The Third Cause of Apostasy
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)
Iain Murry, in his magnificent biography of Jonathan Edwards, described the condition of the church in early 1700’s America, prior to The Great Awakening, as being, “small difference between the church and the world. Almost any degree of religious interest, or of adherence to the forms of religion, was considered enough to justify a person’s Christian profession, and all who grew up in the church were commonly treated as belonging to Christ, irrespective of evidence to the contrary …. Men were treated as saved who never knew they were lost”.[1] Consequently, Jonathan Edwards along with all the other pastors of The Great Awakening, agreed “that the fundamental need of their contemporaries was to understand the meaning of being a true Christian,”.[2] The same is true of modern Christianity; it has lost all sense of what it means to be Christian, and as a result multitudes now perish in their sin because of the negligence and ignorance of those who, instead of teaching and leading them in the way of truth, have been instilling vain and false hopes of being in a state of salvation and redefining and misrepresenting what it means to be a true Christian.
Jesus Himself declared, “and the Scripture cannot be broken” (Jn 10:35), but this truth has not deterred modern Christianity from attempting to do what Jesus declared to be impossible. No means has been left untried. Everything from the seemingly plausible to the utterly preposterous has been and still is utilized in a never-ending attempt to make the Bible not mean what it says, and to redefine and reinvent what it means to be Christian. From the integration and assimilation of unbiblical and man-centered ideologies, to claims of mystical and subjective extra-biblical revelations, to the failure and unwillingness to make any clear distinction between truth and error, to the specious and subtly deceptive reasonings and theories of higher critics and so-called ‘great thinkers’, ‘superb theologians’, ‘prolific authors’, and ‘highly respected scholars’ – reasonings and theories which are nothing but “philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world” (Col 2:8). New theologies of conversion, new theories designed to question and undermine the historical accuracy, inspiration, inerrancy, and authority of Scripture, and new definitions of Christian are constantly being invented – definitions such as ‘Carnal Christian’, ‘Christian Hedonism’, ‘Progressive Christian’, and a host of others – that correspond to these new, erroneous, sophistical, and mutilated interpretations of Scripture.
The Bible, its doctrines, and its truths have been betrayed into the hands of people who do not honor, believe, love, or understand it. Like Hymenaeus and Philetus, “they have gone astray from the truth” (2 Tm 2:17, 18). Modern evangelicalism’s treatment of the Bible has, as the late Dr. Robert Thomas accurately stated, transitioned “from explanation to obfuscation, that is, from explaining the text to beclouding the meaning of the text”.[3] When the true meaning of Scripture is intentionally “beclouded”, then biblical and theological ignorance is the inevitable result; “For you will no longer remember the oracle of the LORD, because every man’s own word will become the oracle, and you have perverted the words of the living God,” (Jer 23:36). What is taught and preached is no longer the pure Word of God, but a different Jesus, a different gospel, and a different Christianity than that taught by Scripture, thereby worshiping their idols instead of the Lord Jesus Christ, and, like the false prophets of Israel, they “have made this people trust in a lie” (Jer 28:15).
Men and women consider themselves courageous and enlightened when they deny and reject the historical truths and doctrines of Scripture and when they contradict beliefs which they consider to be nothing more than ancient myths and antiquated standards imposed upon them by an oppressive cultural system. They imagine they are leading people out of bondage and into freedom and liberty when in reality they have simply rejected the fundamental truths and doctrines of Christianity and invented a new religion that is no more Christian than margarine is butter. Yet these enemies of Christ and His Word expect to be regarded as true Christians, thereby giving the greatest possible evidence that they do not understand what it means to be a true Christian. No truth or doctrine of Scripture remains that has not been corrupted or abandoned by modern Christianity, yet this new religion, being destitute of anything that is truly Christian, seeks to palm itself off as “the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3), only with some slight updates, improvements, and modifications. When true Christianity is gone, and love of the truth is extinct, it is no wonder that people seek some other form of godliness that is more in accordance with their own desires.
Not only is modern Christianity willfully ignorant of the truths and doctrines of Scripture, but it is willfully ignorant of the sins that destroy souls, churches, and nations, even going so far as to “give hearty approval to those who practice them” (Rm 1:32). The church in Ephesus was ignorant of her sin (Rv 2:4); the church in Pergamum was ignorant of her sin (Rv 2:14), as was the church in Thyatira (Rv 2:20), the church in Sardis (Rv 3:1), and the church in Laodicea (Rv 3:15-17). This has been the ruin of countless souls and churches. While they enjoyed their religious freedom and liberties, they could not, or rather, they would not, see or recognize the sin which was the cause of their ruin, “The way of the wicked is like darkness; they do not know over what they stumble” (Pr 4:19). They are at liberty to distort, corrupt, edit, and reject Christ and His Word, so this is how they exercise their liberty. Israel was willfully ignorant of the sins which incurred the wrath and judgment of God, “Now it will come about when you tell this people all these words that they will say to you, ‘For what reason has the LORD declared all this great calamity against us? And what is our iniquity, or what is our sin which we have committed against the LORD our God?’ (Jer 16:10). To this day Roman Catholicism, cults, United Methodist, Presbyterian USA, Southern Baptist, Progressive, Pentecostalism, and all other false forms of Christianity, are willfully ignorant of their innumerable sins and errors. Today, most professing Christians are so ignorant of sin that the sinfulness of even the most obvious and filthy sins must be explained as to why they are sinful. It is a sad thing to witness the ruin of countless souls, churches, entire denominations, and this nation, that even as society decays and crumbles around them, most professing Christians cannot see the sin that has ruined and continues to destroy them. They are secure in their willful ignorance and error.
Blind Guides
When those whose duty it is to instruct people in sound doctrine are unable or unwilling to do so, and instead show by their teaching and lives that they do not understand or believe the truths and doctrines of Scripture which they profess to believe, then the generality of professing Christians will suffer. After all, “if a blind man guides a blind man, both will fall into a pit” (Mt 15:14). It is the first and fundamental duty of all who have been entrusted with the mysteries of the gospel to be faithful and trustworthy (1 Cor 4:1, 2); “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,” (Mal 2:7,8). Such is modern Christianity. Rather than preserving knowledge, it has, and continues to pervert it; it has turned away from the truth and turned aside to myths; it has corrupted, adulterated, edited, modified, and leavened the gospel of Jesus Christ with human wisdom, human ideologies, mysticism, sophistry, superstition, imagination, and the world, thereby causing many to stumble by the instruction, to the point where all sense of what it means to be Christian has essentially been eradicated not only from the culture, but from virtually all that professes to be Christian. Multitudes of biblically and theologically illiterate people willingly and greedily embrace error so long as it is in accordance with their own fanciful beliefs, their worldly lusts and desires, and their self-made Christianity.
