Close Counterfeits and Not-So-Close Counterfeits
After the great apostasy of the New Testament church (which was pretty much all-pervasive by about 270 A.D.), hundreds of years of human history elapsed before truth began to emerge from the great errors and myths of the Roman Catholic Church. This false religion, the church of the man of sin (the Anti-Christ), epitomized a level of religious corruption and error that has yet to be surpassed, at least in longevity and magnitude, right up to our day. The history of this false body is a revelation of what sin can do in an institutional setting.
A restoration of truth began in the Protestant reformation. Little by little, in successive steps of courage and trueness, the foundational truths of the New Testament were rediscovered and embraced. Martin Luther: justification by faith in God, instead of works. John Wesley: perfected salvation through sanctification of the Spirit of God. If each of these reformers had been true to God completely and walked without ceasing in the light that God shone on their pathway, there would have been an entire restoration of truth at that time, but such was not the case.
It could not have been expected that all the Scriptural truths and principles should at any time or by any one reformer be recovered from the rubbish under which they had been buried for a thousand years. There have been numerous reforms, bringing out various truths that had been obscured by the apostasy. Thus Truth in her progress upward to the Scriptural level, has arisen only by successive steps, God having to use human instrumentalities that were limited by the prevailing tendencies and beliefs of the times. Each reformer naturally dealt with conditions that were most conspicuous from his view-point and was exercised in questions of truth that applied only to such conditions. His reform work was not final in character, inasmuch as it left some errors still uncorrected. Hence the progress upward was by a succession of reforms, each, as a general thing, springing from a higher level of truth and spiritual attainment than those preceding.
[Andrew L. Byers; Birth of a Reformation, “Introduction”]
This process of rediscovery was final in its character during the holiness reformation of the late 1800’s. The possession of the experience of perfect love, taught so strongly and commonly in the New Testament, raised a serious and significant question to the children of God of that time. That question was, “Why, even though we loved God with all our heart, soul, and strength, and we feel a wonderful oneness with all others who are truly saved and have the same like experience—then why are we separated in different organizations and groups?” (As you can see, this question is just as pertinent and significant to each child of God today as it was then.)
The scriptural answer to that question is that God has created His body without schisms. “God hath tempered the body together, having given more abundant honour to that part which lacked: That there should be no schism in the body; but that the members should have the same care one for another.” (1 Corinthians 12:24-25) Note that this scripture informs that “God hath tempered the body together… that there should be no schism in the body.” The disparities of men are many, and their inability to get along is legendary and practically a given, but God has a way of taking care of this when He saves people. He puts something in there, that if allowed to grow, to find all God has provided, and to come to Christian maturity; then this great salvation in the heart of each possessor will keep all in subjection to the Head and humble and lowly in mind toward each other. This heavenly experience will enable people of widely differing comprehension, temperaments, and divergent ways to dwell together in harmony and unity under the Divine government.
This wonderful truth was rediscovered and contended for in the reformation of the 1880’s by enlightened souls all over the world. There was tremendous opposition from the organized churches of their day, for the practical application of the above truth meant that people should come out—actually leave—the churches which men had organized, and be complete in Christ, trusting Him to govern and keep them as a body of people. It was nothing less than an attempt to stand on the same ground as the New Testament church, and it worked. That is, God honored and made a way for those who endeavored to walk in the light. The stirring resulted from facing the evils of the day, among which were the sins of division fostered and nourished by loyalty to “my church.”
The movement of these enlightened people went on for a number of years, from about 1880 to approximately 1910-1915, when their leadership began to go back on what they had taught until finally that group of people could fairly be characterized as simply another worldly church with a unique doctrinal angle on the church question. All along, as the apostasy of these people preceded further and further, different ones would be true to God and the light that He had given them, and they would escape.
In due time, many of these found each other and attempted to hold the same truth that had been discovered in the previous century. They were generally called “anti-necktie” because a common characteristic among them was an abhorrence of that article of clothing as being ornamental and superfluous. (The saints before the apostasy had held that same conviction.)
