In our age of “relative truth” or “personal truth,” many churches have become quite relaxed when it comes to biblical doctrine.  When you look at recent research on churches, ministers and beliefs, there is an astonishing number of pastors and “theologians” that don’t believe or are uncertain about some essential doctrines of the faith. A 2022 survey by the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University reveals the following.  Their findings are in line with other major researchers like Barna. 

Specifically, the report found that one-third or more of senior pastors believe:

• Sexual relations between two unmarried people who believe they love each other is morally acceptable.
• Determining moral truth is up to each individual; there are no moral absolutes that apply to everyone, all the time.
• The Holy Spirit is not a living entity, but is a symbol of God’s power, presence, or purity.
• Having faith matters more than which faith you have.
• Reincarnation is a real possibility.
• A person who is generally good, or does enough good things for others, can earn a place in Heaven.
• The Bible is ambiguous in its teaching about abortion, enabling you to make a strong argument either for or against abortion based on biblical principles.
  

Additionally, one-third or more of senior pastors reject the following beliefs: human life is sacred; wealth is entrusted to individuals to be managed for God’s purposes; success is consistent obedience to God; people are born into sin and can only be saved from its consequences by Jesus Christ; they, personally, will experience eternal salvation only because they have personally confessed their sins and accepted Jesus Christ as their savior.

In addition to these findings, other research reveals that high numbers of senior pastors and theologians do not believe in the miracles of the New Testament, the virgin birth, or a literal resurrection of Jesus.  Many do not believe that Jesus is the only way to heaven. We also know that entire denominations have embraced same-sex marriage as well as allowing practicing homosexuals to fill leadership roles in their church. The research finds these faith discrepancies among senior pastors., not just young, new-to-ministry pastors. 

So…is this something to be concerned about?

In Paul’s letter to the Galatian church, he responded to a group of teachers that had come into the church teaching that salvation was not only dependent on belief in Jesus but also on certain works of the Law…especially circumcision.  Their bumper stickers would have read,  ”Jesus + Circumcision[TV1]  = Salvation!” 

In response to that teaching, Paul wrote, “Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God’s curse! As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let them be under God’s curse!” (Gal. 1:7-9). The word translated “God’s curse,” essentially means “eternally damned.”  That is an exceptionally strong rebuke.

In Pauls’ first letter to Timothy, he warns, “The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron” (1 Tim. 4:1-2). 

In Paul’s second letter to Timothy, he reinforced his warnings about false teachers. “I give you this charge: Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths” (2 Tim. 4:1-2). 

A close reading of the New Testament emphasizes again and again that doctrine matters because salvation depends on what you believe about Jesus.  In Galatians, Paul asserts that if you add any kind of works to grace, you have stepped outside of grace. He wrote, “You who are trying to be justified by the law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace” (I Tim. 5:4).  Anything other than Jesus alone, makes his sacrifice insufficient for our salvation.  Any salvation that depends on anything other than the blood of Christ and grace of God, places you back under a system of law which will ultimately condemn you.  Any number of churches today preach a salvation based on a system of faith and works. 

In addition, the entire New Testament admonishes believers to live righteous lives as evidence of their salvation.  We are not saved by righteousness, but we are called to be righteous.  Those who say they believe in Jesus, but continue to live lives dominated by sin without remorse, are warned that those who live in such ways will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.  God does not require perfection, but a heart that wants to live a righteous life for Jesus.  Those who change the word of God to embrace cultural values, place themselves in great danger.

This is not to say that all believers must be in lock-step on doctrine and understand all scripture perfectly.  In Romans 14, Paul says that we can disagree about some biblical doctrines and still be good with God and one another.  For instance, he says if a man wants to count all days as the same and does so unto God…he is good with God. If another man wants to keep certain days holy and does so unto God…he is good with God.   But Paul warns these positions cannot be made conditions of salvation and we must not judge one another about those matters…keep the Sabbath if you wish, keep Christmas if you wish, or consider all days the same.  If you do either out of faith, it is acceptable.  

Many beliefs are not salvation issues. Thankfully, understanding the book of Revelation perfectly is not required for salvation.  We can read scripture honestly and come away with different views on the gifts of the Spirit, end-times prophecies, whether we should celebrate Christmas, what blasphemy of the Spirit truly means and be saved and still fellowship with one another.

What we can’t compromise is the truth about Jesus, his divinity, his coming in the flesh, his sinless life, his death and resurrection and his ascension to heaven.  John tell wu us that those who bring unbiblical views of Jesus into the church and try to teach them, must be separated from the church ( 2 Jn. 7-11).

The second non-negotiable is holy living.  We are called to be holy even as He is holy.  Anyone or any church who tries to use grace as a “get-out-of-jail -free-card“ for sinful living, is in a dangerous place with the Lord, because it makes  a mockery of the cross.  John declares, “No one who lives in him keeps on sinning, No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him” (1 Jn. 3:6).  John is not saying that if we ever sin after coming to Jesus, we are not saved.  He is saying that, after coming to Jesus, we should have a heart that pursues righteousness, even though we fail at times, rather than still having a heart that pursues sin.

In summary, doctrine (what we believe about Jesus and righteous living) matters.  We must be careful with God’s word and be careful not to let culture dictate our understanding of the Word.  After all, Paul declares that without the Spirit living in us, we cannot understand spiritual things (1 Cor. 2:14).  The world and the systems of the world cannot give us insight into God or his truth.

