason; not unbiblical ideologies imported from the world and integrated and assimilated with the Bible. All these things are guaranteed to lead our minds astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ (2 Cor 11:3; Col 2:8). Only God’s self-revelation, found only in the Bible, rightly and accurately taught and understood, and illumined by the Holy Spirit, can give us a true knowledge of God. From the self-disclosure of modern evangelicalism, both in what it says and leaves unsaid about God and His truths, it is unmistakably clear that virtually anything and everything but Scripture informs and governs its idea of God. Therefore, the god which it worships is not the God of the Bible, but one of its own invention, and the Christianity it practices is not the Christianity taught by Jesus and the New Testament, but a totally different religion. When the consciences of men and women are no longer affected by a sense of sin’s guilt, danger, condemnation, and sinfulness, it is because the knowledge of God, His law, and His gospel are no longer among us. It is “through the Law comes the knowledge of sin” (Rm 3:20), and, as the great Puritan John Owen once wrote,
“Take away this law, and there is left no standard of righteousness to mankind, no certain boundaries of good and evil, but those pillars whereon God hath fixed the earth are left to move and float up and down like the isle of Delos in the sea …. That which is good unto one, will, on this ground, be in its own nature evil unto another, and so on the contrary; and all the idolaters that ever were in the world might by this pretense be excused.”[6]
Modern evangelicalism no longer has any objective standard of righteousness, no objective standard for good and evil, for right and wrong, for truth and error, and for what it is to be Christian. This is because it has, in both its profession and practice, to one degree or another, utterly abandoned the authority of Scripture for the authority of the culture, or for the authority of one’s own subjective experiences, opinions, and human reason, or for the authority of some flawed human system. Any church or denomination that has women pastors and preachers, or husband and wife “co-pastors”, is a church and denomination that has abandoned the authority of Scripture, regardless of any professions or pretenses to the contrary. The sad reality is, the vast majority of professing Christians have no true knowledge and understanding of what it means to be Christian. They are like the Corinthians who had “no knowledge of God” (1 Cor 15:34), and the reason they have no true knowledge of God and His Word is because the vast majority of pastors and theologians have no true understanding of the doctrine of regeneration and the radical transformation it produces in the life of every person whom God regenerates. They are as blind as Nicodemus and as hostile as the Pharisees to the necessity and nature of the new birth, and the reason for this is, they have never been born again; they have no experiential understanding of regeneration; they have never experienced the life-transforming power of the gospel in their own life. In other words, they are still a natural man, and “a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot (i.e. does not have the ability to) understand them, because they are spiritually appraised” (1 Cor 2:14). They still have an unregenerate mind which is “darkened in their understanding,” (Eph 4:18), to spiritual truth. By nature, their hearts and minds remain “hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so;” (Rm 8:7). No amount of academic and theological training can remove this spiritual blindness to spiritual truth. The only knowledge they have of spiritual truth is natural, traditional, academic, and theoretical, not spiritual and experiential. In other words, the knowledge they have of God is no better than that possessed and professed by demons (Mt 8:29; Mk 1:24; Lk 4:34; Jm 2:19). The demons know who Jesus is, yet they remain demons. To know Jesus and His Word yet still hate and reject them is demonic.
The Missing Ingredient
Regeneration is indispensable to a true understanding, knowledge, and love of spiritual truth, because only regeneration can uproot and remove the natural hostility of the natural man to spiritual truth. It is impossible for anyone to love what they do not know. No one can love the truth if they are willingly ignorant of the truth; if they are hostile to the truth when it exposes their sin, erroneous beliefs, and false assurances; if they work to corrupt, correct, modify, or contradict the truth; if they deny parts of God’s truth; if they relinquish and apologize for the truth when it runs contrary to public opinion and their own self-interests. No one who loves the truth can advocate, condone, or defend women pastors and preachers, much less be one. No one who loves the truth can teach and believe that immoral, worldly, and ungodly lifestyles are consistent with being Christian. No one who loves the truth can deny the biblical account of creation, namely, that God created everything out of nothing in six twenty-four-hour days, because our conception of God is dependent on the view of creation we maintain, or, as John Murray once wrote, “the thought of creation, the thought of our dependence upon God, is implicated in any true thought we entertain with respect to God. Without the concept of creation, then, we cannot think even one right thought of God.”[7] Likewise, no one who has seen and felt the sinfulness of their own nature, realized their helpless and hopeless condition before a just, holy, and offended God whose law they have violated and known themselves to be under its condemnation, and has understood their need for a new nature and experienced the radical transformation effected by the Holy Spirit in regeneration, can ever affirm, much less teach others, the toxic error that true saving faith can be devoid of a love for the truth and sincere obedience to God’s moral law. This is why they redefine ‘faith’ and what it is to be Christian in a way that conforms to their own experience and their own conception of what it is to be Christian, and why they ignore, misrepresent, or explain away doctrines which they find repugnant to their own reason, desires, and experiences. In biblical language, they hold to a form of godliness while denying its radical life-transforming power (2 Tim 3:5), and profess to know God, but by their deeds they deny Him (Tit 1:16), that is, they deny in practice what they profess to believe in principle.
Profession of a knowledge of God and a true knowledge of God are two separate things. It is one thing to have only the knowledge and conviction of truth in our minds, and another to have the power and love of the truth in our hearts. The former will only produce an outward profession, but the latter will produce an inward transformation of our souls. The mere assent to some of the truths of Scripture is not saving faith. To merely believe in and affirm the existence of God is not saving faith, but the faith of devils (Jm 2:19); it is merely to affirm what God has made self-evident in His creation (Rm 1:19, 20), and which can only be denied when people irrationally suppress the truth in unrighteousness (Rm 1:18). It is possible to have a false zeal for God; it is false because it is based on false ideas of God. The Jews had “a zeal for God, but not in accordance with knowledge” (Rm 10:2). All cults and false religions acknowledge the existence of a god. If there were not a universal and natural knowledge of the existence of a god, there would not be all the various religions in the world, but none of these have a true knowledge of the one true God. All of creation reveals the existence of God, but only the Bible reveals the true nature of God. By rejecting the authority of all of Scripture, men and women not only reject the authority of the One whose Word Scripture is, but they reject the true knowledge of God revealed in those parts of Scripture which they reject, making it impossible for them to think even one right thought of God.