As time passed, another group of people left the original group on the basis of a different interpretation of the book of Revelations. They became known as “seventh-seal” people.
Each of these groups split and splintered until today there is a multitude of different groups all claiming to be right, and each possessing some degree of light and some degree of error. In this, of course, they have simply followed the course of all sectism in Christianity (and even non-Christianity), for it is the nature of man to divide, then divide, then divide again, etc. As Galatians 5:20 informs us, variance is a work of the flesh.
To a great extent, whether knowingly or unknowingly, there has been a great betrayal of the truths taught in the Bible on this subject; and it is this great succession of betrayals which has brought about the close counterfeits and not-so-close counterfeits which we have on hand today. If you love the Lord with all your heart, and you are deeply interested in serving Him without entanglement with idolatry, then what we have to say will be of some interest to you.
The dictionary defines counterfeit as, “An inferior substitute imitating an original.” There are degrees of inferiority. Some are so obvious that almost anyone could readily identify them, while others are so sophisticated that the difference between them and the genuine is extremely difficult to detect. One could spend one’s entire lifetime going from one thing to another without examining even half of the subtle counterfeits on the religious market, so to speak. Even as we write these words, we are conscious that many of God’s little children labor under handicap in these places, for the intent of our adversary is to hinder and thwart the spiritual life in every way possible.
Now very few of these groups of people really understand what they are doing and are willfully set on being fraudulent. You will find plenty of sincerity mixed with the insincere among people who are not clear in holiness. Almost all of them possess some light, just as a counterfeit dollar bill has a great deal about it that is genuine in appearance. It is plain to be seen, that if you are trying to ascertain the authentic on the basis on the presence of sincerity or the existence of merit, then you will find that nearly everything out there has something to commend it.
There is a severe temptation to settle for the best you see, rather than God’s best. The entire process tries the child of God to the uttermost. If you are unwilling to compromise your values that the Lord taught you, then Giant Despair will attempt to crush all hope, and whisper that it is no use—nobody lives just like the Bible teaches, and nowhere is the truth held and taught in its fulness. Surely God has a tried and tested people! No one has ever yet drifted into the truth, but “the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.” (Matthew 11:12) “The kingdom of God is preached, and every man presseth into it.” (Luke 16:16) God’s way is a pressing way, and the seeker for what He has to give must violently tear himself away from everything else. We quote a little from Pilgrim’s Progress:
Then the Interpreter took him, and led him up towards the door of the palace; and behold, at the door stood a great company of men, as desirous to go in; but durst not. There also sat a man at a little distance from the door, at a tableside, with a book and his inkhorn before him, to take the name of him that should enter therein; he saw also, that in the doorway stood many men in armour to keep it, being resolved to do the men that would enter what hurt and mischief they could. Now was Christian somewhat in amaze.
At last, when every man started back for fear of the armed men, Christian saw a man of a very stout countenance come up to the man that sat there to write, saying, “Set down my name, Sir”: the which when he had done, he saw the man draw his sword, and put a helmet upon his head, and rush toward the door upon the armed men, who laid upon him with deadly force; but the man, not at all discouraged, fell to cutting and hacking most fiercely. So after he had received and given many wounds to those that attempted to keep him out, he cut his way through them all [Acts 14:22], and pressed forward into the palace, at which there was a pleasant voice heard from those that were within, even of those that walked upon the top of the palace, saying—
“Come in, come in; Eternal glory thou shalt win.”
So he went in, and was clothed with such garments as they.
Then Christian smiled and said, “I think verily I know the meaning of this.”
[John Bunyan; The Pilgrim’s Progress]
We want to say for the encouragement of all those who want all that God has to give, that God does indeed have a church (Ephesians 5:25-27), and it is worth what it costs to perceive it and take a stand for it. It is worth wading through the counterfeits to find the true.
