The Amazing, Alarming, and Awful Apostasy / Part 2

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All Scripture references are from the New Scofield Reference Bible.
(This message is also included in the hardback book, J. Vernon McGee On Prophecy, copyright 1993 by Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, TN.)

The Amazing, Alarming,
and Awful Apostasy

A liberal magazine came out with that! And yet when some of us came out of the liberal machine, we were criticized as being fighters and come-outers. May I say to you, the liberals were the first ones to recognize that we live in two different worlds today, and I’m glad that they stated the case so clearly.

One of the leading liberals of the past was Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick. Some may still remember hearing him speak on the radio. Dr. Fosdick wrote a book titled The Peril of Worshiping Jesus, and in it he made what was then a startling statement (it is not so startling today): “The world has tried in two ways to get rid of Jesus, first by crucifying Him and second, by worshiping Him.” Evidently Dr. Fosdick rejects the clear teaching of Scripture such as Hebrews 1:6 and Revelation 13:8.

And way back in the 1930s a survey of Christian ministers revealed that 48 percent of those in the ministry at that time denied the grand particulars of the Christian faith.

Then in 1963, The Christian Century contained this statement: “Nothing is so pathetic in modern Protestantism as its confusion over its own faith.” It is interesting to see that they are the ones who said that time would tell which was the real God. They have been following the liberal, and now they have to say that Protestantism is pathetic. And this is one time that I have to agree with The Christian Century thoroughly. These conditions within the church which Jude warned about have been building for a long time "ungodly men turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying...our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Apostasy — the Word of God

If we want to see how far the church has moved away from the faith, we need to examine how it treats the Word of God. Even the liberals recognize this—the real test lies in your attitude toward the Bible and your viewpoint of it.

I understand that many of the pulpits in Germany are inscribed with this motto: “God’s Word Stands Forever.” I can’t quote the actual German, but that’s the English interpretation. In the back of my pulpit there is written, “Sir, we would see Jesus,” but in Germany they have, “God’s Word Stands Forever.” That’s a tremendous statement! And it was a German, Emil Brunner, who said this: “The fate of the Bible is the fate of Christianity.”

But another German, Professor Otto Michael of Tübingen, said, “The Bible remains the theme of preaching for modern theology, but it’s no longer the authority for life and thought. Among the people, generally, its content is rather well-known, but it is not honored as the divine rule of faith and practice.” That’s an important distinction, and it’s true in our evangelical circles, as we will see later on. Professor Michael goes on to say, “So Germany, today, lacks a chart for life. It unites other nations, but cannot supply spiritual direction for itself or for them as long as the Bible is unrecognized as the dress for the body of the Word of God.” Although he was speaking in regard to Germany in his day, you could say the same thing about the United States today.

In our last political conventions, did the Republicans mention the Word of God? Did the Democrats mention it? God have mercy on the United States! These Germans have been through a great deal. The Bible provides the direction for Christianity, and the nation of Germany lost its direction when it got away from the Word of God. Maybe that’s the reason the United States can’t lead in the world today. We have departed entirely from the Word of God, and we are looking to men and their programs to solve the problems. The church stands pitiful in this hour.

The notion that much of the Bible is myth has long been held by some Protestant theologians, but they have talked about it publicly only in the last few decades. When I was in the Presbyterian Church there were men all around me who would get up and take an oath that they believed the tenets of the Westminster Confession of Faith but didn’t believe it at all. Yet they would take this oath!

A while back I got an insight into what is happening from what a newspaper reporter wrote, although I doubt if he himself recognized what all it meant. Down in Texas there was a meeting of the American Unitarian Association in the Universalist Church of America. An appointed committee gave their report on the goal of the church: “To cherish and spread the universal truths taught by Jesus and the other teachers of humanity in every age and tradition, and express pathetically, in the Judeo-Christian tradition, as love to God and love to man.” Now the delegates of this Unitarian-Universalist convention would not accept this report because they said it sounded too specifically Christian! They voted it down. They amended it to read: “To cherish, to spread the universal truths taught by the great prophets and teachers of humanity in every age and tradition immemorially, summarized in their essence as love to God and love to man.” So the Austin newspaper came out with the headline, “Jesus Ousted By Churches In Merger.” They had put Him out. Note that the first statement read “as taught by Jesus and the other teachers.” That was bad enough, but it was too good for that crowd, and they said, “Out Jesus goes. We don’t even want it to sound Christian.”

