Subject: What is the "Force of Faith"? |
Bible Note: There is similarily a certain "hardness of heart" in the teachings of Jesus and His apostles against false teachers. Is it a sacrilege to venture even to ask whether contemporary false teachers and their flock should not be troubled by this scriptural "hardness of heart" that soundly condemns false doctrines, along with those who promulgate them. and also with those who support, believe, and are deceived by them? Is it troubling that Paul was ready to preach the gospel because it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes? [cf. Rom.1:15,16]. Is it troubling and demonstrative of a hardness of heart that Paul charged Timothy to "Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables."? [2 Tim. 4:2,4]. Is is troubling and and was it hard-hearted of Jesus to say, "Many false prophets will rise up and deceive many."? [Matt.24:11]. Our politically correct society, grounded as it is in secular humanism, is breeding a whole generation of namby-pamby, spineless citizens who have no real moral compass or, having one, are by and large too timid to assert whatever Christian convictions they have for fear of offending someone or being ostracised from a society the mainstream of which recognizes no moral or spiritual absolutes, no accountability of man but to man himself, and no such entity as the sovereignty of God. Into this maelstrom of confusion and relativism many who claim to profess Christianity have fallen to such an extent that for them the biblical term "sound doctrine" no longer has any real relevance. They have, hosts of them, diluted the Christian faith from a biblical God-centered theology to a secularly humanistic, feel-good, man-centered (and far more lucrative) theology. --Hank |