The Death of Doctrine

Hello, and thank you for listening to the Testing the Spirits podcast. The title of this episode is The Death of Doctrine. In 2 Timothy 4 .3, the apostle Paul warned that the day would come when people would no longer endure sound doctrine.

One translation says this, that the day is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine. And that day has come. The Greek word translated doctrine is didaskalia, and it simply means teaching or instruction.

Jesus and his apostles taught on a variety of different subjects. Jesus, for example, taught people about the proper understanding of the law, the law of Moses. And pastors today should teach people about the proper understanding of God's law.

Jesus taught about his coming again at the end of the age. The apostle Paul taught about the meaning of baptism. He taught about the spiritual gifts. He and others, of course, highlighted the person and work of Christ.

The apostle John did that in his writings, especially. And then you have the pastoral epistles that I just quoted from, 2 Timothy and 1 Timothy and Titus, where we get the apostolic teaching about men and women and their roles in the church.

And so many other subjects that Jesus and his apostles, they taught on all these different things and pastors for two millennia, 1900 years and local churches. That's what pastors did. They'd stand up on Sunday morning, open the Bible, read a text.

They would explain it to the people, give an application. This is what happened. But now we're living in a day and age where pastors are saying something very different. I got the idea for this podcast when I heard a local pastor say this.

Listen.

It's interesting how this has progressed. Some time ago, we adopted the Apostles' Creed as our working doctrinal operating statement. Because of past histories and cultural realities, we've made the decision that we're not going to fight over other important things, but secondary issues like the meaning and mode of baptism, the Lord's Supper, matters of the second coming, the role of men and women, and on and on and on.

I'm in no way saying these things don't matter, but they're not the heart of the matter. Those are issues that God's people have disagreed on for millennia, and they will continue to disagree until Jesus comes back.

So what we're saying is we don't want those things to be obstacles for the refugees. We want this to be a place where people say, I don't know what I believe about baptism. I don't know what I believe about the second coming.

Frankly, I don't know what I believe about anything.

Now just to be clear, I'm not just looking to critique this guy. I've been to that church. In fact, I've preached from that pulpit more than once. So I'm trying to help because I want what's best for that local church.

I want what's best for every church. So we always have to take what somebody's doing, what they're saying, what a pastor is preaching. If there's some new approach to ministry, it needs to be tested over and against the Word of God.

So let me say this. I understand that yes, there are those people who fight about doctrine. They get that label, the fighting fundamentalists who will sort of at the drop of a hat. Any little difference in doctrine, they'll get angry and condemn people that are, anyone who's different than me isn't even a Christian.

They're not even saved. And yeah, there are those people that get kind of nasty, but here's the thing. They are extremely rare. Certainly here in New England, I've never met anyone like that. So I don't think churches fighting is the main problem today.

The main problem we face today is theological liberalism, deconstruction, churches that are compromising. That's more of the issue than churches fighting it out. That happened in the past, but those issues have been resolved.

In this regard, they've been resolved that we have the different denominations. We know which one believes what. And for the most part, certainly locally, the different pastors from the different denominations can get along, at least the ones that are saved.

A local Presbyterian Baptist, non-denominational assemblies of God, those pastors can all get along. I mean, we're not talking about like the Episcopalians with the rainbow out front. Like that's a totally separate thing.

But we have the different denominations that, yeah, different form of church government, baptism, different view of this or that. And yeah, we can actually get along quite well. So that's not really the problem churches fighting.

The problem is compromise. So the solution to whatever the problem is, the solution is not to shy away from Bible doctrine. Now, if anything, we need more teaching of sound doctrine. The churches that have sort of led the way with people falling out of church, leaving the faith completely, apostasy, the churches that have sort of led the way in the Christian deconstructionist movement, for example, that one Baptist church that I've talked about before that spawned that heretical cult, that church was in Greenfield.

It was thriving way back when. The pastor used to teach doctrine and everything was going well. But at some point, for whatever reason, he took a different approach and he got rid of the church's doctrinal statement.

They adopted the Apostles' Creed, which really tells you nothing. It says we're Christian and that's it. I mean, Pope Francis says he believes in the Apostles' Creed. So that tells you next to nothing.

But they got rid of their doctrinal statement. They adopted the Apostles' Creed. They put up a banner that said, everyone is welcome here, no matter what, even if you're gay, you are welcome here. And, you know, when you see other churches doing similar things, yeah, you take note.

Getting rid of doctrine, not teaching Bible doctrine is not the solution. It's never the solution. And this is not just a problem that's unique to churches in Western Massachusetts. This type of thing is happening all over the country.

Indeed, it's happening all over the Western world. Instead of teaching Bible doctrine, churches are moving away from that in favor of a sort of superficial form of unity. The mantra is doctrine divides, love unifies.

That is until a problem comes up. And then because nobody has been taught sound doctrine, nobody knows the right thing to do anymore. But now that a generation has gone by and we can sort of test the fruit of this anti-doctrinal movement, and there's many things that led to it.

