In a 2010 article from WSJ (see below), the writer who was an observer at Edinburgh 2010 World Missionary Conference opined the “dramatic change” and “paradigm shift” in the focus of world mission today, away from original focus of the commission that Jesus has commanded to one which is merely a vacation style outreach “to battle the ills of poverty and to stretch their own spirituality.”. This is the sad state of mission boards and its supporting churches which have lost its understanding of the Gospel and that they exist to spread the good news of the Gospel and to make disciples of all nations for the glory of God.
It appears that 21st century mission boards and missionaries have lost sight of purpose and intent of the Great Commission that the Lord Jesus Christ has commanded all Christians and for which He has promised His power to enable them to do so faithfully: “And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” Matt 28:18-20.
The 1910 World Missionary Conference was a watershed moment for Protestantism. Meeting in Edinburgh, Scotland, the assembled 1,200 Protestants believed that Christianity was on the cusp of spreading to every corner of the world, and that Christ would come again once every ear had heard the good news of salvation. Their master plan for missions would hasten his return.
But Edinburgh 2010, the centenary conference that concluded last month, drew only about a quarter of the crowd and received attention only from a few Christian publications. The modern master plan was less ambitious as well: a call to global missions and “to witness and evangelism in such a way that we are a living demonstration of the love, righteousness and justice that God intends for the whole world.”
Thisdramatic changewas summed up at a small gathering of academics and missions professionals at Fuller Theological Seminary in late May. “At (1910) Edinburgh, people thought they were going to take over the world,” said C. Douglas McConnell, dean of Fuller’s School of Intercultural Studies in his opening remarks. “And now many of our students wonder if they should even try.”
Indeed, colonialism is dead (thankfully). But the term “missions” itself now carries with it a negative connotation, even in politically and theologically conservative circles. Christians today typically travel abroad to serve others, but not necessarily to spread the gospel.
While meaning well and certainly doing good, this form of outreach has allowed the pendulum to swing too far from 1910. Today, Christian missionaries need to balance both actions and words. The overwhelming majority of American missionaries today are “vacationaries.” Joining mission trips of two weeks or less, they serve in locales where Christianity already predominates.
The purpose, then, of their visit is to battle the ills of poverty and to stretch their own spirituality. According to studies by Robert J. Priest, a missiologist and director of the doctoral program in intercultural studies at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, 82% of short-term missions today go to countries in the most-Christian third of the world. Only 2% land in the Middle East.
The work these missionaries do reflects a paradigm shift—from spreading Christianity, to living it, …………………….missions experts note rising interest in strictly social justice and humanitarian work, even on short-term visits.
…..Unless foreigners explain that they are motivated to help by their religious beliefs, locals may be grateful for the new home but they should not be expected to connect dots that they may not even know exist.
The reality is the Church should be doing both: serving the needy and spreading the gospel. This is what makes the humanitarian work of Christians different than that of the American Red Cross. Both are motivated by the desire to help others, but Christians are spurred by that Jesus thing…………..
” Neo-Christianity, which seems for the time to be the most popular(and is certainly the most aggressive), is very careful not to oppose sin. It wins its crowds by amusing them and its converts by hiding from them the full implications of the Christian message. It carries on it projects after the ballyhoo methods of American business.” – A.W. Tozer from “The Next Chapter after the Last, p. 18.
” The feeling that we got to make converts at any cost has greatly wounded the Church of Christ. We must present the truth as we are told to present it and let the Holy Ghost(Spirit) work and the individual man decide whether he will accept it or not. This soft, pussy idea that in order to keep people coming and giving and filling the seats we don’t dare in any wise offend them, and we’ve got to make everything smooth and soft, is not New Testament.” -A.W. Tozer from sermon, “This I Believe,” 1969.
“The temptation to modify the teaching of Christ with the hope that larger numbers may ‘accept’ Him is cruelly strong in this day of speed, size, noise, and crowds. But if we know what is good for us, we’ll resist it with every power at our command. To yield can only result in a weak and ineffective Christianity in this generation, and death and desolation in the next.”- A.W. Tozer from the “The Size of the Soul”, p. 119.
