Defending. Contending.

This is an excerpt from a sermon by John MacArthur that all should take the time to read. One reason men of God should preach the word is because of the dangerous times in which we live. Here is John’s sermon…

‘It was in the Reformation, 1500, that sacramentalism was given a tremendous blow in the Reformation. As we said this morning, this is Reformation Sunday in the commemoration of the church. And Luther nailed his thesis on the door of the church at Wittenberg and launched the great Reformation.

But it wasn’t long after that, sad to say, the eighteenth century, there came the second dangerous epoch in the life of the church, rationalism. Coming out of the Dark Ages of sacramentalism when the Roman Catholic system oppressed people and told people that only the Church had the true knowledge, man after the back of the sacramental power was broken, after the time of the Reformation, man began to feel his freedom a little bit. And out of that came the Renaissance and man began to discover something of the image of God in him, and something of the incredible creativity that he had and something of his intellectual capabilities and began to develop all kinds of skills.

And out of the Reformation came the Renaissance and out of that came the enlightenment and out of that came the Industrial Revolution and man began to see what a mind he had. And out of that came Rationalism. And in the eighteenth century, man decided that he was God, for all intents and purposes, and that he could only believe what was rational. And anything that wasn’t rational or reasonable to him should be rejected. Man placed himself above God, human reason above Scripture. And rationalism came into the church. Rationalism corrupted the church, corrupted the Protestant church, corrupted the church that came out of the Reformation. Rationalism came into the church. The higher critical theory came into the church. They questioned the authorship of the Bible authors. They questioned the inspiration. They questioned the truth of Scripture. They questioned anything and everything in the Bible. One European scholar, one rationalist scholar decided when it was all said and done there was 26 verses that were true in the whole Bible.

Out of that came old liberalism, new liberalism, neo-orthodoxy. I remember when I went to St. Andrews with Eric Alexander, the third oldest university in the U.K. at Oxford, Cambridge and St. Andrews, an incredible place. I wanted to go to Saints Alvader’s(?) Chapel because they have John Knox’s pulpit there, the great preacher of the Scottish Reformation. And I wanted to see his pulpit, I wanted to stand in his pulpit. I stood in some amazing pulpits, John Calvin’s and John Knox, maybe a little of their power would rub off on me. I’m surprised either of those pulpits are still standing the way they beat on them. John Knox’s pulpit was in St. Andrews at Saints Alvader’s Chapel and I just stood there and my eyes just filled with tears, my heart’s in my throat imagining him stepping in to that Roman Catholic bastion and preaching the Reformation.

I walk out of that place and I go across the little street there and in the cobblestones are some initials. And I find a little plaque and the initials are the initials of three students in their teen-aged years…three students at St. Andrews University who believed the Reformation gospel and were on that spot burned at the stake by the Church. And there is a memorial right behind the first tee, you’ve seen the St. Andrews Golf Course? You’ve seen the Royal and Ancient Club behind it, that old building, right behind that is a great monument to those three boys, really, by our standards, but men by every standard. It’s called “The Martyr’s Memorial.” They died because they believed in the Reformation faith in their teen-aged years, they were burned at the stake.

You keep walking from Saints Alvader’s Chapel where John Knox preached Reformation truth, you walk across past the pub, right next to the initials in the cobblestones, you walk across the street you’re in the School of Theology at St. Andrews University, Protestant university by the power of John Knox and the power of God. Scotland went from Catholicism to Protestantism. You can go in to St. Andrews and you won’t find one person teaching there who believes the Bible. And they walk every day out of the School of Theology across the martyr’s initials into the pub. That’s the legacy of liberalism. That’s dangerous stuff. ‘

Read John’s entire sermon transcript here…