Still, it takes more than just fervency and unswerving pursuit. We have seen a movement of people, purporting to be the true, the original church of the New Testament, which has gradually been revealed as a mass of fanaticism and bondage over a period of about twelve years. They furiously contend with another body of people who have been steadily compromising over that same period of time. We confess to you, dear reader, that we barely avoided believing in that first group when they were starting out. Their meetings seemed so spiritual and stirring, though we were troubled by a great deal of emotionalism, which the Spirit of God had taught us was not adequate and dependable to sustain one in spiritual conflicts. There were some other troubling things, too, in the lives of some who were in the forefront of the thing, but it really seemed as if these were things that would be corrected in time. The Spirit of God seemed to be blessing them. We were earnestly praying about the matter. A certain point was brought up upon which the Spirit of God had instructed us. The line which the Lord had drawn for us between right and wrong on that point was rejected by a congregation of these folks. We were willing to change, yet we knew that the Lord had taught us what we were holding on the subject. We felt that perhaps they were more spiritual than us, and were willing to comply, only with this provision: that we needed the approval of the Lord on us changing. Whereupon they replied that they did not believe in these individual leadings. They believed, instead, in all of God’s children walking in lockstep to collective light, and thus, they contended, was the only way that unity (actually, uniformity) could be.
We had never met something just like this and prayed earnestly for guidance. We began to perceive that it ran contrary to how God had been teaching us over the years, and then the Lord greatly helped us. In a wonderful way, we found two articles written back in the 1930’s which plainly and clearly dealt with the issue of individual leadings. What a blessing they were to us! There was a third article as well, and we were able to obtain a copy. We told this close counterfeit group of the truth what we had found, and they rejected it. Over the next twelve years, reports began to filter back of the end result of getting off on that point. It was horrible. It was amazing. Even writing this now, I shake my head in amazement at how far such a thing can remove one from the truth. It was only the mercy of God that kept us out.
It is extremely difficult to pin down the spirit of error in all its manifestations. It is extremely slippery and elusive. It seems so right and commendable to those under its influence. Scriptures can be quoted that cover the matter, and those scriptures should end the matter; but they do not. There is a power that absorbs and swallows the strokes of truth, yet the end of the matter is not holiness and drawing close to God, after all. It is a way that seems right, oh, so right, to man, but the end is the way of death (Proverbs 16:25).
The Lord allowed this temptation to us because this is standard fare for His children. God sees to it that we love Him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength by allowing our love for Him to be purified and refined in these ways, among others. After this kind of experience, you can say with certainty, “I know I love Thee better, Lord, than any earthly joy.”*
The group which the above-mentioned folks left condemned them just as severely as they were, in turn, condemned. We could not stay with them, either. There were other things about them that troubled us. A philosophy of liberality, and “love, love; cover eyes,” was taking root widely among the ministry; and in 1984, they grieved the Lord by allowing and giving place among them to ministers who were teaching things contrary to the Bible—things that they knew were wrong. When one of the older ministers was questioned about this, they replied, “We are so afraid.” What they were afraid of was that standing true to God would cause a split in the group, and so they were willing to offend God and betray the truth to nurture and keep a group of people together. Well, it kept them together at the expense of releasing a general let-down and worldliness among them. They denied this, of course. Eventually, a number of them went so far that the others could not stomach it, and there is where they drew a line between what was acceptable and what was not acceptable. Trouble was, it was not God doing the drawing—it was them. They are being left more and more to their own devices.
Now, God helping us, we want to go a little further into understanding these matters, and explore the factors that lead to a group of people getting out from under the control of God and evolving into something else than God’s people.
One of the common characteristics is the little-by-little aspect. This is extremely subtle. If the devil presented some thing that seemed significant, people would shrink from that. He is too cunning to approach this matter in that way—he suggests little “no harm” things. Each of these, taken by itself, would not seem to constitute something worth resisting. Each of these things blurs the line between blessing and non-blessing, until a lack of clarity, a kind of fogginess, obscures the end of these things. People do not realize the consequences of what they are doing. They do not discern the elements at work in the matter. They assume that all is well. “How can we be deceived after knowing so much of the truth?” They trust their leaders, and these leaders are under the same influence. Probing, digging, questioning, and making sure began to take on the shades of disloyalty. The scripture in Acts 17:11 is forgotten. 2 Timothy 2:15 is forgotten as well, at least as pertains to “show thyself approved unto God.” The scriptures are searched only to prove the values and mores of the general group, or to change them; instead of a great openness to discover what the Bible really is saying to us. The stage is set for the rise of a rival love to God: the love of a group of people—which is simply a modified form of love of self in group form. The love of “my church” masquerades as an identical thing to love of God and truth.
