Table Of Content© 2007 by John MacArthur
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
MacArthur, John, 1939-
The truth war : fighting for certainty in an age of deception / John MacArthur.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7852-6263-3 (hardcover)
ISBN-10: 0-7852-6263-6 (hardcover)
1. Truth--Religious aspects--Christianity. 2. Evangelicalism. 3. Christian life. I. Title.
BV4509.5.M253 2007
239–dc22
2006032323
Printed in the United States of America
07 08 09 10 11 12 QW 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5
Through the years my partnership with Phil Johnson
has proven to be divinely ordained. The contribution of his
theological knowledge, clear thinking, and strong conviction
has been essential to the success of our collaboration
in projects like these. I owe Phil a deep debt of gratitude
for his considerable editorial efforts in this book.
THE Church of Christ is continually represented under the figure of an
army; yet its Captain is the Prince of Peace; its object is the
establishment of peace, and its soldiers are men of a peaceful
disposition. The spirit of war is at the extremely opposite point to the spirit
of the gospel.
Yet nevertheless, the church on earth has, and until the second advent
must be, the church militant, the church armed, the church warring, the
church conquering. And how is this?
It is in the very order of things that so it must be. Truth could not be
truth in this world if it were not a warring thing, and we should at once
suspect that it were not true if error were friends with it. The spotless
purity of truth must always be at war with the blackness of heresy and
lies.
1
—C. H. SPURGEON
CONTENTS
Introduction: Why Truth Is Worth Fighting For
1. Can Truth Survive in a Postmodern Society?
2. Spiritual Warfare: Duty, Danger, and Guaranteed Triumph
3. Constrained into Conflict: Why We Must Fight for the Faith
4. Creeping Apostasy: How False Teachers Sneak In
5. Heresy’s Subtlety: Why We Must Remain Vigilant
6. The Evil of False Teaching: How Error? Turns Grace into
Licentiousness
7. The Assault on Divine Authority: Christ’s Lordship Denied
8. How to Survive in an Age of Apostasy: Learning from the Lessons of
History
Appendix: Why Discernment Is Out of Fashion
Notes
INTRODUCTION
WHY TRUTH IS WORTH FIGHTING FOR
Who would have thought that people claiming to be Christians—even
pastors—would attack the very notion of truth?
But they are.
A recent issue of Christianity Today featured a cover article about the
“Emerging Church.” That is the popular name for an informal affiliation of
Christian communities worldwide who want to revamp the church,
change the way Christians interact with their culture, and remodel the
way we think about truth itself. The article included a profile of Rob and
Kristen Bell, the husband and wife team who founded Mars Hill—a very
large and steadily growing Emerging community in Grand Rapids,
Michigan. According to the article, the Bells
found themselves increasingly uncomfortable with church. “Life in the church had
become so small,” Kristen says. “It had worked for me for a long time. Then it stopped
working.” The Bells started questioning their assumptions about the Bible itself
—“discovering the Bible as a human product,” as Rob puts it, rather than the product of
divine fiat. “The Bible is still in the center for us,” Rob says, “but it’s a different kind of
center. We want to embrace mystery, rather than conquer it.” “I grew up thinking that
we’ve figured out the Bible,” Kristen says, “that we knew what it means. Now I have no
idea what most of it means. And yet I feel like life is big again—like life used to be black
1
and white, and now it’s in color.”
One dominant theme pervades the whole article: in the Emerging
Church movement, truth (to whatever degree such a concept is even
recognized) is assumed to be inherently hazy, indistinct, and uncertain—
perhaps even ultimately unknowable.
THE IDEA THAT
THE IDEA THAT
THE CHRISTIAN
MESSAGE SHOULD BE
KEPT PLIABLE AND
AMBIGUOUS
SEEMS ESPECIALLY
ATTRACTIVE TO
YOUNG PEOPLE
WHO ARE IN TUNE
WITH THE CULTURE
AND IN LOVE
WITH THE SPIRIT
OF THE AGE.
Each of the Emerging Church leaders profiled in the article expressed
a high level of discomfort with any hint of certainty about what the Bible
means, even on something as basic as the gospel. Brian McLaren, for
instance, is a popular author and former pastor who is the best-known
figure and one of the most influential voices in the Emerging Church
movement. McLaren is quoted in the Christianity Today article, saying at
one point: “I don’t think we’ve got the gospel right yet. . . . I don’t think the
liberals have it right. But I don’t think we have it right either. None of us
2
has arrived at orthodoxy.”
