WE are living in an age of infidelity, and yet, strange to say, few amongst the ranks of nineteenth-century unbelievers like the name of “infidel.” The distinctive doctrines of Christianity are today abandoned, despised, and denounced by a multitude who resent with anger the refusal to describe them as “Christians.”
This does seem strange indeed. Men love to be thought “Christians,” even though in reality they could not with any show of reason claim to be Christians. Why so?
That Christianity has been a mighty influence in the world, none can deny. Wherever it has entered, darkness has been dissipated and degradation has fled. True, much of darkness and degradation still exists in lands where Christianity has been longest received, but only in proportion as its spiritual power has been denied, its teaching unheeded, and Christ Himself unknown, even though its form has been assumed (2 Tim. 3).
“Can you tell me why it is that worldly men are so opposed to mission work?” was a question I addressed to a white-haired and venerable-looking old man whom I met on board a steamer coasting round South Africa. He was a missionary of wide experience; he had labored amongst many heathen races, and had also toiled for Christ’s sake amidst the unresponsive whites, who, while trusting in themselves that they were righteous, despised their black neighbors.
“I have heard so many men say, ‘Never trust a mission Kaffir! Of all Kaffir rogues they are the worst!’ I know, of course,” said I, “that worldly men, especially when inclined to infidelity, owe Christianity a grudge, for the carnal mind is enmity against God, and it is Christ that in reality they still dislike and hate, even as they did when He was here on this earth.”
The old man’s reply set me thinking. “There are many bad, wicked men in this world, sir, but where would you go to find the worst, the most degraded, the most abandoned? Would it not be to London, to Paris, to Rome, to the centers of civilization and of professed Christianity? Wherever the enlightenment of Christianity has gone and the heart has remained unchanged, there you will find a moral degradation, a refinement of vice and wickedness, which is unknown in all the heathen races! I have known,” he continued, “many Kaffirs truly converted to God, their whole lives changed, and bearing testimony to the reality of their faith; while, on the other hand, a Kaffir who has come in contact with the educational advantages of a mission station, if he remain unconverted, may be and often is less to be trusted than others of his race.”
Yes, reader, education is not conversion, and the profession of Christianity, apart from conversion, is utterly worthless. I have known men whose bloated countenances have told a tale of dissipation and vice, whose commercial dealings would not bear the smallest investigation, whose word was not worth the weight of a feather — these very men denounce Christianity and Christians “with the ignorance of a pagan and the animus of an apostate.” It is Christ they hate, though they hate Him without a cause.
The world has not changed its true character though it may have changed its cloak, since the Lord Jesus Christ spoke those memorable words, “If the world hate you, ye know that it hated Me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted Me, they will also persecute you” (John 15:18-2118If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. 19If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. 20Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also. 21But all these things will they do unto you for my name's sake, because they know not him that sent me. (John 15:18‑21)).
After a lengthy conversation with a fellow-passenger on an ocean steamer, in the course of which his disbelief of all the plainest teaching of the Word of God had been unblushingly asserted, I was almost amused, had it not been for the seriousness of the subject, at the injured tone which he adopted on my refusal to recognize him as a “Christian.”
“It is just like you uncharitable people, who think everybody wrong but yourselves. Nobody is a Christian but one who thinks as you do!”
“My dear sir,” I replied, “it is not a question of you being wrong and I being right, or vice versa. This is a plain matter of fact. You deny every doctrine taught in the Christian religion, you refuse belief in Christ, as revealed in the Scriptures [for he had rejected with scorn the doctrines most plainly taught in the Bible, of the fall of man and his sinful state, of the deity of Christ, and of His sin-atoning sacrifice, &c. &c.], and yet you claim to be a ‘Christian’! What would you say to a man who claimed to be called a Mohammedan, and yet loudly asserted his disbelief in Mohammed and the Koran? Would you not say to such a one, ‘Whatever you call yourself, do not call yourself a Mohammedan, for that you most certainly are not’? And so I say to you, ‘Whatever you call yourself, do not call yourself a Christian, for that you cannot be while denying Christ and rejecting the Christian faith such as it is taught in the Bible.’”
The fact of the matter is, reader, we are living in the days of the commencing apostasy, long since foretold (2 Thess. 2:33Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; (2 Thessalonians 2:3)), and men now are “departing from the [Christian] faith” (1 Tim. 4:11Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; (1 Timothy 4:1)). Sad as it is to behold it, it is but plain evidence of the truth of that book which centuries ago revealed by the inspiration of God that such should be the case. We are nearing the end of Christendom’s history.
“The coming of the Lord draweth nigh.”
Yes, the Lord Jesus Christ is coming in the twinkling of an eye to translate His own to heaven, and then the professing Church will be spued out of His mouth (Rev. 3:14-2214And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write; These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God; 15I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. 16So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth. 17Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked: 18I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see. 19As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent. 20Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me. 21To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne. 22He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches. (Revelation 3:14‑22)).
Things are not getting better. No, they are getting worse and worse.
Reader, if you are in danger of giving up faith in Christ and the Scripture, your case is awful. Do not, I beseech you, trifle with infidelity, and do not let “the God of this world” (Satan) blind you into thinking that you are a Christian whether you believe in Christ or not.
Moreover, head belief is valueless. “If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation” (Rom. 10:9,109That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. 10For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. (Romans 10:9‑10)). A. H. B.