It’s Not A Joke!

We’ve come a long way in these pages, and I’d like to end with a parable from the nineteenth-century philosopher and theologian Soren Kierkegaard. In his book, Either/Or, he wrote: 

“A fire broke out backstage in a theatre. The clown came out to warn the public; they thought it was a joke and applauded. He repeated it; the acclaim was even greater. I think that’s just how the world will come to an end: to general applause from wits who believe it’s a joke.”

I believe Kierkegaard was correct. In fact, I often feel as if our world is
living out his parable in real time. As a culture and as a people, we are increasingly ignorant of what God has said about the end times, and what we face at the conclusion of history. Not only that, but humanity is increasingly hostile toward the idea that an end is coming at all.

As we conclude these final words in The World of the End, I don’t want to focus on humanity as a whole. Instead, I want to turn the spotlight directly on you and me.

Make no mistake: everything Jesus warned about in His Olivet Discourse will happen. Each of His prophecies will be fulfilled, and all His promises will come to pass. We can believe it. We can count on it.

The question is, What we will do about it? What will you do about it?

My prayer is that you and I will not sit idly by as the smoke billows through the doors and the flames rise up the walls for our communities. Let us never allow entertainment or comfort or finances or fear or the lust of the flesh or the pride of life or any other earthly thing to get in the way of serving our Savior to the end. To the final moment.

I don’t know if we’ve reached the end of the world. Humanity may have days or decades remaining until the rapture of the church and the grinding, grating thlipsis of the tribulation tax will follow. As Scripture says, no one know the day or the hour (Matthew 24:36).

But I do know this: you and I have come to the World of the End. As a planet and a people, we are experiencing the birth pains in preparation for all that God has promised. We are living out the days prophesied by Christ Himself.

Therefore, let us be honest. Let us be calm. Let us be confident. Let us be prepared. Let us be faithful. Let us be kind. Let us be the good news. And let us be determined to live as we should—as children of God who shine like stars in the universe—until the end!

Dr. David Jeremiah, The World of the End, pg. 207-208: Epilogue.

Preach the WHOLE Truth

One preacher said that when we present the truth about Christ and pagans do not get angry, either they did not understand or we did not say it right! We should not seek to alienate unbelievers, but we should also not attempt to highlight only the “good” points of the gospel.

Larry Dixon, “Warning a Wrath-Deserving World: Evangelicals and the Overhaul of Hell.” The Emmaus Journal, Vol.2/No.1, pg.16

Shout the Message

When we communicate the gospel of Jesus Christ only as a means to peace and happiness, already peaceful and happy pagans will politely listen and then turn away. We should not be surprised that a sin-numbed and self-deceived world will only shrug its shoulders and yawn at a gospel message whittled away to only “peace and happiness in Jesus.”  Today’s evangelicals need to be reminded of the urgency of escaping God’s judgment. And it is a simple truth that “if the house is burning or the ship is sinking, you do not whisper ‘fire’ or ‘Mayday’; you shout it!”

Larry Dixon, “Warning a Wrath-Deserving World: Evangelicals and the Overhaul of Hell.” The Emmaus Journal, Vol.2/No.1, pg.12

We Don't Need Relevant Churches

Today, there is so much talk about how to make our church services more culturally relevant, especially to the unconverted. However effective this might be in drawing "seekers," it was not so in the early church. Their services equipped the saints to be witnesses wherever they found themselves. The church meeting collectively on Sunday will not win the world, nor will more seminars on church growth; rather, what we need are more equipped individuals who share their faith in hospitals, banks, factories, warehouses, office buildings, and neighborhoods.

Erwin W. Lutzer, The Church in Babylon: Heeding the Call to Be a Light in the Darkness, pg.272

Why the Hatred of Deceived People?

While researching false teachings on the Internet I often come across sites which not only attack the false teachings but also attack the followers/adherents of these false teachings, belittling them and really just being downright mean.

I really don’t understand this.  These people are actually bigoted against the deceived people, and often will misrepresent the teachings they follow just to make the people look totally foolish!

What is more interesting to me is that they do not treat pagans the same way.  Does it ever occur to them that these deceived people are really the same as the pagans — and some of them are indeed pagans because they are cult members!  Catholics and Mormons seem to get the most invectives, as if Jehovah’s Witnesses or Christian Scientists, et al, are any less deceived.

You who are calling yourselves discernment/apologetics ministries and yet behave in this manner are bringing disgrace to the name of Christ.  Don’t attack the people — attack the teachings and expose the teachings biblically to show why the people are being deceived!  Expose the false teacher by comparing their teachings to Scripture, but don’t attack them personally.  Expose the false teachers for their behavior and why the behavior is wrong rather than just calling them names.

