What Would Machen Say Today?

Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. We're gonna take a trip today down memory lane,

May of 1930. Story time with John today. May of 1930. And it's an article by J.

Gresham Machen. And the title of it is The Present Situation in the Presbyterian Church.

Someone sent this to me and I thought, man, this is a good article. This is actually, in many ways, an article that parallels some of the things that we're seeing today in the

PCA, but also in other evangelical denominations being compromised by social justice and its various iterations.

Now, May of 1930, what was going on? Well, at that point, the modernist controversy was pretty much, in the mainline denominations, being won by the modernists.

You have, most notably, R. A. Torrey's The Fundamentals. That would have been during World War I, around that period of time, a number of publications were put out there trying to defend orthodoxy against attacks from higher criticism,

Darwinian evolution, social gospel. Some of that stuff is really the same kind of thing we're dealing with today, just a previous iteration of it, especially in regards to the social gospel.

And in this particular article, J. Gresham Machen talks about modernism.

Liberalism would be the word that he uses in his book, Christianity and Liberalism, which I'd recommend everyone reading.

It's not going to parallel, in exactness, every single thing that's happening today in the church, but there are a lot of things that are eerily similar.

And I write about this in my book, Christianity and Social Justice. I picked that title specifically to riff off of J.

Gresham Machen because his book, Christianity and Liberalism, the thesis of it is that liberalism is a religion opposed to Christianity, essentially.

That's what it is. And so I think that the social justice movement is the same thing.

In fact, in many ways, the liberalism of a century ago has many parallels to the social justice movement.

There's many things that are different about it as well, but there are a lot of things that are very similar. And we have progressed or regressed,

I guess, depending on how you... Regress would probably be a better term. And we have come to a point now under radical subjectivism, post -modernism, radical iterations of Marxism and feminism and all the rest, we are to a point now where the church is, in my opinion, way more compromised and the threat is way more subversive and nefarious than it was even at this time.

And at this time, a century ago, oh, it was very nefarious. And the people who were social justice activists, or I should say, social gospel activists and modernists, et cetera, they were making inroads.

But while they were making inroads, they were claiming that they weren't shifting anything. Their orthodoxy was intact. They were simply trying to bring

Christianity into the modern age. They were grappling with what science was teaching and how science taught one thing, the scripture seemed to indicate something different, but did it really?

Maybe these things are compatible. We're saving Christianity. And of course, the track record, the witness of history is that that was not the case at all.

Look at the mainline denominations today. Walk into a Presbyterian church, USA, and see whether or not it is compromised and see whether or not there's a lot of people even in the church.

So many of these churches have shut down because of their compromise. Who wants to go to a church that downstream from this controversy now basically doesn't even believe in Christian orthodoxy in almost any category?

You have pastors preaching that not only endorse the

LGBTQ agenda full throttle, but they don't even believe in inerrancy.

They don't believe in sufficiency of the word of God. They don't even think the

Trinity perhaps is even a doctrine worth defending. They're just so compromised that it's not even worth it calling them

Christians at that point. That's how far we've come. And Jay Gresham Machen is talking about this upstream from where we are, upstream.

And seeing where this is going to head, seeing what's happening in his time period, he could be prophetic in a way.

He could look down the road and he could see what was going to happen. And it's the same way today. It is the same way today.

And I've convinced at this point, it is those, as I said at first, maybe it's just so hard.

I wanna give a lot of people the benefit of the doubt. There's a lot of ignorance out there. There's a lot of people, even in academic circles, they see the social justice movement.

They think, well, it's not as bad as the liberalism that the Southern Baptist Convention was saved from going down the road of the higher criticism and really what

Jay Gresham Machen is writing about earlier, the fights that happened in the Presbyterian church. It's not as bad as that.

So it comes to you and says, we just care about the poor, our intentions are all good.

But the more I've studied this, the more I've realized that actually, no. The modernist controversy, the same thing was going on.

The people that promoted the modernism and Darwinism and higher criticism and social gospel, they all had good intentions.