Elsewhere, McLaren likens the conventional notion of orthodoxy to a
claim that we “have the truth captured, stuffed, and mounted on the
3
wall.” He likewise caricatures systematic theology as an unconscious
attempt to “have final orthodoxy nailed down, freeze-dried, and shrink-
4
wrapped forever.”
That is very popular stuff these days. McLaren alone has written or
coauthored about a dozen books, and his utter contempt for certainty is a
motif he returns to again and again. In 2003 Zondervan and Youth
Specialties teamed up to start a line of products called Emergent/YS.
They publish books, DVDs, and audio products at a prolific rate, with
titles ranging from Rob Bell’s Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith
to Adventures in Missing the Point, an aptly titled collaboration of Brian
McLaren and Tony Campolo.
The idea that the Christian message should be kept pliable and
ambiguous seems especially attractive to young people who are in tune
with the culture and in love with the spirit of the age and can’t stand to
have authoritative biblical truth applied with precision as a corrective to
worldly lifestyles, unholy minds, and ungodly behavior. And the poison of
this perspective is being increasingly injected into the evangelical church
body.
But that is not authentic Christianity. Not knowing what you believe
(especially on a matter as essential to Christianity as the gospel) is by
definition a kind of unbelief. Refusing to acknowledge and defend the
revealed truth of God is a particularly stubborn and pernicious kind of
unbelief. Advocating ambiguity, exalting uncertainty, or otherwise
deliberately clouding the truth is a sinful way of nurturing unbelief.
Every true Christian should know and love the truth. Scripture says one
of the key characteristics of “those who perish” (people who are damned
by their unbelief) is that “they did not receive the love of the truth, that
they might be saved” (2 Thessalonians 2:10). The clear implication is that
a genuine love for the truth is built into saving faith. It is therefore one of
the distinguishing qualities of every true believer. In Jesus’ words, they
have known the truth, and the truth has set them free (John 8:32).
In an age when the very idea of truth is being scorned and attacked
(even within the church, where people ought to revere the truth most
highly), Solomon’s wise advice has never been more timely: “Buy the
truth, and do not sell it” (Proverbs 23:23).
THE ETERNAL VALUE OF THE TRUTH
Nothing in all the world is more important or more valuable than the truth.
And the church is supposed to be “the pillar and ground of the truth” (1
Timothy 3:15).
History is filled with accounts of people who chose to accept torture or
death rather than deny the truth. In previous generations it was generally
considered heroic to give your life for what you believed in. That is not
necessarily the case anymore.
Part of the problem, of course, is that terrorists and suicide bombers
have co-opted the idea of “martyrdom” and turned it on its head. They
call themselves “martyrs,” but they are suicidal murderers who kill people
for not believing. Their violent aggression is actually the polar opposite of
martyrdom, and the ruthless ideologies that drive them are the exact
antitheses of truth. There is nothing heroic about what they do and
nothing noble about what they stand for. But they are significant symbols
of a deeply troubling trend that plagues this current generation worldwide.
It seems there is no shortage of people nowadays willing to kill for a lie.
Yet few seem to be willing to speak up for truth—much less die for it.
Consider the testimonies of the Christian martyrs throughout history.
They were valiant warriors for the truth. They were not terrorists or violent
people, of course. But they “fought” for the truth by proclaiming it in the
face of fierce opposition, by living lives that gave testimony to the power
and goodness of truth, and by refusing to renounce or forsake the truth
no matter what threats were made against them.
The pattern starts in the first generation of church history with the
apostles themselves. All of them, with the possible exception of John,
died as martyrs. (Even John paid a dear price for standing in the truth, as
he was tortured and exiled for his faith.) Truth was something they loved
and fought and eventually died for, and they handed that same legacy to
the next generation.
Ignatius and Polycarp, for example, were early Christian truth warriors.
(Both were personal friends and disciples of the apostle John, so they
lived and ministered when Christianity was still very new.) History records
that both of them willingly gave their lives rather than renounce Christ
and turn from the truth. Ignatius was personally interrogated by the
emperor Trajan, who demanded that he make a public sacrifice to idols to
prove his loyalty to Rome. Ignatius could have saved his life by yielding
to that pressure. Some might try to excuse such an outward act under
pressure, as long as he didn’t deny Christ in his heart. But the truth was
more important to Ignatius than his life. He refused to sacrifice to the
idols, and Trajan ordered that he be thrown to wild beasts in the stadium
