The Apostasy of Young and Old

“Rebellion” - Part 3

While apostasy at the individual level may be hard to spot, it is often the case that such un-noticed lack of discernment grows and grows and become a full fledged assault on Christ.  This is rarely in the apostate’s written or spoken theology, but in their supposed piety.  Instead of seeking the godly wisdom of friends who are well-grounded in Scripture and faithful to its sole sufficiency, authority, infallibility and inerrancy, these people seek instead human wisdom and only have conversations with those who hold the same beliefs.  These apostates do not want to have any confrontation with people who hold firm to historic, orthodox Christianity but are more than willing to have conversations with others who reject Christ and His teachings.

Thus when individuals who commit apostasy join together in friendship, we then have a more visible, more tangible apostate movement.  As these individuals as a group have a larger and larger voice within society’s religious communities, they speak and write more that their apostasy becomes a matter of public record.  No longer is their rejection of Christ in behavior only visible to the careful discerning eye, but now in platform / round-table talks and in written form.

If you look closely enough, such whole-sale apostasy has been present in our society since the early church and has now morphed itself into today’s postmodern culture.  To look back at the fallen states of Christ’s blood-bought church is a disappointing thing to do, but I feel that it is imperative that we call it what it was and still is: apostasy.  Let us remember & repent of the 4 areas of apostasy that have developed over the past two millennia:

Arianism

In the 4th century church, a presbyter name Arius began teaching that there was a time when Jesus did not exist and that he had been created by God–a view which we know as Arianism.  Athanasius of Alexandria, a Christian bishop, opposed this un-biblical view of the incarnation of Christ, and the matter was of such importance to the universal church that Athanasius brought the matter to the First Council of Nicaea (325 A.D.).  The rejection of Christ’s deity by Arius and his followers required an outright declaration of the apostasy of Arian and such teaching.  The heart and effort of Athanasius will forever be acknowledged and remembered by Christians all over the world in one of the first historic creeds of the church: the Nicene Creed.

Roman Catholicism

While there was only one church in the early years after Christ, the apostasy of Roman Catholicism lived for over 1500 years until the time of the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century.  Martin Luther more-less officially kickstarted the protest against the the apostate Church of Rome when he published his 95 Theses which opposed the Roman Catholic practice of selling indulgences.  Furthermore, church beliefs and practices attacked by Protestant reformers included purgatory, particular judgment, devotion to Mary, intercession of the saints, most of the sacraments, and authority of the Pope as the head of the church.  It caused much divide within Roman Catholicism, resulting in a split of the church into Reformed church traditions.

Reformation theology rejected Roman Catholicism in 3 major principles:

• Sola Scriptura–sole authority of Scripture,
• Sola Fide, Sola Gratia–justification by faith alone, by grace alone
• and the priesthood of all believers

As a result of these principles, the Reformers rejected the authority of the Pope, the merit of good works, indulgences, the mediation of Mary and the Saints, all but the two sacraments instituted by Christ (Baptism and the Lord’s Supper), the doctrine of transubstantiation, the mass as a sacrifice, purgatory, prayers for the dead, confessions to a priest, the use of Latin in the services, and all the paraphernalia that expressed these ideas. (Theopedia)

Seventh Day Adventism

More recently, the apostasy of the Seventh Day Adventist Church caused significant uproar by many Protestants during the 19th century.  You can read about the history of the movement here, but in short, the followers of SDA believe God’s Word, Trinity, Christ and saving grace, but they also believe many unbiblical teachings & deny many biblical doctrines.  I have found this to be a good summary of the apostasy of the SDA:

Aberrant

1. Our sins will ultimately be placed on Satan - The Great Controversy, p. 422, 485.
2. Jesus is Michael the Archangel.
3. Worship must be done on Saturday (the Sabbath).
4. On October 22, 1844 Jesus entered the second and last phase of his atoning work.
5. Investigative Judgment - the fate of all people will be decided based upon this event in the future.
6. The dead do not exist anymore — soul sleep.
7. The wicked are annihilated.
8. Ellen G. White, the “founder” of Seventh Day Adventism, was a messenger from God gifted with the spirit of prophecy.
9. There is a sanctuary in heaven where Jesus carries out his mediatorial work.