And so according to them, and they all came not as villains, but as those who are gonna save the church from its complete, just the wreckage that it would experience because of the threat of post -modernism or modernism and higher criticism, et cetera.

So they came with the intention, with the goal, with the message that we're here to save the church.

We are Orthodox believers. And Jay Gresham Machen said, no, you're not. And that should have been the same thing that happened today, but it wasn't.

And in less so than it was in Jay Gresham Machen's time, at least you had some who were willing to say something. Today, you don't hardly even have that.

Think about this. Who do you have in the Southern Baptist Convention? And I'm not saying, this is the standard

I'm using. Who do you have in the Southern Baptist Convention who's willing to say this is a false religion and those who are promoting it are false teachers and I'll name their names.

Who's willing to say Walter Strickland's a false teacher? Who's willing to say Jarvis Williams is a false teacher? Who's willing to say

Matt Hall, false teacher? Who's willing to say, and the list goes on,

Dottie Lewis, false teacher? Who's willing to actually do that? And to confront at the very least, to confront people like Danny Akin and Al Mohler, at the very least, at the minimum, hey, you're being unclear about the gospel here by promoting not just these people, but also many of the ideas that they advocate, which

Danny Akin certainly does, and Al Mohler certainly has. So what, and I'm just using these as general examples.

There's so many more, but why in the Southern Baptist Convention cannot you find anyone hardly who does this?

Who has done this? Russell Fuller. Who else? Who else in the

SBC, currently in the SBC? There's hardly any.

There really aren't. And you may, so here's the thing. There's a lot of, just a lot of compromise, a lot of weakness.

And the thing is, I know, I happen to know, especially at the seminary I went to, there were a lot of guys who did not agree with the social justice movement.

It's direction, they did see the threat, they thought it was wrong. And I don't know what to say other than they did not have the courage to actually make a stink about it.

And there could be many reasons for this, but I'm just saying it wasn't as much that way a century ago.

I'm sure Machen felt like he was standing alone, but he wasn't as alone as someone like a Russell Fuller today is alone. Or think about the interview that I just had with Professor Schultz in the

Lutheran, in the Missouri Synod Lutheran denomination teaching at Concordia and being locked out of his classroom.

I mean, if you're a Lutheran, think about it. Is there anyone else other than Professor Schultz who has done this, working at any of your institutions, who has decided, you know what?

Yeah, I'm willing to go on podcasts. I'm willing to talk about this. I'm willing to write articles. I'm willing to oppose this. I'm willing to say this is false teaching.

I'm willing to say those propagating into false teachers. I'm willing to, where? So this is courage from a hundred years ago, almost.

This is courage from someone who has since then gone on to be with the Lord, but who left us with an example.

And I think that's why I wanted to read this. This is an example. So it's story time with John. We're gonna just read this and I'll give you some thoughts perhaps as we go along.

I may not read the whole thing, but I am gonna read a large portion of it and just see if this rings true to today. This is from 1930.

See if it rings true. The present situation in the Presbyterian Church in the USA is not one phase of a situation that prevails in the

Protestant churches throughout the world. Everywhere in the countries of Europe and in mission lands, Christianity finds itself in a mighty conflict with an alien type of religion, religious belief, and life.

This alien type of religious belief and life appears in many different forms and expresses itself in many different ways.

But at the bottom, it is everywhere the same. Disparagement of doctrine, decrying of controversy, sinking of doctrinal differences in a program of peace and work, the craze for organizational unions, the interpretation of the

Bible and of the great Christian creeds to make them mean almost their exact opposite.

The substitution of vague swelling words for a clear -cut proclamation of the cross of Christ, exaltation of experience at the expense of God's written word.

These are everywhere the marks of one great and deadly enemy to the Christian faith. I mean, is that not very similar to what we see today, especially that last line about experience?

How many churches decided we're gonna have a whole panel of people who are minorities to tell us about oppression, or we're gonna take our cues about solving abuse within the church from those who, what, experienced abuse?

The word of God is not central to those discussions. Why is that? Well, it's very simple. It's very simple, because the word of God is not the important element in any of this.