Is Christ outside the church today? If He’s going to give an invitation to many people today, He’s going to have to knock on the door from the outside because He has already been put out. That is the picture we have of Christ and the organized church today.

I was raised in the Presbyterian Church, and I owe them a great deal. They educated me: I’m a graduate of a Presbyterian prep school, a Presbyterian college, and a Presbyterian seminary. And there are very few Presbyterian ministers today who have that background, I can assure you. But I got out. The Presbyterian Church has adopted a new confession of faith that denies the Trinity and the Person of Christ! I don’t know how any real believer can live with it. The new confession denies the great basic truths of the Christian faith.

Dr. John Gersener, a professor at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, once said, “Possibly the greatest loss for Christianity is in the realm of strict doctrine and consistent discipline. The resultant, ‘easy-believe-ism’ leads to inert nominalism, which is more of a disaster to true Christianity than communism, Romanism, secularism, and sectarianism combined.” The postasy in our churches is worse than any of these other things that men are attacking today. And I could give you multiplied quotations like these, ad infinitum and ad nauseam.

I would like for you to look with me into another area in which the church has moved, in which it has no business going. And that is in this area of trying to tell the Pentagon in Washington about how to conduct a war.

This letter came to me back in May 1936. That’s a long time ago. A great many people think that this business of the church getting involved in war politics is new. But this kind of thing has been going on for many years, as this letter proves. It came from a group called the Emergency Peace Campaign of the National Peace Conference. I’ll not list the names connected with it— they are some of the old liberals, old men now or dead. This is what they wrote:

“If we did not think the religious forces of the world could stop war, create the attitude essential to build peace, we would do something other than ask you to join us in this great mission for peace.”

Now when World War II came along, none of those men dared stand out when we were at war, they all went undercover. But the minute the war was over, they came out in the same way that after a rain certain creatures come out from under the rocks. They began to spring up everywhere in this country, but they were there all the time and totally disloyal, if you please.

I have a quotation here that identifies “...organizations of so-called anti-war congresses, usually including students and well-meaning liberals, the resolutions of which are written by communists....” This is taken out of a conservative journal that doesn’t indulge in wildfire at all.

Considering that this was what some were doing as far back as the ’30s, it’s not surprising that in the late 1960s there were two thousand clerics involved in protest against the Vietnam War. You see, all of this has been moving in one direction, and it led some who were nationally known writers to come out against it very definitely, such as the following:

Today we wish to submit the companion thought that we find it difficult to understand why clergymen who support such wild talk and wild demands think they are helping their churches or contributing to the cause of religion. Among the elements of religion are order, authority, charity and peace, and we find none of these in campaigns of civil insurrection. Of 444 persons arrested in recent street disturbances here, 61 of the adult males, 26%, were clergymen.

This appeared in a national magazine.

That is the condition of the church, my beloved, and back of all of this is the rejection of the Word of God and the great premise of the Word of God. And it has been stated like this:

Where education assumes that the moral nature of man is capable of improvement, traditional Christianity assumes that the moral nature of man is corrupt or absolutely bad. Where it is assumed in education that an outside human agent may be instrumental in the moral improvement of man, in traditional Christianity it is assumed that the agent is God, and even so the moral nature of man is not improved but exchanged for a new one.

So you see that there is a direct clash today between the basic premise of the Word of God and the liberal church. How far is their departure from the faith? May I say that it has gone way out!

