Guarding the Faith

A while ago a pastor decided to look into the state of Evangelical preaching, He and a friend researched the state of Protestantism and found that the Bride of Christ had been overcome by liberalism, academic arrogance, skepticism, and the shift away from God's sovereignty in salvation to the Arminian thought that the human will is the deciding factor in salvation. 

The study found that these were the discrete entry points for heresy to enter the church and drive a wedge between the Bride and her Bridegroom. And by "a while ago" I actually mean 128 years ago. The year was 1887 and the pastors who started the study were Charles Spurgeon and Robert Schindler. As John MacArthur explains in his book Ashamed of the Gospel

Many of those who remained true to the faith were nevertheless reluctant to fight for what they believed in. Evangelical preaching was often cold and lifeless, and even those who held to sound doctrine were careless about where they drew the line in their associations with others: “Those who were really orthodox in their sentiments were too often lax and unfaithful as to the introduction of heretical ministers into their pulpits, either as assistants or occasional preachers. In this way the Arian and Socinian heresies were introduced into the Presbyterian congregations in the city of Exeter.”

Thus within only a few decades, the Puritan fervor that had so captured the soul of England gave way to dry, listless, apostate teaching. Churches became lax in granting membership privileges to the unregenerate. People who were, in Shindler’s words, “strangers to the work of renewing grace” nevertheless claimed to be Christians and were admitted to membership—even leadership—in the churches (John MacArthur, Ashamed of the Gospel, 3rd ed. (Wheaton: Crossway, 2010), 235.)

That's one of Satan's favorite ploys - to corrupt the teaching of God's word. He starts with just a little at first (Did God really say "you shall not eat from any tree of the garden"?), then slowly creeping in through the chink in the wall with more and more heresies. That chink was opened up by the introduction of skepticism and man's pride. 

This study by Spurgeon and Schindler was conducted a century and a quarter ago and look at what we have now - liberalism is running rampant in the Church to the point where liberal psudo-christians have decided only the "red letters" are good enough for them, and they tend to be quite liberal with the interpretation of those remaining words. Atheists have infiltrated the pulpits infecting their congregations with their cancerous spiritual pathogens. The worst part is that the leaders of their denominations are either too cowardly to defrock these scriptural failures, or they despise Christ so much that they allow the festering malignancies that these atheists bring with them to attack the Bride of Christ. 

Yes, Satan is a roaring lion ready to devour the unwary, but lions only roar once they have their claws sunken into their hapless prey and are beginning to feast. Before a lion strikes they stalk quietly and stealthily looking for a moment of weakness and unwariness, then they creep up and pounce. 

We have no one to blame but ourselves. Our Lord and Master Christ Jesus and his Apostles told us over and over - look out for the wolf! Beware of the Lion! They did everything but paint them blaze orange and put neon collars on them. And now we are waist deep in the Great Apostasy that we were also warned about, with atheists in the pulpits, liberal "Christians" worshiping abortion, emergent "leaders" re-writing the bible, and once Christ worshiping denominations giving themselves over to sins of the flesh in the name of "tolerance" instead of worshiping the name of "Jesus"

This is all due to not holding ourselves to God's word. If we hold ourselves to true to His teaching as we have been warned to do we won't hold back the storm, but we will protect our brothers and sisters and those we evangelize.

Pay close attention to yourself and to your teaching; persevere in these things, for as you do this you will ensure salvation both for yourself and for those who hear you. (1 Timothy 4:16)

It ain't easy bein' a Berean, but nothing worth having is easy.