God speaks through His prophets.What they say in Holy Scripture, God says. So we are obligated to listen to Him!
One of the main things He says to His church through Jeremiah, relates to the apostasy of His people in Jeremiah's time. Despite the Lord's goodness to Israel, she continued in her vileness and rebellion, going so far as to desert the Lord who redeemed them to follow after other gods, which are no gods. He had taken her as His own Bride, but she, as His bride, went a-whoring after other husbands. She was unfaithful to Him!
That's what apostasy is essentially. It is a departing from the Lord. And there is more than enough evidence that this has happened in today's church! In fact, Dr Francis A. Schaeffer states that this "is a hallmark of this generation," and who could disagree with him on that! It is difficult to argue that the church of today is experiencing one of her high times knowing the blessing of God. When a retiring church minster who has a house in a particular seaside resort in Northern Ireland is puzzled as to what church he will attend, things are bad! The church has departed from her Lord and Master. She is not engaged to another husband, one that does notlve her as her Lord did.
What has shew done? She has followed the ways of the world. More specifically, she has taken into her thinking the relativism of Hegel the philosopher which says, in effect, that there are really no such thing as right and wrong, but there is a bit of right and wrong in everything and in everybody; so let's come to a middle ground, a compromise, a synthesis. In this way, we will all be happy.
Within the church, this pans out like this: since all things are relative, we must not be too tight on what a Christian is, or on what obedience to the Lord is all about. After all, there is no right and wrong, and truth lies somewhere in between. One minister thinks that unless a man is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God; and another says that as long as you live a decent life, you're a Christian. The church's task is how to, and here's Hegel's term, "synthesisie" this situation, so that all will be happy. So the church agrees not to take definitions too seriously, to allow plenty of room for everybody, those who believe in the necessity of the new birth and those who deny this. So a form of words are arrived at to which every party can subscribe.
Does this sound like your church? An apostate church no longer knows what she believes. Forget about written confessions and such like; they tell us nothing but what the church thought was proper at a given time in history. They DO NOT tell us what any particular church believes today. What does tell you what a church is like is by looking at the kind of membership there is, and if that membership is really committed to the Gospel.
That's enough to be going on with, isn't it?
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