One of the greatest sermons ever preached in America was preached by the Rev. Gilbert Tennent, one of the leading pastors of the 18th century Great Awakening. It was entitled The Danger of an Unconverted Ministry. In describing such ministers and their teaching he stated,
“The application of their discourses is either short or indistinct and general. They do not distinguish the precious from the vile, and divide not to every man his portion, according to the apostolic direction to Timothy. No! They carelessly offer a common mess to their people, and leave it to divide it among themselves as they see fit. This is, indeed, their general practice, which is bad enough; but sometimes they do worse by misapplying the Word through ignorance or anger. They often strengthen the hands of the wicked by promising him life. They comfort people before they plow …. These foolish builders do but strengthen men’s carnal security by their soft, selfish, cowardly discourses. They do not have the courage or honesty to thrust the nail of terror into sleeping souls …. The ministry of natural men is dangerous, both in respect of the doctrines and practice of piety …. Is not the carnality of the ministry one great cause of the general spread of Arminianism, Socinianism, Arianism, and Deism, at this day through the world?”
Charles Spurgeon warned of the danger posed by unregenerate pastors,
“Alas! The unregenerate pastor becomes mischievous … for of all the causes which create infidelity, ungodly ministers must be ranked among the first …. there could be no greater instrument for damnation out of hell than that. People go to their place of worship and sit down comfortably and think they must be Christians, when all the time all their religion consists in listening to an orator, having their ears tickled with music, and perhaps their eyes amused with graceful action and fashionable manners; the whole being no better than what they hear and see at the opera – not so good, perhaps, in point of aesthetic beauty, and not an atom more spiritual. Thousands are congratulating themselves, and even blessing God that they are devote worshipers, when at the same time they are living in an unregenerate Christless state, having the form of godliness, but denying its power. He who presides over a system which aims at nothing higher than formalism, is far more a servant of the devil than a minister of God …. Better abolish pulpits than fill them with men who have no experimental knowledge of what they teach.”[4]
John Bunyan, author of the Christian classic Pilgrims Progress, in his treatise entitled Sighs from Hell, wrote,
“How many souls have blind priests been the means of destroying by their ignorance? Preaching that was no better than rats-bane to the body …. Will it not grieve thee to see thy whole parish come bellowing after thee into hell? Crying out, ‘This we have to thank thee for, thou wast afraid to tell us of our sins, lest we should not put meat fast enough into thy mouth. O cursed wretch, who wast not content, blind guide as thou wast, to fall into the ditch thyself, but hast also led us thither with thee.”
Given the ungodly and wicked state of not just our culture, but of modern Christianity in general – a state which is wicked in the extreme – it is self-evident that God has imposed one of His greatest judgments upon most of the world, namely, to give people over to blind, unregenerate, ignorant guides who secretly introduce the leaven of all sorts of man-made, man-centered, and unbiblical ideologies into the life and teaching of Christianity, thereby blinding others to the truths and doctrines of the gospel. People are kept ignorant of the truth by the false and emotional arguments and the twisted, distorted, and sophistical reasoning, interpretations, and teachings of blind guides.
A Little Leaven
In the Bible, leaven was a piece of last week’s dough that was added to this week’s dough (Lk 13:21), and it only takes a little leaven to leaven the whole lump of dough (1 Cor 5:6; Gal 5:9). All error in doctrine, faith, and practice is leaven. Jesus Himself warned the disciples to “Watch out and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees” (Mt 16:6), that is, their teaching (Mt 16:12). He admonished them, “Take care what you listen to” (Mk 4:24), which of course includes what we read and take into our mind. The Apostle Peter warned of false teachers who “in their greed they will exploit you with false words;” (2 Pt 2:3), that is, with error, myths, stories they have made up; stories that misrepresent the necessity and nature of regeneration and what it is to be Christian; stories that minimize and deny the nature of man and the sinfulness of sin, and that represent man as a victim rather than a guilty perpetrator of sin under the just wrath and condemnation of God; stories that present to the mind false ideas of the nature and person of Jesus Christ; stories of extra-biblical revelations and mystical experiences; stories intended to undermine and deny the inerrancy, authority, sufficiency, historicity, and trustworthiness of all of Scripture; stories as to why we do not have to believe, trust, and obey truths and doctrines of Scripture which the modern mind and modern culture find offensive and contrary to their own lusts, desires, human reason, and made-up beliefs, doctrines, and practices – beliefs, doctrines, and practices which have no basis in Scripture.
Modern Christianity is inundated and dominated by the made-up stories of false teachers who in their greed for numbers, ‘success’, popularity, political influence, praise of man, and of course money, exploit and profit from the biblical and theological ignorance, gullibility, and negligence of professing Christians. They exploit the willingness of unregenerate people to believe any made-up story, no matter how fanciful and contrary to the plain teaching of Scripture, and even common sense, rather than the clear truths and doctrines of Scripture. Professing Christians today have a seemingly insatiable appetite for made-up stories, and the more fanciful and ludicrous the story the more greedily it is received and accepted, especially if it is in accordance with their own desires and provides any justification for their sin and for rejecting the clear teaching of Scripture. ‘Christian’ fiction is today infinitely more popular and profitable than Christian truth. The problem with most so-called Christian fiction is that it is theologically and biblically atrocious, and presents to the mind a false idea of what it means to be Christian. ‘Christian’ fiction is, for the most part, fictitious Christianity.
The fact that the Jews had to make up a seemingly plausible story to try and explain why Jesus’ tomb was empty was itself an admission that the tomb was indeed empty (Mt 28:11-15). In the same way, the fact that so-called ‘scholars’ and ‘theologians’ spend so much time and have become experts at making up stories with which they hope to deny, corrupt, undermine, and explain away the clear teaching of Scripture is itself an admission that the Bible does indeed clearly teach those truths and doctrines which they are attempting to explain away with their made-up stories, thereby giving the clearest evidence possible that they have no love of the truth so as to be saved.
