Tuesday, January 08, 2008

Guarding the Truth

Introduction


Bear in mind that our Lord's patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction. Therefore, dear friends, since you already know this, be on your guard so that you may not be carried away by the error of lawless men and fall from your secure position. But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever! Amen. (NIV II. Peter 3:15 18)
The apostle Peter instructed the saints to be on guard against those who were distorting the teachings of the apostle Paul, as well as the rest of the Scripture. He had good reason to warn them. False doctrines have power to carry us away from God and bring us down from our secure position in Christ. We Christians are to guard the truth. When a person is given the responsibility to guard something, that person must keep a constant eye on it. They must pay attention to it. Implicit in the term "guard" is the need to fight against those who come to steal or destroy what you are guarding. So if we are to guard the truth successfully, we will have to possess a certain amount of zeal for that truth and a commitment to it.

To our dismay, in the last decade we have watched the exact opposite attitude sweep over the body of Christ like a plague. There has been a radical shift of emphasis from guarding truth to guarding relationships regardless of truth. The whole idea of sacrificing relationships for the sake of truth is being discredited.

Suddenly we have a situation where the average Christian no longer cares about doctrine. In fact, the defense of truth is fast becoming the enemy and tolerance the hero of Christendom. Multitudes of believers have been duped into believing that it is wrong to defend the truth they are supposed to be guarding. They have bought the lie that spiritual unity should take precedence over everything.

Yet it has become evident (at least to us) that a host of demonic teaching spirits have been unleashed against an unsuspecting Church. The result is that many Christians are now accepting all kinds of unbiblical teachings and practices into their lives. If ever there was a formula for disaster among the Lord’s people, this is it.

The shift away from caring about doctrine has been the result of various significant developments both inside and outside the Christian community. The first development has been the influence of the world. Tolerance and unity also happen to be the emphasis of today’s "politically correct" establishment. We are getting close to the institution of a one-world government. Both in secular and religious arenas the atmosphere among humanists and New Agers is inclusive. Everyone will be included in the new order—everyone except God’s "elect" of course. They will be viewed by all nations, and by many Christians as well, as too divisive and intolerant.

There’s an incredible amount of pressure outside the Christian community to be inclusive and tolerant. Unfortunately, the organized Church is caving into this pressure. This should not surprise us, for the Religious System has never been very successful when it comes to resisting the influence of the world. Instead of influencing the world for the good, the world always seems to be influencing our churches for the worse—and this is nowhere more evident than in the fact that contemporary believers are continually imitating the world, creating Christian versions of its corruption. This is why we have Christian rock/heavy metal and Christian rap and Christian alternative music. This is why we have Christian tee-shirts with pagan advertisement look-a-likes, such as the one that displays a Budweiser beer can and reads: "Godweiser—this blood is for you."

Is this what James meant when he said we should keep ourselves "unspotted" from the world [James 1:27]? Is this what Jesus meant when He told us to be a "light set upon a hill" [Matt. 5:14]? We should be on a hill with a light, offering the lost something that is completely other than what they are experiencing. Jesus never taught His disciples to make Christian versions of the world’s iniquity so the unsaved would be able to "relate" to them better. He never told us to copy the trends and fads of our fallen society in order to reach the lost.

A second development has come from within the Church, on a grass-roots level. There has been a reaction against the misuse of doctrine. People are tired of all the fleshly striving over doctrine that has gone on year after year between denominations and religious groups. They are tired of all the division and backstabbing among God’s people—and rightly so.

Though not all division over doctrine is wrong, it is certainly true that many of our divisions are wrong because they have been the result of religious pride, not a genuine, Spirit-led defense of God’s truth. There has indeed been much wickedness manifested and people have been hurt, even destroyed, all in the name of defending doctrine.

It is good that believers are trying to correct the situation. But the way we are attempting to repair these divisions is wrong. We are over-reacting, and not only over-reacting, but over-reacting against the wrong thing. Neither godly doctrine or the godly defense of that doctrine is the cause of most of our divisions. The problem is religious pride. The problem is what men do with God’s doctrine. They hold it in unrighteousness. They twist and pervert it. They use it as a means to their own selfish ends and they use it to divide and enslave the body of Christ.

Instead of rejecting the tools that our religious leaders have used to divide the body of Christ, we should be rejecting the men and the systems they have created, which separate God’s people. Unfortunately, this will probably never happen—not in this age anyway. Religious leaders have beat the people of God down into a permanent state of submission. Most Christians will never call those who are responsible for these divisions into account for fear of "touching God’s anointed" or "rebelling against spiritual authority." Neither will they ever leave the systems these men have created.

A third development has also originated within the Church, but at the highest levels of leadership. An organized effort by leaders of the Protestant and Catholic church has been launched to unify the two faiths and bring the "separated brethren" (Protestants) back into the Roman Catholic fold. Most Christians are not aware of what is going on yet; by the time they find out it will be too late to stop it.

Currently there are many "walls" that divide Protestants from each other and from Catholics, but the biggest and the most important wall is the wall of doctrine—and this is why we have seen an effective campaign by various denominations and national religious leaders to de-emphasize the importance of knowing, maintaining and defending doctrine. Today’s buzz-words are reconciliation, unity and tolerance.

The Lord has given us a burden to expose some of the errors that are having a disastrous effect on God’s people. Those who read this booklet may already understand what’s happening. That’s good. Some may not; and it doesn’t hurt to be strengthened in our convictions through confirmation. We stand with the apostle Peter, who said, we will not be "negligent to put you always in remembrance of these things, though ye know them, and be established in the present truth" [II. Pet. 1:12].

Brother Daniel
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