The Paragon of Perfect Love

by Phil Johnson

What follows is a message I wrote to an anonymous Internet hit-and-run commenter who posted an angry blast labeling some friends of mine "Pharisees" because, he said, they were "too concerned about orthodoxy and not concerned enough about unity, diversity, human dignity, and other' people's sensitivities." The gadfly objected because someone in that forum had used the expression "theological miscreant" to describe a certain pernicious heretic. He went on for several paragraphs, scolding no one in particular but indiscriminately upbraiding anyone who might read. Then, oblivious to the irony of his closing remonstration, he wrote, "No one has the right to correct someone else's theology unless you have established a relationship based on love." Anyway, I Tweeted the first sentence of the following response last week, and someone asked me for more context. Here it is:

he Pharisees' problem was not that they were too concerned with orthodox teaching, but that they had invented their own orthodoxy. Jesus condemned them for replacing and modifying the clear truth of Scripture with their own traditions (Matthew 15:1-9).

They were the chief theological miscreants of their day.

So how did Jesus treat them? Did He show them love—i.e., did He obey the Second Great Commandment in His dealings with them? Of course.

What did that love entail? First and foremost, Jesus declared the truth to them. He also frequently delivered public rebukes for the errors that threatened to damn them. He castigated them. He occasionally held them up to public ridicule. He obviously valued their souls more than their feelings. That is what authentic love looks like.

In other words, Christ, not Rodney King, is the paragon of perfect love.

The vast majority of Pharisees didn't heed Jesus' warnings, of course. The smug or snide ones might have even claimed it was because He didn't "have a relationship based upon love." It was nonetheless the right thing for Him to correct their false teaching and warn others of the danger posed by their error.

---

A Word to Squeamish Preachers and Hyper-Calvinists

Your weekly dose of Spurgeon
posted by Phil Johnson

The PyroManiacs devote some space each weekend to highlights from The Spurgeon Archive. The following excerpt is from "Lingerers Hastened," a sermon preached Sunday morning, 12 January 1868, at the Met Tab in London.

f you really long to save men's souls, you must tell them a great deal of disagreeable truth.

The preaching of the wrath of God has come to be sneered at nowadays, and even good people are half ashamed of it; a maudlin sentimentality about love and goodness has hushed, in a great measure, plain gospel expostulations and warnings.

But, my brethren, if we expect souls to be saved, we must declare unflinchingly with all affectionate fidelity, the terrors of the Lord.

"Well," said the Scotch lad when he listened to the minister who told his congregation that there was no hell, or at any rate only a temporary punishment, "Well," said he, "I need not come and hear this man any longer, for if it be as he says, it is all right, and religion is of no consequence, and if it be not as he says, then I must not hear him again, because he will deceive me."

"Therefore," says the apostle, "Knowing the terrors of the Lord we persuade men." Let not modern squeamishness prevent plain speaking concerning everlasting torment. Are we to be more gentle than the apostles? Shall we be wiser than the inspired preachers of the word? Until we feel our minds overshadowed with the dread thought of the sinner's doom we are not in a fit frame for preaching to the unconverted. We shall never persuade men if we are afraid to speak of the judgment and the condemnation of the unrighteous.

None was so infinitely gracious as our Lord Jesus Christ, yet no preacher ever uttered more faithful words of thunder than he did. It was he who spoke of the place "where their worm dieth not and their fire is not quenched." It was he who said, "These shall go away into everlasting punishment." It was he who spake the parable concerning that man in hell who longed for a drop of water to cool his tongue.

We mast be as plain as Christ was—as downright in honesty to the souls of men—or we may be called to account for our treachery at the last. If we flatter our fellows into fond dreams as to the littleness of future punishment, they will eternally detest us for so deluding them, and in the world of woe they will invoke perpetual curses upon us for having prophesied smooth things, and having withheld from them the awful truth.

When we have affectionately and plainly told the sinner that the wages of his sin will be death, and that woe will come upon him because of his unbelief, we must go farther, and must, in the name of our Lord Jesus, exhort the guilty one to escape from the deserved destruction. Observe, that these angels, though they understood that God had elected Lot to be saved, did not omit a single exhortation or leave the work to itself, as though it were to be done by predestination apart from instrumentality.

They said, "Arise, take thy wife and thy two daughters which are here, lest thou be consumed." How impressive is each admonition! What force and eagerness of love gleams in each entreaty! "Escape for thy life; look not behind thee; neither stay thou in all the plain; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed." Every word is quick and powerful, decisive and to the point.