Every teaching, every practice, every ideology, every reasoning that is foreign to Scripture and Christianity in doctrine, or faith, or practice, or life, is leaven. It is the nature of leaven that a small amount introduced into a lump of dough, will, over time, permeate the entire lump until its own nature has been imparted to it. The introduction of any error into any doctrine of the gospel will soon permeate the whole gospel, resulting in the corruption of Christianity. Error is just as deadly as unbelief. It is an infection that “will spread like gangrene” (2 Tm 2:17). To believe error as truth is to “trust in a lie” (Jer 29:31), and “no lie is of the truth” (1 Jn 2:21). It is to exchange “the truth of God for a lie” (Rm 1:25), thereby rendering all who have done so unable to “deliver himself, nor say, ‘Is there not a lie in my right hand’” (Is 44:20). Error will go much deeper and take much firmer root in the unregenerate heart and mind than truth ever will. This is why Scripture commands all true Christians to “to keep oneself unstained (i.e. “uncorrupted”) by the world” (Jm 1:27), that is, uncorrupted by the world’s ideologies, reasonings, definitions, values, priorities, praise, approval, sophistry, ‘success’, and all that is in the world, namely, “the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life” (1 Jn 2:16). Once leaven has been introduced into the dough, it is impossible to get it out. It is impossible to keep it from leavening the entire batch of dough. There is no purifying the lump of dough once it has been contaminated by leaven.
Just as Judaism could not be reformed by Jesus and the apostles, nor could Catholicism be purified and reformed by the Reformers, so modern Christianity cannot be purified of its multiplied errors, worldliness, and apostasy. Like Israel, “Their deeds will not allow them to return to their God. For a spirit of harlotry is within them, and they do not know the LORD” (Hos 5:4). The reason they do not know the Lord is because they are willfully ignorant of the truths and doctrines of Scripture. Forsaking God and His Word for error and the things of this world is always called “harlotry” in Scripture. Like all other false religions and forms of godliness, modern Christianity’s self-interest is now totally dependent upon its multiplied errors. It will not come to the light lest its deeds be exposed as sin and error (Jn 3:20). When people by their willful ignorance will no longer endure sound doctrine, and when they turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths, they effectively say to God, “Depart from us! We do not even desire the knowledge of Your ways. Who is the Almighty, that we should serve Him? And what would we gain if we entreat Him?” (Job 21:14, 15). How can those whose self-interest is dependent on their errors ever be the ones to correct and rectify those errors? To renounce those errors and return to teaching, preaching, and practicing sound doctrine would spell numerical, financial, and commercial disaster. It would mean the dismantling of modern Christianity. It would mean the loss of billions of dollars in revenue and the collapse of commercial Christianity. It would mean forsaking the very sin and error on which its self-interests depend. No wonder modern Christianity is hostile to the truths and doctrines of Scripture. This is why, “Their deeds will not allow them to return to their God”. To renounce its errors and return to God with all its heart would be too costly to its own self-interests; “a spirit of harlotry is within them”.
When Demetrius the silversmith, who profited from making and selling silver shrines of the pagan goddess Artemis, saw that the preaching and teaching of Paul was becoming a threat to his self-interests, “he gathered together with workmen of similar trades and said, ‘Men, you know that our prosperity depends upon this business. And you see and hear that not only in Ephesus, but in almost all of Asia, this Paul has persuaded and turned away a considerable number of people, saying that gods made with hands are no gods at all” (Ac 19:25, 26). The same is true of modern Christianity, its “prosperity depends upon this business” of instilling and perpetuating fictitious ideas of God, Jesus Christ, the Bible, the gospel, what it means to be Christian, and in keeping people ignorant of the truths, doctrines, and principles of the gospel. False teachers and false forms of Christianity learn from history and experience that it is in their self-interests to keep people ignorant, confused, beclouded, and uncertain about the truths and doctrines they should know and understand. Ignorance is the best expedient to increase and secure their success and prosperity. Today it is regarded as arrogant, narrow-minded, and intolerant of the views of others for anyone to teach and preach the truths and doctrines of Scripture with any degree of certainty, and the mark of a ‘good’ and ‘humble’ pastor to hold no truth with any certainty and to never expose and call any belief, practice, or teaching wrong and sinful. Truth, after all, is of course truth, but it would be rude, arrogant, intolerant, and unloving to say that the opposite is a lie and deadly error and comes from the father of lies. In other words, the overwhelming demand of professing Christians today is for people who will tickle their ears and tell them nothing that is not “in accordance to their own desires” (2 Tm 4:3).
The ultimate end and goal of all false Christians is to satisfy themselves. They only desire enough of Jesus and His Word to satisfy themselves, then they have enough of Jesus and His Word, and they will not endure any truth or doctrine that poses a threat to their own self-satisfaction. The ultimate end and goal of all true believers is to be pleasing to the Lord (2 Cor 5:9; Eph 5:10: 1 Jn 3:22), so they never have enough of Christ and His Word. They love all of His Word, even those truths and doctrines that expose their errors as errors and their lusts and desires as sinful. Because their ultimate goal is to be like Christ, they desire to forsake all sin and error that would make them unlike Christ. For the vast majority of professing Christians, Christ and His gospel are merely the means for gratifying their own selfish, carnal, worldly, self-centered, and idolatrous goals, desires, and ambitions. Most are completely and blissfully ignorant of the truths and doctrines of Scripture, despite having free and unrestricted access to the Bible, thereby making their ignorance a willful and deliberate ignorance. If they ever hear sound doctrine they either reject it or respond like the Athenians to the preaching of Paul, “you are bringing some strange things to our ears” (Ac 17:20). More than ninety-nine percent of all ‘Christian’ literature published today is not worth the paper on which it is printed. Myths and made-up stories have replaced the truths and doctrines of Scripture, and the “teaching as doctrines the precepts of men” (Mt 15:9) has replaced the teaching and preaching of sound doctrine. So-called ‘church growth’ schemes are nothing but marketing strategies borrowed from secular business that pander and appeal to people’s carnal, fleshly, and worldly desires. Most who profess to be Christian cannot give a reason for the hope that is in them; they are profoundly ignorant of the fundamental truths and doctrines of the gospel, and have been made to trust in a lie. No wonder most professing Christians are “tossed here and there by waves, and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming;” (Eph 4:14). No wonder they jump on every seemingly new theological bandwagon, and gullibly believe every made-up story designed to exploit their ignorance. They seem to be oblivious to the fact that no one can believe in truths they do not understand and of which they are willfully and blissfully ignorant. Like the Laodiceans, who thought they were rich and had need of nothing, they also “do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked” (Rv 3:17). Their own self-assessment could not be further from the truth. Their profession cannot standup to the tests and unchanging truths of Scripture.