At the bottom of it all is a horrible presumption (which does not appear that way in the least to those who are presuming)—at least as it pertains to the government and institutional relationship of those who worship together. The unspoken, unrealized, and unacknowledged belief is that “we” know enough now to function “for” God in a certain capacity, and this is where the faith of the leaders and supporters is placed. A certain selfconfidence, as a group, goes with this. This horrible thing arises from below, from the fleshly pride and confidence of man, not from above; and it frequently expresses itself in sentiments such as these: “One minister may be mistaken, but all the ministers can’t be wrong.” Only, they can. God can and does let a group of ministers pursue a way that is not of Him to prove what is in their hearts collectively, just as He will allow one of His children to get into error for the same reason. He is faithful to warn and deal with (1) an individual heart, or (2), many individual hearts acting collectively; but if another voice is entertained and the checks of the Spirit of God are disregarded, then the Lord will let us go. This group pride (self-confidence) varies in intensity in inverse proportion to the amount of true spirituality in individual hearts. The deeper we go in God, the less confident we feel in ourselves, and the more we look to God to help us in our need.
I marvel at the crucialness of this point, and I also marvel at how easy it is to pass by it lightly with hardly a realization of its importance. Many an humble brother or sister, who would not ever deign to take this “We Know” attitude personally, and would conclude that for them individually or anyone else individually to do so would be bigotry and arrogance, will feel comfortable with this attitude as a group. “All the ministers together cannot be wrong.” The underlying belief in this creed is that while an individual or several individuals might miss the voice of God and be mistaken, all of the saved together can’t possibly be. Only, they can. Oh, please take heed! We are compelled to state the solemn truth yet again. Consider: if I am zero without the guiding hand of the Holy Ghost, and you are zero without the same Divine hand, and everyone who is saved is zero without God’s merciful guidance; then what do all of us add up to? Behold, no matter how many zeros are joined together with confidence in each other, we are zero together and will stay zero collectively and individually. How true the words, individually and collectively, “Without me, you can do nothing.” (John 15:5)
Most groups, who have had some exposure to the scriptural teaching that Jesus built His church and has never relinquished control of the same (i.e., the kingdom has not been left to other men), focus on the trappings and forms of a people given to Divine trust. With these people, here is the emphasis. Much is made of a lack of planned program for meetings. It is regarded as highly virtuous to abhor a written creed. Highly influential and authoritative positions within a given group of people are downplayed in an effort to pay lip service to the thought that we are a people ruled directly by the hand of God. All of these things at the collective level have their parallel in individual lives. People claim to be led by God, to wholly trust God, and to be consecrated in every respect to follow wherever He leads; yet in times of crisis, who is really followed is made manifest. Most people who claim to be led by the Lord simply aren’t, including many good and wellmeaning people. If anything, this is even more true of religious groups, as compared to religious individuals.
If it is rare to find individuals sold out to God—actually guided by Him, who move “at the impulse of His love”—it is even more rare to find a group of people who are led collectively by that same Holy Spirit. Most perceptive people do not believe that God really leads people on a day by day basis. They perceive that a great deal of what is touted as Holy Spirit leading is something else entirely—usually enthusiasm, zeal, even superstition, or just wishful thinking. Some of these will restrain themselves from saying anything, not wishing to discourage anyone; yet the fact remains that a proven reality of Holy Spirit leading is not often observed, to the extent that a number of people do not believe that there is such a thing. A certain family of our acquaintance had the habit of saying, “as the Spirit moves you,” in response to anything that a person felt very strongly about, and this remark expressed the common skepticism prevalent on the subject.