Souls want much earnest expostulation and affectionate exhortation, to constrain them to escape from their own ruin. Were they wise, the bare information of their danger would be enough, and the prospect of a happy escape would be sufficient; but they, as they are utterly unwise, as you and I know, for we were once such as they are, they must he urged, persuaded, and entreated to look to the Crucified that they may be saved. We should never have come to Christ unless divine constraint had been laid upon us, neither will they; that constraint usually comes by instrumentality; let us seek to be such instruments. If it had not been for earnest voices that spoke to us, and earnest teachers that beckoned us to come to the cross, we had never come. Let us therefore repay the debt we owe to the church of God, and seek as much as lieth in us to do unto others as God in his mercy hath done unto us.

I beseech you, my brethren, be active to persuade men with all your powers of reasoning and argument, salting the whole with tears of affection. Do not let any doctrinal notions stand in the way of the freest persuading when you are dealing with the minds of men, for sound doctrine is perfectly reconcilable therewith.

I recollect great complaint being made against a sermon of mine, "Compel them to come in," in which I spake with much tenderness for souls. That sermon was said to be Arminian and unsound. Brethren, it is a small matter to be judged of men's judgment, for my Master set his seal on that message; I never preached a sermon by which so many souls were won to God, as our church meetings can testify; and all over the world, where the sermon has been scattered, sinners have been saved through its instrumentality, and, therefore, if it be vile to exhort sinners, I purpose to be viler still.

I am as firm a believer in the doctrines of grace as any man living, and a true Calvinist after the order of John Calvin himself; but if it be thought an evil thing to bid the sinner lay hold on eternal life, I will be yet more evil in this respect, and herein imitate may Lord and his apostles, who, though they taught that salvation is of grace, and grace alone, feared not to speak to men as rational beings and responsible agents, and bid them "strive to enter in at the strait gate," and "labor not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life."

Beloved friends, cling to the great truth of electing love and divine sovereignity, but let not this bind you in fetters when, in the power of the Holy Ghost, you become fishers of men.

---

Truth Will Triumph

Your weekly dose of Spurgeon
posted by Phil Johnson

The PyroManiacs devote some space each weekend to highlights from The Spurgeon Archive. The Following excerpt is from "The Sun of Righteousness," a sermon delivered on Sunday morning, 12 November 1871, at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, London

fret and worry myself sometimes about these inventors of new doctrines, and those ritualists who bring up the old rates and stale tallow of the past ages. Let us fret no more, but think that these are only like the clouds to the great sun; the gospel will still proceed in its career.

Let us laugh the enemies of God to scorn and defy them to their faces. They defy the Lord God of Israel as did the Philistine of old, but God himself is mightier than they, and the victory is sure to the true church and to the gospel of his Son. Be ye very courageous! Be not alarmed with sudden fear! Trust in Jehovah, for the Lord will surely give unto his own servants the victory in the day of battle.

---

Chew on this

by Phil Johnson



'm on the way home from Boston this morning and don't have the time or the technology to write a proper blogpost. I can't even get the normal weekend Dose 'o' Spurgeon post online (I'll do it this afternoon, Lord willing).

So for today's post I'm going to point you to this article, which is the best piece I've seen from a secular source on the Harold Camping debacle. It's a sad story. It's a classic example of why false doctrine is so dangerous. And it's a good reminder that the Battle for the truth is one we ought to take more seriously than we sometimes do.

Talk amongst yourselves.

---

Who's Afraid of the Big, Bad Heretic?

Evangelical Apathy and the Danger of False Teaching
by John MacArthur
The following is excerpted from The Truth War (Nelson, 2007, pp. 165-68)



hy do so many evangelicals act as if false teachers in the church could never be a serious problem in this generation? Vast numbers seem convinced that they are "rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing'; and do not know that [they] are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked" (Revelation 3:17).

In reality, the church today is quite possibly more susceptible to false teachers, doctrinal saboteurs, and spiritual terrorism than any other generation in church history. Biblical ignorance within the church may well be deeper and more widespread than at any other time since the Protestant Reformation. If you doubt that, compare the typical sermon of today with a randomly-chosen published sermon from any leading evangelical preacher prior to 1850. Also compare today's Christian literature with almost anything published by evangelical publishing houses a hundred years ago or more.

