COMPROMISING EVANGELICALS

 

Now With The Lord

 

In Jeremiah 12:9, God's people had become, so degraded and idolatrous that He calls them a "speckled bird" which is literally a bird with a vulturous nature. Judah had surrounded herself with similar birds of prey, lost her separated and distinctive character and now God had temporarily forsaken her and permitted her to fall in the hands of her enemies. The words of verse 10 give the painful picture of compromise.

"Many pastors have  destroyed my vineyard, they have trodden my portion under foot, they have made my pleasant portion a desolate wilderness."

 

The Way of Least Resistance

 

What a vivid but tragic picture of present day! Many say: It doesn't make any difference what you believe as long as you are sincere! We're  not interested in doctrine, we just preach Jesus! Associations are not important, it's what you believe that counts! There is much loose, unscriptural thinking and practice on the prowl today and many Christians are falling for it. The way of least-resistance becomes the philosophy of many who follow the way of compromise and disobedience in this apostate, Laodicean age.

I see these things happening in a crescendo that is moving surreptitiously toward the darkness of the anti-christ. I'm moved with awe and fear as I see men who a few years ago stood for fundamentalism now falling into the insidious clutches of compromise and disobedience.

What has happened to such scriptures as the following: "Can two walk together, except they be agreed?" Amos 3:3; "Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness but rather reprove them." Eph. 5:11; 2 Cor. 6:14-18; James 4:4; 1 John 2:15-17.

It is sad to watch, but several of the American Fellowships and associations that a few years ago stood soundly as fundamentalists are now fractionalizing all over the nation. Instead of having several large, strong groups, we are splitting into scores of small organizations. What has caused this fragmentation or fractionalization?

There is no doubt in my mind that our leaders, many of them envisioning dreams of personal greatness and bit by the virus of bigness, have been led astray into unscriptural channels of compromise. Many of them laugh and scoff at old-fashioned scriptural standards of separation. Many have lost completely the scriptural concept of the local church. As a result, there has been a steady "grass roots" awakening and turning back to biblical PRINCIPLES and STANDARDS and SEPARATION and I say AMEN!

Let's not support compromise! Let's arise to the need of the hour, pay the price whatever the cost, and "stand in the gap before men for the land." It may cost! It may hurt! We may lose some friends! I may lose meetings over the issue, but I have spent 45 years in the gospel ministry and I don't want to spend my sunset years of my life walking arm in arm with ecumenical compromise and dishonoring associations.  We may not walk with the majority but we can be a fundamental minority. This was true in Christ's day as well as Paul's and it can be true of us being faithful.