"Always after a defeat and a respite,
the Shadow takes another shape and grows again"
Gandalf the Grey
Why do heresies persist?
Church history tells the story of the battle between truth and error. Heresies arise, gain a following, are opposed and refuted from Scripture, and then the Church moves on and advances in the truth. Because of this we have great statements like the Nicene Creed and the Definition of Chalcedon.
But if these errors have been dealt with in the past why do they come back again and again? Why do people today believe old heresies? There are three reasons.
1. The devil still deceives people into believing heresies by using human instruments to promote attractive and plausible teaching. He will continue to do this until Christ returns in glory.
2. The warnings and lessons from history are ignored or unknown. If we are ignorant of the past we will fail to see that heresies that today appear new, innovative and interesting are as old as dirt. Many of the errors finding a home in evangelicalism today were tried and found wanting by our great-great-grandfathers in the faith at the bar of Scripture.
3. Throughout history those who deny the truth and choose a different gospel are limited in the options available to them.
In his study of heresies Harold Brown concluded that “over and over again, in widely separated cultures, in different centuries, the same basic misunderstandings and misinterpretations of the person and work of Christ and his message reappear. The persistence of the same stimulus, so to speak, repeatedly produces the same or similar reactions.”
3 comments:
The Pilgrim is a nut.
Dear Brother Pilgrim,
You are right about the man, but wrong on doctrine. It's a pity you're not a Calvinist or Lutheran. But you're right ... the Jesuits had long infiltrated Evangelicalism. Liberal Protestants aren't the only ones ...
Yes, Pat Robertson, Satanist - Pentecostalism and Charismaticism - one of the Antichrist's crown stratagems.
There is not going to be any revival but the great falling away ...
BTW, count Ian Paisley too ... another Freemason.
Unrepentant Freemasons are under the eternal curse of God ... and so let it be.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now and forever shall be, world without end.
AMEN.
John MacArthur & Pretrib Rapture
Who knows, maybe John (Reformedispy) MacArthur is right and the greatest Greek scholars (Google "Famous Rapture Watchers"), who uniformly said that Rev. 3:10 means PRESERVATION THROUGH, were wrong. But John has a conflict. On the one hand, since he knows that all Christian theology and organized churches before 1830 believed the church would be on earth during the tribulation, he would like to be seen as one who stands with the great Reformers. On the other hand, if John has a warehouse of unsold pretrib rapture material, and if he wants to have "security" for his retirement years and hopes that the big California quake won't louse up his plans, he has a decided conflict of interest. Maybe the Lord will have to help strip off the layers of his seared conscience which have grown for years in order to please his parents and his supporters - who knows? One thing is for sure: pretrib is truly a house of cards and is so fragile that if a person removes just one card from the TOP of the pile, the whole thing can collapse. Which is why pretrib teachers don't dare to even suggest they could be wrong on even one little subpoint! Don't you feel sorry for the straitjacket they are in? While you're mulling all this over, Google "Pretrib Rapture Dishonesty" for a rare behind-the-scenes look at the same 180-year-old fantasy.
Miriam
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