Standing up for Truth

Hello everybody! Sorry I have not posted in awhile...I've been focusing on my son's homeschooling material for next year. I am, however, almost done so I figured I'd post regarding a new book I just started reading. In case you are not aware, John MacArthur has a new book out, "The Truth War: Fighting for Certainty in an Age of Deception." Ironically enough, in light of events in the past couple of months which led to some major changes in my life, the book is about the Emergent Church movement and its infiltration into mainstream churches. I have barely started reading the book, and I came across an awesome passage in the introduction I thought I'd post. Here goes:

"As always, a war is being waged against the truth. We are on one side or the other. There is no middle ground- no safe zone for the uncommitted. Lately the question of truth itself- what it is and whether we can truly know it at all- has become one of the major points of contention.

We also happen to be living in a generation when many so-called Christians have no taste for conflict and contention. Multitudes of biblically and doctrinally malnourished Christians have come to think of controversy as something that should always be avoided, whatever the cost. Sadly, that is what many weak pastors have modeled for them [emphasis mine]

Controversy and conflict in the church are never to be relished or engaged in without sufficient cause. But in every generation the battle for the truth has proved ultimately unavoidable, because the enemies of truth are relentless. Truth is always under assault. And it is actually a sin not to fight when vital truths are under attack."

Wow. MacArthur hits the nail right on the head with this! When pastors are too afraid, for whatever reasons, to address sin issues or doctrinal errors (one and the same, of course) then they fail to shepherd the church and lead the flock. Ultimately they permit the downgrading of the local church and it becomes only a matter of time until these issues turn the local church into a mockery of what a church must be...