Word of Salvation – Vol. 14 No.18 – April 1968

 

Apostasy: Pentecost Reversed

 

Sermon by Rev. T. E. Tyson, B.A., B.D. on 1John 2:18-27

PSALTER-HYMNAL: 89; 426:1,3,5; 169:1,2,4; 398:1,3; 493

 

The Reformation of the 16th century was necessary because of apostasy; that means, the forsaking of the faith.  So was the evangelical revival of the 19th century necessary, for the same reason.  And today reformation and revival are still needed, because apostasy is still present.

Not that we are to think that this forsaking of the faith is a new thing…. a recent development in Church history.  Actually, the fact is that apostasy was already showing itself in the very first century A.D.!  Yes, as early as that, there was the danger that the young Christian Church would forsake its foundation, Jesus Christ – His Word and Spirit.

Have a look at our text, and you will see that the apostle of love had to deal strongly with the apostasy of his own day!  And if we pay careful attention to the inspired message here, we should gain valuable insight into our own present-day situation.  We should learn exactly what apostasy is, how to discern it, and how to combat it.

First, then, we see

            APOSTASY DEFINED: SATANIC DECEPTION.

Apostasy is usually a matter of deception, and deception is first and foremost a tactic of the Evil One.

Take the situation in the Garden of Eden, for example.  The serpent hissed: “Yea, hath God said? ….then (if you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil) your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.”  That was subtle deception, wasn’t it?  And our first parents apostatised, when they fell prey to such tactics, willingly.

Now, Satan has many helpers on earth.  Our Lord Jesus warned: “There shall arise false Christs…. (they) shall show great signs and wonders, inasmuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.”  And Paul promised that the same thing would happen to the Church in Ephesus, saying to the elders, “After my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock.”  Now, in our text, John says, in verse 26, “These things have I written unto you concerning them that seduce you.”  And by that he means, those who ‘lead you astray’.

Nothing has really changed today, either.  Those who championed Professor Geering at the New Zealand Presbyterian General Assembly in November last year did so in the name of the salvation and the life of the Church!  Not its destruction.  Certainly not its forsaking of the faith!  But apostasy IS deception.  The New Zealand Presbyterian Church listened to the voices of those who claimed that only by finding Professor Geering innocent of heresy could the Church be “relevant” today.  (How we grow weary of the term!  As though the unchanging Gospel of Jesus Christ ever becomes irrelevant!)  Only thus, they said, could the Church speak to young people today.  Only thus could the Church defend itself against the inroads of 20th century science and technology.  Only thus could the Church enter into fruitful dialogue with non-Christian religions.  Only thus…..!  Do you see why we call apostasy Satanic deception?  Satan would have the Church believe that it must forsake the faith in order to survive.  And the Presbyterian Church in New Zealand has believed just that.

Furthermore, Satan’s method of destroying the Church – in which he will not succeed ultimately – is to destroy it from within.  When he has tried to destroy it from without, as in the case of the persecution of Christians by the Roman emperors, he failed miserably.  For then the Church only flourished the more!  But it has always been so from the beginning: Satan’s victories have always come via internal deception.

Think of Achan, “who stole the accursed thing” – and all the people of Israel suffered as a result.  Remember, it was not the heathen nations, who worshipped false gods, but Israel’s very kings who “taught the people to sin.”  Judas, “being one of the twelve,” betrayed the Lord.

Again, in our text, we see that Satan had his own within the bounds of the visible Church.  And perhaps we have here a fulfilment of Paul’s prophecy about “grievous wolves.”  Yes, there was emperor worship, and this surely was an abomination to the Lord: the arrogance of man leading him to seek to usurp God’s very throne.  But here in our text John says that there is an even greater foe of the Church: false teachers who subtly oppose Christ from within His Church.  Thus, John calls them ‘antichrists’.

Now, what did these antichrists do?  Listen to verse 22b: “He is antichrist, that denies the Father and the Son.”  And how did they do that?  By outright atheism…?  Did they teach the people that there was no such thing as the Father, and there was no such thing as the Son?  No, of course not!  For, had they done that, no-one within the Church would have listened to them!

They employed far more subtle tactics.  Rather than deny the Father and the Son outright, they did it by PERVERTING the doctrine of the Father and the Son.  Is doctrine important?  Of course it is!  In this case, for John (and the Holy Spirit), it was a matter of eternal life and death.

