Subtle Signs
When Joshua became an old man, he assembled all the tribes of Israel together at Shechem. He called for the elders of Israel, their heads, their judges, and their officers (Josh. 24:1). Based on the speech he gave to them, one would conclude that he saw evidences that some were compromising their faith. He exhorted Israel to “put away their gods,” for apparently some had already started worshiping Canaanite deities. He said,
Now therefore fear the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in truth: and put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the flood, and in Egypt; and serve ye the Lord. And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord (Josh. 24:14-15).
When Israel agreed to serve the Lord, he commanded:
Ye are witnesses against yourselves that ye have chosen you the Lord, to serve him. And they said, We are witnesses. Now therefore put away, said he, the strange gods which are among you, and incline your heart unto the Lord God of Israel (Josh. 24:22-23).
Joshua saw evidence that some among the Israelites were departing from the faith. Maybe there were early signs (trends) or maybe there were blatant examples of apostasy. At any rate, he knew the end to which such things lead and called this assembly to stop the growing development of the apostasy. Apparently, he was successful for the Scriptures says, “And Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders that overlived Joshua, and which had known all the works of the Lord, that he had done for Israel” (Josh. 24:31). Would to God that one could be as successful as Joshua was in averting the disasters that threaten God’s people today. There are signs for shifting among us about which brethren need to be warned.
A Loss of the Love of Truth
The Scriptures teach men to love the truth. Solomon wrote, “Buy the truth, and sell it not; also wisdom, and instruction, and understanding” (Prov. 23:23). Jesus emphasized the same truth when he compared the precious kingdom to finding a treasure hidden in a field or a goodly pearl. He said, Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field; the which when a man hath found, he hideth, and for joy thereof goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant man, seeking goodly pearls: Who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had, and bought it (Matt. 13:44-46).
In both parables, Jesus teaches his disciples to sacrifice whatever they must sacrifice in order to obtain and retain the truth.
This spirit of hungering for and clinging to the truth is a guiding principle of Christianity. The hunger and love for the truth is manifest in the desire to restore the New Testament church in our own time and to attain unity through the restoration of that New Testament church. The restorers believed that unity could be achieved when men gave up all of their creeds and unauthorized practices so that all men could unite on the revealed teachings of the Bible.
This love for the truth is manifest in many ways, but here are a few of the ways that I remember witnessing and was impressed by as I grew up.
• Preachers reading from and quoting the Bible frequently in their lessons.
• Members turning in their Bibles to read along and taking notes to study at home.
• Announcing from the pulpit that, should one think that the speaker was teaching anything contrary to the word of God, he could be welcome to speak from our pulpit and show us wherein we are in error.
• Members who were committing the word of Scripture to heart so that they would be ready to give answer when someone asked them what they believed about a given subject.
Witnessing that these things are done with less frequency is symptomatic of subtle changes among us. Do you honestly believe that the churches among us would allow someone in our audience to say, “I disagree with what was preached and would like to make arrangements to reply to it”? If so, how many of them? Some brethren have castigated debate; it is shunned and avoided. The rejection of honorable, public debate as an act of carnality by many brethren causes me to believe that the spirit is dying among us.
Where the open search for truth does not exist, one creates a seed bed in which false doctrine thrives and grows. In such cases, the only thing that is necessary for apostasy to occur is for the leadership to become committed to some error. When that happens, the forces that are needed to stop error have already been eliminated and the movement away from the truth cannot be curtailed. These subtle changes in attitude toward the truth portend trouble ahead.
Castigating Those Who Expose Error
Another not so subtle change that is occurring among us pertains to brethren’s attitude toward those who expose error. Both the Old and New Testaments hold up for emulation the work of those men who risked their lives in standing against sin and error in their day. Here are some of those heroes of faith: Elijah’s work in withstanding the prophets of Baal on Mt. Carmel (1 Kings 18), the young prophet who announced God’s judgment against the altar at Bethel in the days of Jeroboam I (1 Kings 13), Micaiah who foretold the death of Ahab at great personal risk (1 Kings 22), Jeremiah whose prophecies led to his being thrown into a pit (Jer. 38), Paul who withstood Peter to his face (Gal. 2:11-14), and Peter who rebuked the Sanhedrin when they tried to squelch the gospel he was preaching (Acts 4:18-20; 5:29).
Jesus noted the people in his day who sang the praises of the prophets but had the dispositions and attitudes of those who killed them. He said,
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! Because ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous, and say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets. Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers. Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell? (Matt. 23:29-33).
What he was describing is the honor and tribute given by word of mouth to the prophets in contrast to the persecution they inflicted on those who walked in the steps of the prophets.
Our own age is not exempt from error. We have popular brethren among us who teach things contrary to divine revelation on divorce and remarriage. When a faithful gospel preacher rises up to challenge the false teaching being done by a well-known brother, which teaching divides local churches, a large host of brethren condemn the man who exposes the false doctrine, all the while admitting that what the popular preacher teaches on divorce and remarriage is false. One may mouth his tributes to Elijah, Micaiah, Jeremiah, Peter, and Paul, but so long as he condemns and castigates those faithful brethren who walk in the footsteps of those prophets by laying their lives on the line to expose false teaching, he is guilty of the very thing Jesus condemned!
The tragedy of this scenario gets worse. Were you a young preacher witnessing this scene, what would you think about and learn from it? Would you not conclude, “If I want to be a successful preacher, I better keep my mouth shut when some prominent brother teaches error or my brethren will say about me what they are saying about this brother who exposes the false teaching of this popular preacher”? Consequently, this environment creates preachers without the backbone to withstand error.
Conclusion
I have no desire to go down that road. Others may travel that road if they please, for there is nothing I can do to stop them; they have free will. However, as for me and my house, we choose to support the truth. We plan to support the truth whether or not it condemns the popular or the unpopular preachers among us. We resolve to keep the pages of our journal and the pulpits where we preach open to those who disagree with us in order to protect ourselves from our own fallibility. (That does not mean that we will allow every person who wishes to reply to set the conditions upon which discussions will take place.) We resolve to “buy the truth and sell it not.”
Those who are marketing a more palatable gospel which removes all the rough edges of the truth lest it offend the visitors who attend services are headed down a road that will lead to certain apostasy. If Joshua were alive, I think he would call for a meeting in some modern Shechem and say, “Now therefore fear the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in truth: and put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the flood, and in Egypt; and serve ye the Lord. And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (Josh. 24:14-15). How many would respond today like that generation to whom he spake?
6567 Kings Ct., Avon, Indiana 46123 mikewillis001@cs.com
Truth
Magazine Vol. XLV: 11 p2
June 7,
2001