Bible teaching, even in the best of venues today, has been deliberately dumbed-down, made as broad and as shallow as possible, over-simplified, adapted to the lowest common denominator—and then tailored to appeal to people with short attention spans. Sermons are almost always brief, simplistic, overlaid with as many references to pop culture as possible, and laden with anecdotes and illustrations. (Jokes and funny stories drawn from personal experience are favored over cross-references and analogies borrowed from Scripture itself.) Typical sermon topics are heavily weighted in favor of man-centered issues (such as personal relationships, successful living, self-esteem, how-to lists, and whatnot)—to the exclusion of the many Christ-exalting doctrinal themes of Scripture.

In other words, what most contemporary preachers do is virtually the opposite of what Paul was describing when he said he sought "to declare . . . the whole counsel of God" (Acts 20:27). Not only that, but here's how Paul explained his own approach to gospel ministry, even among unchurched pagans in the most debauched Roman culture:

I, brethren, when I came to you, did not come with excellence of speech or of wisdom declaring to you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. I was with you in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.

Notice: he deliberately refused to customize his message or adjust his delivery to suit the Corinthians' philosophical bent or their cultural tastes. He had no thought of catering to a particular generation's preferences, and he used no gimmicks as attention-getters. Whatever antonym you can think of for the word showmanship would probably be a good description of Paul's style of public ministry. He wanted to make it clear to everyone (including the Corinthian converts themselves) that lives and hearts are renewed by means of the Word of God, and by nothing else. That way they would begin to understand and appreciate the power of the gospel message.

By contrast, today's church-growth experts seem to have no confidence in Scripture's power. They are convinced the gospel needs to be "contextualized," streamlined, and revamped anew for every generation. Forty years of that approach has left evangelicals grossly untaught, wholly unprepared to defend the truth, and almost entirely unaware of how much is at stake. The evangelical movement itself has become a monstrosity, its vast size and visibility belying its almost total spiritual failure. One thing is certain: the cumbersome movement that most people today would label "evangelical" is populated with large numbers of people who are on the wrong side in the Truth War.

We are right back in the same situation the church was in a hundred years ago, when modernists were busily re-inventing the Christian faith. Far from being a strong voice and a powerful force for the cause of truth, the evangelical movement itself has become the main battleground.

More on the Intolerance of Overtolerance

by Phil Johnson

PRELIMINARY NOTE: 'm getting ready for another back surgery Tuesday, and I have neither the energy nor the clarity of mind to write a proper blogpost. So what follows is a radically abbreviated summary of my thoughts on this weekend's Rob Bell/ Justin Taylor controversy. Also, be aware that after my surgery tomorrow, I plan (Lord willing) to take at least a month off from blogging whilst I recover completely. Unless my recovery goes much better than expected (or something totally unforeseen in the evangelical world compels me to take up my bed and write), you won't see me here until at least April. In the meantime, check out this video, where Rob Bell is promoting his next book:

f you read many blogs, you must be aware by now that on Saturday Justin Taylor posted a link to that video and expressed his belief that Rob Bell's doctrine is rather seriously unorthodox. Justin's commenters' went crazy, racking up hundreds of comments before noon. Many of them angrily insisted that Justin's judgment about Bell is premature and uncharitable. One blogger said so in an open letter to Justin, and most of his commenters agreed, too.

On the other hand, The Bayly brothers thought Justin had failed to speak as strongly as he should.

Of course, we at TeamPyro have been saying for some time that Rob Bell is a dangerous false teacher. So it should come as no surprise that we share Justin's opinion that Rob Bell "is moving farther and farther away from anything resembling biblical Christianity." We also share the Baylys' opinion that Justin could have been even more emphatic than he was.

Nevertheless, all the standard judge-not-lest-you-be-judged responses were quickly trotted out and set in array against Justin. The chorus of voices repeating the theme across the evangelical blogosphere over the weekend has been overwhelming. Justin's original post garnered about a thousand comments over the two-day weekend—an almost unheard-of volume in the Christian blogosphere. The topic swiftly trended on Twitter. Commenters seemed hyperactive on almost every blog where the subject was mentioned, and most of them were critical of Justin and defensive of Rob Bell.

Bell's latest heresy neither surprises nor interests me. What does intrigue me is the tragic drift of popular, mainstream evangelicalism. Here we see clearly why the evangelical movement is in grave trouble: The passions of today's self-styled evangelicals are easily aroused in defense of someone who makes a career dabbling around the edges of truth. Rob Bell likes to play with damnable heresies as if they were Lego bricks, and yet anyone who points out the glaring errors in Bell's teaching will be met with a wall of angry resistance from young, self-styled Christians who grew up in the evangelical mainstream.

Where is that much passion ever employed these days in defense of the truth?