As I stated in the last study, were it not for error, it would be impossible for modern Christianity to be the multi-billion-dollar industry it is today. Modern Christianity reeks with error. Its commercial, political, and numerical success is totally dependent upon error of one kind or another. Just as salt that has lost its saltiness is worthless and good for nothing (Mt 5:13), so a Christianity that has become wholly corrupted with error of one kind or another is worthless and good for nothing. Instead of being salt, preserving the church and culture from corruption, it is only adding to the immorality, wickedness, and apostasy by corrupting, rejecting, and neglecting the truths and doctrines of Scripture, redefining what it is to be Christian, thereby weakening the restraints which true Christianity imposes upon the depraved lusts and desires of men. What is taught is not the truths and doctrines of Scripture, but the error of unprincipled men (2 Pt 3:17). What is professed and practiced is not Christianity, but a different religion altogether. Its gospel is a different gospel and its Jesus is a different Jesus. It was this leavening effect of error which Jesus, the apostles, the Reformers, and the Puritans so strongly warned and strove against, as Martin Luther once stated,
“Just as good wine or precious medicines are corrupted by a single drop of poison or other impurity, and the purer they are, the more readily defiled and poisoned; so, also, God’s Word and His cause will bear absolutely no alloy. God’s truth must be perfectly pure and clear, or else, it is corrupt and unprofitable. And the worst feature of the matter is, the sway and intrenchment of evil is so strong that it cannot be removed; just as leaven, however small the quantity, added to the lump of dough, soon penetrates and sours the whole lump, while it is impossible to arrest its influence or once more to sweeten the dough …. Paul would not mix even a small quantity of leaven with the pure lump, and God Himself has urgently forbidden it. The slight alloy would thoroughly penetrate and corrupt the whole. Where human additions are made to the Gospel doctrine in but a single point, the injury is done; truth is obscured and souls are led astray. Therefore, such mixture, such patchwork, in doctrine is not to be tolerated …. In such matters as these, Paul says, a little leaven leavens and ruins the whole lump – the entire Christian life.”[5]
A Third Cause
This is a third cause of apostasy from the truths and doctrines of Scripture, namely, an ignorance and lack of a true, correct, accurate, and experiential perception, understanding, and knowledge of the principal doctrines of the gospel, along with the marks and evidences that accompany the effect of those truths on the heart, mind, and life of all who truly believe. A knowledge leavened with error, or a general, intellectual, academic, and theoretical knowledge of some doctrines, without a true experiential acquaintance with their grounds, reasons, and power, their use and effects in the heart, mind, and life, is of no value. When people do not know what they ought to know, as they ought to know it, or what it is their duty to know, and without this knowledge they can perform no other duty of the gospel in a right manner, then they are culpably ignorant, and expose themselves to being deceived and led astray by all the errors, deceptions, and made-up stories of those who distort the Scriptures to their own destruction. Whether this ignorance is from a lack of instruction by others, or from a negligent lack of diligence on their part to learn and examine “the Scriptures daily, to see whether these things were so” (Ac 17:11), the outcome is equally destructive and fatal. It is still true that “people are destroyed for lack of knowledge” (Hos 4:6). They are destroyed by their ignorance of what they should know, what they can know, and of what it is their duty to know. They are then vulnerable to having their minds led astray from the truths they profess when exposed to any error, deception, trial, or temptation. Like the Galatians, they will quickly desert Christ and the true gospel for a different Jesus and different gospel (Gal 1:6-9), because, just like in the case of the Galatians, the leaven of error had been introduced, tolerated, and received (Gal 5:6-9).
This was the case which led to the infamous Downgrade Controversy in nineteenth-century England, a downgrade vigorously opposed by Charles Spurgeon. First came the publication of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species, which taught life had originated by blind chance instead of divine creation, directly contradicting Scripture and negating the very idea of the existence of God. Second, what came to be known as Higher Criticism sought to undermine the historical accuracy of the Bible, explain away all the miracles of the Bible, and reduce the Bible to the level of a merely human book. These new ideas of the Bible quickly spread so that by 1880 every denomination in England was leavened with pastors and leaders who had departed from the fundamental truths and doctrines of Christianity. The editor of an influential Christian publication, The Christian World, rejoiced in the abandonment of his old beliefs, writing,
“Modern thought is in Spurgeon’s eyes ‘a deadly cobra’; in ours it is the glory of the century. It discards many of the doctrines dear to Mr. Spurgeon … not only as untrue but unscriptural, but as in the strictest sense immoral … It is not so irrational as to pin its faith to verbal inspiration, nor so idolatrous as to make its acceptance of a true Trinity cover polytheism.”[6]
This is modern Christianity. It has discarded the truths and doctrines of Scripture as not only untrue, but as immoral and unchristian. The leaven of error that was introduced decades ago has leavened the entire lump of dough to the point it now exults in its discarding every truth and doctrine of Scripture that conflicts with its idolatrous pursuit of its own lusts and desires. Where the inerrancy and authority of the Bible is abandoned and its fundamental truths and doctrines are no longer known or believed, there is no true Christianity. When people’s professed faith consists of no more than what the demons know and believe, there is no true Christianity. Most professing Christians today have more in common with an unbeliever than with a true Christian. The unbeliever does not know or believe the Bible, but neither do most professing Christians. The unbeliever does not believe in the biblical account of creation, but neither do most professing Christians. The unbeliever does not know or believe the fundamental doctrines of Christianity, but neither do most professing Christians. The unbeliever can make no distinction between what is and is not Christian, but neither can most professing Christians. The unbeliever’s knowledge of the person of Jesus Christ is distorted and degenerate, but so is that of most professing Christians. The unbeliever loves the world and the things in it, but so do most professing Christians. The unbeliever thinks sin is a disease, disorder, ‘moral failure’, or mental illness, but then so do most ‘scholars’ and professing Christians. The sad truth is, the unbeliever is as much a Christian as most professing Christians, and they are as much an infidel as the unbeliever. This is what comprises the bulk of modern Christianity, infidels in the pulpit and in the pew.
Once error is believed as truth, and once people place their trust and hope in a lie, it will go deeper into the heart and mind of those who merely make a profession of the truth, but have no love of the truth, than truth ever will. Once their self-interest becomes invested in and dependent upon a lie, they will resist, reject, corrupt, and oppose any truth that poses a threat to their self-interests and exposes what they trust in as a lie. It is “because they did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved”, that people “believe what is false” (2 Th 2:10, 11), and “trust in a lie” (Jer 29:31).
Delusional
Sadly, there is nothing more common today than for professing Christians to make a pretense of desiring to know the truths and doctrines of Scripture, yet upon hearing them, and seeing that they run contrary to their own superstitions, experiences, beliefs, desires, and self-interests, to then seek out and invent made-up stories that justify their rejection of the clear meaning of Scripture and that are “in accordance to their own desires”. Like evil King Ahab, they will reject the true Word of God when it “does not prophecy good concerning me, but evil” (1 Kg 22:8). They will search heaven and earth to find some person or some made-up story that will affirm their corrupted interpretations of Scripture, their unbiblical beliefs and practices, and validate their fictious ideas of what it means to be Christian. Unwilling and unable to endure sound doctrine, “but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance with their own desires” (2 Tm 4:3), just as Ahab accumulated false prophets who would tell him only what he wanted to hear (2 Kg 22:13).
