The Church Drifts into Apostasy
The third thing about the church is that, as a whole, it is going to drift into apostasy. There is to be a final falling away; some will be true to God, but many will not hold fast the faith, and thus there is to be an alarming defection in the very church toward the end of the age. Some cannot but ask whether the apostacy is not even now begun. There are men who are teaching in some of the theological schools who would not have been tolerated, even at the Lord’s table, twenty-five years ago, but who would have been classed with infidels. There are preachers who are teaching doctrines that omit blood atonement, inspiration of the Holy Scripture, and everything else that is vital to the supernatural gospel of the New Testament. The center of this Christian religion is Jesus Christ, but not apart from the inspired Word of God. What do you know about Jesus Christ except through the Word of God, or the experience that has been begotten through that Word? The enemy of souls strikes first of all at this Bible, because if you disintegrate this Bible, and scatter it to the winds, your Christianity is gone. You may talk about a Christo-centric theology, instead of a Biblio-centric theology, but all true Christian theology is bound up with this book, and if you lose this Bible you have practically lost your Christ. That fact is not affirmed as it ought to be in these days. My knowledge of this blessed Christ, the living Word, comes primarily through this written Word, the four Gospels and the Epistles and the book of the Revelation. If you could tear from my heart that book, by making it no longer an inspired book to me, what becomes of my faith in the Gospel of Christ as the remedy for this dying world? The enemy is therefore concentrating his attacks on the Bible. He is wise to do it, but the wisest thing the devil ever did is to get respectable believers to make these assaults for him. If he employed none but profligates, men would turn away from him; but when he gets those whom we cannot but respect as Christian men, to teach his doctrines, what a triumph he achieves, and what a jubilee there is in hell.
Arthur T. Pierson, The Coming of the Lord (Chicago; New York; Toronto: Fleming H. Revell, 1896), 35–37.