This, however, is simply the history of mankind. In eating of the forbidden fruit Adam and Eve rejected the authority of God. How soon after the Noahic Flood did people defect from the worship of God? How soon after their deliverance from Egypt did Israel make for themselves a golden calf? How soon after entering the Promised Land did Israel forsake God and followed the gods of the peoples that were around them (Jug 2:12)? In demanding for themselves a king like all the nations around them, Israel rejected the authority of God, “but they have rejected Me from being king over them” (1 Sm 8:7) How soon after being delivered by God from one distress did Israel relapse into disobedience and rebellion against God and His Word, “But as soon as they had rest, they did evil again before You” (Neh 9:28). The religious leaders of Jesus’ day were experts at setting “aside the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition” (Mk 7:9), thereby giving their own traditions greater authority than the commandments of God. How soon after the formation of the early church were many “quickly deserting” (Gal 1:6) from the faith and embracing a different Jesus and different gospels (2 Cor 11:4; 1Jn 2:19). How many today go to the Bible merely to find support for their own opinions, thereby evidencing that what they love is not the Word of God, but their own beliefs and opinions. How many, in attempting to integrate flawed human wisdom and systems with infallible Scripture, have made flawed human reasoning and wisdom the judge and authority over Scripture? The history of the world proves that times of apostasy from God and His Word are the norm rather than the exception, as Jonathan Edwards once made abundantly clear,
“The sottish blindness and folly of the heart of men appears in their being so prone to fall into such gross delusions, soon after they have been favored with clear light. Were not the minds of men exceedingly dark, they never would entertain such absurd notions at all; for they are as contrary as possible to reason: much less would they fall into them, after they had once been instructed in the truth. For, were it not very strange and great sottishness indeed, they would – when they come to be informed of the truth, and have opportunity to compare it with those gross errors – behold such a reasonableness in the truth, and such absurdity in those errors, that they would never be in danger of being deluded by them any more. But yet so it is; mankind, after they have been fully instructed, and have lived in clear light, have, time after time, presently lost the knowledge of the truth, and have exchanged it for the most barbarous and brutish notions.”[8]
Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing
Such is the state of modern evangelicalism; it has exchanged the glorious truths of God for the most absurd, immoral, wicked, rebellious, insane, irrational, and inconsistent lies and delusions. It is times of faithfulness and unconditional trust and obedience to God and His Word that are rare. One old and despised truth from God’s Word is worth more than a thousand ‘new’ and popular errors; therefore, those who love the truth will prize the truth, trust the truth, cling to the truth, not be ashamed to own the truth, keep close to the truth, and teach and preach the truth, when others, who have no love for the truth, are falling away from the truth, prostituting the truth, corrupting and twisting the truth, watering down the truth, avoiding and neglecting the truth, apologizing for the truth, peddling the truth, and turning their ears away from the truth and turning aside to myths. Let times change, let opinions change, let men change, let convictions change, let governments change, let nations change, yet a person who loves the truth will not change their Master; rather they will say, “let God be found true, though every man be found a liar” (Rm 3:4).
Today, many people are vigorously attempting to combat the disastrous moral and spiritual consequences which inevitably infest every nation that has rejected God’s moral law, exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and which refuses to attribute the consequences of sin to the sin which it loves. Some look to enlist the aid of conservative politicians, lawmakers, and judges to enact laws that would uphold biblical standards of morality and prevent and prohibit evil behavior, thinking this is the best means of preserving society. Such measures, however, are an admission of the natural hatred in the heart of unregenerate men and women against the light, and of their strong love for the darkness. If this were not the case then the commandments of God and the truths and principles of the gospel would not need to be protected by laws. Some people write books and blogs against error, and invent philosophical apologetic arguments to refute and expose the errors and fallacy of unbiblical ideologies and heretical teachers and their teachings, but still the error and apostasy continues just as if it had never been exposed or opposed. Besides, most of these simply expose, over and over again, the same obvious errors, obvious false teachers, obviously false churches, and obvious apostasy, while missing and overlooking the subtle and more dangerous false teachers who come to us in sheep’s clothing. It is these kinds of false teachers – the wolves in sheep’s clothing – which Jesus warned against (Mt 7:15), not those who are obviously, conspicuously, and outrageously false. It is the subtle false teachers who are the most dangerous because they stealthily slip themselves into the church unnoticed (Jude 4). They go unnoticed because they are not obvious; they profess to believe the same truths and doctrines, but then they begin to “secretly introduce destructive heresies” (2 Pt 2:1), that is, ideologies, philosophies, schools of thought, and flawed human systems from outside the Bible which undermine its authority and are destructive to true Christianity. Martyn Lloyd-Jones described these wolves in sheep’s clothing in this way,
“What is wrong with their teaching? The most convenient way of answering this is to say that there is no ‘straight gate’ in it, there is no ‘narrow way’ in it. As far as it goes it is all right, but it does not include this. It is a teaching, the falseness of which is to be detected by what it does not say rather than by what it does say. And it is just at this point that we realize the subtlety of the situation…. [There is] an almost entire absence of doctrine as a whole in its message. It always talks vaguely and generally; it never gets down to particularizing about doctrine. It does not like doctrinal preaching; it is always so vague…. the false prophet very rarely tells you anything about the holiness, righteousness, the justice, and the wrath of God. He always preaches about the love of God, but those other things he does not mention…. He does not say that he does not believe these truths. No; that is not the difficulty. The difficulty with him is that he says nothing about them. He just does not mention them at all…. He does not say things that are obviously wrong, but he refrains from saying things that are obviously right and true. And that is why he is a false prophet. To conceal the truth is as reprehensible and as damnable as to proclaim an utter heresy; and that is why the effect of such teaching is that of a ‘ravening wolf’.”[9]
Jonathan Edwards explained the subtle methodology employed by false teachers in their handling of Scripture, especially the epistles of the apostle Paul,