Now, no one is led by the Lord so completely that they function outside their humanity, nor is it necessary or even desirable to do so. I do not normally need to ask the Lord whether He is leading me to eat a meal or go to the mailbox anymore than I need to ask the Lord whether He is leading me to take my next breath. And yet, there may be an occasion where it is imperative and vital to request Divine guidance about the ordinary affairs of life. And so we find the first principle of a life of absolute trust in God: we are out of our depth overall. The Bible plainly teaches us that “the steps of a good man are ordered of the Lord,” (Psalm 37:23) and “it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.” (Jeremiah 10:23) God has so made us that we can function without puppetlike assistance; yet we are not equipped overall for success or true peace and contentment without Divine assistance. How much we need the Lord!
Here we are in this strange mixture of a certain self-capability with a definite deficiency of capability. How it should move us to humility! As individuals or collectively, we are as little children who know not how to come in or go out. We do not even know when we should cease to try and simply wait or when we should forge ahead and bravely trust. We need to be taught, and how thankful we are that God wants to teach us. Truly He upbraids not even as He giveth! Surely there can be no faith, no reliance on God, no waiting, and staying on Him, without an allpervading humility. It is not that human characteristic of an inferiority complex which doubts its Godgiven capability; it is a clear recognition that man at his best state is altogether vanity. It is an intelligent, not particularly emotional trust, a reckoning that anchors deep in believing, persuaded confidence in Him who honors and desires it. “For without faith, it is impossible to please him.” (Hebrews 11:6)
The entire teaching of the Word of God, both in direct statement and in examples, stands behind these thoughts. Any group of people who experience real Divine governorship are characterized by this collective humility and firm faith. It gives rise to utterances such as this: “God cannot be shut up in a box.” This means that being led by God means that the Lord will surprise you. Battles that have been won a certain way in the past will not necessarily be won in exactly the same way in the future. Yet sometimes they will. Yet they will always lead to walking closer to God, to true holiness, to a realization of God’s greatness and power as will reduce the soul to an awed adoration.
As to whether what has just been said is in harmony with the Word of God, we would call your attention to Ecclesiastes 5:1-2: “Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God, and be more ready to hear, than to give the sacrifice of fools: for they consider not that they do evil. Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thine heart be hasty to utter any thing before God: for God is in heaven, and thou upon earth: therefore let thy words be few.” Surely these words exhort us to lowly-mindedness before God, and encourage a great waiting upon Him. Here we have the Divine prescription for the necessary humility and pliability before God that makes it possible for Him to guide and govern us as He desires. We see so little—for we are upon the earth, but He sees all that needs to be seen—for He is in heaven. Therefore we should be quiet and learn how to do, and we should “keep our foot,” that is, be slow to act until we are sure that God actually is leading, especially in the house of God. How solemn the evaluation of those who presume to serve the Almighty with a different attitude— “They consider not that they do evil”!
It is far easier not to be led by the Lord than it is to be led. Yet if we are not led by God, we are going to be led by something. Just where do you think that something-other-than-the-Spirit-of-God will take us? It will certainly be where God would not have us be.
We are very sorry to observe that a great number of religious groups, all claiming Christianity and possessing various degrees of merit, are very much the work of men’s hands. Some of them start out under the control of the Holy Spirit, but most of them lose Divine government fairly early in their institutional life. One of the great concerns of the folks here in our local congregation is that this not happen to us. We are very interested in retaining the blessing that God has for His people. I have frequently thought, “What good will it have done to have left a place where men have usurped the government from the most High, only to fall into the same error and be guilty of the same thing?” It can easily happen. We are leaning hard on the faithfulness of God and His keeping power to stay innocent in His eyes in this matter.
The genius of compromise is that it offers a way for people to be religious and salve their conscience while tolerating carnality of all degrees. An individual does not have to be delivered to be a member in good standing of a compromised group of Christian professors. If a person is really delivered from sin and alive unto God, and consecrates to be a part of a group of people who recognize and accept undelivered professors as genuine and valid, then he or she mars the work of salvation in their heart, gives place to the devil, and sets up the idol of divided love in their affections. “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?” (2 Corinthians 6:14)
There is only one thing to do to keep clear with the Lord if you are in this situation. “Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, And will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.” (2 Corinthians 6:17-18) Obedience to this commandment requires that we lay aside all leaning to our understanding, that we leave all the consequences, including our spiritual survival, in God’s hands, that we trust in the Lord with all our heart. The more deeply you have bought into the philosophy of staying within a framework that recognizes and accepts right and wrong together, the harder it will be for you to follow God’s way and break every yoke that is not of Him.