Cerinthus was a heretic of that day.  He and his followers perverted the doctrine of the Son this way: they said that our Lord was an ordinary mortal, upon whom came for a time a divine power, which is called “Christ”.  These false teachers, you see, used all the right terms, but they made those words mean what they wanted them to mean!  But John is not fooled.  In verse 22 he calls this kind of business a straight-out lie.  In fact, the force of the original language is: “What is a liar, anyway, if such a false teacher isn’t a liar?”

Now, has the situation really changed much today?  No, it hasn’t!  We still have the same Satan, using the same tactics.  We still have the so-called teachers of the faith, who actually deny it.  They are members of the visible Church, nominally Christians, but in fact they are antichrists, if they deny the Father and the Son through their deceptive, but pernicious and ungodly doctrines.  Notice what John says, in verse 23, concerning those who thus deny the Son.  He states clearly that they have not the Father, either.  No wonder John says he is writing about those who are leading the Church astray!

Maybe this kind of thing will so accelerate and grow, until at last, before Christ returns again, there will be one antichrist par excellence!

That seems to be the teaching of Paul, who says, in such a passage as 2Thessalonians 2:3, “The man of sin… the son of perdition… opposes and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped, so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.”

We don’t want to be dogmatic on this matter, like the Reformers, who identified the antichrist as the Pope of Rome.  What we must say, however, is what our text says.  Even if we are not able to point to any one individual, and say that he is the man of sin, we must be able to point out the ANTICHRIST SPIRIT.  John tells us that his generation was itself living in the last time.  In verse 18, he speaks, literally, of the “last hour.”  And how do we know that it is the last hour, asks the inspired apostle?  Because there are MANY antichrists right here in the world now, he states.  And they had been in the Church, before they went out from us, he adds.  But the really important thing to notice is that there was not just ONE of them.  He uses the plural: antichrists.

And that is just why they are so dangerous.  If the Church is looking for only ONE antichrist – for some one prominent and final character who shall appear on the earthly scene – and even if he does in fact appear, you may not see all the antichrists.  If you are looking for HIM, you may fail to see THEM!

That’s John’s point.  He is fearful for his readers, lest they fail to discern the present existence of many antichrists.

And his message is timeless, applying equally to us today.  All we have to do is listen to his further warning in 4:3, “Every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist.”

The whole antichrist SPIRIT is found in every minute of this last hour.  In every year of the Church age.  Today!

This brings us to our second point:

            APOSTASY DISCOVERED: SPIRITUAL DISCERNMENT.

Now, how will John’s readers – and you and I today – ever find out who these false teachers, these antichrists, are, if they are so deceptive, so subtle?

Notice the answer, in verse 20: “But ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things.”

What does this mean if it doesn’t mean that the Holy Spirit of the Father, and of the Son, is their true teacher?  He will not deceive them.  He will teach them the TRUTH about the Father and the Son.  He will lead them into all truth, and enable them to identify that truth!

“And ye know ALL things,” writes John.  Again, in verse 27b, “the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth.”  This is the reason why the Holy Spirit fell upon the Church at Pentecost.

Today, however, we are being told that it is the experts who must lead the common people in understanding doctrine.  “Just listen to the theological professors, and follow them,” is the advice.  Now, John had to contend with the very same thing, in his day.  These false teachers, which he calls antichrists, claimed superior know- ledge.  Even though they knew that their doctrines went contrary to the apostles’ doctrine, they excused themselves on this basis.  They duped the people into accepting changes of doctrine, because they successfully passed themselves off as experts on matters of doctrine.

And what does the apostle think of that?  Well, listen to him, in verse 21: “I have not written unto you because ye know not the truth, but because ye know it, and that no lie is of the truth.”  And, again in verse 27, “Ye need not that any man teach you.”  Not even John suggests that the common people require theological experts, if they are to understand doctrine.

To put this in the simplest terms possible: in the final analysis, believers don’t need any MAN to interpret FOR them the doctrines of the Christian faith.

There will be sermons, and catechism classes, yes.  And so there must be.  But no minister, no teacher of the Church, is allowed to pass himself off as an expert who may contradict the clear statements of the Word of God!

Do you grasp the point?  You, humble believers, without seminary education, but with your Bibles, can discern truth from error.  You can do it… because you have been given a final and authoritative Bible, and the Holy Spirit to open your minds to grasp its teaching, that’s why!

