The Judgment of Deception

By Mike Ratliff

I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry. (2 Timothy 4:1-5 ESV)

Idolatry, as I have been teaching you for these last many years, always produces spiritual blindness. It also brings God’s judgment. As we see in Romans 1:26, God “gave over,” or παρέδωκεν the unrighteous to the their own lusts as an act of judgment. Carefully read the passage I placed at the top of this post from 2 Timothy. This accumulating for themselves of teachers to suit their own passions by ose who will not endure sound teaching, but have itching ears is the very same thing. God has given them over to their false gods, to their idols. Their deception is willing. Think of all those people lining up to to become incarnational, missional servants in the big push of dominionism by these false prophets with their false gospel of works righteousness which preys upon the post modern’s inability to think critically about anything.

There are some who still want to go back to “church as we used to know it” as it was 50 years ago or so, but we can forget that. This downgrade has been going on for a lot longer than that. What is known as Evangelicalism has becoming more and more apostate until it is just a relic of what it once stood for. When I first started this ministry my goal was revival and recovery of the Gospel and I think both are still worthy goals, but God has allowed things to go a different way.

A friend sent me an email this morning to encourage me. In it she shared how she read Jeremiah 24 and God’s analogy of the two baskets of figs. One basket held good figs while the other held bad figs that could not be eaten. The good figs represented those Jews who went into exile in Babylon. They were told to settle there and live quiet godly lives while God’s judgment would fall on those who remained in Judah which represented the bad figs. In any case, she believed, and I agree with her, that those of us who have been rooted out of our churches by the apostasy and are now able to see the evil that is happening in the visible Church all around us are the good figs. We are to simply be good Christians and obey the Lord where He has us. His judgment has already begun in the spiritual blindness and apostasy against the bad figs, but the final judgment is coming.

Another friend sent me the link to the video below. I recommend you watch it to completion my brethren for Paul Washer does indeed explain very well here what I have been attempting to say to you through these last several posts about deception.

If you are still in a good biblical church that has not apostatized then praise God! However, if you are reading this and you know things are just not right there then you must take it to God, seek His face and obey Him and what He wants you to do. I can tell you that it is never His will for you to sit at the feet of false teachers my brethren. Those who tell you different have been deceived and are part of the problem.

(HT: Possessing the Treasure)

Falling on Deaf Ears? — Why So Many Churches Hear So Little of the Bible

By Justin Edwards

The following article by Albert Mohler underscores the watered down messages we hear from pulpits today. God's holy and authoritative Word is tossed to the wayside for the sake of holding the audience's attention, entertainment purposes, or so to not offend the masses with the piercing truth of the Gospel. The modern/post-modern church is collectively lost. This passage of Scripture comes to mind:

For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. 4They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. - 2 Timothy 4:3-4

We are in the time that men do not put up with sound doctrine. They have surrounded themselves with smooth talkers for their ears to be tickled with nonsense. They no longer care for the truth, and they will reap what they sow. If you are one of these teachers who has lost sight of the poignant Gospel, repent and return to your First Love. If you attend a church who is more concerned about entertainment and keeping your attention span than it is for saving the lost and making disciples, then it's time to come out from that church and find one (yes, it's still possible) that stands on the sole foundation of our faith, the Word of God alone.

Falling on Deaf Ears? — Why So Many Churches Hear So Little of the Bible
 

By Albert Mohler

"It is well and good for the preacher to base his sermon on the Bible, but he better get to something relevant pretty quickly, or we start mentally to check out." That stunningly clear sentence reflects one of the most amazing, tragic, and lamentable characteristics of contemporary Christianity -- an impatience with the Word of God.

The sentence above comes from Mark Galli, senior managing editor of Christianity Today in an essay entitled "Yawning at the Word." In just a few hundred words, he captures the tragedy of a church increasingly impatient with and resistant to the reading and preaching of the Bible. We may wince when we read him relate his recent experiences, but we also recognize the ring of truth.

Galli was told to cut down on the biblical references in his sermon. "You'll lose people," the staff member warned. In a Bible study session on creation, the teacher was requested to come back the next Sunday prepared to take questions at the expense of reading the relevant scriptural texts on the doctrine. Cutting down on the number of Bible verses "would save time and, it was strongly implied, would better hold people's interest."

As Galli reflected, "Anyone who's been in the preaching and teaching business knows these are not isolated examples but represent the larger reality."

