You were running a good race. Who cut in on you and kept you from obeying the truth? That kind of persuasion does not come from the one who calls you. “A little yeast works through the whole batch of dough.” I am confident in the Lord that you will take no other view. The one who is throwing you into confusion will pay the penalty, whoever he may be. (Galatians 5:7-10)

Sad State Of Affairs In Evangelicalism Today

We simply must face facts here, evangelicalism has become a thing–an idol–the way we “do church.” And because the Christian Church in America has been waffling on the doctrines of grace for too long God has sent and allowed deceptions into our midst. Not to mention extremely well placed attacks by Satan e.g. the counterfeit Christianity of the new cult of liberal theology the Emergent Church. And the Lord had warned us – For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God? (1 Peter 4:17, KJV).

And as I showed my church this past Sunday it’s not like those words are some isolated New Testament concept, consider the following from Ezekiel 9:

Now the glory of the God of Israel went up from above the cherubim, where it had been, and moved to the threshold of the temple. Then the LORD called to the man clothed in linen who had the writing kit at his side and said to him, “Go throughout the city of Jerusalem and put a mark on the foreheads of those who grieve and lament over all the detestable things that are done in it.”

As I listened, He said to the others, “Follow him through the city and kill, without showing pity or compassion. Slaughter old men, young men and maidens, women and children, but do not touch anyone who has the mark. Begin at My sanctuary.” So they began with the elders who were in front of the temple (vv. 3-6).

The time you live in–right now–is about making a stand. The spiritual principle is found in this question that the Master, Christ Jesus of Nazareth, asked of the waffling religious leaders of His day as our glorious and majestic Creator stood upon His planet we call earth:

“I will also ask you one thing, which if you tell Me, I will also tell you by what authority I do these things. The baptism of John was from what source, from heaven or from men?” And they began reasoning among themselves, saying, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ He will say to us, ‘Then why did you not believe him?’ But if we say, ‘From men,’ we fear the people; for they all regard John as a prophet.” (Matthew 21:24-26, NASB)

Our eyewitness to the event, the inspired Apostle Matthew, then tells us something very important in verse 27. Those original wafflers were exactly like our lukewarm evangelical leaders in the Purpose Driven Church, the Emergent Church and the Word Faith Church. These are the major pillars in the Ecumenical Church of Deceit (ECoD) which is so skillfully being woven together by Satan through the Contemplative Spirituality of the apostate Church of Rome . And just as their descendents these religious leaders Christ was speaking to were also afraid of the people so they just didn’t answer. They wouldn’t take an actual stand. So, how about you?

The question God has before us today is: “Was the Reformation of God or was it of man?” Are you also afraid to answer? Do you fear the crowd of ecumenical fools on the broad road of religion? You are going to have to land on one side or the other. The LORD God Almighty has very clearly spoken and Matthew was there to record His Words of absolute unchanging, unbending and unyielding Truth – “He who is not with Me is against Me, and he who does not gather with Me scatters” (Matthew 12:30). How many times must these centered on the self men be told there simply is no middle ground? Hear this: We are not all one underneath our religious differences.

Men Who Were With Christ And Through Whom God Gathered Many Souls

In the following works from three men, all used mightily by God, we will see exposed the rotten root of this whole pouty postmodern Frank Sinatra-style “my way” Christianity revealed long before this spiritual cancer was sent into the Body of Christ. The Emergent Church is a rebellion against the Bible so that people who refuse to go to the cross to die can be of the world while still trying to eat their Christian cake as well. Younger self-centered “hang with the crowd” types like Rob Bell have somehow convinced themselves they are contextualizing the Gospel to reach their generation. Yeah, right. Reach them with what?

Wow, today we can be Christians…oops I forgot, we mustn’t use that word because of all those nasty “fightin’ fundies.” And isn’t it refreshing that these Emergent “new kind” of Christian types never use sarcasm or name-calling? O, and it’s so like these postmodern punks have discovered a new way of “reaching” people in order that today we can be followers of Jesus and the world is simply going to love us. But unfortunately this same Jesus, Whom they are crucifying all over again, clearly says the world will never love God. And if you truly walk with Him the sufferings and persecutions that fell on Him are going to fall upon you as well. For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe on Him, but also to suffer for Him (Philippians 1:29).