I'm not looking for crass watchbloggers or anti-intellectual zealots for whom every disagreement is an excuse for insults and a shouting match. We are up to here with people like that. They are a tiny minority, I think, but a noisy one. They represent one extreme out there on the evangelical fringe: people who can't tolerate any difference of opinion.

But the other extreme seems to be a much larger, more pervasive problem (and this is the trend currently pushing the most evangelicals off the edge): people whose "tolerance" is bent in favor of distorted and unorthodox teachings. They despise unvarnished criticism. They especially hate it when a critic suggests this or that heresy is truly damnable. Evidently there is no doctrine so important that they are willing to fight for it—much less die for it.

Both our Lord and His apostles told us plainly that we would need to defend the faith against false prophets, vicious wolves in sheep's clothing (Matthew 7:15), minions of Satan disguised as angels of light (2 Corinthians 11:13-14), and corrupters of doctrine who arise within the church (Acts 20:29). Why is it that the average Christian today flatly refuses to take those warnings seriously?



As we enter the second decade of the twenty-first century, American evangelicalism is clearly confused, fragmented, and frighteningly vulnerable to false teaching. Evangelicals are too worldly-minded and untaught to be able to recognize all the deadly errors that have made themselves at home within the movement. Evangelical leaders are far too tentative and timid in denouncing those errors—up to and including the damnable ones. Rank-and-file evangelicals won't stand for it if their leaders do point out false doctrines, especially when the error is being peddled by a slick celebrity.

These problems are serious. What we commonly refer to as "the evangelical movement" is actually no movement at all anymore. It has morphed and melted down into a variegated, muddled, incoherent swamp—without any meaningful boundaries. And we are sending to the world a message that is as garbled and bewildering as this ersatz movement.

---

The Folly of Doctoring the Gospel

Your weekly dose of Spurgeon
posted by Phil Johnson

The PyroManiacs devote some space each weekend to highlights from The Spurgeon Archive. The following excerpt is from "Faith," a lecture delivered at the Conference of Ministers and Students educated at the Pastors’ College, Tuesday 16 April 1872.

ear brethren, you and I believe in the doctrines of the gospel. We have received the certainties of revealed truth. These are things which are verily believed among us. We do not bow down before men's theories of truth, nor do we admit that theology consists in "views" and "opinions." We declare that there are certain verities, essential, abiding, eternal, from which it is ruinous to swerve.

I am deeply grieved to hear so many ministers talk as if the faith were a variable quantity, a matter of daily formation, a nose of wax to be constantly reshaped, a cloud driven by the wind. So do not I believe! I have been charged with being a mere echo of the Puritans, but I had rather be the echo of truth, than the voice of falsehood.

It may be want of intellect which prevents our departing from the good old way, but even this is better than want of grace, which lies at the bottom of men's perpetual chopping and changing of their beliefs.

Rest assured that there is nothing new in theology except that which is false; and that the facts of theology are to-day what they were eighteen hundred years ago. But in these days, the self-styled "men of progress" who commenced with preaching the gospel degenerate as they advance, and their divinity, like the snail, melts as it proceeds; I hope it will never be so with any of us.

I have likened the career of certain divines to the journey of a Roman wine cask from the vineyard to the city. It starts from the wine-press as the pure juice of the grape, but at the first halting-place the drivers of the cart must needs quench their thirst, and when they come to a fountain they substitute water for what they have drank. In the next village there are numbers of lovers of wine who beg or buy a little, and the discreet carrier dilutes again. The watering is repeated, till, on its entrance into Rome, the fluid is remarkably different from that which originally started from the vineyard.

There is a way of doctoring the gospel in much the same manner. A little truth is given up, and then a little more, and men fill up the vacuum with opinions, inferences, speculations, and dreams, till their wine is mixed with water, and the water none of the best. Many preachers—and I speak it with sorrow—have built a tower of theological speculations, upon which they sit like Nero, fiddling the tune of their own philosophy while the world is burning with sin and misery. They are playing with the toys of speculation while men's souls are being lost.

Much of human wisdom is a mere coverlet for the absence of vital godliness. I went into railway carriages of the first class in Italy which were lined with very pretty crochet-work, and I thought the voyagers highly honoured, since no doubt some delicate fingers had sumptuously furnished the cars for them. The crochet work was simply put on to cover the grease and dirt of the cloth. A great deal that is now preached of very pretty sentimentalism and religiousness is a mere crochet-work covering for detestable heresies long since disproved, which dared not appear again without a disguise for their hideousness.