“These gentlemen express a high opinion of this apostle, and that very justly, for his eminent genius, his admirable sagacity, strong powers of reasoning, acquired learning, … They speak of him as a writer of masterly address, of extensive reach, and deep design, every where in his epistles, almost in every word he says. This looks exceedingly specious: it carries a plausible appearance of christian zeal and attachment to the Holy Scriptures, … Hereby their incautious readers are prepared the more easily to be drawn into a belief that they, and others in their way of thinking, have not rightly understood many of those things in this apostle’s writings, which before seemed very plain to them. Thus they are prepared, by a prepossession in favour of these new writers, to entertain a favorable thought of the interpretations put by them upon the words and phrases of this apostle; and to admit in many passages a meaning which before lay entirely out of sight; quite foreign to all that in the view of a common reader seems to be their obvious sense; …. They must understand, that the first reformers, and indeed preachers and expositors in general, for fifteen or sixteen hundred years past, were too unlearned and short-sighted, to be capable of penetrating into the sense, or fit to make comments on the writings of so great a man as this apostle; …. But, at the same time, it must be understood, that there is risen up now at length, in this happy age of light and liberty, a set of men, of a more free and generous turn of mind, of a more inquisitive genius, and of better discernment …. Their criticisms, when examined, appear far more subtle, than solid …. The Holy Scripture is subtilized into a mere mist; or made to evaporate into a thin cloud, that easily puts on any shape, and is moved in any direction, with a puff of wind, just as the manager pleases.” [10]
In other words, the subtle false teacher will invariably affirm their devotion to and belief in Scripture, but then proceed to cast doubt not on Scripture, but on its historical interpretation, the clear meaning, and the doctrines taught by that meaning. They suggest that all the great preachers and teachers of the past have been mistaken or prejudiced in their understanding of this or that doctrine or meaning; that they have somehow missed, or misinterpreted, or corrupted the true meaning of Scripture. Oftentimes, in order to cause further distrust of a historical doctrine, they will ascribe some devious motive or conspiracy behind this alleged mishandling of Scripture, or they suggest that we cannot expect Scripture to mean the same thing to a modern mind enlightened by modern ‘science’ and ‘scholarship’ as it meant to less enlightened and more superstitious people who lived hundreds of years ago. They then put forth their own ‘new’, ‘fresh’, yet altogether specious and absurd interpretations as the more accurate, enlightened, and up-to-date meaning, with the result that multitudes of biblically and theologically ignorant, inept, and undiscerning people are deceived into receiving and believing a lie as truth, or, as the great Puritan John Owen once stated,
“Hence are the minds and inventions of men wonderfully fertile in coining objections against evangelical truths, and raising cavils against them. Seldom to this purpose do they want an endless number of sophistical [i.e. sophisticated and plausible but false] objections, which, because they know no better, they themselves judge insoluble; for carnal reason being once set at liberty, under the false notion of truth, to act itself freely and boldly against spiritual mysteries, is subtle in its arguings, and pregnant in its invention of them. …. Under the shelter of them they despise the force of the most evident testimonies of the Scripture, and those multiplied on all occasions.”[11]
True teachers, however, follow the command of Scripture to “speak the things which are fitting for sound doctrine” (Tit 2:1); they do not shrink from declaring the whole purpose of God (Ac 20:27); they preach the Word in season and out of season (2 Tim 4:2); they guard the treasure that has been entrusted to them (1 Tim 6:20; 2 Tim 1:14); they handle accurately the Word of truth (2 Tim 2:15), whereas false teachers replace doctrinal preaching with programs, entertainment, motivational messages, worldliness, showmanship, humanitarianism, novel interpretations, and shallow and superficial teaching. “They are from the world; therefore they speak as from the world,” (1 Jn 4:5); they reason like the world; they accommodate their message to the world; they adopt and integrate the world’s values, tastes, ideologies, methods, and practices; they seek to be a friend of the world, all because they are from the world. Like the world, they invent subtle, plausible, but false arguments against the clear teachings and doctrines of Scripture; they make no distinction between true and false teachers and teaching, or between what is true and almost true. They strive to make Jesus and His doctrines ‘acceptable’ and ‘relevant’ to a modern audience, and in so doing, they invent, teach, and preach a different Jesus and different gospels. They ‘modify’ the teaching of Scripture under the pretext of trying to gain a clearer understanding of what the Scriptures teach. However, any effort to modify the teaching of Scripture is not an attempt to obtain a better understanding of its teaching, but to correct its teaching. And to correct the teaching of Scripture is simply a subtle way of proclaiming that all of Scripture is untrustworthy as a teacher of doctrine. They subtly question and cast doubt on the reliability, accuracy, historicity, authority, and infallibility of all of Scripture. They are forever coming up with new perspectives, new insights, new meanings, new interpretations, and new revelations. They invent emotional and strawman arguments, not biblical arguments, against the plain meaning of Scripture. They seek to persuade by convoluted reasonings and false premises the minds of the biblically ignorant and unsuspecting. Because the Jesus who has revealed Himself in His Word and His doctrines does not coincide with their own ambitions, desires, reasonings, beliefs, preconceptions, prejudices, definitions, experiences, popular opinion, traditions, and preunderstandings, they strive to fashion Jesus and His doctrines into something other than they truly are. They might preach a message free of any obvious error on Sunday, but then on Monday appear on television, radio, or podcasts with heretics and those who promote heretical teaching, or speak at a conference alongside obviously false teachers and those who promote them, or endorse a grossly heretical book and its author, thereby making no distinction between the true and the false (Ezk 22:26; 1 Tim 6:20, 21). In so doing they are teaching by their example and practice that there is no straight gate, there is no narrow way; that someone who believes and teaches false doctrine can be a Christian; that God’s Word is not the ultimate standard and authority. As Charles Spurgeon once noted, “Such men creep into the ministry, but they are generally cunning enough to conceal the breadth of their minds beneath Christian phraseology, thus acting inconsistently with their principles, for their fundamental rule is that truth is of no consequence.”[12] The description given by Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones of the man who is definitely not called to preach the Word of God is a picture of modern evangelicalism,
“It is surely clear that if a man who is always struggling with problems and difficulties and perplexities himself, and trying to discover truth, or if he is so uncertain that he is always influenced by the last book he reads, and is ‘carried about by every wind of doctrine’ and every new theological fashion, it is clear that he is ipso facto a man who is not called to the ministry. A man who has great problems himself and is in a state of perplexity is clearly not one who is fitted to be a preacher, …. ‘How can the blind lead the blind?’ is our Lord’s own question in such a situation.” [13]
Confounding the Clear
Modern evangelicalism is perplexed over the most clear and basic truths of Scripture. It struggles with clearly defining what it is to be Christian. It is confused about truths which Scripture makes unmistakably clear; facts such as what is good and what is evil, what is moral and immoral, what is true and what is false, what sin is, what is the wages of sin, what it is to be holy, what is the content of the gospel, who is and is not qualified to be a pastor and preacher, and even over the most basic and self-evident of all truths, namely, that God created mankind male and female (Gen 1:27). Modern evangelicalism maintains that people may be Christian, even though they deny the authority of Scripture and live in all manner of sin; that all that is required of them is to ‘accept Jesus into their hearts’ and believe their sins are forgiven, and while doing so, though they give themselves over to the most vile and immoral vices and abominations, and teach and believe the most absurd, irrational, and heretical lies, they may be assured of salvation.