“The crowds-at-any-price mania has taken a firm grip on American Christianity and is the motivating power back of shockingly high percentage of all religious activity. Men and churches compete for the attention of the paying multitudes who are brought in by means of any currently popular gadget or gimmick ostensibly to have their souls saved, but , if the truth were told, often for reasons not so praiseworthy as this.” A. W. Tozer from “The Size of the Soul”, p. 117.
Galatians 1:6-12 “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel– not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed. For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ. For I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man’s gospel. For I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.“
“In my mind, the most significant problem facing evangelicalism today is that evangelicals are assuming the Gospel—and, because of this, I fear we are a generation away from discarding it altogether. The reasons for this are many: the legacy of the seeker-sensitive movement with its emphasis on pragmatism, the rise of postmodernism, theological preaching that lacks the evangelical priority, et al.
How should we respond to this? Christocentric preaching and teaching! Christocentric ministries! Christocentric ministries! We need to pray for a generation of pastors who will be: 1) courageous enough to disregard popular ministry methodologies that undermine the Gospel; and, 2) consumed enough with God’s glory to cease measuring success by the numerical size of a congregation.” Pastor Art Azurdia
“It would seem that everybody in evangelical Christianity, everybody who is truly a Christian, would understand that the gospel is the heart of Christianity, that the gospel is found only in the Scripture. And that the gospel must be preached to the ends of the earth. ……. The heart of the Christian faith is the gospel. The gospel is found in the New Testament. The foundations of the gospel are found in the Old Testament. And the gospel must be preached to the ends of the earth if people are to be saved. That’s essentially the Christian mission.
“That’s what the church has believed. That has compelled its life. That has been its mandate. Jesus said, “Go into all the world and make disciples, baptizing them in My name and teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.” He said it another way. “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.”……..That has been the church’s mandate. True Christians have always believed that. The true church has always taught that. We have believed and been compelled by the fact that if people don’t hear the gospel, they can’t be saved. And if they aren’t saved, then they’ll spend eternity in hell under the judgment of God. So it is absolutely critical that the world hear the gospel of Jesus Christ. That they not only hear it but that they understand it accurately. That they believe it. That they embrace it for themselves because it is the only saving truth.”
“Compelled by this clear biblical mandate, Christians through the centuries have taken the saving message to the ends of the earth. Generation after generation they have been engaged in doing this. Preaching the gospel to every person on earth has been the goal of the church. I have told you many times that that’s the only reason we’re still here. We’re already saved and sealed for eternity. There’s no reason to leave us here except for this responsibility of evangelism.”
“Now we believe that the Bible is very clear that salvation comes through believing in Christ. Believing in Christ comes from hearing and understanding the gospel. Being able to hear and understand the gospel can only occur if somebody takes the message. And somebody can only take the message if they’re sent with it. And that’s what Romans 10 says, “You’re saved by believing in Christ but you can’t believe in Christ unless you hear about Christ. You can’t hear about Christ unless somebody preaches. And somebody is not going to preach unless they’re sent. And that is our mandate and that has been the mission of the church since the church was born on Pentecost and Jesus said, “You’ll receive the Holy Spirit and you’ll be witnesses unto Me in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the uttermost part of the earth.” Since the church was launched till today, uncounted millions of dollars in every currency on the map of the world and millions of hours of effort and work and millions of Christian people through the centuries have been spent and sacrificed to take the only message of salvation to the edges of the earth. Translation work, rigorous, difficult, challenging work of taking a language that isn’t even written and developing an alphabet and developing a way to write that language and then teaching the people to read their own language when they’ve never even seen it. And then giving them the scriptures and the gospel, leading them to Christ, rigorous work that takes decades and then printing materials in every language, preaching, teaching, evangelizing…that’s what the church has been engaged in since its calling, since the arrival of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. An unrelenting effort to use every means available to reach people with the only message that can save them from eternal judgment and that’s the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ.“
“Now all of that is bad enough and we’ve tried to address that. But there’s a new wave in the evangelical world that is at least as frightening, if not more frightening. And the new wave in the evangelical world is this, there are some people who are telling us it isn’t necessary to even take the gospel to the ends of the earth. It’s not necessary. People are being saved without it…without it.”
