Godless Christians

Experience, under the good and sure providence of God, has taught me that one very common reason why ministers are persecuted by elders and by their members is that somewhere in it all there is marital unfaithfulness. I can think back to my early years as a minister, and I can detect one man, a youth leader in the congregation, who was very critical of me and my ministry, and I did not know then why this should be. Years later, I learned that he was having an affair with another woman, as well as 'trying it on' with yet another one.

Then when I was in my first pastoral charge, opposition came from an elder who, on the surface, tried to keep in with me, but was not supportive of my preaching ministry. Years later, I discovered that he had been attempting to have an affair with another church member.

Moving to other pastures, the opposition to my ministry was intense, and one of the prime movers was an elder who had been trying to have secret liaisons with other neighbouring women, nine to date, including my wife. He succeeded in getting the church authorities to support him, and I suffered directly as a result.

Then, in other work situations, I have discovered that my strongest and most vociferous opponents were men of very questionable moral character. When a 'Christian' man says that he believes that girls working as prostitutes is a good thing because it saves other women from being raped by lusty men. Indeed, his language is peppered with vulgarities of all kinds, his normal vocabulary strongly sexual in content, and utterly offensive. Yet this 'Christian' church member opposed the Gospel of Christ at every opportunity.

Take another opponent of the gospel, a man with a responsibility of reading the Scriptures in his local church, a 'Christian' man, and church member, yet his language is grossly offensive, with expletives colouring vulgarities. He hates everything Gospel.

Or the man who has prostitutes in many English cities, which he visits when on work trips to GB, a 'Christian' man who opposes the Gospel and those who believe and preach it.

Then there is the church elder who has youth leadership responsibilities, a man who claims to be a 'Christian man' and whose opposition to the Gospel is flavoured by very regular blasphemies, vulgarities, sexually embedded vocabulary, who curses and swears like a trooper; well, this man hates the Gospel of Christ, and, like the others mentioned, is protected by his church.

That brings me to another interesting and important point: I have often wondered why church elders are so loathe not to accept into membership those who make a 'profession of faith,' and I think I know, at least, part of the answer - they have so many skeletons in their own cupboards that they dare not refuse church membership to anyone! How can they refuse faith professors their place in the church, where their own faith is a mere intellectual belief in some church dogmas! To them, and to the church leadership, all one has to do is to 'say' they are Christians, and who are these leaders to say otherwise? That's the argument. Their faith is in all likelihood a dead faith, and is not only useless so far as eternal life is concerned, but is very dangerous to others. Faith without corroborating works is DEAD, says James.

And the churches are full of people of dead faith. And these are the people who, in the main, persecute their Gospel ministers most severely. They are also the people who are given credibility by their respective denominational leaderships! So church elders admit to membership as many mere intellectual believers as they can, and then use their numerical strength to persecute faithful ministers of the Gospel.

But at back of it all are elders who are being unfaithful to their wives, men who are 'having their cake and eating it,' men who do not know Christ personally, and who, like the Pharisees of Jesus' day, do not want others to come to know Him either. They also know that a faithful Gospel ministry is the surest way of church members being savingly converted to Christ, are afraid that they, too, might come under its converting influences, so do their utmost to rid the church of this uncomfortable preaching - and the best way to do that is to drive the Gospel minister out as quickly as possible. And if church procedures can be used to that purpose, then so much the better.

How sad that the emphasis nowadays is on 'professions of faith' rather than on the reality of the new birth! If this situation was to change, not only would there be fewer 'dead faith' believers in our churches, but there would be a higher spiritual temperature throughout our denominations.

Any thoughts?