It's not the final authority. It's not where you go to primarily for solutions, that it's being sidelined.

That's what's happening. And people will say, no, we believe in the Baptist faith and message, or we believe in whatever the confession of our church is.

But if that stuff's going on, you clearly don't. There's clearly a compromise. And J. Krishnamation is saying the same kinds of things back then, that experience is being platformed, and beyond what the privileged scripture receives, the sacred place it holds, it's now experience.

He says the enemy is made the more dangerous because of it, because rather it is found within rather than without.

Let me read that again. The enemy is made the more dangerous because it is found within rather than without the church. Saying there's an enemy within the church.

That's what he's saying. Definite opponents of the Christian religion could have been more easily met.

But now, as in ancient times, Satan has preferred to labor for the most part. In the dark, the change has become very quietly and very gradually.

There have been few open breaks. There have been comparatively few open denials. And that's a great point, few open denials.

So it's not just that this stuff is being promoted. Who are the people opposing it? Who are the people denying it entry?

Where are they? Who are they? Good men in their ignorance have often become emissaries of unbelief.

The gospel has not been openly contradicted, but it has been quietly pushed aside.

It has quietly faded away as one picture fades away before another on the screen.

And another gospel has assumed its place. That's exactly what's going on today. We believe in the gospel by faith, you know, by grace through faith, but also there's this corporate nature.

There's this, you only have a half gospel or a partial gospel if that's all you believe. It's being pushed aside. Many men are quite unconscious of the change.

They are made very angry by being told the truth. I mean, that's exactly the case in the SBC. How dare you say there's a liberal drift?

Others are not so completely blind. They know in their heart of hearts that all is not well, but they will do nothing unpleasant to preserve the purity of the church.

They preach the true gospel themselves, they say, but let others in the same church preach what they will.

God will ultimately honor the truth, they tell us. God will ultimately destroy error. But meanwhile, let us above all have peace.

Thus is Gamaliel cited as though he were a Christian saint. Thus does a worldly urbanity masquerade under the name of love.

Thus has a polite optimism been substituted for the dread solemnity and exclusiveness of the gospel of Christ.

Man, I wish there was someone like this today. The way he has with words and the way he's able to nail and go to the root of the issues here.

This is exactly what's happening today in so many ways. People saying that our church isn't compromised, we preach the true gospel.

Meanwhile, you have other people on staff that are promoting something the opposite and you supposedly had unity. And it's just incredible.

I've been through this situation many times. Upon this policy of palliation and compromise,

God has placed the signal marks of his disfavor in the modern world. Nowhere has that policy resulted in the advancement of the truth.

Everywhere it has led more and more to radical departure from the word of God. Almost all the larger Protestant churches of the world today are dominated by men who are either hostile or indifferent to the great verities of the faith.

We do not mean that the situation is one of unrelieved gloom. Nowhere in the world has God left himself altogether without a witness.

In Germany and France and England and China and in many other lands, there are heroic groups of people who have not bowed the knee to bail, who have not been afraid to witness for the

Lord Jesus Christ. In Scotland, the heroic free church still raises its voice amid the sad defection of the larger bodies.

In the Northern of Ireland. So he goes through all these examples that where people have stood uncompromised.

Says, is it a fact, whether we like it or not, that the larger and older Protestant bodies have in their corporate capacity, for the most part, ceased to witness in any clear -cut way the gospel of the

Lord Jesus Christ. Wow, what a statement to make. And that statement could be made today of the churches that many of them from that split.

Think of the PCA. Think of the Presbyterian Church in America. Think of the article by Tim Keller about the future of the

PCA, pacifying conservatives. Revoiced theology really isn't a threat. The side B stuff, not a threat.

Pacifying, it's really just this older, more innocuous debate between people who have a different, more strict and more narrow interpretation of the

Westminster. That's all it is. In fact, you're gonna see that very argument come up in this, and he knocks that kind of thing down.

It's, Tim Keller's on the wrong side of this today. He would not have been with the Machens of that time,

I believe, with the same disposition he has today, were he to have lived a century ago.