Like the Jews who came to the prophet Jeremiah making a pretense of wanting to know what God would have them to do, even declaring, “Whether it is pleasant or unpleasant, we will listen to the voice of the LORD our God to whom we are sending you, in order that it may go well with us when we listen to the voice of the LORD our God” (Jer 42:6), but when upon being told by Jeremiah what God would have them to do, responded, “You are telling a lie! …. As for the message that you have spoken to us in the name of the LORD, we are not going to listen to you! But rather we will certainly carry out every word that proceeds from our mouths,” (Jer 43:2; 44:16, 17). They even invented a story to justify their rejection of the clear teaching and command of God, “but Baruch the son of Neriah is inciting you against us to give us over into the hand of the Chaldeans, so they may put us to death or exile us to Babylon” (Jer 43:3). All their pretended desire to know and obey God’s Word and will was nothing more than self-deception, as Jeremiah declared, “For you have only deceived yourselves” (Jer 42:20). The same hostility, rejection, self-deception, and willful ignorance of the clear meaning and teaching of God’s Word characterizes most of what professes to be Christian today, especially when those truths and doctrines run contrary to their own beliefs and desires upon which their self-interests depends. Nothing is so effective as this willful ignorance in predisposing people to a defection from the truth which they have professed when they are exposed to any trial, temptation, or made-up story.
History is chockfull of examples of people, even of entire nations, this nation being one of them, that have been brought to an outward profession of the truths of Christianity; a kind of cultural Christianity in which someone is a Christian by birth rather than by new birth. These same people, had they been born in a nation or family that was dominated by another religion, would profess to be part of that religion. If they had been born in a Catholic family they would be Catholic. If they had been born in India they would be Hindu. If they had been born in Iran or Saudi Arabia they would be Muslim, and so on. In the same way, the southern kingdom of Judah, under the influence and reformations made by King Josiah, made a profession of believing in the one true God. But despite their outward profession, the people of Judah “did not return to Me with all her heart, but rather in deception” (Jer 3:10). They did not do it out of a love of the truth, or out of any conviction of sin, or with any intention of repenting of and forsaking their sin. To the contrary, they stubbornly maintained, “I have not sinned” (Jer 2:35), and “they have refused to repent” (Jer 5:3). Instead of being ashamed of their sin, “They were not even ashamed at all; they did not even know how to blush” (Jer 6:15). All their professed belief and devotion to God was just a hypocritical external form of godliness. The same was true of most who made a profession of faith in God in the time of Jesus, as Jesus Himself declared, “This people honors Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me. But in vain do they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men” (Mt 15:8, 9). Most who professed to believe in Jesus turned on Him when He taught them truths that exposed their sin and error and made demands that conflicted with their own lusts and desires (Jn 8:31, 59).
The first conversions to Christ in the world were by the faithful preaching and teaching of the apostles, evangelists, and others, occasionally accompanied with miracles, and always evidenced by a life of holiness, obedience, faithfulness, and perseverance under all sorts of oppositions and persecutions. No one was affirmed to be a Christian who was not personally convinced of its truths, instructed in its doctrines, their lives conformed to its commands, and persevered in obedience in the face of temptations and persecutions. All who showed by their lives and doctrine that they were not truly Christian were exposed as unbelievers and false teachers and removed from the church (1 Cor 5:9-13). All who defected from the faith were said to have done so “in order that it might be shown that they are all not of us” (1Jn 2:19). However, as Christianity spread, and as kings, emperors, and rulers were “converted”, professing the Christian religion in opposition to paganism, their subjects, allies, and other officials, seeing it was in their self-interest to profess the same religion as their rulers, followed them in their profession. For most, their profession consisted of little more than the performance of some external rituals and the substitution of the names of new saints for their old idols. By these means their first profession of Christianity was founded on profound ignorance of the truths, doctrines, principles, and duties of the gospel. It became easy, therefore, for those popes, bishops, and priests who were regarded as their spiritual guides, to lead them into all kinds of false and foolish beliefs, practices, superstitions, idolatries, blind subjection to their made-up stories, and apostasy from the gospel of Jesus Christ. Knowing little of what they should have known, and not truly understanding what little they did know, they willingly embraced a form of godliness without its power. God, therefore, judicially gave them over to their self-deceptions which turned them away entirely from the true gospel of Jesus Christ.
After the Reformers resurrected the truths and doctrines of the gospel from the grave of Roman Catholicism where they had been buried for a thousand years, and preached, taught, and instructed others in those truths and doctrines, many nations received and professed evangelical Protestantism and rejected, and even outlawed, Catholicism along with all its false, foolish, and superstitious practices and doctrines of men. But in the course of time, and largely due to the ignorance and negligence of those whose duty it was to preach and teach the truths and doctrines of Scripture, multitudes became utterly ignorant of the truths they professed to believe. In describing the spiritual condition of England at the beginning of the eighteenth century and prior to The Great Awakening, J.C. Ryle wrote,
“What were the parochial clergy of those days? The vast majority of them were 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 assembled it was generally to toast “Church and King,” and to build one another up in earthly-mindedness, prejudice, ignorance, and formality …. And when they did preach, their sermons were unspeakably and indescribably bad,”.[7]
Many today like to speak of this nation as “a Christian nation”, when nothing could be further from the truth. People still hypocritically sing ‘God Bless America’, all the while rejecting and opposing any true blessing of God, which is to turn people from sin to righteousness, and from unbelief, worldliness, and disobedience to faith, holiness, and obedience to His Word, “…God raised up His Servant, and sent Him to bless you by turning every one of you from your wicked ways” (Ac 3:26). Having God turn them from their sinful and wicked ways is not what most people have in mind when they ask for God’s blessing. Those who take pleasure in wickedness, and in the sin and error upon which their self-interest depends, regard turning from their wicked ways to be a curse, not a blessing. Therefore, those who do not turn from, but obstinately continue in their wicked ways, are under the curse and wrath of God, not His blessing. For God to truly bless America would be totally devastating to the sin and error upon which the self-interest of most people depends, and in which they take pleasure, and especially to the self-interest of virtually all that professes to be Christian today. It would be as detrimental as the preaching of Paul was to the makers of silver shrines of the pagan goddess Artemis. It would be as detrimental as the preaching and teaching of the Reformers was to Roman Catholicism.