That’s the life of the true Christian because God the Holy Spirit says of evangelical leaders like Rick Warren and Guru Brian McLaren – “They are from the world; therefore they speak from the world, and the world listens to them” (1 John 4:5, ESV). And our Master also clearly warns us – “Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for that is how their fathers treated the false prophets” (Luke 6:26). Whew, there must be a ton of woes on the “I love Rob-O-Meter” – yikes! But consider this from Charles Spurgeon who battled the beginning of the original Cult of Liberalism in England in the 1800’s.

In commenting on Daniel 6:13 – Then they said to the king, “Daniel, who is one of the exiles from Judah, pays no attention to you, O king, or to the decree you put in writing. He still prays three times a day,” Spurgeon said:

Daniel had been exalted to very great worldly prosperity, but his soul had prospered too. Oftentimes outward advancement means inward decline, Tens of thousands have been intoxicated by success. Though they bade fair in starting in the race of life to win the prize, they were tempted to turn aside to gather the golden apples, and so they missed the crown.

But this is exactly what happened to an evangelicalism which had never turned it’s back on trying to placate the fallen nature of man. In trying to please men it kept telling them about their “free will” and their ability to “make a decision for Christ.” This slippery slope is now perfectly personified in the terrible slide of Rick Warren: The New Charles Finney. Spurgeon continues:

It was not so with Daniel–he was as perfect before God in his high estate as in his lowly days, and this is to be accounted for by the fact that he sustained the energy of his outward profession by constant secret communication with God. He was, we are told, a man of excellent spirit and a man abundant in prayer; hence, his head was not turned by his elevation, but the Lord fulfilled in him His promise to “make His servant’s feet like hinds’ feet, that they may stand upon their high places.” Yet although Daniel preserved his integrity, he did not find a position of greatness to be one of rest.

The example of Daniel I present for your observation today, believing that these are times when we need to be as firm and resolute as he, and that at any rate, occasions will come to every one of us, before we win our crown, when we shall need to put our foot down firmly and be steadfast and unflinching for the Lord and His Truth (At the Master’s Feet, December 9).

To Follow Jesus Is To Pick Up Your Cross And Die To Self

So you see, attacks on the veracity of God’s Word and flagrant compromise of people who profess to be Christians is absolutely nothing new. The question you should be asking is: “How do I keep myself from being deceived and falling into compromise with these other man-lovers?” This verse in Daniel cited above begins to answer this question – “He still prays three times a day,” humble yourself before God. Read the Bible, pray and then do what it says.

And the following Biblical teaching from A.W. Tozer instructs us further because in Trials and Pain: It Works! Pastor Tozer exhorts us:

…Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Corinthians 12:9-10)

Ten thousand enemies cannot stop a Christian, cannot even slow him down, if he meets them in an attitude of complete trust in God. They will become to him like the atmosphere that resists the airplane, but which because the plane’s designer knew how to take advantage of that resistance, actually lifts the plane aloft and holds it there for a journey of 2,000 miles. What would have been an enemy to the plane becomes a helpful servant to aid it on its way….

If this should seem like a bit of theorizing, remember that always the greatest Christians have come out of hard times and tough situations. Tribulations actually worked for their spiritual perfection in that they taught them to trust not in themselves but in the Lord who raised the dead. They learned that the enemy could not block their progress unless they surrendered to the urgings of the flesh and began to complain. And slowly, they learned to stop complaining and start praising. It is that simple–and it works! WTA 032- 033.

“Lord, I wish I could more readily ‘stop complaining and start praising.’ I pray for Your grace to work within me that I might allow the trials to lift me aloft rather than press me down. I’ll do it in Your strength today. Amen.”(Tozer on Christian Leadership, December 9)

This is also where the power to live above the trials of this world and the ability to bear the sufferings of Christ actually comes from – Trials and Pain, It Works! It has been rightly stated that before the Lord will use a man or women He will first wound them deeply in order to destroy every vestige of self within them. And yet the whole of today’s ECoD and their foolish Contemplative Prayer is about going “deep within” and finding a supposed “true self.”