A fellow minister sees that I receive a little magazine put out by Orthodox Jews, and I’ve appreciated it very much because I’ve been interested in the writers’ reactions to the issues of Christianity. A while back they met with some liberals who were supposedly representing Christianity, and a Dr. Littel of the Jewish group wrote, “The agony of the breakdown of Jewish-Christian dialogue seven months ago was compounded for some of us by the theological nakedness of leading Protestant churchmen. They had no theological basis to rest upon or historical theology.” These Orthodox Jews were appalled that the liberal had no conception at all of God’s purposes with the nation Israel, and as a result they accused them of anti-Semitism. And my friend, that’s a new twist—liberalism that has boasted of its tolerance and is now being accused of being anti-Semitic because they are theologically naked!

Now I want to bring this closer to home, and it will probably hurt. We read in Jude that they deny their Master and our Lord Jesus Christ. It’s easy for you and me to point the finger at the liberal and say, “He denies the Lord, but those of us who are evangelicals, we are wonderful. We haven’t denied Him.” I say that the evangelical has largely denied Him. He is our Master and our Lord. If you want to know what I mean by this, I would like you to consider what another man has written, Dr. A.W. Tozer, a great man who has gone on to be with the Lord. Notice what he said:

Let me state the cause of my burden. It is this: Jesus Christ has today almost no authority at all among the groups that call themselves by His Name. By these, I mean not the Roman Catholics nor the liberals, nor the various quasi-Christian cults. I do mean Protestant churches generally, and I include those that protest the loudest that they are in spiritual descent from our Lord and His apostles, mainly the evangelicals.

Now this may hurt, but continue reading:

It is a basic doctrine of the New Testament that at His resurrection the man Jesus was declared by God to be both Lord and Christ and that He was invested by the Father with absolute Lordship over the church which is His body. All authority is His in heaven and in earth. In His own proper time He will exert it to the full, but during this period in history He allows this authority to be challenged or ignored. And just now it is being challenged by the world and agnored by the church.

The present position of Christ and the gospel churches may be likened to that of a king in a limited constitutional monarchy. The king, sometimes depersonalized by the term “the crown,” is in such a country no more than a traditional rallying point, a pleasant symbol of unity and loyalty, much like a flag or a national anthem. He is lauded, feted, and supported, but his real authority is small. Nominally, he is head over all, but in every crisis someone else makes the decisions. On formal occasions he appears in his royal attire to deliver the tame, colorless speech put into his mouth by the real rulers of the country. The whole thing may be no more than a good-natured make-believe, but it is rooted in antiquity. It is a lot of fun, and no one wants to give it up.

Among the gospel churches, Christ is now in fact little more than a beloved symbol. “All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name” is the church’s national anthem and the cross is their official flag, but in the week-by-week services of the church and the day-by-day conduct of her members someone else, not Christ, makes the decisions. Under proper circumstances Christ is allowed to say, “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden,” or “Let not your heart be troubled,” but when the speech is finished, someone else takes over. Those in actual authority decide the moral standards of the church as well as all objectives....

Not only does Christ have little or no authority, His influence also is becoming less and less. I would not say that He has none, only that it is small and diminishing. A fair parallel would be the influence of Abraham Lincoln over the American people. Honest Abe is still the idol of the country. The likeness of his kind, rugged face, so homely that it is beautiful, appears everywhere. It is easy to grow misty-eyed over him. Children are brought up on stories of his love, his honesty and his humility.

But after we have gotten control of our tender emotions, what have we left? No more than a good example which, as it recedes into the past, becomes more and more unreal and exercises less and less real influence. Every scoundrel is ready to wrap Lincoln's long, black coat around him. The cold light of political facts in the United States, the constant appeal to Lincoln by the politicians is a cynical joke.

The Lordship of Jesus is not quite forgotten among Christians, but it has been mostly relegated to the hymnal where all responsibility toward it may be comfortably discharged in a glow of pleasant religious emotion. Or it is taught as a theory in the classroom. It is rarely applied to practical living. The idea that the man Christ Jesus has absolute and final authority over the whole church and over all the members in every detail of their lives is simply not now accepted as truth by the rank and file of evangelical Christians.*

*From “The Waning Authority of Christ in the Churches” in God Tells the Man Who Cares by A. W. Tozer. Copyright 1970, 1992 by Christian Publications. Used by permission.

