The greatest victory Satan has gained against the Lord Jesus Christ, he seems to be gaining in these days. His power was never seen in such deadly effect on the souls of professing Christians as it is now. The defection from a full belief in Christ and His Word is appalling. Many of the standard-bearers in the front rank of the army of the Lord are being seduced from their loyalty by the awful power of “seducing spirits.” Men whose names have been held in high honor for their loyalty to the Saviour and His Word, are now wounding Him by defending, or finding excuses, for those who are blaspheming Christ and denying the full inspiration of the Scriptures.
Think of a man sent out by a great Missionary Society preaching in China five sermons containing terrible and blasphemous attacks on the inspiration of the Word of God and the Deity of Christ—asserting that much of the Holy Word of God was derived from heathen sources, and that our Lord had His limitations.
Lieut.-Colonel Seton tells us that this missionary in his first sermon asserted that the Flood, the Ark and the Tower of Babel are prehistoric myths; (Sermon 2) that the stories of Genesis 1 and 11 are based on Babylonian myths; (Sermon 3) that the translation of Elijah is a similar story to that of the Taoist sage, Ke Hung, who lived in Chung-hee, and that our Lord’s endorsement of such Old Testament stories may be due to His own limitations; (Sermon 4) that thoughts ascribed to Adam, Noah, Abraham and Moses are really Jewish conceptions of times as late as 450 B.C.! (Sermon 5) that the story of Jonah is obviously based on the Babylonian myth of the dragon Tiama.
The man who preached these sermons—two of them in Hong Kong Cathedral—is still in the pay of the Missionary Society who sent him out. There are hundreds of others, at home and abroad, preaching these same “doctrines of devils.” They have put the Son of God to an open shame, they have disobeyed the command, “That all men should honor the Son, even as they honor the Father. He that honoureth not the Son honoureth not the Father which hath sent Him.”―John 5:2323That all men should honor the Son, even as they honor the Father. He that honoreth not the Son honoreth not the Father which hath sent him. (John 5:23).
These men are emissaries of Satan, seeking to break down the old foundations of eternal truth. They are falsifying the words of Jesus. Christ, who said, “Search the Scriptures, they testify of Me,” and at another time, when walking with two disciples to Emmaus, “beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded unto them, in all the Scriptures, the things concerning Himself.” Men are denying today “the accuracy of some of our Lord’s utterances.”
What does the Lord Jesus say to such? ― “If any man hear My words and believe not, I judge him not; for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world. He that rejecteth Me and receiveth not My words hath One that judgeth him; the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day.”―John 12
Stern and terrible words are these: like the Pharisees, it seems easy for some to sit in judgment on our blessed Lord now, but the Word despised and disregarded shall be the Word to judge these blasphemers in the last day.
They have attacked the deity of Christ-these “wolves in sheep’s clothing.” How could our blessed Lord be God if He had limitations? How could He make a perfect offering to God for our sins if He lacked any of the attributes of God―Himself God the Son?
I trust these blinded men, supported by those who must be as blind as they, will repent before it is too late. Their fallible Christ can give them no peace on their death-beds, and their imperfect Bibles will give them no solid basis of assured acceptance with God, when eternity is close at hand for them.
They cannot love the Saviour they traduce. The test of love is loyalty, and they show no loyalty to Christ. The curse of the Apostle is a terrible thing to face, but it must be faced by those who shadow the glory of the Son of God, and deny the inspiration of all the Scriptures. “If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha, that is, accursed at the Lord’s coming.”
The unassailable glory of Christ―
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God.”―John 1:11In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. (John 1:1) and 2.
“And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth.”―verse 14.
“For in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.”―Colossians 2:99For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. (Colossians 2:9). There are no limitations here.
Charles Spurgeon had to meet and answer such men as we have been speaking about when he was alive, and I want you to read the following quotation from one of his sermons, in which he preaches against the “Higher Critics.”