It has once again come to pass, that through the lethargic negligence and apathy of professing Christians in general toward all things eternal and biblical, and through the sloth, ignorance, laziness, and wretched greediness of those who should be instructing people in the truth, multitudes have become shamefully ignorant of the most basic and fundamental principles, truths, and doctrines of the faith to which they profess to belong. So it has been in all ages and places after the profession of Christianity has become national and cultural. Many will neglect the means of instruction which they do have, and many more will turn their ears away from truth and turn aside to myths. Some will not listen and learn, some listen but reject what they hear, some are too busy pursuing and preserving their life in this world, some are engaged in the vain pursuit of their worldly lusts and desires, some consider themselves too wise and intelligent to believe all that the Bible teaches, some busy themselves making up stories to convince themselves and others that they can live in sin yet still inherit eternal life, some are swallowed up in the love of and worries and cares of this world, some deceive themselves that they have a love of the truth, when in reality what they love is their own opinion, made-up stories, and versions of the truth which they have concocted for themselves. Very few in any age have had a love of the truth so as to be saved; very few have been “all the more diligent to make certain about His calling and choosing you;” (2 Pt 2:10); very few “take pains with these things, be absorbed in them” (1 Tm 4:15), that is, the things which are of eternal importance. Most live and die in the delusion that they will go to some vague “better place” when they die, but as J.C. Ryle once stated,
“I can imagine nothing so pleasant to our flesh and blood as the deceptive theory that we may live in sin, and yet escape eternal damnation; and that although we are ‘enslaved to all kinds of passions and pleasures’ while we are here, we will somehow all eventually get to heaven. Just tell the young man who squandered his wealth in wild living that heaven is available even to those who live and die in sin, and he is never likely to turn from it. Why should he repent and take up a cross, if he can eventually get to heaven without repenting? There is no greater delusion than the common idea that it is possible to live wickedly, and yet rise gloriously – to be without Christ in this world, and yet be a saint in the next. However carelessly men may go on while they live, they secretly cling to the hope that they will be found among the saints when they die. They seem to embrace the idea that there is some cleansing, purifying effect produced by death, and that whatever they may be in this life, they will be found ‘suitable for the inheritance for the saints’ in the life to come. But it is all a delusion.”[8]
Yet, because of their gross negligence and ignorance, it is a delusion in which most who have ever professed to be Christian have lived and died. It is this willful ignorance that has facilitated all apostasy from the truths and doctrines of the Bible, “Is this not the reason you are mistaken, that you do not understand the Scriptures, or the power of God?” (Mt 12:24). And why did they not understand the Scriptures? Because, “Neglecting the commandment of God, you hold to the tradition of men” (Mk 7:8), because the tradition of men, that is their error, justified the pursuit of their own lusts and desires and their neglect of Scripture. It is the great design of Satan to lead the mind astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ (2 Cor 11:3), and to substitute another Jesus and a different gospel in their place (2 Cor 11:4), thereby keeping people ignorant of the true. For whatever reasons or motives which people have for wanting to be regarded Christians, it has always been in the self-interest of false teachers and leaders to affirm them in their false profession of faith. Being profoundly and willfully ignorant themselves to the power and nature of true conversion and what it means to be Christian, they first accommodate the truths, doctrines, and practices of the gospel to their carnal, man-centered, and superstitious minds, and then gradually lead people into all errors, myths, and stories which they have made up. Because they themselves are blind and self-deceived, they therefore seek to deceive others into believing what they believe, not what is clearly taught by Scripture. Because they have never known and experienced true conversion they can only imagine what it is. Still being darkened in their understanding, the only Christianity they can comprehend is one that accommodates their carnal, worldly, man-centered, and self-centered conceptions of what it is to be Christian. In this way all the fundamental truths and doctrines of the gospel were abandoned for the superstitious and fanciful stories made up by monks and popes, for stories of miracles and extra-biblical revelations, stories of the immaculate conception of Mary, stories of purgatory, stories of absolution of sin by a priest, stories of justification by works, stories of baptismal regeneration. In this way all the fundamental truths and doctrines of Scripture have been rejected in favor of the theories and ideologies of Higher Criticism, evolution, psychology, feminism, mysticism, and the culture.
It was because of ignorance that the original Mormons believed the fanciful stories concocted by Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, and ever since it has been in the self-interest of Mormonism to keep its adherents ignorant of the truths and doctrines of Scripture. It is principally on account of ignorance that so many professing Christians today have, again and again, given themselves up to the power of seducers, and enabled the architects of all forms of apostasy from the gospel to lead them into beliefs, opinions, ways, and practices that are suited to their own worldly self-interests and “in accordance to their own desires”. False, blind, greedy, negligent, and incompetent teachers are so aware of the advantage which this willful and negligent ignorance on the part of professing Christians gives them, that they have no fear of ever having any shortage of gullible, blind, and willfully ignorant people to seduce and exploit. Such people are not the helpless victims of smooth-talking false teachers, but willful participants in their own self-deception by means of their negligent ignorance. Like the Corinthians, “if one comes and preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached, or you receive a different spirit which you have not received, or a different gospel which you have not accepted, you bear this beautifully” (2 Cor 11:4); and the reason they “bear this beautifully”, that is, patiently and willingly hear and listen to it, is because error is more conducive (or so they imagine) to their own self-interests than the truth. People believe error not because it can be supported from the Bible, but because it is in accordance with their own carnal, worldly, and self-centered desires. They believe it because they want to believe it. False teachers and fictitious Christianity can only exist and flourish in an atmosphere of willful biblical and theological ignorance. It is because professing Christians in general will no longer endure sound doctrine, “but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance with their own desires; and will turn away their ears from the truth, and will turn aside to myths” (2 Tm 3:3, 4), resulting in a profound ignorance of the truths and doctrines of the gospel, and the abandonment of true Christianity for a fictitious Christianity.