Does that hurt? May I say to you, that’s the picture today of the church.

Now let's get right down to the nitty-gritty: How does all this work in life? A great many people today, members of the church, say, “Oh, I love Jesus! I dedicated my life to Him.” But where are these people on Sunday evenings? Where will they be on the night that their church holds a Bible study? Where will they be when there’s something that can be done for Christ today? Where are they? Well, they are willing to sing the songs but not much else.

Let me illustrate this with a poem that came out during World War II. At that time there had been absenteeism in the plants that supplied the needed material to these fellows at Bataan. Some of us remember — we would like to forget it, of course. One day at dusk during the tragic, bloody battle at Bataan, a 19-year-old lad from Indiana scribbled in poetic form the burden of his heart. Early the following morning he was killed. The burial detail found his poem:

And if our lines should sag and break Because of things you failed to make, That extra tank, that ship, that plane For which we waited all in vain. Will you then come to take the blame? For we, not you, must pay the cost, Of battles you, not we, have lost.

With this thought in mind, let’s make application to absenteeism in our own church. Here is another piece that hurts—not a poem exactly—it’s called “The Empty Pew.”

I am an empty pew.
I vote for the world as against God.
I deny the Bible.
I mock at the preached Word of God.
I rail at Christian fellowship.
I laugh at prayer.
I break the Fourth Commandment;
I am a witness to solemn vows broken.
I advise men to eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.
I join my voice with every atheist and rebel against human and divine law.
I am an empty pew.
I am a grave in the midst of the congregation.
Read my epitaph and be wise.

We say we love the Lord, that He is our Master, the Captain of our salvation. But you let a captain in the army call the roll at five in the morning, and they’re all present. There is not a one of those fellows who found it easy to get up to be ready for inspection at five in the morning. Don’t tell me today that we evangelicals are not denying Him as our Master and our Lord. We are!

We are living in days of apostasy, and we measure ourselves by those around us. We look at Mr. Jones and Mrs. Smith, and we say, “Boy, I’m better than they are!” Maybe you are, but you can’t really call Christ your Captain or your Lord. Do you remember He said that there will be those who after death will stand before Christ and say, “Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? And in thy name have cast out demons? And in thy name done many wonderful works?” (Matthew 7:22). But He will say, “I never knew you; depart from me, ye that work iniquity” (Matthew 7:23).

I think that we have come to a day of apostasy that is frightful, and it’s easy to see what’s happening around us and to point it out as I have done here. But what about you and me? I am confident that we are moving into the night and that the time is coming—not too far away— when there will have to be a separation made within the church. If the Rapture doesn’t make the
separation, then you can be sure of one thing, the world outside is going to make you pay a price for being a Christian.

It’s interesting what both Peter and Paul have to say about this. In Peter’s second letter we read:

Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election [more] sure; for if ye do these things [mentioned in verses 5-9], ye shall never fall. (2 Peter 1:10)

The apostasy is a falling away, and Peter says here that it might be well for you and for me to give diligence to make our calling and election more sure—because you and I could fall.

When I was in seminary, I sat next to a fine-looking, brilliant young man. He would have been the greatest preacher to come out of our class. He is today a rank atheist! Yet he had ten times the ability and talent that any of the rest of us had. Paul said, “Examine yourselves, whether you are in the faith; prove yourselves...” (2 Corinthians 13:5). Honestly, in this day of apostasy, when the church everywhere has cooled, what kind of life are you living for Christ? I think that all of us should examine ourselves.

...Know ye not yourselves how Jesus Christ is in you, unless you are discredited? (2 Corinthians 13:5)

This is what Peter and Paul say to us. You may think in this day of apostasy that you can’t be carried away. Well, all of us need to make a personal inventory.