It is obvious that the gospel and Christianity professed and taught, in general, by modern evangelicalism, has had no great success in transforming the lives of those who profess to be Christian, nor has personal righteousness, holiness, and love of the truth thrived among those who sit under its teachings and fill its churches. Rather, it has had the opposite effect of weakening the restraints which true Christianity imposes on the wickedness which fills the hearts of sinful mankind, and is utterly incapable of slowing, much less arresting, this nation’s decent into moral and spiritual darkness and paganism. Fruits should determine profession, because that ‘faith’ that does not evidence itself by holiness, obedience, and love of the truth, by which it may be examined, is of no use unto salvation. If there is one thing of which we can be certain, and which history and experience has proven over and over again to be true, it is that none of these, or any other similar but erroneous means, by themselves, will ever preserve or promote the gospel of Jesus Christ, or prevent the entrance of any false doctrines or apostasy from the truths of the gospel. Some means other than those which modern evangelicalism has been inventing, implementing, and practicing must be adhered to and practiced in order to inculcate and fix the truths and doctrines of Christianity in the hearts and minds of people, and this is nothing other than the only means appointed by God, namely, the accurate, in-depth, and unadulterated preaching and teaching of sound doctrine to the minds, and the establishment of its power on the hearts of the people, “For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe” (1 Cor 1:21). This, and this alone, will root out of them their natural and inbred hostility to the spiritual truths, doctrines, and principles of the gospel which leads them into apostasy.
Unless people know why they are to value the truth, and what benefit and blessings they actually receive from living in obedience to the truth, it is irrational to expect that they will be faithful to the truth when they are exposed to temptations, trials, and errors. The better people become at subtly twisting, corrupting, correcting, ignoring, modifying, and denying the truths and doctrines of the Bible, the more they will justify themselves for rejecting its authority, sufficiency, inspiration, and inerrancy. The better people become at redefining, minimizing, and extenuating their sin, the less need they see for a righteousness which is not their own; rather, they will, in one way or another, trust in themselves that they are righteous, or, as the great Puritan John Owen once stated, “And it is in vain to recommend the doctrine of justification unto them who neither desire nor endeavor to be justified.”[14] Once anyone has come to say in their hearts, “It is vain to serve God; and what profit is it that we have kept His charge,” (Mal 3:14), they will easily allow their minds to be led astray and will turn aside to any myth, falsehood, or superstition, no matter how irrational, ludicrous, and unbiblical, that promises to preserve and gratify their pride, affirm their sin, and offers a broader and easier road than the one taught by Scripture. Soon, they will no longer be willing to tolerate sound doctrine, any distinction between them and those in whom this hostility is overt and dominant will be negligible, nor will they be willing or able to distinguish truth from error, good from evil, the true Christian from the false Christian, or the true shepherd from the obviously false one, much less the subtle wolf in sheep’s clothing. Faithful men who uncompromisingly teach, preach, and live the truth will be despised, ridiculed, marginalized, maligned, and caricatured as unloving, narrow-minded, bigoted, ignorant, and intolerant hypocrites and bullies who pose a threat to a person’s emotional and psychological well-being and to their false forms of Christianity. They will think and say, “Why do we need to know all this doctrine? Can’t we just love Jesus?” But the question is, what Jesus do they love? The Jesus who has revealed Himself in Scripture, of whom they are utterly ignorant, or the Jesus of their own imagination? The Jesus who said, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments” (Jn 14:15), or the Jesus who makes no demands on their life, condones their sin, judges and condemns no one, and loves and forgives everyone? The Jesus of the Bible or the Jesus who is just like them? Those who dislike doctrine and reject the moral law of God as the only authoritative standard for good and evil can only love the latter and will always hate the former. No one can truly love who they do not know, and who we truly love, we want to know better, and the only means of knowing the Jesus of the Bible is through His self-revelation found only in the Bible. True spiritual love, namely, the love that is the fruit of the Spirit, loves holiness and righteousness and all who practice them (1 Cor 13:6). Those who truly love God also hate evil (Ps 97:10), and every false way (Ps 119:104). The more holy and righteous one is, the more they are loved by those who love and practice righteousness. There has been, however, in every age, professing Christians who seem to show more love for those who practice unrighteousness, and show only contempt for those who practice righteousness. Our age is no exception This reveals more hypocrisy and self-deception than sincerity, “Evil will slay the wicked; and those who hate the righteous will be condemned” (Ps 34:21). The world still loves its own, and men still love the darkness rather than the light.
On the other hand, when God, by means of the gospel, shines “in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ” (2 Cor 4:6), and when a person is truly “born again….through the living and abiding word of God” (1 Pet 1:23), and when, like the Thessalonians, they receive all of Scripture “not as the word of men, but for what it really is, the word of God, which also performs its work in you who believe” (1 Thes 2:13), and their nature is renewed and their lives are transformed, reformed, and purified so that they are no longer “slaves to impurity and to lawlessness” (Rm 6:19), but slaves “of obedience resulting in righteousness” (Rm 6:16), they will, by the power of the Holy Spirit which indwells them, “continue in the faith firmly established and steadfast, and not moved away from the hope of the gospel” (Col 1:23), no matter what trial, hardship, temptation, error, cultural pressure, or persecution they might encounter. As the great Puritan John Owen once wrote,
“And it argues the woeful enmity of the carnal mind against God and all the effects of His wisdom, that, whereas He has granted us such a glorious image and representation of Himself, we like it not, we delight not in the contemplation of it, but either despise it or neglect it, and please ourselves in that which is incomparably beneath it …. It is the knowledge of “God in Christ” alone that is effectually powerful to work the souls of men into conformity unto him. Those alone who behold the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ are changed into the same image, from glory to glory.” [15]
Truth needs no subterfuges, no tricks, no gimmicks, no schemes, no theatrics, no showmanship, no marketing, no psychological and emotional manipulation, no sophisticated and philosophical human reasonings and wisdom to make it powerful and effective; it only needs to be accurately, clearly, and faithfully proclaimed and applied in its entirety, or, as the apostle Paul told the Corinthians, “And when I came to you, brethren, I did not come with superiority of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you to the testimony of God. For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified …. And my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not rest on the wisdom of men, but in the power of God” (1 Cor 2:1-5). The true Word of God convicts, converts, and sanctifies; it does not amuse, entertain, or justify a life of sin. For over a hundred years, however, the bulk of evangelicalism has demonstrated a preference for preaching everything except Jesus Christ and Him crucified, and more adept at twisting, manipulating, disregarding, watering down, and explaining away Scripture than in handling accurately the word of truth. In both its message and practice it has habitually evidenced, despite all professions to the contrary, that it is ashamed of the true gospel and all the words of Jesus, which is of course just all of Scripture. It picks and chooses which truths it likes while ignoring, twisting, correcting, explaining away, or denying the truths which it dislikes and cannot reconcile with their own human reason, all while still professing to be Christian. It pits the words of Jesus recorded in the four gospels against the words of the apostles recorded in the rest of the New Testament, as if they were not equally the inspired, inerrant, and authoritative Word of God (1 Thes 2:13). It invents artificial distinctions, evasive interpretations, and emotional arguments based on prejudices, lusts, and human reason, not on Scripture, because it has no love and reverence for the authority of God’s Word. It exerts more effort in trying to evade the plain meaning of Scripture than in teaching and submitting to that meaning. It works to show that the difference between the Christian and non-Christian is not as profound nor as serious as the Bible says it is. It is an utterly false Christianity that attempts to set up a contrast between the authority of Jesus’ spoken words and the authority of the New Testament epistles; that says its faith is in Jesus, not the Bible, as if the Incarnate Word can be separated from His revealed Word, and that Jesus can be known apart from His self-revelation in Scripture.