Yes, the Mormon religion is from Satan, but the Mormons themselves are deceived and need the gospel just as much as does the average pagan on the street who your are so willing to hand tracts too.  Yes the Roman Catholic religion is corrupt with apostate and heretical teachings, but the Catholic person is deceived and in need of the truth just as does the pagan you hand tracts to.

Why is it these sort of people have no problem going everywhere with all sorts of tracts trying to get the average Joe or Jane on the street to take one and perhaps have a seed planted so they will seek truth, but they have no desire to reach people in cults or apostate religions?  Is it because they have a semblance of Christianity that they are to be hated rather than pitied?  Would these “apologists” rather refuse access to the truth for these people because they happened to be deceived by a teaching that is hated?

It doesn’t matter whether the person is a Catholic, a Mormon, a Jehovah’s Witness, a Freemason, a Hindu, a Muslim, etc.  If you have the truth and they need it — reach out to them.  Don’t just attack them as being stupid or ignorant, or fools, etc.  They are all lost and need the light to expose the darkness they are in.

Drop your bigotry against the people because of the religion or non-religion they follow, and treat them as Jesus would treat them.

Some Things for Edification, Some to Just Think About

How NOT to Follow the Holy Spirit.

Interesting information about the angel Gabriel.

Steve Bricker has an excellent study of the Holy Spirit’s work in Acts, and some lessons about it.

Mary:  Who She Was (and Wasn’t)

Did Paul pray for the dead?  An excellent article examining one of the “proof” texts used by Roman Catholicism to defend the false doctrine of purgatory.

The necessary existence of God.

When Christians Act Like Mormons.  Think about your evangelistic ideology.

Have Christians lost the art of biblical discernment?

Godly speech in a culture of profanity.

The tragedy of Biblical illiteracy and the remedy needed.

A very interesting article about “cross-heresy addiction.”  I’ve known many people like this, who jump from one false teaching to another, and I have learned it isn’t unusual for those leaving one cult to fall in with another.

I can fully empathize with Michelle, and agree with her responses!  (Except that the command against women teaching men is in the context of the assembly, not on blogs, books, etc.  Woman can certainly teach men outside of the assembly.)

The Arian Snare  — prevalent in too many “churches” today.

Did Old Testament men treat wives as property?

Are You Propagating Christianity Without Defending It?

When men talk thus about propagating Christianity without defending it, the thing that we are propagating is pretty sure not to be Christianity at all.  They are propagating an anti-intellectualistic, non-doctrinal Modernism; and the reason why it requires no defense is simply that it is so completely in accord with the current of the age.

J. Gresham Machen, cited in Why We’re Not Emergent, by Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck, pg.107

Are You Concerned About Those in Darkness?

Christian people, may I put it to you like this:  Are you concerned about the masses that are in this darkness?  I know you feel a sense of disgust with respect to them; we all do; but if you merely feel a sense of disgust, and gather up your skirts, and walk on the other side of the street, you are almost as bad as they are.  The Levite and the priest did just that, and no more, when they saw the wounded man by the roadside.  That is of no value.  If we realise that the people we encounter are living worthless lives because of this world’s tragic ignorance and darkness, then, I say, as Christian people it should move us to say, “What can I do for these people? How can gospel light and knowledge be brought to them?”

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, “Darkness and Light: An Exposition of Ephesians 4:17-5:17,” pg.389

Methods Must Be Congruent With Message

Christians can be infected by secular worldviews not only in their beliefs but also in their practices.  For example, a Christian church or ministry may be biblical in its message and yet fail to be biblical in its methods.  Hudson Taylor, the great missionary to China, said that the Lord’s work must be done in the Lord’s way, if it is to have the Lord’s blessing.  We must express the truth not only in what we preach but also in how we preach it.  A Christian organization may be doing the Lord’s work—but if it is acting on human zeal and willpower, using secular methods of promotion and publicity, without visible love among staff and coworkers, then it is merely another form of human achievement, accomplishing little for the Kingdom of God.

Nancy Pearcey, “Total Truth: Liberating Christianity From Its Cultural Captivity,” pg.361

Evangelism Must Start With Creation

If we start with a message of sin, without giving the context of Creation, then we will come across to nonbelievers as merely negative and judgmental.

