Apprising Ministries notes that as Anne Rice “quits Christianity,” and apostasy continues slithering its way through increasingly squishy evanjellyfish, more and more people have become surprised by this sad state of affairs in the visible church.

Below is a section of John MacArthur’s message Apostates, Be Warned, Part 2, which was actually part of the series he preached on the Book of Jude that would become his book The Truth War. Dr. MacArthur reminds us that we really shouldn’t be surprised when apostates don’t always leave the church.

What better place for Satan’s minions, e.g. within the sinfully ecumenical neo-liberal cult of the Emerging Church like EC guru Brian McLaren and heretical quasi-universalist EC pastor Doug Pagitt, to “propagate their corrupting heresies to destroy the church and its message and its impact.”

And yeah, you in the Emergent Church be sure and quote me on that; McLaren and Pagitt are no brothers of mine:

[W]e are called to arms in regard to protecting the faith and fighting for the truth is because certain persons have crept in, verse 4, unnoticed and they intend because of their ungodliness to turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord Jesus Christ. And we learn here that the great battle for the truth is waged within the framework of the visible church, that our enemy is within, the enemy has infiltrated the church.

The tares have been sown amidst the wheat. Satan has disguised himself as an angel of light. His ministers are also disguised as angels of light. They have infiltrated successfully into the church always and no different today and they sow damning lies at the very heart of the Christian church. The visible church and the invisible church are two different entities. The visible church is that which bears the name of Christianity in the name of Christ. The invisible church is Christ’s true and redeemed people. And so we have to be discerning and we have to battle for the truth inside the very realm called Christendom. So we’ve been calling our study the long war on the truth, the truth war. And we have noted that this is one form of apostasy and one very, very dangerous deadly, penetrating subtle deception and effective form of apostasy. That apostasy which occurs inside the church and remains there to pollute the church and to diminish people’s confidence in the true gospel.

So we’ve been talking about this matter of defectors from the faith, those who apostatize from the faith. Some leave the church, others remain. And all of us, I think, who have been Christians for any length of time have experienced this matter of defection, this matter of rebellion, this matter of people exposed to the truth, even confessing or professing the truth who abandon the truth and turn away from Christ. We have all known people who have professed to be Christians and profess to believe in Jesus Christ, who have appeared to love the Lord and love the church and to respond to His truth, who had at some point in their lives have utterly and completely abandoned that. And now are living as none of the Scripture were true and as if the gospel was a lie and Christ was not the Savior and hell is either a fabrication or a more desirable place than heaven. Those people fall into the category of apostates, defectors from the faith. You have to know it to defect from it, to reject it.

And as I said, however, not all apostates leave the church. Some remain in it. Some remain in it for a time and eventually leave. But many remain in the church to propagate their corrupting heresies to destroy the church and its message and its impact. This is precisely what Satan desires to do. I think this is his priority operation. That’s why Satan himself is disguised as an angel of light. And as I said earlier, from 2 Corinthians 11, his ministers also are disguised as angels of light. And when you mention Christianity today, just the word conjures up everything that is true and everything that is not true all in the same breath.

For us who know Christ, for us who know the gospel, for us who know our Redeemer, for us who have experienced the goodness of God, His transforming grace, it is always difficult for us to understand how people who are to any degree familiar with the gospel can reject it. I find that almost impossible to believe. Apart from understanding the human heart, the gospel is so appealing, the gospel is so wonderful that it seems something that we should grasp and hold to as tightly as we can, given its immense and eternal promises. But Scripture clearly tells us that there will always be defectors.

And as you look in the gospels, for example, in the New Testament, you’re going to see some of the reasons why. Ignorance is one reason why people defect from the gospel. There’s never really any penetrating of the truth, that’s the hard ground. It just sort of bounces off them. They don’t comprehend it. Persecution is another reason…people who are exposed to the gospel but do not want to pay the price of naming the name of Christ and bearing the reproach of Christ. The worries of this life, Jesus said, are another reason why the seed has a very short life and produces no fruit. And Jesus also said the deceitfulness of riches, people love wealth and materialism and prosperity in this life more than heavenly promises.

It is also true that there is another reason why people defect and that is because the teaching of Jesus is hard. John 6:60, “Many therefore of His disciples when they heard this said, ‘This is a hard statement, who can listen to it?'” A few verses later as a result of this, “Many of His disciples withdrew and were not walking with Him anymore.” The demands of Jesus were hard, that’s really what I was driving at in the book Hard to Believe, which reflects the teaching we did, particularly on Luke 9, “If any man come after Me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow Me.” The message is hard, hard teaching. It was too hard for the rich young ruler. It was too hard for Judas Iscariot. When you come to the epistles in the New Testament, you’re going to find some more reasons why people defect. One is Satan’s devices. Paul says he’s very concerned that people will be led away from the simplicity of devotion to Christ, Satan will come in and confuse people as to the priority and the person of Christ. There are some people who defect from the gospel because they don’t want to be alienated from the people around them. They love the world too much. And John said, “If you love the world, the love of the Father is not in you.” Demas is an illustration of a defector. Second Timothy 4:10, “Who loved this present world.” It doesn’t mean that he loved…he wasn’t an environmentalist in particular, but he loved the whole society that made up his sinful world. There are others who defect from the faith, according to 1 Timothy 6, because they love riches. The desire for riches has corrupted and destroyed many.

