Paul's Passing Thoughts

What’s wrong with you? “You seem to struggle with being content.” “Well, there’s no such thing as a perfect church,” “Are you one of those ‘heresy hunters?’” “You aren’t a ‘church-hopper’ are you?” “Nobody else has a problem with what your talking about; maybe you should take a deeper look at your own heart.” “Come now brother, you act like there’s a false teacher behind every bush.”

If your a zealous Christian with a deep love for the truth, the above statements might sound familiar to you, but it just might be that the trouble isn’t in your set (or head). It took several years for the following to sink into my head: if one takes Scripture seriously, we must believe that solid New Testament churches will be the exception in our day, and not the norm. In fact, the big question is not where to find a “good” church, but rather what to do, and how to think about the fact that such churches will be extremely rare in our day. Julia Duin took a stab at it in her book, “Quitting Church: Why the Faithful Are Fleeing and What to Do about it.” I think her book describes the symptoms well and offers a reasonable solution to the problem. More on that in my close.

First, I must believe that any mentality that fosters the idea that “there are many good churches out there, but you have to find them,” couldn’t be true. Why? Because the coming of Christ and His ascension marks an “age” that will be characterized by an unprecedented attack on the truth unrivaled in all of redemptive history. I delve into this in detail in the following post: https://paulspassingthoughts.wordpress.com/2009/06/24/an-apostolic-call-to-discernment-in-the-%E2%80%9Clast-days%E2%80%9D/

Christ said the following in Luke 18:8, “…when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” In the very beginning of the New Testament age, all-out warfare between truth and error was a raging fire, mostly WITHIN the church. Almost all of the New Testament books are primarily written to address doctrinal error / heresy WITHIN the church, or address that problem as a secondary issue. The only exception I can think of is Philemon. Furthermore, it is clear that looking forward historically, the apostles made it clear that the problem would only get worse: “while evil men and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived” (2Timothy 3:13). Also, the apostle Paul warned Timothy, “For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine” (2Timothy 4:2,3). Got that? Men will not TOLERATE sound doctrine in the last days; and again, I think the apostle is talking about men within the the church. And with bad doctrine comes the usual results:

“But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God-having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them” (2Timothy 3:1-5).

Paul said the times would be “terrible,” and I have to believe that the Holy Spirit isn’t given to exaggeration. Frankly, when you consider the mindset of today’s church in regard to the sufficiency of Scripture, what could be more descriptive than “having a form of godliness but denying its power”? Forget biblical counseling for serious life problems, its been replaced with Church-in-a-Bottle and Saint Sigmund. Without getting sidetracked further, I might also mention Peter’s description of the latter-day characteristic regarding eschatology (2Peter 3:3-10). The church’s disdain for last things has become very prevalent, especially in this decade.

However, this isn’t the picture we are coming to grips with in our day. We don’t want to think about how bad it really is when the kingdom of darkness has been perfecting its trade for 2000 years. The apostle Paul was consumed with defending the truth on every front, and warned that false teachers would increase, not decrease; and again, that was 2000 years ago!

But there’s hope. The manual for doing church right hasn’t gone anywhere; the truth still waits for all who will follow. Julia Duin seemed to advocate home churches that aren’t constrained by church hierarchies. Perhaps, but I do think new churches that have the right biblical goals are a good solution to the problem. I also think that such churches will have to remember the following: the kingdom of darkness will seek to snuff them out early on; where there is life, there is CHANGE; the Bible must be the final authority on EVERYTHING, and; a hermeneutic used for interpretation of the Scripture must be known and agreed upon. The problem is huge, but God never leaves his children without remedy.

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