With words of human wisdom and speculations of their own invention men disguise falsehood and deceive many. Be it ours to give to the people what God gives to us. Be ye each of you as Micaiah, who declared: "As the Lord liveth, whatsoever the Lord saith unto me that will I speak." If it be folly to keep to what we find in Scripture, and if it be madness to believe in verbal inspiration, we purpose to remain fools to the end of the chapter, and hope to be among the foolish things which God has chosen.

---

"Like Passions"?

by Phil Johnson



"Elijah was a man subject to like passions as we are."

et's take a minute and dissect that expression from James 5:17. In a series of posts on Elijah a couple of years ago, I cited that verse and noted that James was stressing Elijah's ordinariness. He wasn't anything superhuman. He was unexceptional. The modern versions mostly say: "He was a man with a nature like ours." That's the main idea.

But it's more than that. The Greek term is homoiopathes—literally, "like passions." And indeed, Elijah's human passions are prominent throughout his life story. If anything, Elijah wore his passions on his sleeve. His affections and his zeal are more pronounced and more clearly visible than most of us. Even his famous ups and downs were driven to the highest of heights and the lowest of lows by his passions. He was not only a man of passions—he was a man of strong passions.

But James's central point is simply that Elijah was "a man"—and he was every bit a man. The ruggedness of his masculinity is one of the most prominent and endearing features of his character. He was a man of strong passions—but don't get the idea he was always emoting. His passions weren't the sniveling or effeminate kind. He wasn't a wimp. His manliness is always as evident as his emotions, even at the emotional low point in his life. That came at the end of a long fast, during which he had run nearly the full length of the nation of Israel from north to south. That one episode of discouragement was also the exception to a life and ministry distinguished by remarkable courage and stamina.

Elijah was a guy's guy. He seems to have been a bit crude. For months he ate food that was brought to him by ravens—scavenger birds. I don't know many people who wouldn't cringe at such a diet. It suited Elijah just fine.

And listen to the Bible's physical description of Elijah from 2 Kings 1:8: "He was an hairy man, and girt with a girdle of leather about his loins." So his physical appearance was dominated by hair and leather. I wonder how people would look at him if he walked into the typical evangelical church today.

And in that episode where he lapsed into discouragement, Scripture says he slept under a juniper tree. The Hebrew word signifies a kind of broom plant that flourishes in desert climates. They are scratchy. They grow low to the ground. And they don't make enough shade to shield a grown man. Underneath one of them would make a spectacularly uncomfortable sleeping place.

But Elijah was that sort of crude, earthy character whom the Lord delights to use. I find this refreshing. Time and time again, both in Scripture and in church history, God employs men who smash the stereotypical notions of piety. John the Baptist was exactly like Elijah, living in the desert and eating bugs and honey for his meals. Christ's closest disciples were fishermen instead of sanctimonious Pharisees. Christ himself grew up in a carpenter's home rather than the more sheltered environment of a scribe or cultured clergyman. Again and again, God uses that which is uncultured, unsophisticated, and contemptible in the eyes of refined society. I don't know about you, but I find that wonderfully liberating and encouraging.

Think about it, and you'll realize that the Bible's standard of true holiness is about as far as you can get from the cloistered existence most people imagine when they think of a life of devotion to God. But what good is the kind of righteousness that can only be lived out in behind the walls of a monastery or convent? What good is any kind of piety that cannot survive in the real world?

I'll take the robust, manly faith of Elijah any day over the weak and effeminate attitude of the typical professional clergyman (or woman) who thinks he (or she) is being devout because (s)he pretends (s)he has attained a higher level of social refinement than (s)he really has.



Elijah was the kind of person who tends to offend the sensibilities of cultured clergypeople. He was a passionate, plain-spoken man of decisive action. He could be harsh and even viciously sarcastic, especially when he was defending the truth against its enemies. He wasn't known for diplomacy. He was no friend of the enemies of God. He had a clear-cut sense of right and wrong, truth and error, and he had little patience with anyone who might want to blur or obscure the line between them.

He was not a man who would fit in well among modern evangelicals. The biggest fear of most evangelical pastors today is that they might offend people. They are convinced they will never win the world unless they are as subtle and indirect as possible with the truth—especially those truths that go against the spirit of our age. They think the only way to attract people to the truth is by accommodating worldly appetites as much as possible—especially in matters of style and form. Political correctness is their standard of truth.

Elijah was at the opposite end of the spectrum. He was abut as non-subtle and non-compromising and politically incorrect as it is possible to be. His style would not be warmly welcomed in the typical 20th-Century clergyperson's convention.