And many of these men would not have. They would not have been with Machen. They would have been on the other side, the accommodationists, trying to make sure there's a place for worldly thinking within the church.

To that assertion, one, and perhaps only one, notable exception must be made, and one place only in the modern world that we large church that is maintaining faithfully the full deposit of faith.

The church to which we refer is the great church of Holland. There are, at least we have a truly Calvinistic church.

Now, the funny thing is today, would he even say that? Today, I don't think he could. But he cites them as a good example to rally around.

I'm gonna skip ahead here a little bit. Praises what Kuyper has done there. And the example of those churches shows, if indeed it needed to be shown that the modern unbelief is not invincible, but that even in these days, a church as well as an individual may be a true witness to the

Lord Jesus Christ. Only if it is to do that, it must be willing to pay the price. It must be willing to be called intolerant and narrow and unkind.

It must be willing to do unpleasant things. It must be willing to practice exclusion for the sake of those for whom

Christ died. But do we require modern examples to establish the need of separateness for the church?

Did our Lord not say that salt that has lost its savor is good for nothing, but to be cast out and trodden under the foot of men.

And he gives all these examples from scripture on the doctrine of separation. And he says, that's what they're doing. And they're called all the names that we're being called today.

Now, there's other names that are presently in vogue, but those names really boil down to you're unkind, you're intolerant, you're narrow.

This is just eerie, to be honest. I'm gonna skip ahead here a little bit.

In view of this worldwide condition, we need not wonder that America too has drifted away from the gospel of Christ. We are in little agreement with those who think that American churches all is essentially well.

The modernist is just a foolish little aberration and that the heart of the church may be assumed to be perfectly sound.

Those who speak so are really quite blind to that which is going on in the world today. They are quite living in a situation of 50 or 75 years ago.

And I'm not the slightest inkling of the real state of the case. It's exactly what we're in today. Exactly what we're in today.

There's not a problem in the SPC. There's not a problem in the PCA. All is fine and well. It's just like it's always been.

That's even the message Keller gave. It's just like from the inception of the PCA. We're at the same kind of debates.

It's always been this way. No, it's not. No, it's not. As a matter of fact, in this battle against modernism in America, we are engaging merely in one division of a worldwide conflict.

Here as elsewhere, Christianity is battling against a mighty current of the age. So this is a threat from without.

In this American phase of the conflict, the enemy is not yet in such complete ascendancy as in most other countries of the world, but certainly the situation even here is bad enough.

Of the larger Protestant bodies, very few are resisting with any vigor the general drift. Very few are delivering any ringing testimony to the gospel of Christ.

Most lamentable of all perhaps is the condition of those churches that boast of their freedom from modernism and the absence of controversy within their bounds.

For that boast usually means merely that the churches have made, make it are relinquishing without even a struggle, the great heritage of the

Christian faith. Let me give you an example of this today. Let me give you an example of this today. All the churches that brag that they have unity because we didn't really take a stand on the

COVID thing. Of course, every church did to some extent and some switch sides. We didn't take a stand on who the

Lord of the church was, whether it's Jesus or Caesar. We didn't take a stand on whether churches should be open and obey the commands of Christ or not, whether the full spectrum of spiritual gifts should be used on the

Lord's day. We didn't take a stand on any of this stuff, whether Zoom church actually was a, a kind of replacement for church.

We didn't take a stand on any of that. Look, we have people in our congregation on both sides and we decided to just say nothing about it.

Therefore we have unity. That's not unity, not unity at all. But there's so many churches, even quote unquote conservative churches that boast in this.

And I've been there because I've seen it because I've been in the services. I've literally heard pastors say this. A big churches, mega churches,

I've seen pastors do this very thing. And it's one of the most, for anyone who has a brain, a working brain and knows what's happening in the real world, this should be laughed out of the room.

And I'm serious about that. This is one of the most, just what pathetic responses one can have.

Of course you took a side on it. Not, and there's some things you don't have to take a position on as a church, but something as fundamental as these issues were.