Can you really not see this is actually diametrically opposed to the life of the genuine Christian? I cover this further in Your Evil “True Self”. But O how I loathe every time I hear people-pleasing posers like Philip Yancey say that in the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus was struggling with whether or not to accept His mission to die on the Cross. Perish such a ridiculous thought! Christ is the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world. Our Lord knew what His mission was and He was demonstrating to stupid sheep how they also could overcome their finicky flesh to truly act as His ambassadors within this evil world system.

Prayer in complete surrender and submission; trials and pain, no matter the cost personally – “yet not my will, but Yours be done” (Luke 22:42). Do you now sense the developing theme of the only way this rotten root of the centered on the self spiritual spoiled four-teen-year-old postmodern mentality can be uprooted? Maybe then The Offence of the Natural from Oswald Chambers will finally piece your stubborn hide:

And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. (Galatians 5:24)

The natural life is not sinful; we must be apostatized from sin, have nothing to do with sin in any shape or form. Sin belongs to hell and the devil; I, as a child of God, belong to heaven and God. It is not a question of giving up sin, but of giving up my right to myself, my natural independence and self-assertiveness, and this is where the battle has to be fought. It is the things that are right and noble and good from the natural stand point that keep us back from God’s best. To discern that natural virtues antagonize surrender to God, is to bring our soul into the centre of its greatest battle.

Very few of us debate with the sordid and evil and wrong, but we do debate with the good. It is the good that hates the best, and the higher up you get in the scale of the natural virtues, the more intense is the opposition to Jesus Christ. “They that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh” – it is going to cost the natural in you everything, not something. Jesus said – “If any man will be My disciple, let him deny himself,” i.e., his right to himself, and a man has to realize Who Jesus Christ is before he will do it. Beware of refusing to go to the funeral of your own independence.

The natural life is not spiritual, and it can only be made spiritual by sacrifice. If we do not resolutely sacrifice the natural, the supernatural can never become natural in us. There is no royal road there; each of us has it entirely in his own hands. It is not a question of praying, but of performing (My Utmost for His Highest, 256).

So Now You Personally Have No Excuse

In Send The Reformers! back in June of 2006 I pointed out that we have made a pathetic mess of the American Christian Church. And further it’s now so bad our Lord has been busy Paging Paul And Barnabus. So one can imagine I am delighted to tell you that on Pyromaniacs a while ago my brother in Christ Phil Johnson was dead on when he said that:

evangelicalism right now is at least as much in need of Reformation as Medieval Roman Catholicism was before Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the castle church. We need to face that squarely,… (emphasis his)

What, do we seriously think this is going to come without the sacrifice of some of our reputations and prestige in the eyes of some who are around us? Good luck to you. I know that because of the Holy Spirit in me I can honestly say – “I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the wicked” (Psalm 84:10). And if you have taken the time to read this particular article then you should now know that you have been personally warned as to what is at stake in this generation.

And you are more than welcome to say whatever you want about me as I really couldn’t care less; and even further, if you don’t want to listen to me that’s fine too. But I will tell you this in the Lord, then you’d best listen to the following from Dr. John MacArthur from a series on Pulpit Magazine. This admonition from the Lord is also in his forthcoming book The Truth War:

Rather than respond to the contemporary infatuation with postmodern ambiguity in a completely positive and nonpolemical way, I find myself compelled to echo the inspired words of Jude and exhort my readers who truly love Christ: you need to contend earnestly for the faith. Truth is under heavy attack, and there are too few courageous warriors who are willing to fight.

When we stand before the judgment seat of Christ, believers from this generation will not be able to justify their apathy by complaining that the strife of conflict over truth just seemed “too negative” for the kind of culture we lived in–or that the issues were “merely doctrinal” and therefore not worth the effort.

…he who has an ear to hear, then let him hear what the Spirit of God has said to His Church…and if anyone thinks he is spiritual then let him acknowledge herein are Words from the Lord…