The Gathering of Believers Part 5
How to Identify Apostasy is to Identify the Absence of the Gospel of Grace
Among people who call themselves Christians are Roman or Greek Orthodox Catholics, Protestants include Lutherans, Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Pentecostals, and Charismatics, among whom some embrace conserving the older forms of ceremony or doctrines, and others desire to be liberated from such traditions. Then, too, there are the cults and isms or people who follow a single person who began a new way of viewing the "Christian faith," who also deny that Jesus Christ was God come in the flesh.
How to Identify Apostasy is to Identify Interpretive License over Divine Meaning
The Apostle John acknowledged apostates this way, "For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. This is the deceiver and the antichrist" (2 John 1:7). Every departure from the truth, no matter how slight it may seem it is falling away from Christ who is the truth.
By my following statement, I reason that all divisions in the church demand a defection to one extent or another by one party because, in a matter of teaching, where two disagree, they can never both be correct. If I say Methuselah's age when he died was 969 years, and you say he couldn't have been much more than 69, I am right, as stated in Genesis 5:27, and the Bible is never wrong because God inspired it. To the extent that a person does not believe in the longevity of people before the flood, they exhibit a spirit of unbelief in the Word of God.
How to Identify Apostasy is to Identify the Devisive
The church is full of divisive individuals with various interpretations on many topics covering the breadth of scripture. An apostate, according to Hebrews 6:4-6 is, "For in the case of those who have once been enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance since they again crucify to themselves the Son of God and put Him to open shame."
Let us be clear: I am not saying that every minor difference means a person has defected from the faith. The apostasy spoken of by the writer in Hebrews in 6:6 is expanded upon in Hebrews 10:26-31, "For if we go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a terrifying expectation of judgment and THE FURY OF A FIRE WHICH WILL CONSUME THE ADVERSARIES. Anyone who has set aside the Law of Moses dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much severer punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled under foot the Son of God, and has regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has insulted the Spirit of grace? For we know Him who said, "VENGEANCE IS MINE, I WILL REPAY." And again, "THE LORD WILL JUDGE HIS PEOPLE." It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God."
In other words, there is no such thing as easy belief. There is no partaking of eternal life because a person says he does. The value of their word saves no person; God decides who is saved and who is a fraud. The word used in Hebrews 6 for fall away in Greek is parapíptō, to fall, fall away, being close-beside, to defect. According to Hebrews 10, apostasy is more than an intellectual belief but an understanding that reveals a new and better way of life. The way of life is that Jesus Christ is the source of that new life, and without Him, there can be no new way of life. A defection to that degree is a full-blown apostate. Apostasy is as much about rebellion and disobedience as it is about belief in God's word; consider the life of Jesus' disciple Judas.
The problem with the church is not only because of apostates but because of those who believe for various reasons but were never born again. It is easy to seek the pastorate because your father was a pastor or to go to a foreign mission field because your parents were missionaries. However, was there ever true repentance leading to the death of the old self and the resurrection of life in the new self through identification with Jesus Christ?
How to Identify the Apostasy of Leaders
Here's the real problem! Many leaders are liberal in their theology because they have never received true repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. For them, the words of James 2:19 bear them witness, "You believe that God is one. You do well; the demons also believe, and shudder." Then there are evangelicals, who can be divided into two camps: the first is reformed, and the second magnifies the false teaching of "Free will." In either case, many in both camps are proud of the so-called special calling of leaders. Certainly, exceptional preachers have moved even a generation of believers to Christ. Such men do not define some special calling.
Some leaders fell away because they never fell in with Christ. After receiving Christ by faith, they become indoctrinated in church traditions and read into scripture, not out of it. Some leaders need help getting past the learning they acquired at a university where only men, especially those gifted and called by God, obtain a golden understanding of scripture. (See the life of Stephen, relegated to serving women and no doubt glad to do so, who also became the first martyr after debunking the religious leaders of his day and who also seated themselves in Moses seat for their own personal profit and to be seen as holy before men but not God).
The falling away in the church begins with leaders, as Jesus proposed in Matthew 23:1-4. "Then Jesus spoke to the crowds and to His disciples, saying: "The scribes and the Pharisees have seated themselves in the chair of Moses; therefore all that they tell you, do and observe, but do not do according to their deeds; for they say [things] and do not do [them]." How to determine this apostasy is to recognize religious men who, without having ever been transformed by the saving grace of Jesus Christ, represent Him on a Sunday morning.
Falling away can be exemplified by the words, "They tie up heavy burdens and lay them on men's shoulders, but they themselves are unwilling to move them with [so much as] a finger." (Matthew 23:4). How to identify this apostasy is to recognize religious legalists who preach anything but the grace of God that sets people free to serve the Son of God as slaves.
Falling away is defined by the words, "Now I exhort you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all agree and that there be no divisions among you ...Now I mean this, that each one of you is saying, "I am of Paul," and "I of Apollos," and "I of Cephas," and "I of Christ." Has Christ been divided? Paul was not crucified for you, was he?" (1 Corinthians 1:10, 12-13). How to identify this apostasy is to recognize division as seen in denominations that, in either case, is blatant rebellion to the Word of God and a license to what we feel is right but causes the Holy Spirit great grief.
"Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves" (Philippians 2:3). How to identify this apostasy is to recognize men who recognize themselves as having a special calling.
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