It is through knowledge of the Scriptures that the body of Christ, the Church, is built up in understanding of the doctrines of grace.  That is the way it learns to identify the truth.  And that is the way it learns to identify error and apostasy, too.  It is not through the giving of “pat” answers, from the top down through the so-called theological experts that the Church is equipped for its task.  Oh, no!  It is through the regular and personal building up of the members of the Church through the understanding of the Scriptures, that the Church is able to discern apostasy.

You see, it is this very anointing of the Christian by the Holy Spirit to understand the Bible, that makes Bible study so necessary.

For this Holy Spirit, in his anointing, does not work apart from the Bible.  In 1Corinthians 2:13, Paul writes, “We speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth, comparing spiritual things with spiritual.”  We dare not simply say, “Oh, we’ll just automatically know apostasy when it comes around, because we have a special sort of sixth sense.”  We dare not say that at all!

Paul said to Timothy that it was his knowledge of the Holy Scriptures that equipped him for every good work, including the pointing-out of error, and the steadfast maintaining of the faith once-for-all delivered unto the saints.  How we need to be faithful in our personal Bible reading; in availing ourselves of every opportunity which we are given of group and family Bible study!  And how we need to see to it that our children begin at the earliest age, and continue to receive sound Bible instruction – in the home, and then in the Church.

Without this, the Church will be an easy prey for Satan’s deception, and apostasy will go on undiscovered.  With this the Church will be equipped to discern every evil way, and be in a position to do something about it.

Thus, we arrive at our third point:

            APOSTASY OPPOSED: SAINTLY DETERMINATION.

The saints have to be willing to stick to the faith once-for- all delivered unto them.  Verse 24a makes that abundantly clear: “Let that therefore abide in you, which ye have heard from the beginning.”

The Lord Jesus said, “Abide in me, and my words in you…!”  Probably John remembered those words and here in our text he draws the obvious conclusion: as it is clear that the antichrists are NOT abiding in Christ – because they deny Him – so it is also true that the real saints of God CONTINUE to abide in Christ AS they continue to allow His doctrine to abide in them.

And that is exactly what he says in the second part of the same verse: “If that which ye have heard from the beginning shall remain in you, ye also shall continue in the Son, and in the Father.”

There is no better illustration of the blessing of this kind of faithful determination and defence of the truth of God, on the part of the saints, than the one given by John right in our text.  We could note other illustrations in the Bible, but this one is particularly striking, especially because it stands as a constant rebuke for the defeatism that so often plagues even the faithful evangelicals of the Churches.

The illustration is found in verse 19: “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that it might be made manifest that they were not all of us.  There it is…!  Apparently, the Lord’s blessing was already felt upon the faithfulness of His true people.

What happened was this: the liberals left the Church, that’s what happened!  And that is not the usual way it happens, is it?  Usually it is the liberals who capture the visible organizations and structures of the Church, driving out the evangelicals, in one way or the other.  But here, in the early Church, the opposite takes place!

Humble Christians, steeped in the knowledge of God’s truth, noticed that false teachers had sprung up in their midst.  They identified their lies for what they were, and made those antichrists, those apostate teachers, very uncomfortable indeed!

In fact, they made them so uncomfortable, that these antichrists left in a hurry!  THEY quit the Church, anxious to establish their own liberal organization where they would be able, unhindered, to set up their own doctrines contrary to the teaching of Christ and His apostles.

And the result?  John says that all this was God’s providence, working all things together for the good of His own true people, who love Him, and defend His truth.  The Church was purged, cleansed, and thereby strengthened.

But what happened in New Zealand in November, 1967?  It was the EVANGELICALS who were made uncomfortable!  And it is they who will be driven at last out of the Church.  One cannot help but think that it all could have been so different had Bible-believing members of the Presbyterian Church of N.Z.  DEMANDED that the name and honour of Christ be upheld at their Assembly, and that THE ANTICHRISTS BE MADE TO LEAVE!  But the sad fact is that such determination was hardly noticed!  In fact, the amazing truth is that not one negative vote was entered upon the minutes recording the Assembly’s decision!!!

The unity of the Church is attacked not by the evangelicals, as is commonly believed.  It is not belief, but unbelief, that is really schismatic.  Of course the truly spiritual Church can expect attacks from within – that’s Satan’s tactic.  But we have our Lord’s promise that “the gates of hell will not prevail against His Church.

But we must be constantly vigilant.  Let the Reformed Churches continue in that faithful word of doctrine and life which they received from their only Lord and Redeemer.  And let us pray for, and render every assistance we can to, disillusioned people left in the wake of this terrible apostasy of our day.

Amen.