Nancy Pearcey, “Total Truth: Liberating Christianity From Its Cultural Captivity,” pg. 88

Away With Palsied, Powerless Preaching

The church today is standing on the sidewalk, watching with fever and frustration, while the sin-dominated evil geniuses of Moscow strut the middle of the road, breathing out threatenings against “whatsoever things are lovely and of good report.”  Behind, follows the purple pageantry of papal Rome.  Moreover, the devil has substituted reincarnation for regeneration, familiar spirits for the Holy Spirit, Christian Science for divine healing, the Antichrist for the true Christ, and the Church of Rome for the true Church.

Agains these twin evils of Communism and Romanism, what has the Church to offer?  Where is the supernatural?  Both in the pulpit and in the press, somnolence seems to have overtaken religious controversy of late.  Even Rome does not call us Protestants any more; we have just the juiceless name of non-Catholics!  Significant, isn’t it?  Hell has no fury like that of this “Mother of Harlots” when she is stirred.  But who now “earnestly contends for the faith once delivered to the saints”?  Where are our unctionized pulpit crusaders?  Preachers who should be fishing for men are now too often fishing for compliments from men.  Preachers used to sow seed; now they string intellectual pearls.  (Imagine a field sown with pearls!)

Away with this palsied, powerless preaching which is unmoving because it was born in a tomb instead of a womb, and nourished in a fireless, prayer less soul.  We may preach and perish, but we cannot pray and perish.  If God called us to the ministry, then, dear brethren, I contend that we should get unctionized.  With all thy getting—get unction, lest barren altars be the badge of our unction less intellectualism.


[Replace “Moscow” and “Communism” with “Islam” for current affairs]

Leonard Ravenhill,  Why Revival Tarries (1959), pg.21-22

Random Aberrations, Apostasies, and Heresies

Ex-President Jimmy Carter (the worst in history until Obama) continues to be looked to as a spokesman for Christianity.  Now he claims that Jesus would approve of same-sex fake marriage.  This man worships another Christ — and apparently always has.

The superstition in the Roman Catholic Church never ceases to amaze me.  Their whole ideology of exorcism has been unbiblical from the start, but it just keeps getting more and more ridiculous.  A priest performed an exorcism over a whole town from a helicopter!  Does he really think he affected any demons?  Come on, Catholics, where is your protest over this nonsense?!?  Aren’t you the least bit embarrassed?  It’s no wonder the world makes fun of the Christian faith when they see such antics.

OH BOY!!  Willow Creek, that bastion of the market-driven mentality, just held a “Leadership Conference,” where guest speakers included MORMONS!!!  And Brian Houston of Hillsong, to name a few.  Well, when you think of your assembly as a business organization instead of a place for believers to gather for corporate worship, edification and mutual support, I guess anything goes.

Anyone still in the United Methodist Church really has to justify why they are part of a denomination which is so deep in apostasy.  Now we have a “Methodist Healthcare Ministries” providing almost half-a-million dollars to Planned Parenthood!  Talk about dishonoring God!!!!

How often have you heard the saying, “Preach the Gospel, If Necessary Use Words”?  I’ve always thought it was a very stupid thing to say, but it usually comes from those who think they are more “holy” in someway because they promote the social gospel rather than the gospel which saves.  Take a look at Steven Kozar’s post — it hits the nail on the proverbial head.

Christian Missionary Alliance seems to be going deep into the whole mystical/contemplative movement.  Be forewarned.

Elizabeth Prata has an excellent, short commentary on Henry Blackaby’s Experiencing God.

Midwest Christian Outreach’s blog article this week gave me a good laugh.  It’s about how we end up laughing at some of the foolishness of the cults — because it can be so absurd!!  The Jehovah’s Witnesses’ “New World Translation” is used as an example of some really silly things.

Lastly, one of the best articles this past week comes from Pamela Couvrette: “The Cult of Personality Under the Evangelical Limelight.”  She hits a lot of false teachers with this one — don’t miss it.

Be An Apologetic Evangelist

Around us is this godless world which cannot know about Christ unless you and I tell them about Christ, either by preaching or by mixing with them in our work and employment and the ordinary avocations in life.  We must show what we know, and what we have, and above all show Him in whom we have believed.

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Christian Unity: An Exposition of Ephesians 4:1-16, p.16-17

Spiritual Seductions In America

Most North American believers are wonderfully and prayerfully sympathetic to the plight of fellow Christians who are undergoing terrible persecutions for their faith in foreign lands, yet too few have a real concern for fellow believers here in the West who are being spiritually seduced and whose biblical faith is being critically undermined.  The tendency is to write off most false preachers as religious kooks and to think no more about their captive audience.  All true believers, whether or not they have been led into false teaching, make up the body of Christ.  When one part of the body is seduced and suffers, it affect the entire body (1 Corinthians 12:25-27).

