"Son of man, eat this book that I am giving you. Make a full meal of it!" (Ezekiel 3:3)
It is a plain and simple fact that what is known as Evangelicalism today is desperately sick, and rapidly losing its vitality and power. Not its political power. Good riddance to most of that, as far as I am concerned. It has been a confusion of the Two Kingdoms which has not saved very many souls but has engendered compromise after compromise on our part, and bitterness on the part of our political opponents.
Instead, by "its power," I mean its power to speak God's truth to individual men and women in a way that the Holy Spirit blesses and uses, and which saves souls in eternity and gives transformed and abundant life now.
The least healthy segments of the Evangelical church are running as fast as they can down the road to classical theological liberalism, making the same mistakes in the name of "cultural relevance" that the mainline church made a hundred years ago. The world will always hate the gospel. When your gospel is not offensive to the world and you are not an object of ridicule to the unconverted, then you can be pretty sure that your gospel is not the true gospel, and that you have begun to tread the path of Friedrich Schleiermacher, trying to win over the "cultured despisers" as the expense of truth. Nothing but the sovereign power of the Spirit of God can make the gospel acceptable to lost and wicked men and women.
The healthiest segments of the Evangelical church, those who adhere most closely to what I will call "classical Protestantism" are marked by a knowledge of true doctrine, even a zeal for true doctrine, but also seem to possess little power. It often becomes knowledge which puffs up. (1 Cor 8:1) I say this as one who comes perilously close to this condition myself, and perhaps have slipped into and out of it before. I love classical Reformed Orthodoxy. I love the Regulative Principle of Worship. I love the Sabbath. I love the Westminster Standards. I love the system of doctrine and think it is the biblical system of doctrine. I think Presbyterianism is the biblical system of church polity and will put you to sleep telling you all about it if you'll let me. I am what some call a "T.R." (which stands for "Totally Reformed," a pejorative term employed by my less theologically precise brethren in the PCA.) I love knowledge. In my worst moments, I love knowledge just for knowledge's sake, or just to boast that I have more of it than someone else. But I've discovered that the mere collection of knowledge does not necessarily transform my heart. I think I am not alone in that discovery...
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