But he had a faith that was well-suited for the real world. His passion for truth was stronger than his love of comfort. His convictions were so unshakable that he never wavered, even when he thought he was literally the last man alive who believed the truth. Most people are tempted to decide truth by majority vote. Most of us would probably be tempted to adjust our world-view if we thought the entire world had abandoned the faith and we were the last Christians left. But not Elijah. It's true that he begged to be allowed to die, but he never once entertained the thought of abandoning the faith or softening the truth just to make his life easier.

Elijah's culture was remarkably like ours. The parallels between his time and ours are striking. Elijah's life is a textbook example of what real faith looks like when it's unleashed in a hostile world. If your prototype for Christian piety has always been the quiet ascetic who sits with his hands folded, reading devotional material, it's time to adjust your thinking—especially since we live in a culture where passion and plainspokenness are commonly deemed inappropriate modes of communication when we're proclaiming the truth of Scripture to a hostile culture.

I think if you seriously contemplate the example of Elijah, you'll come away with a different perspective on what real passion for the truth looks like. And I hope you'll be persuaded to pray for a double portion of Elijah's spirit.

---

The Foundation of God stands Sure

Your weekly dose of Spurgeon
posted by Phil Johnson

The PyroManiacs devote some space each weekend to highlights from The Spurgeon Archive. The following excerpt is from "The Great House and the Vessels in It," a sermon preached Sunday Morning 8 April 1877, at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, London.

NE of the most serious calamities which can befall a church is to have her own ministers teaching heresy: yet this is no new thing, it has happened from the beginning.

Paul and Peter and James and John in their epistles had to speak of seducers in the churches, even in those primitive days, and ever since then there have arisen in the very midst of the house of God those who have subverted the faith of many, and led them away from the fundamental truths into errors of their own inventing.

The apostle compares this to a gangrene, which is one of the most dangerous and deadly mischiefs which can occur to the body. It is within the body; it eats into the flesh deeper and deeper, festering and putrefying, and if it be not stopped it will continue its ravages till life is extinguished by "black mortification." False doctrine and an unchristian spirit in the midst of the church itself must be regarded as such a gangrene, a silent wolf ravenously gnawing at the heart, the vulture of Prometheus devouring the vitals: no external opposition is one-half so much to he dreaded.

Yet here is our comfort when distressed at the evils of the present age, among which this is one of the chief, that the truth abides for ever the same, "The foundation of God standeth sure." There is no moving that. Whether ten thousand oppose it or promulgate it, the truth is still the same in every jot and tittle; even as the sun shineth evermore, as well when clouds conceal its brightness as when from a clear sky it pours abroad a flood of glory.

The lovers of profane and vain babblings have not taken away from us, nor can they take from us, the eternal verities: the Lord liveth, though they have said, "There is no God." The precious blood of Jesus has not lost its efficacy, though divines have beclouded the atonement; the Spirit of God is not less mighty to quicken and to console though men have denied his personality; the resurrection is as sure as if Hymeneus and Philetus had never said that it is passed already; and the eternal covenant of grace abides for ever unbroken though Pharisees and Sadducees unite to revile it.

The foundation of God standeth sure, and moreover the foundation of the church remains sure also, for, blessed be God, "the Lord knoweth them that are his." All that God has built upon the foundation which he himself has laid keeps its place, not one living stone that he ever laid upon the foundation has been lifted from its resting place. Earthquakes of error may test the stability of the building and cause great searching of heart, but sooner shall the mountains which are round about Jerusalem start from their seats than the work or word of the Lord be frustrated. The things which cannot be shaken remain unaltered in the very worst times.

---

A Thought Prompted by John 10:8-13

by Phil Johnson



oo many Christians think the biggest threat to the spiritual well-being of Christ's true flock today are outspoken atheists; people who lobby against prayer and other expressions of faith in public venues; overtly anti-Christian celebrities; or non-Christian religions like Islam, Buddhism, Sikkhism, and whatever it is that Deepak Chopra teaches.

Those aren't the most immediate threat to the true flock of God. The greater threat is posed by false teachers who infiltrate the fold by illegitimate means. Some of the most thoroughly wicked people in the universe seem nice (they often are nice, by human standards). They look good. They sound religious. But under that impressive-looking sheepskin they are false prophets, or thieves, robbers, and wolves.