It was by means of the truths, doctrines, and principles of the gospel preached, and the transforming power of its truths experienced by those who heard, that the gospel was first spread abroad in the first century. It was these same experienced evidences of the truth that gave birth to the Reformation, and by which true Christianity was first brought to and established in this nation. While many other factors contributed to the spread and establishment of the truths and principles of the gospel, if the minds and lives of multitudes had not actually experienced its radical life-transforming power, it would never have had any permanency. The mere outward form of Christianity is unable to contend with the various forms of counterfeit Christianity which error, false teaching, mysticism, human reasoning, superstition, showmanship, pragmatism, marketing, and self-deception will present to the minds of people, nor will it convince them of how much they stand in need of true salvation. Iain Murray, in comparing the message of modern evangelicalism with that of the past, has noted,
“…on a number of fundamental truths, the evangelicalism of the last hundred years contrasts unfavorably with what went before. One of the older evangelicals who forecast the coming change was C.H. Spurgeon; another was William Booth. When Booth was asked by an American newspaper what he regarded as the chief dangers ahead for the twentieth century, he replied tersely: ‘Religion without the Holy Ghost, Christianity without Christ, forgiveness without repentance, salvation without regeneration, politics without God and heaven without hell.’ Such a decline in the biblical message has indeed taken place and a weaker evangelicalism has been unable to stem the tide.”[16]
Unchristian Christianity
Modern evangelicalism is not only weak, it is for the most part totally apostate. It is not Christian. It is a different religion entirely from the Christianity of the Bible. It does not worship the Jesus of the Bible, nor does it know, teach, believe, or obey His commands and doctrines. It cannot give a reason for the hope which it professes. It is more concerned with pragmatism, entertainment, showmanship, image, numbers, money, branding, marketing, personalities, titles, personal experiences, form over substance, appearance over reality, gaining the approval of the world rather than the approval of God, and more committed to presenting a popular, trendy, emotionally manipulating, mystical, subjective, relativistic, inoffensive, self-affirming, man-centered, and inclusive message than with preaching a biblical message. The rule and method of interpretation followed by most is that when anything seems repugnant to our own reason and self-interests, though it is plainly taught and affirmed in Scripture, we must not submit our minds and lives to it, but search out some interpretation, no matter how absurd and forced, to make the sense of the words conform to our reason and serve our self-interests. Modern preaching is careful to avoid any conviction of sin, which is why it avoids and is hostile towards the law of God, and instead assiduously works to redefine, rename, psychologize, and extenuate sin. The ‘Christianity’ taught by modern evangelicalism bears no relation to that taught by the New Testament; rather it borrows terms from Christianity, gives them different meanings, and uses bits and pieces of Christianity carefully selected and preserved to construct what it imagines to be the ideal religion, namely, one that is molded to a person’s own tastes, reasoning, beliefs, and desires, and then calls that religion ‘Christianity’, or as B.B. Warfield once described this process,
“The process is exceedingly simple. “Our religion” is certainly Christianity, because real Christianity is, of course, just “our religion.” Everything else in “actual phenomenal Christianity” is to be discarded because it is not included in “our religion”….he simply makes his reconstructed version of Jesus’ Christianity the sole Christianity which he will recognize….Thus he is led to present as “the religion of Jesus” a religion which is as different as possible from the actual religion of Jesus, and the result of that is that he completely separates “the religion of Jesus” from the religion which He founded, and is compelled, therefore, to treat Christianity in its entire historical manifestation as a radical departure from “the religion of Jesus”; or, to put it brusquely, as a religion quite distinct from that which had been introduced into the world by Jesus, although it has usurped its place and name.”[17]
This is modern evangelicalism; it is “a religion which is as different as possible from the actual religion of Jesus”, and that has “usurped its place and name.” Being a ‘pastor’ or ‘theologian’ or ‘scholar’ is not the equivalent of being a Christian. One can be all of these, yet be a total stranger to what it means to be Christian. I know that such things are despised by many. We are living in times when the bulk of professing Christians will no longer endure sound doctrine, and when exposing error, false teachers, and apostasy is regarded by most to be ‘unchristian’, or at least impolite. Modern evangelicalism has washed all meaning out of the word ‘Christian’, as is evidenced by the steady stream of celebrity ‘Christians’ who continue to announce they are no longer a Christian, as if they ever were one. Or, if they do not outright reject Christianity and the Bible, they do the equivalent by affirming that the most wicked, perverted, immoral, and worldly lifestyles are consistent with being Christian. Such things may be consistent with their conception of God and their reconstructed version of Christianity, but not with the God of the Bible and the Christianity taught by Jesus and the New Testament. It would be better for them if they had never made a profession of being Christian, then to afterwards abandon it, “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). The only reason such people were ever considered Christian in the first place is because all meaning has been washed out of the word ‘Christian’, and what it is to be Christian has been redefined in terms so broad so as to encompass virtually anyone and anything. After all, if your goal is to sell something, you want as large a customer base as possible. B.B. Warfield warned of the danger of this practice more than a hundred years ago when he wrote,
“If you persist in calling people who are not gentleman by the name of gentleman, you do not make them gentlemen by so calling them, but you end by making the word gentlemen mean that kind of people. The religious terrain is full of the graves of good words which have died from lack of care …. There is that good word “Evangelical.” It is certainly moribund, if not already dead. Nobody any longer seems to know what it means …. Does the word “Christianity” any longer bear a definite meaning? Men are debating on all sides of us what Christianity really is…. People set on calling unchristian things Christian are simply washing all meaning out of the name. If everything that is called Christianity in these days is Christianity, then there is no such thing as Christianity. A name applied indiscriminately to everything, designates nothing.”[18]
We live in times when the word Christian has been indiscriminately and consistently applied to people and things that are not Christian, with the result that the word has come to mean those kinds of people. An obvious example of this is the word “gay”. Historically this word meant a bright color or a happy and cheerful person, but by misuse it has come to mean a person with unnatural, sinful, immoral, and depraved sexual desires and practices, so that the word has now come to mean those kinds of people. The true Christian is considered to be ‘unchristian’ for simply stating the clear biblical fact that such people, and the people who condone them, are not Christian, and “shall not inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Cor 6:9, 10). We live in times when people think that as long as a person claims to be Christian we should regard them as such and ignore all the biblical truth and evidence to the contrary, no matter how copious and obvious that truth and evidence is. After all, if a man can claim to be a woman, despite the self-evident fact they are a man, then why can’t a non-Christian claim to be a Christian, even when it is obvious they are not? Both are equally irrational and insane; both deny reality, yet people persist in doing both. Contemporary evangelicalism, in imagining that it has invented better and more ‘successful’ ways of promoting and preserving the truths and principles of the gospel other than its own power and efficacy, has ended up denying and apostatizing from even the most obvious truths of Scripture. It is both unnecessary and impractical to try and enumerate all these various means and methods invented by modern evangelicalism, seeing that those who invent and practice them do so continually. Even when all their invented methods in which they have placed their confidence fail, and they reap the corrupt fruit of their own imaginations, most still refuse to admit the cause of their failure; rather they think the solution is to deny reality, invent more and newer means and methods, and to redefine what it is to be Christian in terms that conform to their worldly and sinful lives, their own beliefs, and to their fallen human reasonings. They constantly strive to conform the Bible to their ever-changing lives, thinking, values, reasoning, and beliefs rather than conform their minds and lives to unchangeable, infallible, and authoritative Scripture. If the message of the gospel as revealed in the New Testament, which is inclusive of all its truths, doctrines, commands, and principles, is considered to be offensive and foolishness so that it must be corrected, modified, and accommodated to the modern mind and human reason, it is because its truths are hid from the minds of the unbelieving (2 Cor 4:4).
