This warning applies even to the churches of Christ, and we see it in a sense, in modern times. In the 1920s and the 1930s and into the 1940s, there was a great decline in interest in doctrine within the churches. If you are into books, you see it very starkly. You see, coming from the Victorian period, all the books: the theologies, the spiritual biographies, most of all the commentaries and the sermon collections. There are numerous books by well-known authors about Old Testament and New Testament events, and they are nearly all doctrinally based, Scripture based. Then suddenly there is a change after World War I, and the famous and the well-known preachers and the men of Keswick and the big names and the books and so on – even extending to one who was a very able pastor here at the Tabernacle, before and in the early years of the war: W G Scroggie. You look at their books, and although they are biblical and they are in their way faithful, and they make many, many good points, you will notice they are different in character. They are almost never doctrinally based. They almost never start with an analysis of the passage of Scripture: what God actually says, what the narrative actually says. They tell you stories. They spin the most interesting and sometimes accurate accounts of narratives and places, beautiful descriptions. They make their points, but their aim seems to be to intrigue you and fascinate you. Consequently, you get generations coming along who, as far as the literature is concerned, have forgotten how to appreciate the Bible. Those books may have been the fruits of the study of the word, but they didn't actually present the word.
We find this extending today. We see books published in the United States by sound people, but you look at them, and none of the chapters start with a text or a Scripture. The author isn’t going to expound anything; he is not going to base it on God's word. He has crafted the book beautifully. It isn’t unsound. It's commenting on true things and worthy things, but he simply is not going to attempt to bring it to you from the Scripture. We have been through all this before: in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. That was the time of great decline when liberals got into the churches and into the pulpits, and took over the colleges, and no one was watching, because people weren't doctrinally trained and they didn't see the doctrines had been removed. It was not because people did not believe the doctrines, but they thought it would be far more interesting to tell a story, and then say what is right; just to throw a few texts in, and not work it out from the Scripture and let the word speak. The big collapse happened because dear Christian people had forgotten how to think scripturally, and defend the doctrines. Then you get people like Dr Martyn Lloyd Jones, and he knew – and there were others like him, but they were few and far between – what he had to do. He had to go back to exposition of the Scripture, working things out from the text. God gave up many of those churches; hundreds of churches in this country have been lost to the truth and closed altogether. But it all started with good people thinking that there was a better way than simply teaching the Scripture. And it led to ignorance, and God let those churches go in the passage of time. He judges the abandonment of his word and his truth.
What we see today is lack of holiness in so many of the churches. There was a young man went from this church a few years ago, and he tried another church across the river, and he soon fled away from that. And I said, why didn't that satisfy you to him? And he said, because they can use a little holiness, and his phrasing stuck in my mind. That is all too often the case. You go into places, and they say, ‘We are evangelical and we preach the word’, but there is so much worldliness. Ultimately God will remove the candlestick. He will warn and he will warn. Those churches may even get some converts – though nothing like the number that God would give them if they were faithful to the word. They will even hang onto that and say: ‘Look we have been blessed; we have had one baptism this year, so we are not going to examine ourselves or change our ways. It is a great tragedy, and that ultimately will mean the withdrawing of the Spirit from the church. But God will exercise great patience. How many churches are on notice, as it were, from heaven, because they need to change their ways, and go back to the old ways?