False teachers may range from devious false messiahs to naive but self-commissioned teachers. They might be as overtly, obviously wicked as Fred Phelps or as benign-sounding and likable as Norman Vincent Peale. Either way, they represent a serious threat to the sheep. They climb over the walls into the sheepfold, acting as if they belong there. Once inside, they steal, kill, and destroy virtually unchallenged.

The evangelical community today is full of spiritual thieves, robbers, and wolves in sheep's clothing. Stay vigilant.

---

Don't Bow to Worldly Wisdom

Your weekly dose of Spurgeon
posted by Phil Johnson

The PyroManiacs devote some space each weekend to highlights from The Spurgeon Archive. The Following excerpt is from "The Key-Note of a Choice Sonnet," a sermon preached at the Metropolitan Tabernacle sometime after 1861, first published in early 1880.

f all the philosophers in the world should contradict the Scriptures, so much the worse for the philosophers; their contradiction makes no difference to our faith. Half a grain of God’s word weighs more with us than a thousand tons of words or thoughts of all the modern theologians, philosophers, and scientists that exist on the face of the earth; for God knows more about his own works than they do. They do but think, but the Lord knows.

With regard to truths which philosophers ought not to meddle with, because they have not specially turned their thoughts that way, they are not more qualified to judge than the poorest man in the church of God, nay, nor one-half so much. Inasmuch as the most learned unregenerate men are dead in sin, what do they know about the living things of the children of God? Instead of setting them to judge we will sooner trust our boys and girls that are just converted, for they do know something of divine things, but carnal philosophers know nothing of them.

Do not be staggered, brothers and sisters, but honor God, glorify God, and magnify him by believing great things and unsearchable—past your finding out—which you know to be true because he declares them to be so. Let the ipse dixit of God stand to you in the place of all reason, being indeed the highest and purest reason, for God, the Infallible, speaks what must be true.

---

"Tolerance" vs. Truthfulness

Your weekly dose of Spurgeon
posted by Phil Johnson








The PyroManiacs devote some space each weekend to highlights from The Spurgeon Archive. The following excerpt is from an article titled "Ministers Sailing under False Colours," originally published the February 1870 Sword and Trowel:




ur forefathers were far less tolerant than we are, and it is to be feared that they were also more honest. It will be a sad discount upon our gain in the matter of charity if it turn out that we have been losers in the department of truthfulness.

There is no necessary connection between the two facts of growth in tolerance and decline in sincerity, but we are suspicious that they have occurred and are occurring at the same moment.

We freely accord to theological teachers a freedom of thought and utterance which in other ages could only be obtained by the more daring at serious risks, but we also allow an amount of untruthfulness in ministers, which former ages would have utterly abhorred. . . .

Our love to the most unlimited religious liberty incites us to all the sterner abhorrence of the license which like a parasite feeds thereon.

the plea of spiritual liberty, of late years certain teachers who have abjured the faith of the churches which employ them, have nevertheless endeavored, with more or less success, to retain their offices and their emoluments. . . .

Our complaint is . . . not that the men changed their views, and threw up their former creeds, but that having done so they did not at once quit the office of minister to the community whose faith they could no longer uphold; their fault is not that they differed, but that, differing, they sought an office of which the prime necessity is agreement.

All the elements of the lowest kind of knavery meet in the evil which we now denounce. Treachery is never more treacherous than when it leads a man to stab at a doctrine which he has solemnly engaged to uphold, and for the maintenance of which he receives a livelihood. . . .

It is frequently bewailed as a mournful circumstance that creeds were ever written; it is said, "Let the Bible alone be the creed of every church, and let preachers explain the Scriptures as they conscientiously think best." Here again we enter into no debate, but simply beg the objector to remember that there are creeds, that the churches have not given them up, that persons are not forced to be ministers of these churches, and therefore if they object to creeds they should not offer to become teachers of them; above all, they should not agree to teach what they do not believe.

---

Let the Dogs Bark

Your weekly dose of Spurgeon
posted by Phil Johnson

The PyroManiacs devote some space each weekend to highlights from The Spurgeon Archive. The following excerpt is from "Jesus, the King of Truth" a sermon preached on Thursday evening, 19 December 1872.

the age extols no virtue so much as “liberality,” and condemns no vice so fiercely as bigotry, alias honesty. If you believe anything and hold it firmly, all the dogs will bark at you. Let them bark: they will have done when they are tired! You are responsible to God, and not to mortal men. Christ came into the world to bear witness to the truth, and he has sent you to do the same; take care that you do it, offend or please; for it is only by this process that the kingdom of Christ is to be set up in the world.