Not only is such a cavalier attitude wrong biblically, but it is extremely shortsighted and therefore blinds a person to the seductions and ultimate deceptions that are involved.


T.A. McMahon, "They Claim to Speak for God, Part One," The Berean Call, March 2013.

All Things to All People?

Our culture has abandoned such concepts as duty and responsibility as antiquated Victorianism.  But these are the virtues our text [1 Cor. 9:22-23] extols against an emphasis on “demands” and “rights.”  Those who would use this passage to support libertarianism miss his point entirely.  It is precisely because he was “all things to all men” that he would not participate with the pagans in their temples.

Some might argue that Paul contradicts himself.  If he was truly “all things” to the Gentile, he would attend the pagan festivals, not avoid them!  It is here that the interface of the message and the method is seen.  He does not attend because it would entail the compromise of his message (a point he will expand in the next chapter).  The festival was a place of “fellowship” with demons.  And it is entirely incompatible with the believer’s association with the Table of the Lord and the body of Christ (10:14-23).  By the same token, he will approach the Jew with a keen sensitivity to those matters of religious observance that might cause offense and stand as stumbling blocks to their response to the gospel.  But here too he will draw the line where he might compromise the law of Christ.  In such cases, he will take his stand and let the chips fall where they may.

The contemporary Church struggles with this today.  Many fail to recognize the line Paul draws between communication and compromise.  In our efforts to be “all things to all,” it is possible that we have forgotten the message for which we have sacrificially abandoned all rights to personal liberty?  New Testament believers “came out from among them” when they “turned to God from idols.”  Today it is not uncommon to invite the idols (be they musical or media figures) into our feasts in order to “identify” with the lost.  One wonders what we think we are supposed to do with our unsuspecting guests after we have put the idols on the platform and hidden the gospel, like a door prize, under the tables.

Dan Mitchell, The Book of First Corinthians: Christianity In A Hostile Culture,  p.136-137

The Problem With Evangelical Campaigns

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, former minister of Westminster Chapel in London, was interviewed by Carl Henry for a February 1980 Christianity Today article. Henry asked, "You declined to be either a participant or observer [of the Berlin World Congress on Evangelism]. You were also, I think, the only minister of a major church in London that did not cooperate in the Graham crusades? What kept you on the sidelines?"

Lloyd-Jones' response:

This is a very vital and difficult matter. I have always believed that nothing but a revival—a visitation of the Holy Spirit, in distinction from an evangelistic campaign —can deal with the situation of the church and of the world.... I have never been happy about organized campaigns.... When things were not going well, the old approach was for ministers and deacons to call a day of fasting and prayer and to plead with God to visit them with power. Today's alternative is an evangelistic campaign: ministers ask, "whom shall we get as evangelist?" Then they organize and ask God's blessing on this. I belong to the old school.

Henry then asked, "What specific reservations do you have about modern evangelism as such?"

He replied:

I am unhappy about organized campaigns and even more about the invitation system of calling people forward.... I just can't subscribe to the idea that either congresses or campaigns really deal with the situation. The facts, I feel, substantiate my point of view: in spite of all that has been done in the last 20 or 25 years, the spiritual situation has deteriorated rather than improved. I am convince that nothing can avail but churches and ministers on their knees in total dependence on God. As long as you go on organizing, people will not fall on their knees and implore God to come and heal them. It seems to me that the campaign approach trusts ultimately in techniques rather than the power of the Spirit.

Cited in the April 1989 issue of The Berean Call.

Who Does Evangelism?

It is not shepherds, but sheep that make more sheep.  Shepherds care for them.  It is the job of a pastor/teacher to equip, train and feed the flock.  But as one of the sheep of God which he is too, he also must evangelize; and as an example to the flock he is to take the lead in evangelizing.  But he cannot, and must not attempt to, do the evangelistic work of the congregation for them.  He, as one man limited in time, space and energy, cannot be where they are with all of the opportunities that are afforded to each one of them alone.  Indeed, as he serves as a teaching model of the evangelist and as he concentrates on helping to equip all of the saints for their work of ministry (Ephesians 4:11, 12) as God intended, ultimately more evangelistic activity will take place than he possibly could engage in on his own.  In addition, the blessings of participation and personal growth for each member of the congregation that this will bring will be incalculable.

Dr. Jay E. Adams, Shepherding God’s Flock, pp.24-25