Warning to the Church

The biblical job description of pastors and elders is twofold. First, they are to guard the flock from false teachers trying to invade the church from the outside and from false teachers rising up from within. (Acts:20:28-30 [28] Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood. [29] For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock. [30] Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them.
See All...) Second, church leaders are also to: “equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.” (Ephesians:4:12-14 [12] For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: [13] Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ: [14] That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive;
See All...)

It is not an easy job. People who say we need to get back to “first-century Christianity” may not realize that leading the early church was no picnic.  It was a difficult job in the First Century, and in fact, nearly all of the New Testament, with the exception of Philemon, was written to refute false teaching and false prophets, as well as correct bad doctrine and bad behavior. As we read the opening pages of Revelation, we find these issues were still plaguing the church.

Many take for granted that celebrity pastors, Christian educational institutions, Christian publishing houses, magazines, periodicals, Christian television, and radio stations are “safe” and can be trusted. It is assumed that they certainly would be more biblically informed. Often, by the time the pastor and elders realize there is a problem with a particular false teaching in the church, quite a few in the congregation are already infected with false teaching and are passing it along. In other cases, pastors themselves, trusting the above sources, are infected and deceived themselves. When that happens, they may go on the defensive and attack anyone who exposes the unbiblical teachings and practices they have adopted. It is truly a full-time job watching out for twisted teachings coming into the church from supposedly Christian sources.

Megan Basham’s recent book, Shepherds for Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda, has caused quite a stir, and many celebrity leaders are not happy with her exposure. For example, she wrote:

North Carolina megachurch pastor J. D. Greear, while president of the Southern Baptist Convention, encouraged his congregation to minimize speaking about sexual sins like homosexuality, saying they should not “shout about what the Bible whispers about”—as if the destruction of Sodom and Paul’s description in Romans 1 of the progression of societal depravity were mere murmurs. 

The damage of downplaying and minimizing God’s word on something He has clearly spoken in the Old and New Testaments had already been done. There is no question that this minimization of homosexuality is something Greear taught, but some believe that his reversal should have prevented its inclusion. Was Greear unaware of God’s position on sexual immorality or was he downplaying it to appease those with an unbiblical agenda? We don’t know the answer to that question.

The problem of defending a favored preacher, teacher, or celebrity Christian is not new, certainly, but we first encountered this type of defensiveness in 1991. Dr. Murray J. Harris, a beloved professor of New Testament exegesis and theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois (TEDS) at the time, was teaching that Jesus was not physically resurrected but had a non-physical, non-corporeal body. The late Dr. Norman L. Geisler had addressed this heretical Jehovah’s Witness-like view with an eye toward repentance and restoration. Several ministries to Jehovah’s Witnesses, including Witness Inc., MCOI, and others, joined Dr. Geisler to address the issue. Dr. Harris’s defenders took a tactic similar to the one Basham is currently experiencing. We explained familiar practice in “Fraternity Over Orthodoxy”:

When we were addressing Murray J. Harris’s false teaching on the Resurrection, nearly all of the professors at Trinity College defended Harris, and many outside of the institution defended him as well. “He is a nice guy,” they said. “He is a faithful husband,” we were told. “He is a brilliant scholar on the original languages,” it was claimed. All of those things may have been true, but none of them addressed the problem at all. Unfortunately, nice men and women, faithful spouses, and brilliant scholars can slip into heresy the same as nasty guys, cheaters, and dim bulbs. Our focus did not encompass his personality or scholarship. We were solely concerned with his teaching that the Resurrection was not physical. He essentially took the same view on the Resurrection as the Jehovah’s Witnesses!

Although this was resolved after several years, with Harris changing his view, though not correcting his book, many pastors had already been influenced by his teachings and books, and the lack of biblical understanding on this central issue of the faith still lingers in churches.

At the turn of the Millennium, the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) faced another doctrinal dilemma: could members hold to the view that God is not omniscient and hence does not know the future, a view known as “Open Theism?” In 2003, ETS essentially punted, and both rejected Open Theism and maintained members who held that view. I…and several others resigned. In my resignation letter, I enumerated the reasons for my resignation and suggested:

The irony here is that when theological terms cease to have stable meanings, Christianity not only becomes spiritually impotent but also academically suspect. ETS’s watering down of the meaning of “evangelical” is thus costly not only in spiritual but also intellectual terms, and thus is an ethical dilemma. It may be the case that the Evangelical Theological Society, in an effort to be honest with the public, should consider changing the organizational name to the Elastic Theological Society and thus avoid representing itself as an organization that continues to uphold a biblical worldview.

https://midwestoutreach.org/2024/09/19/warnings-to-the-church/