“Well what does the Bible have to say about this? Do we have a biblical case for the…for the exclusivism? Do we have a case for the fact that if you don’t know the gospel and if you don’t believe in Jesus Christ, you aren’t going to heaven?…….The answer to that is yes.“
“Do not be bound together with unbelievers for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness? Or what harmony has Christ with Belial? Or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever? Or what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God, just as God said, `I will dwell in them and walk among them and I will be their God and they shall be My people. Therefore, come out from their midst and be separate,’ says the Lord, `and do not touch what is unclean and I will welcome you and I will be a Father to you and you shall be sons and daughters to Me,’ says the Lord Almighty. Therefore having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.”
Now as I pointed out last time, this passage identifies two opposing worlds. The terminology is clear. One of those worlds is marked by righteousness, light, Christ, believers, and the presence of God. The other is marked by lawlessness, darkness, Satan, unbelievers, and the presence of false gods. And these two worlds are utterly different and distinct, so much so that they are mutually exclusive. They cannot work together in common partnership, they cannot fellowship together, they are not in harmony with one another. One is old, the other is new. One is earthly, the other is heavenly. One is deadly, the other is life giving. One is wicked, the other holy. One is built on lies, the other is all truth. One perishes and the other lives eternally.
Paul then is making it clear that believers can’t live in both worlds. Certainly John said this in his first epistle, 1 John, when he clearly identified this disparity between the two worlds with these familiar words, “Do not love the world, nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” Mutually exclusive worlds. You can’t be in both at the same time.
Then in James we read in chapter 4 and verse 4, “You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God. Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.” And later in verse 8 he says, “Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double minded.” People trying to live in two different worlds.
In Romans chapter 12, of course that very, very familiar passage that begins the exhortation part of Romans, “I urge you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God which is your spiritual service of worship, and do not be conformed to this world.” Make a clean break.
When a person becomes a believer they are transported out of one world into another. And shuttling back and forth is absolutely unacceptable. And that is precisely what the Corinthians were trying to do. Having named the name of Christ, identified with Him, come into the church, they were still hanging on to their own idolatry, their old pagan ways. They had come to Christ out of idolatry, as it says in 1 Thessalonians, they had come to serve the living and the true God from idols. But they didn’t make a clean break. They had been wooed back into the old idolatry, back into the old pagan culture because it was so pervasive, and so dominant and it was so on display and so woven into the fabric of their life, family life, social life, community life. Corinth was dominated above the city by an acropolis, a high mountain on top of which was the temple to the false deities which engaged itself in pagan ritual and worship and priest…priestess prostitution. This temple not only was the center of that religion, but from it disseminated its religious viewpoints and ideologies through the entire culture of Corinth. It was a part of everything in life…holidays, festivals, celebrations and so forth. And it was a constant pull to the Corinthians to fall back into those old patterns. And they did.
Additionally, the false teachers had come in and they had brought a quasi Christian syncretism and eclectic religion which took Christianity, a little bit of Jewish legalism, and some pagan religion and melted it all together and offered it as the truth. And that compromise had found its way into the Corinthian church and found an audience and some of them were listening and believing and accepting it.
You see, the false teachers wanted to make Christianity more popular, less demanding, less distinct, less narrow, less offensive, less different, less exclusive so they’d get more people in on it, so they could get more money, which is always what false teachers want. And so here is the Corinthian church new and fresh and being assaulted by pagan religion around it. You couldn’t separate the social life from the religion, you couldn’t separate the historical life of that village in terms of its patterns from the religion. That village that became a city bore all of the signs of the religion that moved in its growth. It was a full-blown pagan system down to the very core. And it was hard to sort it out. To be involved at all in the life of the culture was to be involved in the paganism, unless you made a very clean break. The Corinthians didn’t do it. And as I said, then add to that the confusion of the false teachers and you can understand why Paul says to them, “Don’t be unequally yoked with unbelievers.”
