Questions, Admonitions and Warnings

This is a part of one of the last chapters of my new book called: The Biblical Doctrine of Separation: The Unhardened Heart. 

For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock (Acts 20:29).

But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction. And many shall follow their pernicious ways; by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of. And through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you (2 Pet. 2:1–3).

It has come all the way to this that we can use these two sad and grave messages from Paul and Peter as a quote because we are here when we have apostasy, we have false teachings in our churches, and not here and there but almost everywhere, and they have many followers.

Maybe you think that I am exaggerating, that I have no idea of what I am saying; to accuse brothers in Christ of being apostates, and being false Christians, Christians in name only, who have left the true faith. But let me ask in all humbleness: if you believe that Scripture is God’s perfect Word, all of it, and you look around: do you see faithfulness to a perfect and inspired Word of God? Do you see it in few or in many places? Do you see great reverence toward a holy God? Do you see separation with Christians from the world and unto the Lord? Do you hear from the pulpit how important it is that the Christian shall live his life in fear of God, separated from this world? Do you hear from the pulpit about the danger of worldliness? Or that ye should be careful with what you watch, read and listen to? Do the pastor sigh and cry over all the abominations that we have around us? If you answer no to these questions then is what you see apostasy.

I know that the only places I am able to view are Sweden and what I can view on YouTube and read in the press. We have a few faithful congregations in Sweden, we have countless faithful Christians in Sweden who I believe “sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst” (Ezek. 9:4) of Sweden and where they live. But we have no faithful denominations in Sweden, “they are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one” (Rom. 3:12). This is our reality, and I believe this is the reality for many.

The downgrade of Scripture that we see, and the irreverence toward God and his Word, the preaching we hear, not of the gospel, but a message they themselves believe to be from both God and man, and which they translate into different messages dependent on the different contexts the receiver is residing in, and done arbitrarily and contrary to the clear commandment of Jesus Christ, and impacted by their false idols which today are earthly wisdom and worldly science and philosophies mark them as wolves. It is with great sadness I feel compelled to write this. But as someone who lived in blatant rebellion for more than a decade, I must warn the church. What they preach is not the truth of Scripture. They even admit it, we just do not listen. The “perverse things” (Acts 20:30) Paul is referring to is this deformed and corrupted and uncertain message they preach to draw disciples away. Therefore, remember says Paul, how I did not cease from warning about this. We have been here for a while, and it is time that someone is telling the truth again because it has been said so many times throughout our church history. Let us return to the Lord in repentance and praying for forgiveness, and let us separate ourselves to the Lord.

I believe that Christendom’s lack of separation is one of the most fatal decisions it has ever taken. Is has gone out from God’s protective commandments. What do we think God meant by giving all of these commandments and warnings? Did he give it to us just for fun, or out of spite? How can we justify our disobedience? We cannot. But liberal Christendom has used the last two hundred years to find clever ways to get out of God’s commandments, and it is so very clever, using its wisdom and knowledge to try to outsmart God. How mindless it is. What does Ps. 2:1–4 say, “Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain ting? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed, saying, Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us. He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision.” We cannot outsmart God. We will be hold accountable for our words, and teachings, and deeds. Maybe they want to repudiate that statement also? The Heb. word used for “imagine” is הָגָה (hagah) meaning “to growl, groan, to sigh, to mutter,” and is used figuratively “to meditate,” therefore do we have translations like, “meditate on a vain thing?” (LSB), “plot a vain thing?” (NKJV), “devising a vain thing?” (NASB).

This is what liberal Christendom has done, it has raged against the Lord, and it has plotted against him, but the LORD will have it in derision, LSB even translates with, “He who sits in the heavens laughs, The Lord mocks them.” This is a Psalm about Christ and his incarnation and his reign where the kings of the earth set themselves against him, and we as them have taken counsel against the living God and his commandments and precepts. The liberals say, “let us break away from Scripture,” God does not see or care, and since he is only love, love, love we can be rather certain that he will not punish us for anything. Let us also remember that we have liberals in different stages. We have them that outright deny there exist an Almighty God, and we have them we mostly have met in this book, who deny a perfect, and inerrant, and infallible Word of God. They are in a way more dangerous because their lies are much harder to catch, and they are in a way careful not to be too specific either. But sometimes they have to show their true colour. Be not deceived. They might be the nicest person you have ever met, having a very disarming calm and pleasant reasoning, and they seem to be listening, but it is all a show.

I am not saying that they consciously deceive, I do not think they do, but they themselves have invited this level and downgrade of God’s Word. And it does not matter if they think they are pursuing the truth. They have simply determined that the Word of God is not infallible and inerrant, and from this we only get detrimental teachings that do not lead to anything but condemnation.

I am truly at a loss for what the message of contemporary Christianity is because it is a great discrepancy between what their homepages state and what they in fact teach, and themselves live by. But they no longer preach the gospel, since they do not preach about man’s sin and depravity, they do not preach about Jesus Christ’s perfect life or substitutionary sacrifice, that he is risen from the dead, and what that means to us; they do not preach salvation and deliverance from sin, or about separation from the world and unto the Lord, or about whom God is and his attributes. They do not preach about the Christian life, or about the second coming of Christ. There is no anticipation of his near return, they have a kind of withdrawn presence, like someone staring with empty gaze out the window, in a way are they not present in this time and age, not seeing the writings on the wall, believing all is more than fine (Dan. 5). They do not preach the fear of God since if God exists at all he is described as a kind of Santa-clause, they say things that we follow Jesus, and the ground of everything is Jesus, but they do not want to read the Bible. I then wonder which Jesus do they follow? To my knowledge there is only one place where Jesus is revealed and that is through Scripture. And many have a calling they say. A woman can say that Jesus called me to be a pastor. On what ground did he call her since it would be contrary to what Scripture reveals? Many in contemporary Christendom has no knowledge of anything biblical, it is mostly empty words meaning nothing at all.

Salvation or what they now call it today is clothed in a language with a kind of message if they would like to come in and get an ice-cream. Who would not want that since they have all kinds of ice-cream, there is one for everyone, they have the universal message that fits all and everyone. No one is excluded. Come as you are and stay as you are if that makes you happy, or change if that makes you happy, as long as you stay and are happy and content everything is fine.

Scripture is full of grave warnings and instructions for our life, and having the greatest message in the whole world of deliverance from sin, it being full of truth, full of warnings, full of descriptions of punishment, and of people being saved without cause, showing a God that is active in salvation and in condemnation, in helping and in chastising. God is so gracious and so kind, and he is so strict; he is holy, we should fear him. He is our Creator.