What would Christianity look like today if men hadn’t been endowed with boldness from on High? If men like Paul, enduring much suffering for Christ’s name sake, hadn’t continued standing up for the gospel, proclaiming Christ Crucified, after Jesus ascended and sat at the right hand of God? If Athanasius hadn’t defended the doctrine of the Trinity and the Deity of Christ despite being banished 5 times when the whole world was given over to Arianism? If it hadn’t been for men such as John Hus and William Tyndale, upon recognizing certain errors in the Roman Catholic Church, cried out at the expense of their very lives? Luther, following soon after these men, seeing the abusive power and unbiblical practices of the priesthood, stands before King Charles and the representatives of Rome and declares, “I am bound by the Scriptures … My conscience is captive to the Word of God … Here I stand, I can do no other!”
Consider the Prince of Preachers, Charles Spurgeon, in an age where unimpassioned preaching filled London pulpits and Hyper-Calvinism and Liberalism plagued the Church. He stormed the pulpit unashamedly declaring the Gospel of our Lord. And those great men of God who were used to bring about the First Great Awakening: men like Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, and the Wesley Brothers. What if they had been content to be silent, perfectly satisfied with the dry orthodoxy and nominalism which swept across the world after those old Puritans began drifting off the scene? Where would we be today if men like William Carey, Adoniram Judson, Jim Elliot, Hudson Taylor, and many others, had quenched the burning desire to see God’s glory magnified among all the nations of the world? What if they had decided it would be much easier and more comfortable to stay home and let someone else “Go and make disciples”?
We live in a time where the Church of the Lord Jesus is being pressured to remain silent, to cave on their biblical convictions, to allow sinful man to be the arbiter of Truth. This pressure is exasperated by those within the Church that are of the persuasion that “it doesn’t matter what we believe, can’t we all just get along??” Those who seek to preserve biblical doctrine are accused of being “argumentative”. We roll our eyes when we see two Christians debating a point in Scripture thinking piously to ourselves, “What fools!” We’d probably all agree internet debates are often dumpster fires, but where is the right place? Obviously, the web and technology is a major part of our ordinary experience now. Why shouldn’t it be utilized (in an appropriate manner) in Christian engagement? Even if we called for an ecumenical council like the old days, only those within the denomination who called for the council would likely be present. If a multi-denominational meeting is held, the focus is always on the points of agreements and efforts are made to avoid all controversial points. While, in truth, this spawns from a spirit and desire for Christian unity and a heart to seek “peace with all men”, it seems we have forgotten about the equally important duty of the Christian to “earnestly contend for the faith once delivered to the saints”.
Meanwhile, our society is being won over to a secular worldview. Our children are being pumped full of anti-Christian propaganda in our school systems. Thankfully, living in a small town, some of that is shielded because we still have Christian men and women teaching the classes. Our young people are going off to college as uninformed, under-discipled children of the faith, and they’re coming back atheists, agnostics, or even worse, Liberal “Christians”. We have churches with homosexuals and lesbians leading “worship” to a God they do not know, a God who calls such things an abomination! We have Universalists boldly claiming that all will eventually end up in heaven regardless of how they live their lives, whereas Scripture says, “The smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever.” And what’s our response to these false doctrines? “Ah, that’s one perspective. I, of course, do not hold to those views, but I will agree to disagree with those who do.” If only Christians had the zeal for Truth that false prophets have for lies!
Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality breathe out threatenings to the Church, and what are Christians doing about it? Those who do cry out are called Radicals, Bigots, and Racists.
When will what matters actually matter to us? When will faithful men, full of the Holy Ghost, stand up and “Suffer hardship as a good soldier of Christ Jesus”? When will Christian parents become more obsessed with training their children in righteousness and the worship of God than they are in training them to be sports stars? When will we be unsatisfied with being tossed about with every wind of doctrine and seek to be rooted in the Truth and consumed with love for one another (instead of a false outward show of love while inwardly despising one another)?
As Steven Lawson asks in his “Long line of Godly Men” series: Where are the modern day Luthers, Calvins, Whitfields, Spurgeons? There are, in fact, men and women around the world who are sold out to the gospel of Christ. They are unashamedly passionate about the Word of God, about Truth, about the Great Commission. Let us stand up with these men and women and declare to our generation: “Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father!”
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