It’s very much like modern Christianity today, by the way, that seeks to blend Christianity with popular culture, wants to make Christianity more popular, less different, more palatable, less offensive, less narrow, less exclusive. And the result of it is that true Christianity in the purity of God’s Word gets corrupted by compromise and the church can become useless and shameful and blasphemous in mocking the truth. For believers there can be no compromise. We cannot engage ourselves with unbelievers in any spiritual enterprise. That’s the issue. “Do not be bound together with unbelievers,” that is he command that sets this text in motion. And it is an unmistakable call to believers to separate from unbelievers. No one could miss that that’s what it’s saying. The question is, what does it mean?
And as I said last time, it is essential to understand what it means but first of all what it does not mean. Paul is not saying, cut off all contact with non-Christians. He’s not saying that because we have to reach them with the gospel. That is not the issue. He’s not saying don’t evangelize the unconverted, don’t confront people in false religions. He’s not saying that. We must do that.
Secondly, he is not calling for complete isolation on the part of the church. We are not to become isolationists. We are not to be monastics. We are not to go hide somewhere and pull apart from the world. Quite the contrary. We are to find unbelievers and love them and be their friend and set a model of spiritual example for them.
Furthermore, he is not saying you are to divorce your unsaved partner, or to sever all unsaved contacts…all contacts, I should say, with unsaved people in your family. He is also not saying that you can’t work or play or do business or be engaged in common earthly enterprise with unbelievers. He’s not saying that, of course you can. What he is saying is you cannot link up with unbelievers in religious causes…or religious enterprises. You cannot go to their worship and become a part of it, you can’t make them a part of the Kingdom of God. You can’t engage them in anything that involves ministry, teaching, or worship. Where there is ministry, teaching and worship there has to be absolute separation.
So he’s referring in actuality to harnessing up believers and unbelievers in any common religious, spiritual enterprise. The two cannot be yoked together anymore than an ox and an ass can pull a straight furrow when under the same yoke, as Deuteronomy 22:10 forbids. But that is precisely what the Corinthians were doing. They were going to the feasts that were involved with the idols and they were trying to still befriend the people in the world and in their families and in their society by attending and being involved in idol festivals and such compromise is intolerable.
At the same time they had invited into the church forms of pagan religion and that was equally intolerable. There can be no harmony, no fellowship, no partnership, no participation between believers and unbelievers in any religious enterprise. That is the issue. Pagan religion, false teaching ruins those who listen to it. It leads to ungodliness. It spreads like gangrene and it upsets the faith of people. Paul directed all of that to Timothy and warned him to warn the church.
The issue then is religious cooperation, religious compromise with false teachers and with heresy and error. We can have nothing to do with the people involved in that when they are so involved. And we can allow them to have nothing to do with enterprises that involve the advancement of the Kingdom of God. And yet through the years the church has continued to do this. Sometimes it’s called cooperative evangelism where an evangelist will come into a city and bring together Christians and non-Christians, those who believe the Word of God and those liberals who would openly deny the Word of God in a common evangelistic enterprise. That is in direct violation of what this text is teaching.
It happens all the time in common efforts at evangelism. It happens in educational institutions where those institutions that would claim to be Christians would have on their faculty those who believe the Word of God, those who were born again, and those who are not. And they are illegitimate linked together in a common spiritual enterprise to the detriment of the church, to the debilitation of the believers and the false assurance of the unbelievers. True Christians have to separate from unbelievers in matters related to ministry, teaching and worship. And when I say teaching I’m talking about teaching that relates to God and His truth.
So Paul fixes that principle. And that, by the way, was a brief review of the first message. But in response to that initial principle he gives us five reasons, or five motives for following this mandate. And I want to approach those motives from a negative perspective…if I might. To be bound together with unbelievers in any spiritual effort is…number one…irrational, irrational. The point that Paul is making here is one of congruity. It is one of simple reason. And to make this point of the irrationality of such a common enterprise, he asks for rhetorical questions, each of which demands a negative answer.
Here they come, verse 14, “For what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? Or what harmony has Christ with Belial, or Satan? Or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever?” And the answer to those is negative. Righteousness and lawlessness have no partnership. Light and darkness have no fellowship. Christ and Satan have no harmony. And a believer and an unbeliever have nothing in the spiritual realm in common. That is axiomatic. An axiom is a self-evident truth that doesn’t need proof. And that is obvious. It is obvious that you can’t make opposites the same. And those are all opposites.
Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world--the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions--is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever. 1 John 2:15-17
‘What is Worldliness?
Worldliness is departing from God. It is a man-centred way of thinking; it proposes objectives which demand no radical breach with man’s fallen nature; it judges the importance of things by the present and material results; it weighs success by numbers; it covets human esteem and wants no unpopularity; it knows no truth for which it is worth suffering; it declines to be a ‘fool for Christ’s sake’.
Worldliness is the mind-set of the unregenerate. It adopts idols and is at war with God. Because ‘the flesh’ still dwells in the Christian he is far from immune from being influenced by this dynamic.
It is of believers that it is said, ‘the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary one to another’ (Galatians 5:17). It is professing Christians who are asked, ‘Do you not know that the friendship of the world is enmity with God?’ (James 4:4) and are commanded, ‘Do not love the world’, and ‘keep yourselves from idols’ (1 John 2:15, 5:21).
Apostasy generally arises in the church just because this danger ceases to be observed. The consequence is that spiritual warfare gives way to spiritual pacifism, and, in the same spirit, the church devises ways to present the gospel which will neutralise any offence.
The antithesis between regenerate and unregenerate is passed over and it is supposed that the interests and ambitions of the unconverted can somehow be harnessed to win their approval for Christ. Then when this approach achieves ‘results’ – as it will – no more justification is thought to be needed. The rule of Scripture has given place to pragmatism.‘
Christians, there is an important question we must ask ourselves:
Did God Write His Law Within Our Hearts ? If He did, which Law did He Write ?
There are many today who think and speak smugly as if that they have just discovered a “Grace Revolution”, something long hidden from other believers for the past 2000 years and freshly minted in the 21st century. They decry anything concerning confessing your sins to God and repentance towards God, their stance is that one only has to embrace the “Gospel of Grace”, to be “Christ Conscious” and against any need for a believer’s pursuit of personal holiness and self denial. They teach against any need for searching one’s heart before God, confessing and repenting . People of this Grace Revolution mindset “appear to delight in the imputed obedience of Christ who make little or no concern about personal holiness”. Claiming in error and with arrogance and that any pursuit of holiness and any self denial is deemed to be “legalistic”, “law based”, “old covenant” and “work based” salvation.
Let hear the late Pastor Arthur Pink’s words warning against this “Grace Revolution” error mindset:
“True, there is perfect holiness in Christ for the believer, but there must also be a holy nature received from Him.”
“There are some who appear to delight in the imputed obedience of Christ who make little or no concern about personal holiness. They have much to say about being arrayed in “the garments of salvation and covered with the robe of righteousness” (Isa 61:10 , who give no evidence that they are “clothed with humility….How many there are today who suppose that if they have trusted in Christ, all is sure to be well with them at the last even though they are not personally holy.
Under the pretense of honoring faith, Satan as an angel of light, has deceived and is now deceiving multitudes of souls.When their “faith” is examined and tested, what is it worth? Nothing at all so far as insuring an entrance into heaven is concerned: it is a powerless, lifeless, fruitless thing.”
Arthur Pink did not mince his words, though dead yet he speaks with clarity, pointedly and faithfully from the Word of God against the maladies and errors of our day. In our walk as professing believers and born of His Spirit, UNLESS WE ARE denying self and dying to self, the question needs to be asked “Are we really putting on Christ and following Him?
“Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the LORD. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” Jer 31:31-33
“If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.” John 15:18 -19
‘You adulterous people! Do you not know thatfriendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.‘ James 4:4
‘Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world–the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions–is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.’ 1John 2:15-17
Below is an article (by Pastor John Macarthur) from Grace to You (Gty.com) which aptly summed up my thoughts on the sad state of on how evangelicals are playing “church” today and how they are marketing and positioning their image to sell to and draw the “consumers” within the world. The perverted and twisted philosophy can be summed up like this: to win the world to the church, the church becomes like the world.
The world is in “Church” today because the “Church” today did not leave it behind.