History Repeating
The vast majority of those who profess to be teachers of God’s Word today fall into the same category as the priests of Israel, “For the lips of a priest should preserve knowledge, and men should seek instruction from his mouth; for he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts. But as for you, you have turned aside from the way; you have caused many to stumble by the instruction; you have corrupted the covenant of Levi,” says the Lord of hosts” (Mal 2:7, 8). If the truths of the gospel are corrupted, neglected, or watered down by those who should be teaching and preaching them, and if error is taught, marketed, and received as truth, and no distinction is made between truth and error, then the outcome will be disastrous. If the bulk of professing Christians are content to be under the ministry of people who are incapable of, or refuse to make a distinction between truth and error, and who give no evidence of understanding the sinfulness of sin, the depravity of man, the necessity and nature of regeneration, the holiness of God, or of having experienced the power of those truths which they profess, nor demonstrate its fruits in a life of holiness and obedience to the Word of God, they may cry, “Legalism; Intolerance; Unloving; Narrow-minded”, as much and as long as they please, but when temptations, errors, pressures, opportunities, and self-interests coincide, they will fall away from the faith into a form of godliness as easily as dry leaves fall from a tree when stirred by the slightest breeze.
If God had not intended for us to know the difference between good and evil, right and wrong, truth and lies, light and dark, the narrow and the broad road, true and false teachers, sound and false doctrine, or the spirit of truth and the spirit of error (1 Jn 4:6), He would not have made such clear and noticeable distinctions between them in Scripture. God would never have made such a clear and comprehensive distinction in His Word between the children of God and the children of the devil, between the righteous and the wicked, between the regenerate and the unregenerate, between the sheep and the goats, between wheat and chaff, between the good tree and bad tree, between the wise and foolish builder, between the stony and thorny ground hearer and the true believer, between the faithful and the apostate, if it were impossible to know which of these two states a person is in. God would not have commanded us, “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see if they are from God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world” (1 Jn 4:1), if He had not given us an objective standard by which we can “test the spirits to see if they are from God”. Jesus would not have warned us to “Beware of the false prophets who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves” (Mt 7:15), if it were impossible to identify not just obvious and outrageously false teachers, but those subtle false teachers who “disguise themselves as servants of righteousness” (2 Cor 11:14). The apostle John tells us of those who “went out from us, but they were not really of us, for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us;” (1 Jn 2:19). They were at one time among them by a profession of the same truths, or they could not have gone out from them; but they were not really of them in experiencing the power of the truth or in having a love of the truth so as to be saved. If they had, “they would have remained with us;”, that is, steadfast and immovable in their love and commitment to the truths, doctrines, commands, and principles of the gospel, but by their turning away from the truth to pragmatism and myths, all while still making a profession of being Christian, they simply demonstrated that they were never really of them. When the religious unbeliever is given the scriptural marks of a true Christian, they often conclude they are being told they are not Christian, when no such accusation was ever made. In applying the scriptural marks and descriptions to themselves, they come to their own conclusion which they blame on others. It is not us, but the biblical marks applied to their own conscience which accuses them of not being Christian, as Jonathan Edwards once observed,
“The things that put it to the proof, whether men will prefer God to other things in practice, are the difficulties of religion, or those things which occur that make the practice of religion difficult, and cross other principles besides the love of God; because in them, God and other things are both set before men together, for their actual and practical choice; and it comes to this, that we cannot hold to both, but one or the other must be forsaken. And these things are all over the Scripture called by the name of trials or proofs. And they are called by this name, because hereby professors are tried and proved of what sort they be, whether they be really what they profess and appear to be; and because in them the reality of the supreme love of God is brought to the test of experiment and fact;” [19]
Or, as the great Puritan John Owen stated, “It is particular actions wherein we express and exercise our faith and obedience; and what we are in them, that we are, and no more.” [20] Like the Laodiceans, these false teachers lie to themselves and tell themselves they are one thing when they are really another (Rev 3:17); they honor God with their lips, but their heart is far from Him (Mt 15:8); they call Jesus ‘Lord’, but do not do what He says (Lk 6:46), but instead practice lawlessness (Mt 7:21-23). In times of apostasy from the truths, principles, and commands of the gospel, all other means, methods, and attempts to preserve and promote those truths, other than the diligent, faithful, and accurate preaching of the whole counsel of God by men who can give a reason for the hope that is in them, and who have an experiential knowledge of its life-transforming power, will have no effect. All other means will prove futile in securing the continuance of the gospel to future generations. When Joshua and his generation died out, “there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord, nor yet the work which He had done for Israel” (Jug 2:10). Why did they not know? Because they were not taught; they had never experienced the power of God in their lives. As a result, “they forsook the Lord, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other gods from among the gods of the people who were around them,” (Jug 2:12). The same thing happened in England during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as a result of the Uniformity Act passed in May of 1662 by Charles II, followed by the Five Mile Act which he instituted in 1665. The former Act ejected an estimated 2,472 godly Puritan pastors from their churches, and the latter forbade them from coming within five miles of their former parish, or of any place they had preached, or of any corporate town. The vacuum created in the churches by their ejection was filled by the most incompetent, worldly, and irreligious men; men whom J.C. Ryle described as,
“sunk in worldliness, and neither knew nor cared anything about their profession. They neither did good themselves, nor liked any one else to do it for them …. They seemed determined to know everything except Jesus Christ and Him crucified …. when they did preach, their sermons were so unspeakably and indescribably bad, that it is comforting to reflect they were generally preached to empty benches.” [21]
The spiritual and moral consequences for England were devastating, as J.C. Ryle described,
“When such was the state of things in churches and chapels, it can surprise no one to learn that 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 …. All that is distinctly Christian, or that is peculiar to Christ, everything concerning Him that has not its apparent foundation in natural light, or that goes beyond its principles, [was] waived, and banished and despised.” [22]