We personally know a minister, who was much used of God, who kept preaching the truth with liberty and anointing among a certain group of people. At first, this child of God was in harmony with most of the other preachers, for at that time, most of them were also blessed and true. But a great change took place over a number of years, and this one minister became more and more a voice in the wilderness. It did not set well with the ones who were changing. The individual came under more and more criticism. Finally, the minister was accused of sin. The accusation was false, but most of the ministry did not support this innocent child of God. The Holy Spirit preaching from that source was distasteful to them and to the people whom they led. Those who supported the minister of God were not willing to go the point of resigning their place to not compromise with wrong, even though they were sure that the accusation was false. One of them told me that “it was for the greater good” that this minister was set down. Whereupon I asked how any good could come from setting down an innocent child of God—whom clearly God had used and blessed.
This dear child of God, who had faithfully preached the truth, accepted the verdict of a compromise ministry. It brought great bondage and limitation. Instead of being free to go where God would direct, the minister of God was limited to teaching in a certain congregation for two years. This limitation does not make sense on the face of it, for if the ministry of this individual be true and valid, why impose any such limitation at all? And if it is not true, then why recognize any teaching at all?
This true story is an excellent example of the rule of man over the working of God. It is the same spirit that you find in Matthew 21:33-44. “We will not have this man [Jesus] to reign over us.” (Luke 19:14)
It is possible, for a time, at least, to stay saved in such a place and try to walk the fine line between pleasing God and pleasing man, but it will never be very satisfactory. If you please God to a great extent, you will offend the people with itching ears (2 Timothy 4:3-4), and you will find that they will take your testimony and bend it to the greater glory of the group, making merchandise of you (2 Peter 2:3). You may will your spiritual energy and strength for the good of the Kingdom of Heaven alone, but you will find that something else will syphon it off. If you lean toward pleasing the people, you will find it taking you farther and farther from what God would have you speak, for unregenerated people who are professing to be all right have no taste for the things of God in actuality. They will say to you, “Prophesy not unto us right things, speak unto us smooth things, prophesy deceits: Get you out of the way, turn aside out of the path, cause the Holy One of Israel to cease from before us.” (Isaiah 30:10-11) They will want to be intellectually challenged, or emotionally challenged, or reassured by orthodoxy to a creed. What is allowed that is of God, suffers from limitations. The problem is that they don’t want what God wants. If you are God’s man, then they don’t want you either. You are trying to please two masters.
H. M. Riggle has an article or testimony in which he relates having a bad spell of sickness by blood poisoning, wherein he came near passing over. While in a very low ebb of life he says the Lord made him very conscious of a number of things:
First, there is but one passport to heaven—the blood of Christ. He saw plainly that he could not rest his hope on labors in gospel work. The blood was the password that opened heaven’s pearly gates.
Second, for sometime he has seen a trend toward the world in many ways. The plain, saintly-looking pilgrims dressed and appearing as women professing godliness are becoming very few in number. The general appearance of many congregations is the same as found in the old, dead, formal, and proud churches and cannot be distinguished from the theater-goers; and the astonishing thing is that they have let down the line fence entirely and have joined the hellbound masses in the picture shows and theaters. There is a multitude caught in the immigration away from God, and they are whirling along so rapidly that they are completely blinded and unconscious.
He said that he had promised God he would lift up his voice like a trumpet and cry out against the sins of the church as never before.