Why do evangelicals try so desperately to court the world’s favor? Churches plan their worship services to cater to the “unchurched.” Christian performers ape every worldly fad in music and entertainment. Preachers are terrified that the offense of the gospel might turn someone against them, so they deliberately omit the parts of the message the world might not approve of.
Evangelicalism seems to have been hijacked by legions of carnal spin-doctors, who are trying their best to convince the world that the church can be just as inclusive, pluralistic, and broad-minded as the most politically-correct worldling.
The quest for the world’s approval is nothing less than spiritual harlotry. In fact, that is precisely the imagery the apostle James used to describe it. He wrote: “Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God” (James 4:4).
There is and always has been a fundamental, irreconcilable incompatibility between the church and the world. Christian thought is out of harmony with all the world’s philosophies. Genuine faith in Christ entails a denial of every worldly value. Biblical truth contradicts all the world’s religions. Christianity itself is therefore antithetical to virtually everything this world admires.
Jesus told His disciples, “If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you” (John 15:18-19).
Notice that our Lord considered it a given that the world would despise the church. Far from teaching His disciples to try to win the world’s favor by reinventing the gospel to suit worldly preferences, Jesus expressly warned that the quest for worldly accolades is a characteristic of false prophets: “Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for so did their fathers to the false prophets” (Luke 6:26).
He further explained: “The world . . . hates Me because I testify of it that its works are evil” (John 7:7). In other words, the world’s contempt for Christianity stems from moral, not intellectual, motives: “And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed” (John 3:19-20). That is why no matter how dramatically worldly opinion might vary, Christian truth will never be popular with the world.
Yet in virtually every era of church history there have been people in the church who are convinced that the best way to win the world is by catering to worldly tastes. Such an approach has always been to the detriment of the gospel message. The only times the church has made any significant impact on the world are when the people of God have stood firm, refused to compromise, and boldly proclaimed the truth despite the world’s hostility. When Christians have shrunk away from the task of confronting popular worldly delusions with unpopular biblical truths, the church has invariably lost influence and impotently blended into the world. Both Scripture and history attest to that fact.
And the Christian message simply cannot be twisted to conform to the vicissitudes of worldly opinion. Biblical truth is fixed and constant, not subject to change or adaptation. Worldly opinion, on the other hand, is in constant flux. The various fads and philosophies that dominate the world change radically and regularly from generation to generation. The only thing that remains constant is the world’s hatred of Christ and His gospel.
"When John declared that ‘the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ’, he was contrasting law and grace, not as two contrary and irreconcilable systems, but as two related parts of one system. The law was the shadow, Christ was the substance. The law was the pattern, Christ was the reality. The grace which had been behind the law came to light through Jesus Christ so that it could be realized." Arthur Pink
AW Pink 1886 –1952
“The law was given to Israel not that they might be redeemed, but because they had been redeemed. The nation had been brought out of Egypt by the power of God under the blood of the slain lamb, itself the symbol and token of His grace. The law was added at Sinai as the necessary standard of life for a ransomed people, a people who now belonged to the Lord. It began with a declaration of their redemption; ‘I am the Lord thy God who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage’ (Ex. 20:2). It rested on the basis of grace, and it embodied the principle that redemption implied a conformity to God’s moral order. In other words, the very grace that redeemed Israel carried with it the necessity of revealing the law to Israel. The law was given that they might walk worthy of the relation in which they now stood to God, worthy of a salvation which was already theirs. The covenant of the law did not supersede the covenant of promise, but set forth the kind of life which those who were redeemed by the covenant of promise were expected to live.
The law was not a covenant of works in the sense that Israel’s salvation depended upon obedience to it. The devout Israelite was saved by faith in the promise of God, which was now embodied in the tabernacle services. He looked forward through the sacrifices to a salvation which they foreshadowed, and by faith accepted it, as we look back to the Cross and by faith accept the salvation which has been accomplished. The Old Testament saints and the New Testament saints are both saved in the same way, and that is, by the grace of God through Jesus Christ alone.‘
from “The Law and the Saint” by Arthur. W. Pink, Studies in the Scriptures, Published from 1922 to 1952.