You have to take a stand somewhere along the line. There's no middle ground there.

This is something that would be, and there's many different ways of approaching it, sure. But the issues that are at play in this are fundamental.

And you do have to take a stand on those. Who's the Lord of the church? Do we obey Jesus' commands? What are the limitations that the government has upon the church?

That's just to pick one example, but you could have, I mean, to take the revoiced theology, take the social justice movement, the

Black Lives Matter stuff. We have unity here. We are, we're free from that.

In fact, our pastor preached against critical race theory, said stuff against it, and yet he's talking also about whiteness and the systemic racism.

And he's importing critical race theory, but yet he's preaching against it. Therefore, we don't have it here.

That just means you're blind. And that great Jay Gresham Machen is saying this about issues that aren't the current issues necessarily, but they're similar.

He's talking about the social gospel. He's talking about modernism is what the word he keeps using here. He's talking about the threat from higher criticism and Darwinism and liberalism.

And he's saying that that's the same situation. Things haven't changed. Things haven't changed. I think men are even more weak now, but we've seen this weakness for a long time.

So he uses, as an example, the Presbyterian Church in the USA. And that, and I'll read for you some choice clips from this.

The conditions are bad, he says, in that particular church. He says,

I'll just read this. The creed of the church remains indeed truly Christian for every candidate for ordination is required to subscribe solemnly to the

Westminster Confession of Faith. But this creed subscription is constantly being interpreted so loosely as to mean scarcely anything at all.

It would be instructive to trace the steps that have brought a church that was formerly so great into the present lamentable condition.

But that can only very imperfectly be done. Here as elsewhere, the destruction forces have been content to labor for the most part in the dark only now and then has some overt act been observed to reveal the extent to which the undermining of the church has progressed.

And this is so true. With the SBC, for instance, looking back at the last couple decades, okay, how can you, what's the barometer to figure out whether there's a drift?

Well, you could look at something like I talked about recently, the Disney thing. Look at what they said in 97, boycotting Disney.

Why? Because, well, they're gonna extend to homosexual couples the same benefits that they would give to heterosexual married couples.

Then look today at the Southern Baptist Convention and, hey, we're gonna give you discount tickets. We're gonna incentivize you to come.

We're gonna make some money for Disney. Come on out to the convention in Anaheim and go to Disney. How did we get from that to that, right?

It's hard to trace that. There's not like a lot of steps, but subversively is what he's saying, subversively.

In the Presbyterian Church USA, you saw the same kind of thing where it was happening.

It was where the sausage was being made. People were shifting their positions. The statement of the church hadn't changed.

Hey, we still have the same doctrinal statement. How many times do SBC guys hold that up? Here's Matt Hall signing our doctrinal statement.

Here's Walter Strickland signing our doctrinal statement. Let's defend because we got a doctrinal statement. Well, big whoop.

So did the denominations that fell into modernism. They had a doctrinal statement, but then you're contradicting it over here where the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing.

That's the issue. And so he gives specific, he tries to give some specific examples here that many of us would not, unless you're steeped in Presbyterian history, you wouldn't understand some of these examples.

But suffice it to say, you can see similarities between what happened to the Presbyterians, what's happening today to the

PCA today. And he talks about old

Princeton Cemetery. The drift of the church has been not only in the ecclesiastical machinery, but also in the educational agencies.

One and only one of the theological seminaries, that is Princeton, was until recently engaging in a really vigorous and effective battle against the destructive forces.

That seminary indeed up to the spring of 1929 stood as a very height of its influence. Its student body had increased greatly.

It was honored by all those throughout the world. And evidently from the modernist indifferentist point of view, such as the institution constituted a serious menace, let's see, had to be destroyed.

So destroyed it was in 1929, after a three -year fight, Princeton Theological Seminary now stands under a board of control that has two

Auburn affirmationists in its membership, and is quite out of accord with the doctrinal position that the institution has hitherto maintained.

He talks about the various ways in which the Princeton has compromised.