We may confidently say then that ignorance is another cause of apostasy. When people are ignorant of the truths and doctrines of the religion they profess to believe, and when they are like the Samaritans who did not know or understand their own worship which they had received by tradition, but “worship that which you do not know;” (Jn 4:22), they are in no way able to defend themselves against even the most obvious errors and made-up stories. Like the Athenians, they may be “very religious in all respects” (Ac 17:22), but what they worship is “an image formed by the art and thought of man” (Ac 17:29), not the Lord Jesus Christ. What they worship, they worship in ignorance of the one true God (Ac 17:23). This is why the Apostle Peter, because of the danger posed by false teachers, instructed his readers to “be on guard lest, being carried away by the error of unprincipled men, you fall from your own steadfastness, but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Pt 3:17, 18). The only guard against error is a true knowledge of Jesus Christ, and the only source of this knowledge is the revelation of Himself in Scripture alone. We do not know Jesus apart from Scripture. In the same way, the Apostle John, showing the danger that believers were in from apostate deceivers (1 Jn 2:19, 26), ascribes the means of their protection to “let abide in you which you heard from the beginning. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, you will also abide in the Son and in the Father” (1Jn 2:24). Had they not been instructed in the truth, they could not, in such a time and season, have persevered in the faith once for all delivered to the saints. Their minds would easily have been led astray. People who are ignorant of the truths and doctrines of the gospel are very ready to think that there is something worthy of their consideration in what is proposed to them by the most corrupt seducers. Iain Murry, in his book Evangelicalism Divided, quotes one such self-deceived ‘scholar’,
“Many modern evangelicals do show a commendable willingness to listen to other Christians who, only a few decades ago, would have been considered beyond the pale, and this willingness reveals a desire to think through differences … If evangelicals listen carefully to each other … then it is possible to imagine that a way will be cleared to benefit from even broader Christian discussions, drawing in Roman Catholics, other Protestants, and the Orthodox, and still more expansive conversations including ‘persons of good will’ at large.”[9]
Such thinking is today applauded by most professing Christians, but as Iain Murry so rightly observed, “What these views have in common is their insistence that in accepting them there will be benefit rather than loss for the Christian faith”.[10] The only reason anyone finds something commendable and worthy of consideration in the errors of unprincipled men is because they have never found anything worthy of their love and devotion in the truths which they profess to believe. In other words, they never had a love of the truth so as to be saved, for no one can have any real love for or find any real benefit in truths of which they are willfully ignorant. We are told by the Apostle Paul that it is “by their smooth and flattering speech they deceive the hearts of the unsuspecting” (Rm 16:18). What these deceivers say has the appearance of being plausible, true, ‘scholarly’, and commendable to those who are ignorant of Scripture, so that they are apt to be pleased with them and led astray by them. They imagine there is more to be gained by their sin and error than in the truths and doctrines of Scripture.
Simply let some biblically incompetent and crafty false teacher come among this sort of people, and let them confidently tell them that they need to “rethink” truths, doctrines, and commands of Scripture; let them seem to be “always learning” by their resorting to the latest theological fad, human wisdom, human tradition, and ‘scholarly’ and sophistical reasoning, yet they are “never able to come to a knowledge of the truth” (2 Tm 3:7), nor do “they understand either what they are saying or the matters about which they make confident assertions” (1 Tm 1:7). Let them introduce ideologies and practices from outside the Bible, human reasonings, emotional arguments, extra-biblical revelations, subjective mystical experiences, and unsubstantiated stories of miracles. Let their teaching be in accordance with their errors, their own lusts and desires, and popular opinion; let them give biblical terms new meanings; let them confidently teach people to trust in their own heart, some “inner light”, or some mystical experience; let them accommodate the truths, doctrines, and worship of God to modern tastes, values, and opinions, then such people will bear this beautifully. They begin to think that there is something in these things which they can see, experience, and understand, whereas before, all the great truths and doctrines of the gospel were foolishness to them (1 Cor 2:14). They neither do nor can they understand them no matter how much they hear them. But these new things have the nature of made-up stories and tales, and are in accordance with their own errors, human reasoning, sin, and desires which their minds are predisposed to receive, believe, and retain. It is not hard to see how easy it is for people to transition from a religion, the truths and doctrines of which they know little or nothing at all, to one that is in accordance with their own carnal and worldly senses, pride, understanding, and desires. An apostasy from those truths which people neither understand nor have any inward experience of their power, is easy, and in a time of temptation, unavoidable.
In all ages, multitudes have in this way perished for lack of knowledge. Such people are defenseless against having their minds led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ. Their mind has not been transformed and trained by truth to be able to discern good and evil (Hb 5:14). They have nothing in their minds to enable them to distinguish truth from obvious error, much less truth from almost truth, nothing in their heart to love the truth and to oppose and hate sin, nothing to conflict with the errors and superstitions of their own minds, nothing to prevent them from being “tossed here and there by waves, and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming” (Eph 4:14). Therefore, like the seed which fell on stony ground and that which fell among thorns, when trials and temptations arise, and when circumstances are favorable, they comply with any excuse and pretense to fall away from the faith once delivered to the saints and embrace a form of godliness that denies its power and is according to their own beliefs, desires, and opinions.
Let any man come among such people and preach sound doctrine and the truth as it is in Christ Jesus; let him prove and expose from Scripture the true nature and character of sin and error; let him show that what they believe and practice has no basis in Scripture, but are made-up stories; let him prove from Scripture that the Jesus they worship and the gospel they trust in is not the Jesus revealed in Scripture or the gospel taught by Jesus and the apostles, but a product of theirs or someone else’s imagination; let him expose what they think and believe it is to be Christian is not Christian; let him call them to repent of and forsake their sin and error and turn to Christ in faith and obedience; let him “speak and exhort and reprove with all authority” (Tit 2:15), this such people will not endure, thereby making their ignorance a willful and self-imposed ignorance. Herein lies the danger of what professes to be Christian today. It is astonishing how gullible and ignorant multitudes of professing Christians are. Most know no difference between truth and error, sin and righteousness, holy and profane, clean and unclean, what is Christian and what is not. They may be very confident in what they do not believe, but when called upon to give a reason for the hope that is in them, they can give no reason from Scripture for what they believe and why they believe it.
Whatever the cause of this ignorance may be, such willful ignorance will never fail to expose people to a fatal defection from the truth. If those whose duty and office it is to instruct people in the knowledge of the truths and doctrines of the gospel are themselves ignorant of, and have no experiential knowledge of those truths in their own lives, if they are negligent in their duties, if they adulterate the Word of God, if they conceal and ignore unpopular truths and doctrines, if they are unwilling to be regarded a fool for Christ’s sake but seek to maintain some kind of intellectual respectability, if they accommodate the truths, commands, and doctrines of Scripture to modern tastes, values, opinions, and human reason, if they neglect to expose the true nature of sin and error, if they make no distinction between what is and is not Christian, if they misrepresent what it is to be Christian, if they give sin respectable names and give old words new meanings, if they introduce and integrate ideologies from outside the Bible, then they do whatever is in their power to lead the minds of all within the sphere of their influence astray from the truths and doctrines of Scripture and to deliver them over into the hands of their spiritual adversaries. It is sheer foolishness and self-deception to suppose people will be kept from being led astray, or recovered when led astray, by anything other than the truths of Scripture. It is Scripture alone that “is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness” (2 Tm 3:16). There is no other means that is appointed by God, or is rational in itself, of instructing, correcting, growing, grounding, and persevering men and women in the faith once for all delivered to the saints. When those who profess to be Christian are willfully ignorant of the truths and doctrines they profess to believe, they are either not sincere and serious in their pretended zeal and love for the truth, or they believe something else to be a better means of instructing and preserving people in the truth, or they are influenced by other things that they love, value, and desire more than the truth and the purity of the gospel, which is to have no love of the truth so as to be saved.
