IMPLOSION

IMPLOSION

 

What began as erosion of the foundation has progressed to a frightening corrosion of the vital framework.  As moral decay metastasizes through our government, schools, businesses, press, entertainment, and homes, the one institution that God ordained to check and cure the malignancy of vice is herself in peril.  The Church in America is at the brink of implosion. 

The Apostle Paul, (who wrote the absolute truth under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit) compared the Church to a building.  Built on the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets with Jesus Christ the cornerstone, the true Church is the dwelling place of God through the Spirit. (Ephesians 2:20ff).  In too many quarters the Spirit has departed. 

Our pulpits no longer thunder with certainty—“Thus saith the Lord.”

Our services are no longer charged with conviction.  We don’t want anyone to go away challenged or changed.  We want them to feel loved and affirmed.  Weirsbe had it right: “We want to feel good without being good.”

And the demand of obedience, that inevitable impulse of genuine love, is mocked as legalistic.  But the desire to obey God is not legalism.  Legalists are people who zealously keep one part of God’s law while justifying their neglect of the rest of God’s law.  A legalist tithes mint and omits judgment, mercy, and faith. (Matthew 23:23). A legalist is self-righteous.  A Christian is righteous—we walk in the light as He is in the light and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son, cleanses us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:7)

Modern Christians are anxious to condemn those who carefully keep the law of God, then commend those who carelessly disregard the law of God.  For them legalism is worse than il-legalism.  The truth is that legalism and il-legalism (liberalism) will damn the unrepentant.

It is casuistry to suppose that one can abandon the foundational fundamentals of our faith—the inerrancy and authority of the Bible, the necessity of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ, the requirement of Christian holiness—in heart and in life, and the permanence of the marriage vow—without consequence.   

As the foundation has shifted and cracked from a blistering barrage of godless philosophers, cynical producers/entertainers, and skeptical worldlings, cracks in the framework of contemporary Christianity are now threatening the stability of the Church herself. 

What were at first only fissures are widening into to gaping holes.  We used to say “The Bible is inspired, inerrant, and infallible.”  But under the assault of modern criticism we retreated to, “We have the highest regard for Scripture.”  We are now being told that Holy Spirit may have misdirected Moses, or Moses may have misunderstood the Spirit, or maybe the Genesis we are reading today is not the Genesis Moses wrote—yet “we have the highest regard” for Scripture.  Really?  Now they are asking, “Must a scientific Christian really believe that ‘God breathed into man the breath of life’?”  I hear the hissing of that old serpent, “Hath God said?” (Genesis 3:1).

Integrity has been compromised. 

Fidelity has been jettisoned.  

Purity has vanished.  

Strength has been scorned. 

And stability is no longer sustainable. We have come again to that tragic hour when “the prophets prophesy falsely, the priests bear rule by their own means, and [God’s] people love to have it so.” (Jeremiah 5:31).

It is no wonder that those who know the God of Scripture are warning us—“This building is not safe.”  They have wisely condemned all new “forms of godliness.”  They see the danger. 

They have seen the corrosive effect of compromise.  Their hearts tremble and their tongues stammer, “What will ye do in the end thereof?” (Jeremiah 5:31).

Rescuing as many as possible before the inevitable implosion of the compromising church—we who are contending for the faith once delivered to the saints (Jude 1:3)—must continue in faith, love, and holiness with self-discipline (1 Timothy 2:15).  We must speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15).  We must go into all the world to make disciples, (Matthew 28:19.  And we must aggressively, persistently, insistently, and consistently assault the gates of hell (Matthew 16:18). 

It is the Church militant that will be the Church triumphant.  

The church recalcitrant stands at the brink of implosion and the sentence of God himself--“depart from me ye workers of iniquity.” (Matthew 7:23)