Much like the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. last week, the American evangelical church has been ransacked while the gatekeepers and shepherds stand idly by, welcoming in any transient on their way to hell. While this is not a bad policy (welcoming hell-bound souls), their intention was never to come for healing, but to mislead the church–over the course of the last four years in-particular. The decline of American culture from a nominally Christians society to a mutilate-your-eight-year-old-who-thinks-he’s-a-girl-society has a lot to do with these idle gatekeepers and shepherds.
Spurgeon, on the Pastor’s responsibilities, said, “We are not responsible to God for the souls that are saved, but we are responsible for the Gospel that is preached, and for the way in which we preach it.” Christians were sent out into the world by our Lord to “Make disciples of all the nations” and to teach them to “obey all that I have commanded” (Matthew 28:18-20). Jesus also said to his disciples, “‘You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt has become tasteless, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by people'” (Matthew 5:13). If the nation into which the gospel came some 500 years ago now looks less like Christ than it did 200 years ago, what has happened? What changed?
The preaching changed. The pulpit changed. The church has given over its pulpits to those who don’t teach sound doctrine, and its pews to those who won’t tolerate it; “… but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance with their own desires” (2 Timothy 4:3). In accordance with the societal desires to have sexual equity, the pulpit has been handed over to women; In accordance with societal desires to have sexual anarchy, homosexuality is not sinful in much of evangelicalism; In accordance with the political mind of the time, the church has given over to the secular Left, who oppose the clear teaching of Scripture on a multitude of fundamental moral standards.
The list wouldn’t have to stop there. There are many names need naming, and I might just name a few. Russell Moore, president of the ERLC, called for the sitting president of the United States to “step down and let our country heal.” I’m assuming he means by conceding to the oncoming Biden/Harris administration who plan on expanding and universalizing abortion in nearly every respect. And you might chide me over invoking a single-issue squabble, but may I remind you that it is a single-issue squabble that is already buried beneath 61,000,000 dead bodies. It was the pulpit’s job to incite the people of God to oppose sin, to speak against it, to crush the head of the enemy, to disciple nations toward obeying King Jesus.
What the church in America needs for God to raise up a generation of men to fill the pulpit who are like Nehemiah: willing to fight like a man and pull out some beard hairs in order to purify the priests of God (Neh. 13:23-30). We need truth spoken boldly in the pulpit and the public square, so that justice does not turn aside, and the wicked strut about because vileness is exalted (Isaiah 59:14; Psalms 12:8). Men who will without fear to men who oppose the truth, declare: “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, make your own judgment; for we cannot stop speaking about what we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:19).
Dead on as usual. I’m not sure how any true Christian could oppose this. And yet…….