These
are times of moral and religious confusion and it is sometimes hard
to distinguish the false from the true.
Our faithful Lord has tried
to save us from the consequences of our own blindness by repeated warnings
and many careful instructions. It will pay us to give close attention
to His words.
Toward the end of the age,
we are told, there shall be a time of stepped-up religious activity
and frenzied expectation, growing out of the turbulent conditions prevailing
among nations. The language is familiar to most Christians: "Wars
and rumors of wars. . . nation shall rise against nation. . . famines,
and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. Then shall they
deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be
hated of all nations and then shall many be offended, and shall betray
one another, and shall hate one another."
Concurrent with this state
of affairs will be a great increase in religious excitement and supernatural
happenings generally. "For many shall come in my name, saying,
I am Christ; and shall deceive many. . . And many false prophets shall
rise. . . Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or
there; believe it not. For there shall arise false Christs, and false
prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if
it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect."
Many tender-minded Christians
fear to sin against love by daring to inquire into anything that comes
wearing the cloak of Christianity and breathing the name of Jesus. They
dare not examine the credentials of the latest prophet to hit their
town lest they be guilty of rejecting something which may be of God.
They timidly remember how the Pharisees refused to accept Christ when
He came, and they do not want to be caught in the same snare, so they
either reserve judgment or shut their eyes and accept everything without
question. This is supposed to indicate a high degree of spirituality.
But in sober fact it indicates no such thing. It may indeed be evidence
of the absence of the Holy Spirit.
Gullibility is not synonymous
with spirituality. Faith is not a mental habit leading its possessor
to open his mouth and swallow everything that has about it the color
of the supernatural. Faith keeps its heart open to whatever is of God,
and rejects everything that is not of God, however wonderful it may
be.
"Try the spirits"
is a command of the Holy Spirit to the Church. We may sin as certainly
by approving the spurious as by rejecting the genuine. And the current
habit of refusing to take sides is not the way to avoid the question.
To appraise things with a heart of love and then to act on the results
is an obligation resting upon every Christian in the world. And the
more as we see the day approaching.
How can we tell whether
or not a man or a religious demonstration is of God? The answer is easy
to find, but it will take courage to follow the facts as God reveals
them to us.
The tests for spiritual
genuineness are two: First, the leader must be a good man and full of
the Holy Ghost. Christianity is nothing if not moral. No tricks of theology,
no demonstrations of supernatural wonders, no evidences of blind devotion
on the part of the public can decide whether or not God is in the man
or the movement. Every servant of Christ must be pure of heart and holy
of life.
While sinless perfection
is not likely to be found among even the best of men, still the leader
to be trusted is the one who lives as near like Christ as possible and
who knows how to repent in sorrow of heart when he sins against his
Lord by any act or word.
The man God honors will
be humble, self-effacing, self-sacrificing, modest, clean living, free
from the love of money, eager to promote the honor of God and just as
eager to disclaim any credit or praise on his own part. His financial
accounts will bear inspection, his ethical standards will be high and
his personal life above reproach.
But the test of moral goodness
is not enough. Every man must submit his work to the scriptural test.
It is not enough that he be able to quote from the Bible at great length
or that he claim for himself great and startling experiences with God.
Go back to the law and to the testimony. If he speak not according to
the Word it is because there is no light in him.
We who are invited to follow
him have every right, as well as a solemn obligation, to test his work
according to the Word of God. We must demand that every claimant for
our confidence present a clean bill of health from the Holy Scriptures;
that he do more than weave in a text occasionally, or hold up the Bible
dramatically before the eyes of his hearers. His doctrines must be those
of the Scriptures. The Bible must dominate his preaching. He must preach
according to the Word of God.
The price of following
a false guide on the desert may be death. The price of heeding wrong
advice in business may be bankruptcy. The price of trusting to a quack
doctor may be permanent loss of health. The price of putting confidence
in a pseudo-prophet may be moral and spiritual tragedy. Let us take
heed that no man deceive us.
Reference:
The Set of The Sail, A.W. Tozer, chapter 6
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