It was due to the willful ignorance and negligence on the part of those whose duty it was to instruct the people in the truths of Scripture that Jesus came to a people who were in darkness. All they had for spiritual guides were blind guides. The first conversions to Christ by the gospel consisted in delivering people from darkness and ignorance, “for you were formerly darkness, but now you are light in the Lord; walk as children of light” (Eph 5:8). The Protestant Reformation, and the teaching and preaching which produced the 18th century Great Awakening consisted in delivering people from darkness and ignorance. It has once again come to pass, that because of the willful ignorance and negligence of Scripture, and the unholy and worldly lives and examples of not only those whose duty it is to teach it, but on the part of those whose duty it is to know it, and who have the means of knowing it, and to live it, that the minds of most who profess to be Christian have once again been reduced to that same state and condition of darkness, and are therefore easy prey for any and every false teaching and teacher that pretends to be Christian. God has made it clear in His Word what the duty of all true and faithful pastors, elders, and Christians is in such a time and season as we are now in, a season in which most who profess to be Christian will not endure sound doctrine and are therefore willfully ignorant of the truths and doctrines which they profess to believe, and that is to “preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with great patience and instruction” (2 Tm 4:2). This is the only means appointed by God which will preserve us in the truth.
It is not enough to simply teach people the most basic, rudimentary, and general truths of the gospel, nor is there anymore foolish and sinful opinion, nor one more contrary to true Christianity, than to think we do not need to grow in the true knowledge of Jesus and His Word. Those who content themselves with only knowing what is absolutely necessary for salvation simply show they have no love of the truth. It is impossible to believe and love who and what we do not know, and who we truly love, we desire to know better. The most dangerous false teachers are the ones who speak the most truth. They do not deny the most basic and general truths of the gospel; rather they use biblical terminology, but give it different meanings, and redefine and misrepresent what it is to be Christian. If they were obviously false they could not “have crept in unnoticed” (Jude 4). They go unnoticed because outwardly they profess to believe the same things. Nor are we to be satisfied with a mere intellectual, academic, speculative, and natural knowledge of divine truths; rather we must grow in a true spiritual knowledge and understanding, or, as Jonathan Edwards explained,
“There are two kinds of knowledge of divine truth, speculative and practical, or in other terms, natural and spiritual. The former remains only in the head. No other faculty but the understanding is concerned in it. It consists in having a natural or rational knowledge of the things of religion, or such a knowledge as is to be obtained by the natural exercise of our own faculties, without any special illumination by the Spirit of God. The latter rests not entirely in the head, or in the speculative ideas of things; but the heart is concerned in it; it principally consists in the sense of the heart. …. Thus there is a difference between having a right speculative notion of the doctrines contained in the word of God, and have a due sense of them in the heart. …. The latter, or the spiritual and practical, is of the greatest importance; for a speculative without a spiritual knowledge, is to no purpose, but to make our condemnation the greater. Yet a speculative knowledge is also of infinite importance in this respect, that without it we can have no spiritual or practical knowledge.”[11]
The truth is, the knowledge possessed by most professing Christians, that is, what they think it is to be Christian, has no basis in Scripture, but is the product of their own or someone else’s imagination; it is composed of made-up stories. We must know and realize that the more our teaching, doctrine, and life conforms to and is governed by the truths and doctrines of Scripture, the less mixture there is of anything human in it, then the more difficult it is to thoroughly instruct others in it, and the more opposition we will face toward it, especially in a time when most will not endure sound doctrine. The greatest opposition will come from professing Christians who are ignorant of the truths and doctrines they profess to believe. The mind of man is far more apt and able to accept and comprehend and retain made-up stories, errors, and superstitions than spiritual truths and doctrines. To turn their ears away from truth and to turn aside to myths is natural to the mind of natural men and women (2 Tm 4:4). They have a natural affinity for myths and a natural dislike and enmity for divine truths (Rm 8:7; 1 Cor 2:14), until their mind is renewed by divine grace. This is why many will make more progress in, and become more devoted to a false religion in one or two weeks than others will do in years in the knowledge of the truth, because there is nothing in a myth for the flesh to oppose. They will become experts in their myths in two or three months, but progress in learning the truths and doctrines of the gospel is slow, requiring much prayer, study, effort, and diligence, as Paul told Timothy, “Take pains with these things; be absorbed in them, so that your progress may be evident to all” (1 Tm 4:15); “Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, handling accurately the word of truth” (2 Tm 2:15); “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 Tm 4:16). If we neglect this diligence either in ourselves or in what we teach others, they will be made a prey of the next opportunity for a defection from the truth. We become a stumbling block to them. Modern Christianity, by its willful ignorance of the truths and doctrines of the gospel and of what it is to be Christian, has become a stumbling block to a true knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. As Jesus Himself declared, “For it is inevitable that stumbling blocks come, but woe to that man through whom the stumbling block comes!” (Mt 18:7). This is a third cause of apostasy, a willful, deliberate ignorance of the truths and doctrines of the gospel.
In our next study we will examine other causes of apostasy, namely, the pride, arrogance, and self-centeredness of mind which makes the mind of man the ultimate authority and judge of divine truth, along with love of the world, and a careless and presumptuous false security.
[1] Iain H. Murry, Jonathan Edwards: A New Biography (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1987), 125.
[2] Ibid, 125.
[3] Dr. Robert L. Thomas, Evangelical Hermeneutics: The New Versus the Old (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2002), 31.
[4] Charles Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students (Great Britain: Christian Focus, 1998), 11, 12.
[5] Martin Luther, Complete Sermons of Martin Luther, Vol 4 (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2000), 184, 185.
[6] Quoted in Arnold Dallimore, C.H. Spurgeon: The New Biography (Chicago: Moody Press, 1984), 208.
[7] J.C. Ryle, Christian Leaders of the 18th Century (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1978), 17.
[8] J.C. Ryle, Practical Religion (Darlington, England: Evangelical Press, 2001), 499, 500.
[9] Quoted in Iain Murray, Evangelicalism Divided: A Record of Crucial Change in the Years 1950-2000 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2000), 199.
[10] Ibid, 199.
[11] Jonathan Edwards, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Vol 2 (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2005), 158.