TRUTH-IGNORED
[There is] a
perverse assumption now dominant among evangelicals that feelings, attitudes
and relationships are all more important than truth. Unity is a higher priority
than orthodoxy. Division, even for truth's sake, becomes the most offensive of
heresies.
World Magazine, Date Unknown.
The Word of
God tells us that Christ’s church is glorious... [But] today the glory of the
church is thickly veiled. It is no exaggeration to assert that in the main it
presents a picture of advanced decadence and extreme feebleness... Let it be
said emphatically, the church is where the truth is. Sound doctrine always has
been, is today, and ever will be the foremost mark of the true church. But who
dares to assert that there is today in the churches a rising tide of interest
in doctrine? By and large people do not go to church to learn about God from
His infallible Word, but to be tranquilized. And that the glory of God is both
the beginning and the end of common worship does not seem to occur to them.
The fact is
that a sound and lively truth-basis has been ejected from the premises of
modern evangelicalism. Evangelicalism has been dispossessed of truth to such an
extent that it is becoming frightening. In its place experience and mysticism
are house-sitting the church or, if not these, then church growth pragmatism or
an unhealthy preoccupation with the psychological. But the necessary doctrines
of the holiness of God and His just wrath, justification by faith alone, the
transforming nature of regeneration, the sovereignty of God over all of
creation and in salvation itself, the nature and extent of grace in
justification and in sanctification – doctrines upon which the earlier revivals
thrived – have been considered unimportant and useful only for wizened old theologs holed up in ivory towers who do not relate to the
church’s future.
Jim Elliff
Reformation
or Revival?, Christian Communicators Worldwide, www.CCWtoday.org.
Used by Permission.
If you shoot
past truth to get to experience, then you will have at best something very
limited and immediate only, something which, in the final case, will produce a
greater heteropraxis (wrong living). Heterodoxy
always leads to heteropraxis. God has already
instructed us as to how transformation of behavior is to take place. It is
through the truth, not by mere experience. “Sanctify them by Your
truth; Your Word is truth” (Jn. 17:17).
Jim Elliff
Reformation
or Revival?, Christian Communicators Worldwide, www.CCWtoday.org.
Used by Permission.
To believe
that two contradictory religions are both true is like saying, “2+2=4, or 5, or
37, or whatever you like.” To believe all religions simultaneously is to become
hopelessly entangled in self-contradiction. One simply cannot accept the Hindu
belief that there are 3000,000 or more gods and at the same time accept the
Muslim belief that there is only one god.
Nor can one embrace either Hinduism or Islam and Buddhism because
historic Buddhism does not believe in a personal God at all. Or consider the
religious opinions about the afterlife. Shintoism
says there is no afterlife, just the here and now, so make the most of it. Buddhists
seek Nirvana, the complete absence of desire. Christianity teaches that heaven
is a place where all pure desires are satisfied in Jesus Christ (Rev. 22:4).
Who is right? If there is a heaven at all, does it negate or satisfy desire? Opinions
about judgment differ as well. Christianity teaches that “man is destined to
die once, and after that to face judgment” (Heb. 9:27). Hindus believe in a
seemingly endless series of reincarnations. Well, which is it? Both views
cannot be true.
Is Jesus the Only Way? Crossway, 1999, p. 34.
Religion is
not a preference. Although people are allowed to hold their own opinions, they
cannot make up their own truth. This cannot be done with religion any more than
it can be done with mathematics. To insist that all religions are equally true
is another way of saying that all religions are equally false… If every
religion is compatible with its opposite, why bother with religion at all?
Is Jesus the Only Way? Crossway, 1999, p.
34-35.
If you want
the truth to go round the world you must hire an express train to pull it; but
if you want a lie to go round the world it will fly; it is as light as a
feather, and a breath will carry it. It is well said in the old proverb, “a lie
will go round the world while truth is putting its boots on.”
C.H. Spurgeon
When
regard for truth has been broken down or even slightly weakened, all things
will remain doubtful.
It is more
from carelessness about truth than from intentional lying, that there is so
much falsehood in the world.
The Letters to the Galatians and Ephesians,
Westminster, 1958, p. 183.
The new
evangelicalism is not driven by the same passion for truth as the older form,
and that is why it is often empty of theological interest. We now have less biblical fidelity, less
interest in the truth, less seriousness, less depth and less capacity to speak
the Word of God to our own generation in a way that offers an alternative to
what it already thinks.
What we
suffer from today is humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the
organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction; where it
was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself,
but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed.
Truth that is
known and not obeyed becomes judgment.
Author
Unknown