Such has become the state of modern evangelicalism. Its pulpits have been filled with unregenerate people, many of whom have been trained in seminaries that are more concerned with enrollment than whether a man is called or qualified, and with being broad-minded and popular rather than faithful and biblical, and that under the guise of ‘scholarship’, deny the inerrancy, inspiration, historicity, and authority of all of Scripture. One former liberal theologian described the leading type of theological teaching when she wrote,
“The undeclared yet working basic principle of Old Testament and New Testament science is: What the text clearly states can, by no means, be true. The exegete’s task is to discover and solve ‘difficulties’ in the text of the Bible. The better the interpreter, the more ingenious this will be.”[23]
This low view of Scripture characterizes modern evangelicalism. Its shallowness and worldliness are self-evident not only by the utter lack of any substantive doctrinal teaching and preaching, but also by the music and performances that dominate its so-called worship. What its music lacks in theological truth it seeks to compensate for by sheer volume and showmanship. It has substituted emotionalism, mysticism, and humanitarianism for the fruit of the Spirit. All the gimmicks, programs, showmanship, money, conferences, mystical experiences, celebrity preachers, motivational messages, elaborate buildings and stages, and superficial sermons can provide no remedy whatsoever; they can provide absolutely no benefit to the souls of men and women. And as long as professing Christians prefer these things over and above the preaching and application of sound doctrine to their hearts, minds, and lives, they will continue to be self-deceived into thinking they are Christian when the sad fact is that it is obvious that they have no love of the truth so as to be saved.
Times of defection and revolt from the truth by professing Christians is a historical reality. That various factors have led to this being the current state of modern evangelicalism is beyond any doubt to anyone with eyes to see. The question is, what is the best way or means to recover and preserve the truth and its effects? The answer is, the only the means ordained by God, which is the diligent, faithful, zealous, and accurate preaching of all of Scripture, accompanied by a holy and obedient life by those who preach it. In other words, it is to be obedient to and trust in the commands of Scripture directed to all who would be faithful and true shepherds of God’s people, “Prescribe and teach these things …. in speech, conduct, love, faith, and purity, show yourself an example of those who believe …. Pay close attention to yourself and to your teaching; persevere in these things; for as you do this you will insure salvation both for yourself and for those who hear you” (1 Tim 4:11, 12, 16); “in all things show yourself to be an example of good deeds, with purity in doctrine, dignified, sound in speech which is beyond reproach, in order that the opponent may be put to shame, having nothing bad to say about us” (Tit 2:7, 8); “preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction” (2 Tim 4:2). It was the neglect and lack of these means and principles by which the gospel was lost in past ages, and this will always be the consequence wherever and whenever this negligence and infidelity are found, whether in the past, in this age, or in those generations to come. Charles Spurgeon once said, “The character of an age is determined by the theology of that age.” The spiritually ignorant, morally bankrupt and debauched, insane, and evil character of our age is a direct consequence of the appalling and apostate theology that has dominated this age. That the truths, doctrines, and principles of the gospel can only be preserved by means of their being faithfully and accurately preached can easily be confirmed by a few obvious considerations.
First, it is the way, indeed the only way, which God has ordained and which He has promised to bless for this end and purpose. When Paul said his farewells to the elders of the church in Ephesus, he commended them “to God and to the word of His grace, which is able to build you up and to give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified” (Ac 20:32). Just as God has ordained no other means to bring people to a profession of the truth (cf. Rm 1:16; 10:14, 17), so He has provided no other means of preserving a people in the truth but by the preaching and teaching of His Word, and it would be hard for anyone to find any other way ordained by God for this purpose.
One would think that it would be more difficult to convert people from atheism, Judaism, Catholicism, Mormonism, Islam, Hinduism, or any false religion, to a profession of faith in the gospel, than to retain them in that profession, because in conversion there are all sorts of prejudices, false reasonings and beliefs, sin, pride, blindness, misunderstandings, and preconceptions which must be overcome. If, therefore, the truths and doctrines of Scripture are the only sufficient and effectual means of bringing people to a knowledge of the truth so as to be saved, what reason can be given for their not being sufficient for the preservation and growth in those truths? What need do these truths have of human inventions and outward assistance? If it is the true gospel, and the gospel alone, which is the power of God unto salvation, what reason can be given for God’s Word not being sufficient for its preservation? The power and efficacy lie in the truth of Scripture, not in the gifts, talents, demographics, ethnicity, or popularity of the person who preaches the truth (2 Cor 4:7). If all those who profess to be called to the work of the ministry were as conscientious and faithful in the discharge of their duty as those who were first appointed to preach the gospel, or as were those preachers of the Reformation, or those of The Great Awakening, we would see a proportionate degree of its effects. But as long as people who profess to be ministers of the gospel neglect, distrust, and corrupt the only means ordained by God for the preservation of gospel truths, either because they judge them to be insufficient, and in need of their own inventions which God has not appointed or promised to bless, or because they think their duty is to increase numbers, or to be culturally relevant and popular, it is no wonder if faith and truth disappear, and mere forms, which they call Christian, are substituted in their place; forms of godliness which can be made consistent with and that serve their pride, lusts, greed, worldliness, and ambitions, while they hate the power of it which is destructive to the sin they love.
The apostle Paul foresaw times when 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; and will turn away their ears from the truth, and will turn aside to myths” (2 Tim 4:3, 4). The means which Paul prescribed for the preservation of the truth in such times, while directed to Timothy specifically, applies to all men in all ages who would be faithful ministers of God’s Word, “I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction …. But you, be sober in all things, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry” (2 Tim 4:1, 2, 5). This is the only means and way which Paul prescribes for the preservation of the truth against those who would corrupt and deny them, and against the subtle deceptions of those who would lead the minds of people astray from them. All other means and methods invented by the minds of men may preserve various and multiple forms of godliness, and their own various versions of Christianity that are in accordance to their own desires, but the truth of the gospel, and all its useful, beneficial, and transforming effects, will never be preserved in a nation, church, or people, by any means other than this means appointed by God.
