We admire a man who was firm in the faith, say four hundred years ago...but such a man today is a nuisance, and must be put down. Call him a narrow-minded bigot, or give him a worse name if you can think of one. Yet imagine that in those ages past, Luther, Zwingle, Calvin, and their peers had said, "The world is out of order; but if we try to set it right we shall only make a great confrontation, and get ourselves into disgrace. Let us go to our bedroom, and sleep over the bad times, and perhaps when we wake up things will have grown better." Such conduct on their part would have entailed upon us a heritage of error. Age after age would have gone down into the infernal deeps, and the evil heaps of error would have swallowed all. These men loved the faith and the name of Jesus too well to see them trampled on...
It is today as it was in the Reformer's days. Decision is needed. Here is the day for the man, where is the man for the day? We who have had the gospel passed to us by martyr hands dare not tinker with it, nor sit by and hear it denied by traitor, who pretend to love it, but inwardly abhor every line of it...Look you, sirs, there are ages yet to come. If the Lord does not speedily appear, there will come another generation, and another, and all these generations will be tainted and injured if we are not faithful to God and to His truth today. We have come to a turning-point in the road. If we turn to the right, perhaps our children and our children's children will go that way; but if we turn to the left, generations yet unborn will curse our names for having been unfaithful to God and to His Word. 1888 Charles Haddon Spurgeon (some words modernized)
It seems to me that man of God had it right. Many of this nation's churches have become parlors of disgrace to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. There is nothing like the word of God. However, any man who manipulates an entire body to error is not of God. Man can miss God at times by accident, but to manipulate others for ones own gain is completely wrong. I will no longer allow my Lord and Savior to be defamed by such men. I will no longer allow my God to be trampled on by such men. I must speak out, or I am not much better than those who pierced His side.