Indeed, in many churches there is very little reading of the Bible in worship, and sermons are marked by attention to the congregation's concerns - not by an adequate attention to the biblical text. The exposition of the Bible has given way to the concerns, real or perceived, of the listeners. The authority of the Bible is swallowed up in the imposed authority of congregational concerns.
As Mark Galli notes:

It has been said to the point of boredom that we live in a narcissistic age, where we are wont to fixate on our needs, our wants, our wishes, and our hopes—at the expense of others and certainly at the expense of God. We do not like it when a teacher uses up the whole class time presenting her material, even if it is material from the Word of God. We want to be able to ask our questions about our concerns, otherwise we feel talked down to, or we feel the class is not relevant to our lives.

It is well and good for the preacher to base his sermon on the Bible, but he better get to something relevant pretty quickly, or we start mentally to check out. Don't spend a lot of time in the Bible, we tell our preachers, but be sure to get to personal illustrations, examples from daily life, and most importantly, an application that we can use.

The fixation on our own sense of need and interest looms as the most significant factor in this marginalization and silencing of the Word. Individually, each human being in the room is an amalgam of wants, needs, intuitions, interests, and distractions. Corporately, the congregation is a mass of expectations, desperate hopes, consuming fears, and impatient urges. All of this adds up, unless countered by the authentic reading and preaching of the Word of God, to a form of group therapy, entertainment, and wasted time -- if not worse.

Galli has this situation clearly in his sights when he asserts that many congregations expect the preacher to start from some text in the Bible, but then quickly move on "to things that really interest us." Like . . . ourselves?

One of the earliest examples of what we would call the preaching of the Bible may well be found in Nehemiah 8:1-8:

And all the people gathered as one man into the square before the Water Gate. And they told Ezra the scribe to bring the Book of the Law of Moses that the Lord had commanded Israel. So Ezra the priest brought the Law before the assembly, both men and women and all who could understand what they heard, on the first day of the seventh month. And he read from it facing the square before the Water Gate from early morning until midday, in the presence of the men and the women and those who could understand. And the ears of all the people were attentive to the Book of the Law. And Ezra the scribe stood on a wooden platform that they had made for the purpose. And beside him stood Mattithiah, Shema, Anaiah, Uriah, Hilkiah, and Maaseiah on his right hand, and Pedaiah, Mishael, Malchijah, Hashum, Hashbaddanah, Zechariah, and Meshullam on his left hand. And Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people, for he was above all the people, and as he opened it all the people stood. And Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God, and all the people answered, “Amen, Amen,” lifting up their hands. And they bowed their heads and worshiped the Lord. Also Jeshua, Bani, Sherebiah, Jamin, Akkub, Shabbethai, Hodiah, Maaseiah, Kelita, Azariah, Jozabad, Hanan, Pelaiah, the Levites, helped the people to understand the Law, while the people remained in their places. They read from the book, from the Law of God, clearly, and they gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading with their faces to the ground. [English Standard Version]

Ezra and his companions stood on a platform before the congregation. They read the scriptural text clearly, and then explained the meaning of the Scripture to the people. The congregation received the Word humbly, while standing. The pattern is profoundly easy to understand -- the Bible was read and explained and received.

As Hughes Oliphant Old comments, "This account of the reading of the Law indicates that already at the time of the writing of this text there was a considerable amount of ceremonial framing of the public reading of Scripture. This ceremonial framing is a witness to the authority of the Bible." The reading and exposition took place in a context of worship as the people listened to the Word of God. The point of the sermon was simple -- "to make clear the reading of the Scriptures."

In many churches, there is almost no public reading of the Word of God. Worship is filled with music, but congregations seem disinterested in listening to the reading of the Bible. We are called to sing in worship, but the congregation cannot live only on the portions of Scripture that are woven into songs and hymns. Christians need the ministry of the Word as the Bible is read before the congregation and God's people -- young and old, rich and poor, married and unmarried, sick and well -- hear it together. The sermon is to consist of the exposition of the Word of God, powerfully and faithfully read, explained, and applied. It is not enough that the sermon take a biblical text as its starting point.

How can so many of today's churches demonstrate what can only be described as an impatience with the Word of God? The biblical formula is clear -- the neglect of the Word can only lead to disaster, disobedience, and death. God rescues his church from error, preserves his church in truth, and propels his church in witness only by his Word -- not by congregational self-study.

In the end, an impatience with the Word of God can be explained only by an impatience with God. We -- both individually and congregationally -- neglect God's Word to our own ruin.

As Jesus himself declared, "He who has ears to hear, let him hear."
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Mark Galli, "Yawning at the Word," Christianity Today [online edition], posted November 5, 2009. http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2009/novemberweb-only/144-41.0.html
Hughes Oliphant Old, The Reading and Preaching of the Scriptures in the Worship of the Christian Church, vol. 1, "The Biblical Period" (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), pp. 98-99.