We've talked about this before in other podcasts, Vatican II with the Roman Catholic Church. That was the Catholic side of things, Billy Graham on the Protestant side and the Baptist side. The two of them basically said, hey, let's put our differences aside and all come together and we'll just focus on Christ and the gospel.

Nevermind that Protestants and Catholics have a different gospel, but that was the play in the 1960s with the Catholic Church and Billy Graham. And then the charismatic movement, the Jesus people movement, just bring everybody together, this massive push for unity in order to get that unity.

You need to stop talking about the mode of baptism and all this stuff that divides us. That happened in the middle of the 20th century. So now we can sort of test the fruit of that. And because people were taught to not have strong convictions about those things, because people in some cases were just not taught doctrine, because people were not equipped with the truth, and there's other reasons for this, but we have seen over the past 50 years or so, a massive falling away from the faith, partly because people don't know what they believe anymore.

They don't have those convictions. And like I said, as we saw, some are taught not to have those convictions. And you just have to consider if the church leadership doesn't have convictions about doctrine, if the pastor doesn't have strong convictions, how much less the people in the church.

So I don't say this to be critical. It's just to kind of show you that this is not the way to go. This is going to make matters worse, not better. And we need to compare it to the Bible. And Hey, does the Bible teach?

We should stop teaching doctrine. No, the apostle Paul tells Timothy first Timothy four 16. He says, take heed to yourself and to the doctrine continue in them for in doing this, you will save both yourself and those who hear you.

So for 1900 years, churches taught doctrine. Yeah, it's true. Denominations, different denominations came to different conclusions or people came to different conclusions, which led to different denominations, right?

That's yeah, that happened. The Presbyterians baptized infants. Baptists don't. The Pentecostals and the liberals ordain women pastors. The traditional evangelical churches do not. The non-denominational churches take a memorial view of the Lord's supper that the bread and cup are symbolic.

You know, the Lutherans don't. Some reform churches don't. There are all sorts of doctrinal distinctives and that's true. And not everyone can be right. And no, I don't think we should fight and condemn one another.

If somebody truly believes now, if somebody is trusting in a false gospel of salvation by faith plus works, that's a different story. Okay. But if somebody believes the true gospel, but they have a different view of baptism or the end times, we can still fellowship.

We can still work together. And again, for the most part, people do. That's not really the big problem. Apostasy is a huge problem. This is not going to help my friends. We live in a day and age at this point, any Christian who knows anything, you just have to know a little bit and you understand at least some of the differences.

And still, again, many churches can work together. We have a local evangelicals pastor's meeting, pastor's fellowship. We have Baptists. We have non-denominational churches represented. We have Presbyterians.

We have, I mean, we have a charismatic or two, for the most part, everyone gets along just fine. Churches fighting with one another. I just can't repeat this enough. That is not the problem. The problem is not Bible doctrine that divides and it's so contentious and, oh, no, we need to do something.

No, it's the lack of conviction. The problem is the lack of churches teaching doctrine. Here's some more verses on the subject. First Timothy 4 .13, Paul says, till I come, give attention to reading, to exhortation and to doctrine.

Second Timothy 3 .16, all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for, you guessed it, doctrine. Titus 2 .1, Paul speaking to Titus, he says, but as for you, speak the things which are proper for sound doctrine.

I think you get the idea. But again, doctrine is being ignored because doctrine divides. Well, you know what? That is true. Doctrine does divide. Doctrine divides truth from error. Doctrine divides Christianity from the cults.

Doctrine divides those who are faithful from those who are compromising. Going back to that verse that I mentioned at the beginning, Second Timothy 4 .3, for the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers.

My friends, that is being fulfilled right before our very eyes. It's happening everywhere. It's happening everywhere. Are things getting better? Again, this anti-doctrinal movement started in the beginning of the 20th century.

Gee, when did things really start going downhill? Oh, it was right around that point. Just pointing out the obvious, but I don't want to belabor the point. Remember, we need to stick to what the Bible teaches.

Take what I say and compare it against the scripture. I am certain about this as much as I'm certain about anything. If people are taught to ignore sound doctrine, then implicitly they're being taught to not really care about the Bible.

And then there's more blatant statements that you'll hear from time to time. Either way, it's not good. So, in conclusion, doctrine matters. Amen? And if somebody says it doesn't, by them saying that, it just proves the point that much more, that the words of the Apostle Paul are coming true right before our eyes, that the time will come and indeed it has, that they will not endure sound doctrine.

But according to their own lusts, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves, teachers, and they will turn their ears away from the truth and they'll be turned aside to fables. It doesn't need to be that way.

And by God's grace, people hear this, they'll turn it around and churches will continue to teach the whole counsel of God. Everything that Jesus taught, everything that Paul taught, everything, the whole counsel of God.

That's what we need to do. And until next time, thanks for listening. Consider subscribing to the channel. Click thumbs up if you want to get it out to more people. And if you're listening on Spotify, hey, leave us a positive review.

Okay? All right. Thanks for listening. Until next time, may the Lord be with you. Have a great day.