---

Plain Truth vs. Knowledge Falsely So-Called

Your weekly dose of Spurgeon
posted by Phil Johnson

The PyroManiacs devote some space each weekend to highlights from The Spurgeon Archive. The following excerpt is from "Forts Demolished and Prisoners Taken," Spurgeon's sermon on 2 Corinthians 10:5, preached Sunday morning, 11 May 1879 at the Met Tab.

lain truth is in this wonderful century of small account; men crave to be mystified by their own cogitations. Many glory in being too intellectual to receive anything as absolute certainty: they are not at all inclined to submit to the authority of a positive revelation. God's word is not accepted by them as final, but they judge it and believe what they like of it.

This is madness. I speak to those who believe in the Scriptures, and I say if, indeed, there be a revelation, it becomes us to be silent before it, and accept it without dispute. The Lord knows what he is better than we can ever know, and if he has been pleased to speak in his Word plainly and solemnly, it is ours to believe what he says, because he says it.

It may be all very well to prove that such and such a revelation of God is consistent with reason, consistent with analogy, consistent with a thousand things; but the spirit which needs such argument is a spirit of rebellion against God. If there be a revelation, every part of it is of authority, and must be believed. Human thought is not the arbiter of truth, but the infallible Word is the end of all strife.

It is not ours to say what the truth must be, or what we think it should be, or what we would like it to be, but reverently to sit down with open ear and willing heart to receive what God has spoken.

If an astronomer were to forbear to examine the stars, and teach an astronomy invented in his own brain, he would be an idiot: and those who treat theology in like fashion are not much better.

"Surely," saith one, "we ought to modify our beliefs by public opinion, and the current of thought."

I say "no" a thousand times. The incorruptible word of God liveth and abideth forever, and is incapable of modification. To modify is to adulterate and nullify it, and render it of none effect, so that it becomes another gospel, and, indeed, no gospel.

The thought of tampering with revealed truth is vicious, and ought not to be tolerated by any Christian for a second. The gospel of Jesus Christ is not a thing which is to be moulded according to the fashion of the period: it is "Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today, and for ever."

Whether the Greek philosophy rules or is exploded, whether some more modern theory blazes up or smoulders down, is small concern of ours, for we are set to preach the one unvarying gospel of Jesus Christ, with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven.

No man was ever led to a saving faith by our meeting him halfway and consenting to his unbelief. No real faith was ever wrought in man by his own thoughts and imaginations; he must receive the gospel as a revelation from God, or he cannot receive it at all.

Faith is a supernatural work wherever it is found, and if we think that we can beget faith in ourselves or others by the use of the fleshly weapons of philosophy we shall certainly be foiled. The Scriptures pressed home by the Holy Ghost are God's power unto salvation, and not men's cogitation's and imaginations.

There is the revealed gospel, reject it at your peril; there is Jehovah's revelation of himself to men, receive it or be lost; this is the ground to go upon if we would speak as the oracles of God. God grant that proud thinkers may come upon this ground and become believers.

---

Why do heretics seem more earnest than sound Christians?

Your weekly dose of Spurgeon
posted by Phil Johnson





The PyroManiacs devote some space each weekend to highlights from The Spurgeon Archive. The following excerpt is from "God’s Cure for Man’s Weakness," a sermon preached on Sunday Morning, June 24th, 1866, at the Met Tab in London.


oth ministers and private members of the church are very generally weakly in one way or other. They are living, but they are sickly. They are working for God, but they are working in a feeble, inefficient manner.

If I look upon the camps of the Lord's enemies . . . I see intelligence and vigor so apparent that I am apt to think that never was error more earnest, more active, more intense than just now; there is a reality about the efforts of our opponents which may well alarm us: but when I look to the camp of the Lord Jesus Christ I lament a predominant luke-warmness, a want of enthusiasm, and deficiency in force, which, if it does not betoken a departure from God in heart, certainly indicates very great feebleness in the vital parts, producing comparative weakness in all the parts.

I desire this morning to speak to those who are weak—weak where they ought not to be—and who feel a growing tendency to rest content in that weakness; I would stir up those who are beginning to imagine that weakness is the normal and proper state of a Christian; that to be unbelieving, desponding, nervous, timid, cowardly, inactive, heartless, is at worst a very excusable thing. I want, if God wills, to show to the sinfully weak ones that their condition is not proper at all, and that it is the work of faith to lift us right out of it; not to help us in our evil weakness, but to deliver us out of it and to make us strong, reversing our present condition by enabling us to be mighty in the work of God.

---