Pastor John MacArthur wrote an excellent review “Measuring Oral Roberts’ Influence” commenting on the published obituaries following the passing of Oral Roberts on 15 Dec 2009. Pastor JM clearly set the straight facts on Oral Roberts’ infamous contribution to developing the tragic legacy of Seed-Faith perversion of the Gospel:
“Tragically, the Seed-Faith message usurped and utterly replaced whatever gospel content there ever may have been in Oral Roberts’ preaching. In all the many times I saw him on television I never once heard him preach the gospel. His message–every time–was about Seed-Faith. The reason for that is obvious: the message of the cross–an atoning sacrifice for sins wrought through Jesus’ sufferings–frankly doesn’t mesh very well with the notion that God guarantees health, wealth, and prosperity to the righteous. Our fellowship in Jesus’ sufferings (Philippians 3:10), and our duty to follow in His steps (1 Peter 2:20-23), are likewise antithetical to the core principles of prosperity doctrine. The prosperity message is a different gospel (cf. Galatians 1:8-9).”
“One thing all the obituaries agree on is that Oral Roberts paved the way for all the charismatic televangelists and faith-healers who dominate religious television today. He did more than anyone in the early Pentecostal movement to influence mainstream evangelicalism. He parlayed his television ministry into a vast empire that has left a deep mark on the church worldwide. In many places today, including some of the world’s most illiterate and poverty-stricken regions, Oral Roberts’ Seed-Faith concept is actually better known than the doctrine of justification by faith. The message of prosperity is now the message multitudes think of when they hear the word “gospel.” Countless confused people worldwide think of the gospel as a message about earthly, temporal, and material riches rather than the infinitely greater blessings of forgiveness from sin and the eternal blessing of the believer’s spiritual union with Christ.“
"Roberts taught that money and material things donated to his organization were the seeds of prosperity and material blessings from God, and that God promises to multiply in miraculous ways whatever is given--and give many times more back to the donor."
It is clear that Oral Roberts has done much damage to the Kingdom work of the Gospel through creating and promoting a movement which drove an entire generation feeding on the false prosperity Seed-Faith teaching that has swept many churches in USA and elsewhere. The existence of this movement is likened to judgment of God on people in Prophet Amos’ days who hated and rejected the truth and preferring to love a lie:
‘”Behold, the days are coming,” declares the Lord GOD, “when I will send a famine on the land– not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD. They shall wander from sea to sea, and from north to east; they shall run to and fro, to seek the word of the LORD, but they shall not find it.’ Amos 8:11-12
Churches today have adapted Christian faith for marketing to satisfy the felt needs of consumers shopping for a quick fix to meet their earthly needs and unfulfilled emptiness in their lives.
‘In practice, the church is guided, far too often, by the culture. Therapeutic technique, marketing strategies, and the beat of the entertainment world often have far more to say about what the church wants, how it functions and what it offers, than does the Word of God.’ THE CAMBRIDGE DECLARATION of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, April 20, 1996
“As evangelical faith becomes secularized, its interests have been blurred with those of the culture. The result is a loss of absolute values, permissive individualism, and a substitution of wholeness for holiness, recovery for repentance, intuition for truth, feeling for belief, chance for providence, and immediate gratification for enduring hope. Christ and his cross have moved from the center of our vision.’ THE CAMBRIDGE DECLARATION of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, April 20, 1996
This video documented the interviews of both clergy and lay persons showing the sad state of where the Church is today: “Christianity” without Jesus Christ and devoid of the saving Gospel.
Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you too will abide in the Son and in the Father. …..I write these things to you about those who are trying to deceive you. But the anointing that you received from him abides in you, and you have no need that anyone should teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about everything, and is true, and is no lie–just as it has taught you, abide in him. And now, little children, abide in him, so that when he appears we may have confidence and not shrink from him in shame at his coming. 1John 2:24,26-28
“dramatic change” and “paradigm shift” in the focus of world mission today, away from original focus of the commission that Jesus has commanded to one which is merely a vacation style outreach “to battle the ills of poverty and to stretch their own spirituality.”. This is the sad state of mission boards and its supporting churches which have lost its understanding of the Gospel and that they exist to spread the good news of the Gospel and to make disciples of all nations for the glory of God.