So here's the advice. Here's what J. Gresham Machen says. Under these discouraging circumstances, what ought to be done by the sound elements in that church about the answer to this question, there may be differences of opinion, but some things we think can hardly be in doubt.

There are some things at least which we certainly ought to do. Here's his recommendations. Number one, we ought to face the facts.

And this is what I really wanna talk about, okay? So whatever denomination you're in right now,

J. Gresham Machen's advice. Number one, face the facts. Face the facts.

Do not try to cover them up. Do not pretend they don't exist. Do not just say that anyone's saying that this drift is happening, they must be a racist or a liar.

Don't, face the facts. This is what Al Mohler's unwilling to do. This is what Danny Akin's unwilling to do in the

SBC. This is what Tim Keller is unwilling to do in the PCA. This is what so many are unwilling to do.

We ought to face the facts. Nothing is more insurvating, see, they use words back then, we don't use a lot today, enervating today than a foolish optimism about the state of the church.

Let us get rid of this ecclesiastical, man, co -ism, co -ism?

A co -ism, it's gotta be co -ism, which seeks comfort from a parrot -like repetition of the assertion that the church is essentially sound.

Rather, let us spread the real facts unreservedly before God in prayer and seek our help from him.

Number two, we ought to avoid paring down our ecclesiastical program to suit undecided or timorous persons on the outskirts of our camp.

Nothing has been more effective in preventing any brave or generous actions on the part of evangelicals in the church. And this continual fear of losing support for our movement if we speak out bravely for the

Lord Jesus Christ. As a matter of fact, our movement will greatly profit by losing some kinds of support. When our army is reduced to Gideon's 300 men, then

God may be pleased to give us the victory in the fight. So number one, face the facts. This is what people are unwilling to do. I would submit to you the supposed conservatives, even, look, even the people that you think, like at the

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in the SBC, they're the conservatives, like Denny Burke, right? Conservatives.

Are they ever calling out the other professors who are preaching absolute nonsense at their seminary?

Are they ever encouraged to stand? Where, where is it? Where are the people who are supposedly really strong on orthodoxy?

So face the facts. There are facts. And number two, avoid paring down our ecclesiastical program to suit undecided, or basically he's saying people who are, we want the approval from on the outskirts.

How often do Southern Baptists and evangelicals in general want the approval of those in not just the world, but like the

Roman Catholics? They constantly look to the Roman Catholics, many of the thought leaders, the more astute academics in evangelicalism, right?

How many of them want the approval of those in the

New York Times, Washington Post, right? Forget about that. How many of them are trying to satisfy the woke mob, trying to get, if we just expand the 10 of our denomination to include more racial minorities, which in their minds means we have to go woke, then we will, you know, we accommodate them.

Stop it, he said, just stop it. Preach the truth. Stop trying to accommodate people that don't even believe the truth.

And that would include people like, you know, Dwight McKissick and Walter Strickland at the

BDN Abuelae, and some of these, and your Russell Moores, your Beth Moores, your,

I don't even know. There's so many, it's,

I could just go on forever probably, but your liberals, quote unquote, they don't call themselves that, but those in the denomination who wanna shift things kind of towards the left, why accommodate them?

Number three, let us support our new evangelical organ with all our might and main. It certainly deserves our support.

Let's see here, let me skip ahead. He commends some people that he thinks are doing a good job.

We gotta support them. I would say they're the Russell Fullers. Support the people who are going to actually fight this.

I'll tell you this, and I haven't said this a lot. I don't know if I've said this at all. So during, when

Russell Fuller came out and talked about, and he released all these documents, talked about what was happening at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, there was a sense in the air before that happened.

Many people had seen, on the conservative side, had seen his interviews, appreciated them, liked them.

There wasn't anything negative, I'm just telling you. And when it went public, those people were never, hardly any of them were ever to be found again.

People who even promised, I'm gonna have Russell Fuller on my, I'm not gonna let him go out there alone.

I'm gonna support him. They were nowhere to be found. People on the, quote unquote, conservative side in the

Southern Baptist Convention. People that many of you in the Southern Baptist are looking to, to probably solve some of the problems that are happening, withdrew their support.