Over eighteen years ago, the Lord plainly showed me that the Trumpet movement was being swallowed up with worldliness and warned me to loosen from the things, which, by His grace, I did. It may seem strange to some why the Lord did not, or could not, show this thing to H. M. Riggle years ago. The truth of the matter is this: It is hard for one who is much entangled in a thing, and has more or less love for it, to see the thing as it is, and thus he drifts with the tide. The Lord had to get him down to death’s door before he could get courage enough to publicly speak a thing he said he had been seeing for some years. Now he says he has promised God that he would lift up his voice like a trumpet and cry out against these things. His labors against this will be useless unless he first clears himself from the rubbish, for he helped start the thing when he donned the tie and later endorsed and fellowshipped other things of a worldly nature. The only safe thing for this man to do is to obey the Scriptures found in Revelation 18, from the first to sixth verses, which say, “Come out of her, my people.”
History proves to us there has never been a movement which has become adulterated with the world that has ever cleansed itself, or been reformed, and come back to a standard of purity and become again separate from the world as Holy People unto God; but on the contrary has become numbered in the “valley of dead bones” (Ezekiel 37), and needs to be prophesied to, and not endorsed. A minister’s preaching has no weight of eternal worth when he himself has on some worldly attire, endorses, or is entangled in the thing he speaks against. My prayer is that God will awaken those who are asleep or at ease in Zion.
[Fred Pruitt; God’s Gracious Dealings]
The above quotation was first read to me by a minister of a compromised movement who was advocating that it was better to stay in and do all the good that one could do than to leave. As proof of his assertion, he had me read from the book quoted above about H. M. Riggle’s experience. As published in the book, the quotation above was arrayed on two pages—and he had just read the first page. Therefore, he thought it supported his contention—God is able to wake us up and help us to recover and do good where we are—there is no need to leave. After reading the portion he requested, I noticed that it extended to the next page and asked him if he had read that. He replied that he had not, whereupon I read it. It was devastating to his position. He had nothing left to say. The whole thing had backfired on him. But he did not abandon his false doctrine.
It seems contrary to all good sense and human wisdom to abandon positions of influence or potential influence to launch out in God—starting over, as it were. It does not readily appear at those moments of crisis how limiting it is to in effect say, “Lord, I am Your man—as long as You use me here—for this has to be right—and Lord, You must work just right here, as least as far as working through me.” Do not be surprised if God uses you less and less, for you have partaken of an accursed thing—group loyalty, a party spirit—and God abhors such. In truth, can you really say that now you love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength?
The moment you separate the church of Christ into distinct divisions, you set up the idol of party. Success or adversity will no longer affect the mind simply as they touch the cause of Christ, but they will be felt, also, as affecting “our side” or “our church.” It is not Christ and His cause to which their whole thoughts and desires are now turned; the idol of party has now been set up, and it claims, and receives, part of their regard. The man, I think, is almost more than human that can wholly avoid this influence, at least after he has been long identified with any branch of the church. It is an influence which is all the time at work. The idol has been set up to divide the heart from the blessed Savior and His holy service; and its influence is as ceaseless as the existence of the cause. And this party feeling is, as we have seen, the essence of all sin, so that sinful desire is blended continually in the heart with its love to Christ, and pollutes the worship which it offers Him.
It mingles poison with the streams of salvation that flow to the soul through the church, and casts a blight upon its budding fruit.
The divisions of Christ’s people beget and stimulate continually that opposite spirit of rivalry and contention, which is the spirit of the world.
[W. H. Starr—quoted in Andrew L. Byers; Birth of a Reformation, “A Spiritual Shaking”]
To conclude, let us state the all-too-often-ignored, but obvious conclusion: Only God can detect the counterfeits of the devil all the time. I remember a certain time in my life when I was thinking, “I have been taught a lot of Bible truth. It would be difficult for me to be deceived.” This reasoning sounded quite plausible, and I realize, looking back, that it was endeavoring to induce a certain complacency in my attitude. But God was faithful. He dealt with my heart and caused me to be able to properly divide the sound from the not sound in my thinking. The Lord got it over to me, “You may not be deceived by a lot of things. But there are things that can deceive you.” This struck home in me with great force. Then came the scripture in Matthew 24:24, and I saw with great clarity that it was possible for even the elect to be deceived except that God watched over them and they regarded His warnings and admonitions. He is so faithful. He chastises and tries us, deals with us, and warns us. How much He loves us!