(Exodus) Exodus 32:26-28 — J. Vernon McGee

Moses Calls for Those on the Lord’s Side

And now I begin reading here at verse 26, actually. "...Then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, Who is on the Lord's side? Let him come unto me. And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves together unto him.

And he said unto them, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Put every man as sower by his side, And go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp,. And slay every man his brother, and every man his companion,.

Every man his neighbor.". Now, that's serious, and it's extreme. Sure it is. But there's been awful sin. The way that liberalism got into the church, I have lived now quite a while, I can remember that when I came before a church court to be examined for the ministry, they had another boy there, another young fellow, and they asked him questions, and he was a graduate of a liberal seminary.

Liberalism’s Ignorance of Theology and Scripture

I have never in my life seen anybody who knew as little theology and as little Bible as he did. And what he did know, he had all mixed up. And he was as liberal as they come. He didn't have any faith.

He had no knowledge. He could never explain the great doctrines of the faith, although he didn't believe them. And the interesting thing is, in fact, one man very impatiently said to him, Well, if you don't believe it, at least you ought to know what you don't believe.

But he couldn't define it. And then a dear old brother got up, and he said, You know, I knew this boy's father. His father was a great preacher of the past, and he was sound in the faith. And I know that this boy, one of these days come around, and he'll be all right, and all that, you know, that jargon that they used back in those days, that old buddy-buddy brotherhood stuff, and they had a motion, and they accepted him.

Refusing to Compromise in Ordination

It wasn't unanimous, but they accepted him. And it made me sick at heart to be brought in at the same time with a fellow like that that didn't believe anything at all. Well, may I say to you, that's not the way Moses would have handled it, or he wouldn't have drawn a sword in our day and slain the boy, but he sure would have not accepted him.

He would have given that boy a Bible and told him to go out and go to Bible school and learn a little Bible, and then come back if he believed it, and they'd examine him again. But no, it was all that falterall, and that's the way liberalism came into the organized denominations today and have taken over.

You can't compromise with it, friends. It was Morley who said that compromise is immoral, and I think it is, especially in the church. Moses doesn't do a very good job of compromising. I tell you, there was extreme surgery used, and we are told here that those that were guilty were slain, and the children of Levi did according to the word of Moses, and there fell of the people that day about 3 ,000 men.

Judgment Against Idolatry and Preservation of the Nation

That cleaned up the camp pretty well, by the way. They'd have been in idolatry, friends. They'd have been destroyed out in the wilderness. Now, a great many people are apt to say, my, it was so terrible and brutal and all that.

Well, let's look at it this way. Is it best to cut out the cancer here and save the person or save the nation? Think of the women and the children and the young men and the old men that were there that were not guilty, and had they permitted these men, who apparently are in charge now, they had taken over, what would have happened?

Why, that entire nation would never have entered the Promised Land. They'd gone into idolatry. Now, they would have been absolutely destroyed as a nation. And that, of course, is what's happened in the church in many places.

Liberalism’s Decline of the Church’s Influence

I've seen church after church, friends, lose its importance, its influence, and become practically nil because of the fact liberalism got in. We today are soft and we are sentimental and we're silly. In fact, the matter is we're stupid in the way that we are handling evil.

Soft-Headed Law Enforcement and Rising Lawlessness

And the reason that we are having lawlessness in this land is because that we have not only soft-hearted judges, but they're soft-headed judges. My friend, the law is to be enforced.