And what I hear Jay Gresham -Machin saying here is, you gotta support the people, and he named some of them, like Dr. S .G.

Craig, and Reverend H. McAllister Griffiths. And people who are gonna fight this, you gotta get behind them.

Number four, we ought to support the Westminster Theological Seminary, which has been born in prayer, and has been supported by the devotion and self -sacrifice of those who love the gospel of the

Lord Jesus Christ. So an institution, we don't really, we're not at that stage, but new institutions probably do need to form.

Number five, we ought to keep the banner flying in the councils of the church about our immediate duty and detail. There may be some doubt, but one thing at least is clear, there can be no peace, save a shameful peace, between the

Christian religion and that which, of the Auburn Affirmation, for example, represents.

If the latter is really in permanent control of our church, then a new church should be formed. So basically, just don't bend, don't be uncompromising on this.

Okay, so, and then six, we ought not to despair. The world may look,

I'm gonna read this whole one. The world may look dark to him who loves the gospel today, but let us reflect that this is not the first gloomy time in the history of the

Christian church, and sometimes the darkest hour has just preceded the dawn. Even now, God has by no means left himself without a witness.

We who have been at Westminster Seminary, for example, have learned through contact with our splendid company of students, as never before, how truly blessed a thing is

Christian fellowship in the midst of a hostile world. No, there are still many today who love the

Lord Jesus Christ as he is presented to us in God's word, but the true ground of our confidence is found in the great and precious promises of God, who can say, perhaps

God has brought us into these troubles in order that we may cease to have confidence in men and may rely more completely upon him.

God uses the weak things. There's what Jay Gresham Machen says as his advice for us today, and I would suggest to you that numbers one, two, three, and five are on life support, especially one, two, and three.

Facing the facts, making sure that we're not trying to appease people on the outskirts.

The conservatives are hampered by this, hampered by this. Oh, and I could, I have so many examples in my mind of this that many of them

I haven't talked about, because the thing is, I don't want to, I don't like the friendly fire thing. I don't, people who

I think do see the issues and do want to put some kind of a resistance out there, I really don't want to, but the thing is,

I have seen so many examples of this. You, if you're to the left, all right, this is just a general, this happens in political conservatism as well.

If you're to the left a bit from someone, they tend to cuddle up to you more. They tend to want your approval. They tend to want to say, we're friends.

They don't want to take pictures of you. If you're to the right, you're an opportunity to be chopped off.

Cut that person out. They're too radical. They're too extreme. They're going to hurt us. They're going to make us a whole movement. It's going to look bad if we accept this person.

But if you're to the left a little bit, there is an accommodation. That is just the way it goes. I've seen this.

I've seen this so clearly. And it's, James Gresham Machen is saying, no, don't do that.

Support those who are going to take a stand against this stuff. That has been just almost entirely thrown out the window.

And then support the institutions that are against this, like Westminster support.

Keep the banner flying in the councils of the church. Have a standard bearer.

Just don't give up. And then don't despair. And that's the one, I think, for many of us in this audience, we need to focus on the most.

Because many of you listening, you don't have these platforms. You don't have the influence to do much about what's happening in your denomination, except you can write letters.

You can pray. You can show up at conventions. You can, but many of you, you're not, you don't have a position that you built within a denominational structure.

And so this is where I think, you know, the other stuff might not apply to you as much, or you're there already.

You just, you know, you wish that your leaders would be there. But number six does apply. We ought not despair. Don't despair.

The world is going to constantly impress itself upon the church. That Satan is always at work.

And the reality is God's going to preserve his church. And we don't know how he's going to do it all the time, but I think what

Machen says here is very critical. We need to believe that promise that God is never going to leave nor forsake us.

He is going, and the promise that gates of hell won't prevail against the church. And it's going to make us rely on him.

It's going to make us rely on him, not put our trust in chariots and horses, but in the Lord God. So that's what

I had for you today from Jay Gresham Machen from almost a century ago and how it rings true today.