But most notably in the New Testament, the book of Hebrews features the longest list of why people defect from the faith. And we could spend literally weeks going through this, I’m not going to do that, I’m going to just spend minutes going through it. But you might want to just listen carefully. Some people defect from the faith because, I’m not being self-serving here, but they just don’t pay careful enough attention to the teaching of Scripture. Their approach to the Word of God is superficial and that’s why in Hebrews 2:1 it says, “For this reason we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it.” It is a very dangerous thing to pay only a superficial amount of attention to the profound realities of divine truth. And there are some people who defect from the faith according to the book of Hebrews because it somehow slips their mind, slips their grasp. Actually in Hebrews 3:6 it says, “Christ was faithful as a son over his house whose house we are if we hold fast our assurance.” How could you ever let something so wonderful as the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ slip down your priority list, or slip out of your conscious memory? And, of course, there are people who defect from the faith because of an unbelieving heart, no matter how they might listen, no matter how they might remember, Hebrews 3:12 says, “Take care, brethren, lest there be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart in falling away from the living God.” And really, all of these things sort of go together. It’s sort of a packaged deal, I think.

Also there in the third chapter of Hebrews, we are warned, “Do not harden your heart as when they provoked me as in the day of trial in the wilderness.” This is another thing that caused people to defect from the faith, to rebel from the gospel that they have heard, and it is because they have a hardened heart and perhaps an increasingly hardened heart. Hebrews 4:7, “Today,” David after so long a time, “Just as has been said before said again, ‘Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your heart.'” Later in that same third chapter of Hebrews, rebellion is added to the list. That’s another problem, people who are just flatly, openly, overtly rebellious, like those Israelites we looked at last time. And there are some people, according to Hebrews 4:2, who do not combine faith with the hearing of the Word. They train themselves and this is really another way to say the same thing, they train themselves to hear the Word without ever really making a commitment to it. Hebrews 4:2 says, “They heard it but it didn’t profit them because it was never mixed with faith in those who heard it. Very dangerous to keep on hearing the Word and not believing it.

And then there are some people, according to Hebrews 4:6, who are just flatly disobedient. And then there are some people, according to chapter 6, who are just lazy. And then there are some, according to Hebrews chapter 10, who are just not interested in coming to the church and therefore they just distance themselves from it and they forsake the assembling of themselves together. There are some who are deliberately flagrantly anti-Christ, we see that in chapter 10 as well. They trample under foot the blood of the Covenant. There are some, we find, in chapter 10 at the end of the chapter, verses 38 and 39, who get close but shrink back, some because of bitterness, some because of sexual immorality, some because of disrespect of leaders and it just goes on and on all the way through this epistle to the Hebrews.

There’s just so much potential for apostasy, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. Is it any wonder that many get on the broad road and few find the narrow way? Is it any wonder that many, many say, “Lord, Lord,” but really don’t know the truth and few really find the door? There are just so many potential ways to apostatize and it’s so normal and so natural to the human heart. I would go so far as to say that it is not a surprise to me that the majority of people exposed to the gospel turn away from it. Is that not obvious? The majority of people exposed to the gospel turn away from it. And it seems to me that clearly there are far more people in the visible church than in the invisible church, many, many more. But some of these people that defect and some of these people that turn away remain in the church as the instruments of Satan to teach their demon doctrines and to build the visible church with its corrupt theology. (Apostates, Be Warned, Part 2)

Dr. John MacArthur

See also:

NEO-LIBERALISM FOLLOWS SAME EVIL METHODOLOGY OF LIBERALISM

CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE DOESN’T MATTER TO BRIAN MCLAREN

DOUG PAGITT, THE EMERGING CHURCH, AND AFFIRMING HOMOSEXUALITY

HERETICAL EMERGING CHURCH PROGRESSIVE/LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN TONY JONES TO JOIN STAFF OF FULLER SEMINARY

PHILIP CLAYTON AND THE EMERGING CHURCH 2.0

OUTLAW PREACHERS KHAD YOUNG AND JAY BAKKER DON’T LOVE ENOUGH 

LIBERALISM 2.0 THE NEW PROGRESSIVE CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY