Compromises

This is a newly written chapter for my book The Sovereignty of God: The Forgotten Doctrine, added during 2023.

We live in a postmodern world, a world that has surrendered to the possibility of ever finding objective truth. The truth that has always been sought and pursued in the past. Jesus Christ himself tells the religious leaders of that time, “If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:31-32), so it should be something worth striving for. And Jesus says a few chapters later in the same Gospel, “Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth” (John 17:17). But in this postmodern world, the guiding principle is that truth is subjective, and what is rewarded is what is called tolerance, that is, a tolerance defined by the ruling class, anything and everything outside their definition of subjectivism, tolerance and wokeness are thus legitimate targets to mock and insult, deny and reject, and in some cases even to destroy.

The Church does not admit it, but it is clearly influenced by postmodernist thought. Its science is appreciated, quoted, used even if it is in collision with the revealed Word of God, because the Word of God is only partially true, it is only partially useful, and that is why the postmodern church is so weak in its conviction of what is true and what is false, and they are as noble as the world in their doubt. For in this world, whether Christian or secular, it is a bit fancy to doubt, to not know what is true, because truth is subjective, there is no absolute truth. It makes it sound as if doubt is something worth striving for. And to give extra weight to this, you might draw strength from all the horrible atrocities that the Nazis inflicted on God’s people, they say that the perpetrators did not doubt, they were absolutely convinced that they were doing the right thing; and doubt is supposed to be a protection against that. You see this perspective expressed, for example, in the great action game Wolfenstein: The New Order, when the main character is in an extermination and labor camp. There is a fascinating dialog there between the protagonist and the prisoner he is there to save:

– Faith. Faith kept her going, I… I… I cannot believe with such certainty. For me, in everything there must be doubt. Otherwise there’s no room to question. To learn. This place. This is the fruit of unquestioned, ferocious conviction. This is where absolute certainty leads.
– Yet you are a believer.
– I often wonder what kind of a God would sanction suffering such as this. And I question myself whether my faith… is misplaced.
– Maybe he’s testing us.
– Well, Shimshon. If he is testing us… we are failing gloriously.

It is a fascinating and important dialogue. Even Descartes said it, do not accept anything as true unless you know it to be fully true beyond doubt, don’t accept anything as true just because someone we trust says so. And it is very true that we should have a great deal of skepticism and doubt about what we see and hear in this world, it is very necessary. But that is not the doubt I am talking about. I am talking about the doubt that cannot see the Word of God as the Word of God, actually I am talking about faith and faithfulness. Somehow this modern doubt is the total opposite of the gift of faith that the LORD gives us. The doubts raised in contemporary Christianity are really just expressions of lack of faith, but they say it is about the dialogue above. So instead of entertaining their unbelief so much, they should instead turn in prayer to the Lord, who gives to all liberally if man does not doubt (Jas. 1:5-6). Man must turn away from his disbeliefs.

This doubt that is emphasized, especially in the world, saying that there is no absolute truth, and whoever says that there is an absolute truth will be mocked and at worst destroyed. The person will be taken away from his platform, if he has one. No, today it is good and desirable to not know what is true. The world today cannot even define what a woman is. If you cannot, then the truth has left you, it is not there, it is dead and buried, and behind those doubting, reasoning, and opinionated words we find wolves in sheep’s clothing, or in the words of Jeremiah, “Their tongue is as an arrow shot out; it speaketh deceit: one speaketh peaceably to his neighbour with his mouth, but in heart he layeth his wait” (Jer. 9:8). And one wonders if, in the same way, the Church of God cannot define what a Christian is, or what sin is, or what it means to be redeemed, or what sanctification means and entails in the life of a Christian. The LORD says this to the people of Judah through the prophet Jeremiah, “But thou shalt say unto them, This is a nation that obeyeth not the voice of the LORD their God, nor receiveth correction: truth is perished, and is cut off from their mouth” (Jer. 7:28). Truth was perished. It is also something special to be tolerant, it is a kind of quality you have to show, even though tolerance can be the greatest expression of true intolerance and oppression imaginable. Because it is they, the current ruling class, who define what is tolerance and what is intolerance, and what expressions can be squeezed into that view is their self-designed world view.

Lindbom says of tolerance that it is a term for two different processes, one of which is a destructive striving for heterodoxy, where every norm, opinion and principle is to be turned into a provisional one. Nothing has moral validity beyond the subjective views of the individual or interest group. The second process in the warfare of tolerance is the debate, which is based on the fact that there are no pre-existing truths, but these are nevertheless to be gathered through the clash of opinions in the debate that is allowed. They know from the beginning that it is a show. But, he says, no debate should get too deep, no one should approach the eternal truths, so that the falsity of tolerance’s search for truth becomes apparent and the debate becomes meaningless. No, they want to conduct the debate on the periphery, and with intensity, thus preventing the actualization of eternal truths and the attainment of inner peace. Tolerance in the human realm is merely a means of eradicating the last vestiges of the divine order itself. In the secular world, this is tolerance. And it has been absorbed by the Church. Genuine tolerance is forbearance, says Lindbom, the profane and false one is indifference.

And in the age of tolerance, one must also demonstrate unity, however false and impossible it may be; one sacrifices everything for it. Christianity has sacrificed truth for a false unity. In Acts it says that the church firstly held to the apostles’ doctrine, and then to the fellowship; doctrine comes first (Acts 2:42). And we are called evangelicals, in the days of William Tyndale they were called “gospellers.” Therefore are we to hold on to the Gospel, and only acknowledge true unity, where the true doctrine of Scripture is the only base for unity and reject everything else. Evangelical unity has been sought for a long time, where doctrine is discarded for the unity. They rather have unity than truth. That will never hold or work. But before we look at what they discard of the truth, let us briefly examine Schleiermacher’s influence on contemporary Christianity. In our modern world, the self is at the center, ever since Schleiermacher, truth has taken a back seat to human feelings and experiences, this was not only exported to society at large but also taken up by the church. Schleiermacher said that the Christian’s experience consisted of life and not of doctrines, it is Christ in us, not Christ revealed in Scripture and by the Holy Spirit. “The Bible is simply ’the original intepretation of the Christian feeling’, and by means of our own feeling we are free to add further ’interpretation’”.

Today it is not the truth that we seek, today it is the experience, we prefer to look inward in order to catch the inner voice, the voice of the spirit, we say, yes, the voice of god, we say, than to seek the truth of his Word, the external Word, the objective Word; the revealed Word of God has been replaced by the self-love that always looks inward, for which man lives, and he analyzes his feelings, which always guide him: the gut feeling becomes the truth; he follows his own inner impulses rather than the Word. The Pentecostal movement in Sweden was once expelled from the Baptist denomination for its doctrine of the charismatic gifts; these gifts have now been taken up by all churches in Sweden. They are all charismatic, they all look inward rather than outward to Christ. The fruits of the Spirit are not asked for, the sanctification of the Spirit is irrelevant, forgotten and neglected, but the gifts are sought. God is forgotten, you never hear anybody preaching about God, you only hear themes preached, and these themes put man at the center, his feelings, his experiences, his well-being, his traumas, and you lull him into a sense of security on the road that leads to condemnation and reprobation, they are led in groups on the broad religious road, because on the narrow road and through the strait gate you can only get through one by one. Groups do not trouble themselves there. But nobody wants to go through the strait gate; they would rather walk on the broad religious road in a light-hearted manner, without seriousness or sorrow for sins committed, and have happy days until everything stops. They do not understand that the broad religious road leads to condemnation and reprobation; and they say, Lord, Lord, haven’t we done this and that in your name, in our community of unity, casting out evil spirits, performing miracles and signs, hearing you whisper in our minds, speaking in new tongues, eating and drinking with you. We thought we were following you, doing your will, and the Lord will say to them, “I tell you, I know you not whence ye are; depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when ye shall see Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets, in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves thrust out” (Luke 13:27–28; cf. Matt. 7:13-14).

Why does not the Church take this seriously? Why do not they ask themselves: Am I walking on the narrow road, through the strait gate, or am I walking on the broad road in crowds with the other religious? Do I have the fruits of the Spirit, am I freed from sin, am I delivered and redeemed? Am I a new creation in Christ Jesus? Is my heart turned towards the Word or towards my inner self and the inner dialogue, which voice am I listening to? Do I recognize that God’s revelation is fixed in the written Word, that it is perfect as it is, or am I waiting for more, for new revelations, for more scripture, for more chapters not yet written? Obviously, some people do, they want a different Word than the one already given, they search in translations like The Passion Translation or The Message, or they read books by people who claim to have been to heaven and bring new revelations that are not in the Word, or they listen to dreams and so-called prophets with revelations that have no support in Scripture, they are obviously not satisfied with what God has bestowed on us in his goodness, grace and love, because they want more, but not of God or of his Word, but more of that which can lift man up, can give him confirmation of his own dreams and desires, more of all that is worldly, meaningless and empty, and for the man who seeks this, it is his all. People can get very enthusiastic about a prophecy they hear or a word of wisdom, they go far away to what they think is a revival, but the Word is despised.

This is where Christianity has ended up, in the therapeutic gospel: Nothing is true, but if people are good enough, they will probably go to heaven anyway. Jesus loves everyone just as they are, the spirit leads him, just listen to him, he will only confirm him if he listens carefully to the inner dialog; if he ever hears someone say: stop or no, it is not the spirit, because he will only confirm him, but it is man’s own penalizing superego that speaks, just reject it or seek help from one of the many therapists and religious counsellors who exist and who are happy to help him kill the voice of truth, the voice of conscience that has been laid down in his innermost being, and he is told to listen instead to the tone tuned to the emptiness of meaninglessness.

Sin is redefined as the failures in people’s lives, Jesus as a wise teacher who compulsorily loves all people, and God the Father, he is abandoned, should he ever appear between the lines, he is: love, love, love. And since we cannot understand Scripture, the external Word, the Word of God, we have to keep highlighting it: We do not understand Scripture, we cannot be categorical, we cannot say anything with any certainty, we have no idea what Scripture says except that God is love, love, love, and if man feels a warm flow within him that moves him to tears or laughter, then it is the spirit within that moves, and is a sign that he is truly saved if he just makes a decision to believe it.

Does anyone recognize themselves? It is both exaggerated and very true. It pains me to write this. I have read so many times now on social media, in Christian media, that some Christians are so humble that they cannot proclaim any truth. That is a measure of their humility. How can you deal with such a person? No matter what you do, such a person is the victor, so you keep quiet. With her words she has already killed any possibility of even being able to say anything else, because whatever you say will make you look like the opposite of being humble. The only thing you can do is to agree or remain silent.

We have given up on finding the truth, even though it is right in front of our eyes. And for thousands of years people have been interpreting the Scriptures, but everything that was once said about God’s Word is rejected today in many ways. The LORD says, “Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, We will not walk therein” (Jer. 6:16).

Subsequently, nothing new under the sun, historical truths are rejected, and they are rejected either by saying that they are so humble that they cannot know the truth, except that the interpretation of the past was based on misunderstanding, and lack of understanding and true knowledge, that is known for sure, or that God’s love is so great that he does not care about anything at all except that everyone should feel loved. And all of God’s attributes are rejected, and when God’s Word says that he reprobates people, they turn a blind eye to it, they say that it is not consistent to the overall love that God has expressed in his word, and in personal revelations, and in dreams and in inner dialogues, and they reject God in their own righteousness, which is so great that even God has to go and do penance and repent in sackcloth and ashes. As the LORD says in Jeremiah, “Yea, the stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed times; and the turtle and the crane and the swallow observe the time of their coming; but my people know not the judgment of the LORD. How do ye say, We are wise, and the law of the LORD is with us? Lo, certainly in vain made he it; the pen of the scribes is in vain. The wise men are ashamed, they are dismayed and taken: lo, they have rejected the word of the LORD; and what wisdom is in them?” (Jer. 8:7-9). They should know God’s righteousness, his judgments and statutes. And they say with pride: we have the law of the LORD with us, but, says the LORD, their scribes, their pastors, have turned the truth of God into a lie and contempt. They have rejected the Word of the LORD, where is their wisdom? I wonder too. What is the wisdom of abandoning the Word of God, of compromising the truth in every conceivable way?

In the 1970s and 1980s, the Pentecostal movement still showed great reverence for the Trinity and for His Word, and although I am very doubtful about their theology of Spirit-baptism, Arminian salvation and semi-Pelagianism, at that time they recognized the truth. But this changed, the movement was influenced by the world around it. The movement that warned me: don’t study theology at university, you’ll lose the truth, your faith and spirituality, has itself fallen to the desires and temptations of the world, absorbing its values, embracing its doctrines and theories, rejecting the Word of God as perfect and sufficient in itself, as the truth itself; it has stared down like Narcissus at her own reflection and cannot tear its eyes away from the beauty and wisdom it thinks it sees. Will it be able to tear itself away? God does not call for a movement, he calls us one by one, he does so because the way is narrow, and the gate is strait; I see great multitudes advancing on the religious broad road towards destruction and reprobation, and I see countless people walking on the narrow road, through the strait gate, one by one. They are called out of the world into the Kingdom of God, they are born again, given faith and repentance, and a new heart that loves the LORD and hates sin. But the movement is not like this, it is filled with both wheat and tares and only at harvest time will they be separated, the tares will be rejected and burned up and the wheat will be gathered to God (Matt. 13:24-30). But the movement denies this, everyone belongs to the wheat, everything is good fruit, everyone who has made a decision are saved. These altar calls as they are called, popularized by Finney and later taken up by Billy Graham, are loved today. But there is not a single word in the Bible that can confirm the validity of such a call, when Peter preached, he did not need to make an altar call, for the people who had been pricked in their heart by the Spirit ask Peter, what shall we do, they are told: repent and be baptized (Acts 2:37-38). Murray writes about Billy Graham’s altar calls, “Walking the aisle in response to the ’altar call’ was so closely identified with conversion that coming to Christ and coming to the front were treated as one and the same thing. Behind the practice lay the fallacy that saving faith is of the same nature as a physical decision, and that if only sinners will answer the evangelist’s invitation then grace will secure their rebirth.” The same thing is happening today. In the newspaper Dagen at the end of June 2023, a Pentecostal pastor says that since they started making an invitation to salvation (altar call) in their services, many new converts have come.

Martin Lloyd-Jones in London had not given his support to Billy Graham’s crusade in London in 1954-55, and when he talked to Graham later, in 1963, Lloyd-Jones told him that if he stopped taking public support for his campaign, stopped having liberals and Catholics on the platform, and stopped his altar calls, he would support him in England. None of this Billy Graham could give up. Francis Schaeffer expressed the same concerns as Lloyd-Jones without success. Music, altar calls and the sinner’s prayer are used instead of relying on the Word of God and the Spirit of God to do what Scripture promises. And since they no longer believe in the power of the preaching of the Word of God, they do not consider it sufficient in itself to affect the heart, and become the seed that gives life to the listener, they also need some external stimulus, so they try with worldly repetitive and suggestive music and so-called worship songs to make the people have an inner experience, then the pastor preach about church growth based on the wisdom of the world, and then the repetitive music and singing continues while the pastor prays and then he makes his altar call, and whoever then feels something, anything, can come and be saved. But the one who “gets saved” has no idea what salvation is, what sin is, what atonement is; because if he is there for the first time, he is been taught the same lessons that you get in business school where they teach you how to maximize a company’s profits, because it is the same knowledge they both use, and if he is been there many times, he may have heard some themes about how Jesus can fix his failed life, give meaning to his life, fill him with joy, and as a bonus, get him rich in the process. Anyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved, says the pastor, if you believe in the Lord, you will be saved. But this person has no idea who the Lord is. How can he be saved? How can the pastor guarantee his salvation? Is this not the religiously broad road he is leading man on?

In this setting, God is not primary either, he comes last of all. Here it is man who takes the step when this altar call is given which is omnipotent in a sense, his step makes the atonement real in his life, so the movement teaches. This is not what the Word of God says, but they ignore it because such a God does not fall within the scope of their worldly wisdom of who he is and how he is allowed to operate. But God says to Judah, he might as well have said it to contemporary Christendom, “The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means; and my people love to have it so: and what will ye do in the end thereof?” (Jer. 5:31). To where, then, will the comely and delicate Christendom turn, to the holy, eternal and true Word of God, or to the wisdom of the world? Time will tell, but my prayer is that unlike Judah, they will turn to the LORD and His eternal Word and not perish.

We cannot compromise the truth, the Word of God. We must reject every compromise, every untruthful doubt, every postmodernist inspired tolerance and false humility. The OT says there was no meeker man than Moses, but he never compromised God’s Word or commands (Num. 12:3). Neither should we, but that is exactly what contemporary Christianity is doing.

Therefore, this is a book about truth, a book about the Word of God, a book about the attributes of God, about God’s plan of reconciliation, the atoning work of Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit’s work of regeneration and sanctification, it is a book about how God elects and reprobates. I will describe Reformed theology, I will expound the Word of God, from which the reader can either reject or affirm; the reader can read for himself every Word of Scripture that is either quoted in the text or referred to. But for me, Scripture is absolutely true. Our only source of knowledge of God and all that is revealed, I will not go to any other source of knowledge than the Word of God, and the historical sources of Christianity.

This is important. I will not acquire the knowledge of the world, and there can sometimes be collisions here. Lev Sjestov describes in his book Sola fide how Erasmus and Luther debated about free will, he said that the philosopher Erasmus considered the doctrine of free will to be the weakest point in Luther’s theology, because Luther denied the freedom of the will. The problem was that they were talking about two different things, as we often do; we talk past each other. Luther believed that man is completely free to will in the world of phenomena, but man’s freedom extends only to certain limits, and beyond those limits it ceases. Erasmus had to consider the law-bound nature of philosophical phenomena; he did not understand that God was not bound by his own laws and wanted to force God into them. Luther believed that the law of nature could conflict with freedom however it wished. Man is free in all everyday events in a law-bound world, that in itself was nothing strange. But God is not bound by these constraints in the law-bound world. What I want to say with this is: Let us all stay on the same page. This is not a philosophical book; this is a theological book. I do not want anyone to read things into what I write from the wrong point of view.

Consequently, this is a book about the revealed truth of Scripture. I am not saying that I have the truth, or that I possess the truth, I am saying that the Word of God is the truth, the Son of God calls himself the truth, as λόγος (the Word). We have the truth, and we must proclaim the truth, that’s what Luther did during the Reformation, he discovered the truth and reformed the whole Christian world, this truth that the therapeutic Christianity now rejects, that the Word is perfect, that the Word gives life, that the Word gives knowledge, that the Word is Christ Jesus. We have the truth in the Word of God, that is what we will carefully study in this book.

Let us also not forget the five solas of the Reformation: Sola Gratia, Solus Christus, Sola Fide, Soli Deo Gloria and Sola Scriptura are excellent beacons to focus on so as not to get lost. They are rejected today. But they are excellent aids, so that we do not let ourselves be deceived or seduced by everything we see and hear, but that we evaluate everything based on the Word of God: salvation comes by grace alone (man adds nothing, God’s grace is the only cause), by faith alone (no works we do declare us righteous), and possible through Jesus Christ alone (there is no other way to salvation), and our lives are to be lived for the glory of God alone (God alone is to whom all glory belongs) and everything is to be tried and tested against Scripture alone (no doctrines, no revelations, nothing outside the Scriptures may formulate our doctrines), which is our only guide and authority in all things.