Denials

1. Denies the doctrine of predestination
2. Denies baptism by sprinkling
3. Denies infant baptism.
4. Denies the immortality of the soul.
5. Denies the eternality of hell fire.
6. Denies any use of alcohol (as a drink) or tobacco.

Today, little is said or written against the SDA’s teachings as it is known fact that Reformed evangelicals do not consider Seventh Day Adventism to be a true church.  While individuals may be Christians as they put their faith in Christ as their Lord and Savior, the validity of the church is not even a question anymore.  (You know how far a church has fallen if John MacArthur doesn’t even thump his Bible anymore in disgust against SDAs!)

Which now brings us to the apostasy that many Reformers today, including John MacArthur, are thumping their Bibles over:

Postmodernism & the Emerging Church Movement

I have blogged extensively in the past about how scared I am to see followers of this movement fall away from historic Christian orthodoxy, and right now, I am just tired and sick to the stomach by the truth war that is raging before our eyes.  The rejection of Christ and His Word can be seen as a three-fold apostasy:

1. It fosters contempt for authority.
2. It breeds doubt about the perspicuity of Scripture.
3. It sows confusion about the mission of the church.

My friend and mentor, Pastor Ken Silva, has devoted most of his ministry to defending the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.  I join him in this fight for biblical truth in our piety and written/spoken theology: striving to reach out to our neighbors with the love of Christ without selling out, to contend for the faith and contextualize it so that our culture would come to know and worship Christ in spirit and in truth.

In closing, I want to share with you an excerpt from MacArthur’s new book that is coming out next year, titled “The Truth War”:

Many self-styled evangelicals today are openly questioning whether such a thing as truth even exists. Others suppose that even if truth does exist, we can’t be sure what it is, so it can’t really matter much. This type of thinking is epidemic, even among some of the evangelical movement’s most popular authors and spokespersons. Some flatly refuse to stand for anything because they have decided that even Scripture isn’t really clear enough to argue about.

Except for the massive scale on which such thinking has attained popularity today, and the way it is seeping into the church, such ideas themselves are really nothing new or particularly shocking. It is exactly the same attitude with which Pilate summarily dismissed Christ: “What is truth?” (John 18:38) 

Certain avant-garde evangelicals sometimes act as if the demise of certainty is a dramatic new intellectual development, rather than seeing it for what it actually is: an echo of the old unbelief. It is unbelief cloaked in a religious disguise and seeking legitimacy as if it were merely a humbler kind of faith. But it’s not faith at all. In reality, the contemporary refusal to regard any truth as sure and certain is the worst kind of infidelity.

The church’s duty has always been to confront such skepticism and answer it by clearly proclaiming the truth God has revealed in His Word. We have been given a clear message for the purpose of confronting the world’s unbelief. That is what we are called, commanded, and commissioned to do (1 Corinthians 1:17–31). Faithfulness to Christ demands it. The honor of God requires it. We cannot sit by and do nothing while worldly, revisionist, and skeptical attitudes about truth are infiltrating the church. We must not embrace such confusion in the name of charity, collegiality, or unity. We have to stand and fight for the truth—and be prepared to die for it—as faithful Christians always have.

In my next post of this series, I reflect upon Campus Challenge 2006 and how part of the worship ministry was abandoned by God.  Read over this post, and let us consider what Romans 1 really had to do with it all.

(Continued in Part 4, coming soon…)

“Rebellion”:
Part 1-Worshippers Rebel
Part 2-False Faith
Part 3-The Apostasy of Young and Old
Part 4-Abandoned by God
Part 5-Deprived of Restraining Grace