No example can be given of any nation, church, or people defecting from the truths of the gospel where there was not first a general neglect of teaching and inculcating the power of the gospel on the hearts and minds of people by those whose duty and calling it was to do so. This sinful neglect of the truth is that which has always opened the door to apostasy. And when this neglect of the truth is motivated by a desire for the praise of man, the love of sin, and the things of this world, this is the most dangerous position that any nation, church, or people can be found in, because God is ready to judicially give them over to any and all delusions that will turn them away from the gospel, or, as John Owen once wrote,
“Where men, under the profession of the truth, will continue profligate in sin, and take pleasure in unrighteousness, God will not always suffer the gospel to be prostituted to give them countenance in their wickedness, but will judicially give them up unto such delusions as shall flood them away into an open apostasy from it.”[24]
When professing Christians will no longer endure sound doctrine, other ways and means must be invented and assimilated into Christianity that might accommodate unbiblical ideologies and various sins, or give approval and false assurances to those who are determined to live in their sins. In this way the apostasy is completed. Finding no other way of keeping people in a profession of faith in the gospel, except by corrupting the whole doctrine and worship of it, and accommodating their lusts and worldliness, external things are substituted for things internal, and the mystical and mere emotional substituted for things spiritual, and given the same names. It is this which makes our present age so dangerous. The great design of modern evangelicalism is, to help people live in sin and unbelief with as much ease and security now, and as little fear of what is future, as they possibly can. And there are only two ways this can be achieved.
One is by obliterating all ideas of good and evil, and all conceptions of future rewards or punishments, or of God’s sovereign rule over the world. This is what many in our age have tried to do, and no one deceives themselves into this way of thinking but with the desire to live in sin without any self-restraint or fear of future punishment. Very few, however, are able to live this way. They cannot free themselves from their conscience, and from the fact that “the wages of sin is death” (Rm 6:23). Any sense of peace and happiness they have in their sin is only pretended. Their outward façade is but a thin veneer for their inward fears, turmoil, and emptiness. Their pretended security can never survive the shock of hardships and disasters, much less death.
Another way, therefore, must be found for the same end, and this other way must be by a religion. Nothing but true religion can convert people from sin, and nothing but false religion can make people secure in sin. This is the universal testimony of Scripture. Israel forgot God and lived in sin because they trusted in falsehood (Jer 13:25). It is because people hold to a form of godliness, but deny its power (2 Tim 3:5) that they are “lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant….lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God” (2 Tim 3:2-4). If they did not have some form of godliness, they could not be secure in their practice of sin. This is the design of every false religion which people will apostatize into from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ. One way or other is proposed to eliminate the necessity of, and redefine the nature of regeneration and the renewing of their nature into the image of God. Since Jesus Himself makes the necessity of a new birth the first requirement for entering into the kingdom of God, the first thing every false religion does is to try and destroy its nature and eliminate its necessity. Some would have regeneration consist merely of baptism; some would equate it with any positive response to the gospel, praying a prayer, asking Jesus into their heart, responding to an invitation, or some emotional and mystical experience; some would substitute a moral renovation of their life in place of it, or the forsaking of some particular sin. Therefore, if you can propose a way of religion in which people who live in sin, and are resolved to do so, and who are hostile to the truths, commands, and principles of the gospel, can still be secure of eternal happiness, there is no danger that such a form of godliness will suffer persecution or fail to attract a crowd of devoted followers. Add to this form of godliness the message that the way of procuring this eternal happiness is to be had on easy terms, even to persons who never intend to forsake their sin, nor submit their minds to the authority of God’s Word, nor live in obedience to all the Word of God, you will find them very receptive. This is the ‘gospel’; this is the religion and ‘Christianity’ which modern evangelicalism uses to keep people in a profession of faith while living securely in the practice of sin, ignorance of the truth, and in open rebellion and hostility to the clear Word of God. If there is no way (and there is not) by which people can be assured of remaining faithful to the truth of Scripture, unless their hearts, minds, and lives are transformed into its image, then certainly the ways and means pursued by modern evangelicalism can only lead to, and has in fact led to, a fatal apostasy from those truths. The only way to preserve the truth is to preach the truth.
Next time I will identify the second cause of defection from the gospel, which is the spiritual darkness and ignorance which remains in the mind under a profession of the truth.
[1] Quoted in Iain Murray, Archibald G. Brown: Spurgeon’s Successor (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2011), 278.
[2] Ibid, 278 (Emphasis added).
[3] Steven Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1996), 360.
[4] A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy (New York: HarperCollins, 1961), 1.
[5] Ibid, 1.
[6] John Owen, The Works of John Owen Vol 5 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, Reprint 1965), 244.
[7] John Murray, ‘The Significance of the Doctrine of Creation’ in The Collected Writings of John Murray, Vol 1 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1976), 326.
[8] Jonathan Edwards, The Works of Jonathan Edwards Vol 2 (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2005), 249.
[9] D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Studies in The Sermon on the Mount (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976), 501-502.
[10] Jonathan Edwards, Works, Vol 1, 232-233.
[11] John Owen, The Works of John Owen, Vol 5 (Banner of Truth: Edinburgh, Reprint 1965), 210.
[12] Charles H. Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students (Ross-shire: Christian Focus Publications, 1998), 252-253.
[13] Martyn-Lloyd Jones, Preaching and Preachers (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1971), 109.
[14] John Owen, The Works of John Owen, vol 5 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, Reprint 1965), 3.
[15] John Owen, The Works of John Owen, Vol 1 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1965 Reprint), 78-79.
[16]Iain H. Murray, The Old Evangelicalism: Old Truths for a New Awakening (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 2005), xi.
[17] B.B. Warfield, The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield, Vol 3 (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2003 Reprint), 410, 414, 430.
[18] B.B. Warfield, The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield, Vol 2 (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2003 Reprint), 396.
[19] Jonathan Edwards, The Works of Jonathan Edwards Vol 1 (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1834 Reprint), 327.
[20] John Owen, The Works of John Owen Vol 6 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1967), 237.
[21] J.C. Ryle, Christian Leaders of the 18th Century (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, Reprint 1978), 17.
[22] Ibid, 14-16.
[23] Etta Linnemann, Quoted in Iain Murray, Evangelicalism Divided (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2000), 206.
[24] John Owen, Works Vol 7 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2001), 98.