When Satan can teach “doctrines of demons:” within the church, he has found a powerful strategy for deception. We must study the scriptures for ourselves and test what we hear in church with the scriptures.  I’m not advocating distrust, but we are told to weigh prophecies, test the spirits, and Paul called the Bereans noble because they searched the scriptures daily to see if what he was teaching lined up with God’s word.  The end-times are to be marked with deception, so be careful with the Word of God so that Satan cannot twist it, change it, or dilute it and lead you away from God’s truth.

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There is, of course, a great deal of discussion about “end times” right now.  Interestingly those discussions were going on even in the days of Paul. Writing to the church at Thessalonica he said, “Concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to him, we ask you, brothers, not to become easily unsettled or alarmed by some prophecy, report or letter supposed to have come from us, saying that the day of the Lord has already come. Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way, for that day will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction. He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God” (2 Thess. 2:1-4).

Jesus was clear that we could know the season of his return but not even he knew the day or the hour.  There are indicators that we are certainly in the season of the Lord’s return.  The most significant was Israel’s return in 1948 to the land God had promised them in the days of Abraham.  We sometimes forget that the world does not revolve around the United States, but in God’s mind, it revolves around the little nation of Israel that he chose millennia ago to be his special people. Believing Gentiles have been grafted into spiritual Israel, but God still has plans for the physical nation.  In due time, Jesus will return to Jerusalem and the veil of unbelief will be lifted from the physical descendants of Abraham.  

A second major indicator will be the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem from which the anti-Christ or the man of lawlessness will make his proclamations.  Orthodox Jews are on the verge of rebuilding the temple in Jerusalem, restoring the priesthood, and the sacrifices of the temple once again. We can expect animal rights activists to have a meltdown over those sacrifices.  But when the temple is rebuilt, another solid indicator that the Day of the Lord is near will be imminent.

A third indicator is what Paul called “the rebellion.”  The Greek word is apostasia from which we get apostasy.  Paul seems to be prophesying a time when the church would experience a great falling away and a rejection of essential doctrines and truths of the church. That’s where we come in.  We have seen such a falling away in American and European churches over the last fifty years. Over that time, increasing numbers of theologians in our universities began to deny the miracles of the Bible. They began to frame them as only mythological stories that carried cultural values much like fables.  Because miracles were not “scientific” and were not being witnessed today (by them), these men and women simply declared they didn’t happen.  

I remember one commentary on the gospels regarding the account in which Peter and Jesus needed to pay a temple tax.  Jesus told Peter to go fishing and when he caught the first fish it had money in its mouth that covered the tax.  The commentator boldly proclaimed such a miracle would never happen and that Peter caught the fish and sold it for the amount needed to pay the tax.  He wasn’t there, he didn’t witness the event, but spoke as if he had been.  In the name of higher education and science, these theologians have denied the flood, the plagues on Egypt, the crossing of the Red Sea, the fall of Jericho, giants in the land, the healings of Jesus, the feeding of the five thousand, the virgin birth and ultimately the resurrection.  But if you take the miraculous out of the Bible, you have stripped it of any intervention by God in the affairs of men and the essential proofs that Jesus was, in fact, the Son of God.  You have stripped our faith of any personal relationship with God and, thus,  of our salvation.

Once theologians starting taking liberties with the Word of God, the trickle-down effect was that pastors and denominations felt they could also modify it as they saw fit.  So, in the past few decades, the “church” has felt free to change the definition of marriage, approve homosexuality, support transgenderism, question whether Jesus is the only way to heaven, and stand up for abortion on demand…even though scripture clearly calls these issues sin and even abominations. Once you deny the authority of scripture in any area, you deny it in every area. 

This has likely been the great rebellion or apostasy that Paul spoke about in 2 Thessalonians.  The church has compromised Biblical standards by giving into cultural pressures and a desire to be “intellectually acceptable” to the world.  John, however, warns us about such a move. He says, “Do not love the world or anything in the world.  If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them” (1 Jn. 2:15).  He defines the world in this context as the cultures, systems, and values of the world that Satan promotes contrary to God’s truth.  If we deny the Word of God then we deny the one who spoke it.

As this “apostasy” continues in many places, we must accept the fact that we must speak out in order to be faithful representatives of Jesus and his truth. We must also accept that when we speak out, those who love the world will hate us.  We can speak the truth in love and still be hated because the spirit in them hates the Spirit in us. This is an “end times” reality we must embrace.  To be silent or compromise with the world opens the door for the enemy to establish a stronghold in our families, our nation, and our churches. We may have little to do with Jerusalem or the third temple, but we are those who are called to push back against the great falling away of the church.  

Our role is to be personally clear about biblical truth and to speak out when others want to deny it or compromise with the world.  We must avoid any arrogance or self-righteousness in our push back, but our silence will seem to them as agreement and so we must speak to city councils, school boards, church leaders, business leaders, and even family members.  If we love God we must speak up for his truth and his standards.  

To fail to speak up will be a form of denial, but we can take heart.  Jesus promised, “you will be brought before kings and governors, and all on account of my name. This will result in your being witnesses to them. But make up your mind not to worry beforehand how you will defend yourselves. For I will give you words and wisdom that none of your adversaries will be able to resist God’s truth to those who are not prepared to receive it.  As we move toward the return of Jesus, we need to ground ourselves in biblical truth and pray that God will prepare our hearts to speak when the time comes.