Transforming Christianity

HOW DO YOU CHANGE A FAITH WITHOUT ANYONE NOTICING?

​There is a kind of change so slow that no one living inside it ever feels it happen. Watch a child every day and you will never catch them growing; it is the grandparent who visits once a year who walks in, stops at the door, and says, “Just look how you’ve changed.”

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Something like that has happened to a great deal of Christianity. Day by day nothing seemed to move. But set the faith preached from many platforms today beside the faith of the Book — beside the faith of those old saints who went down into the deep things of God — and you will find yourself stopping at the door. The distance is startling. And the most unsettling part is that almost no one inside it felt the ground shift, because it happened too slowly.​

Suppose a believer had known the faith of just a generation ago, then gone away for a long enough season to miss the slow years of change, and returned in our day. He would not hear a few small adjustments of emphasis. On question after weighty question — what is taught of God, of man, of salvation itself, of where this whole world is finally heading — he would find the answers turned almost completely around, until in places the new teaching faces the very opposite direction from the old. A change that no one felt happening has, in a single generation, swung some of the central doctrines of the faith very nearly the full half-circle. That is the measure of just how much Christianity has been transformed.

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Our previous discussion pointed out how the church of our day resembles the predictions of the Bible, and how that often differs from the picture we have of ourselves. This discussion will begin to unpack how we got here.

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To help us we will apply four tests that indicate spiritual drift:

• What has final authority?

• What is the true centre?

• Who is being exalted?

• What fruit is being produced?

INTRODUCTION

Let’s be clear, before we begin, about why we are looking at this at all. It is not so that we can become suspicious, or go hunting for error under every chair, or learn to enjoy the cheap thrill of being right while others are wrong. That spirit is itself a sickness, and we want no part of it. We are looking only so that we, and those we love, can be kept safely on the Rock, so that our house will not crumble when the storm comes. We have been given a great treasure in Christ and do not wish to see it swapped, while we are not looking, for a cheap imitation. So let us look — gently, but honestly.

Section One:

THE QUIET METHOD — KEEP THE WORD, CHANGE ITS MEANING

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If the enemy of our souls wished to overthrow our faith, how would he go about it? He would not make a loud call to war, but a silent infiltration. Announce an attack on the truth and the church would raise the alarm and man the walls. No — the patient way, the truly dangerous way, is to keep every cherished appearance of the faith exactly where it is, and quietly change only the hidden essence on the inside. Leave the label on the bottle and pour in a different wine. The shell is preserved; the heart is replaced; and because nothing on the surface has altered, no alarm is ever raised.

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How is this done? By reinterpreting the doctrine, redefining terms, letting the words we are familiar with remain, while hollowing out what those words point to.

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Paul saw this coming with great clarity, when he said:

“But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not preached… or another gospel, which ye have not accepted, ye might well bear with him.” — 2 Corinthians 11:3-4

Notice: another Jesus; another gospel. Not “no Jesus” and “no gospel” — the names are kept; it is the content that has been exchanged. And mark too how it is done — “through his subtilty.” The serpent in the garden did not deny God’s word outright. He kept it, and bent it: Did God really say? Did God really mean what you think He said? A small turn of interpretation, and the whole world fell.

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You can watch the same small turn being performed today on word after word. Take repentance. For two thousand years it has meant a sorrowful turning away from sin and back to God. But we have heard it taught that to “re-pent” simply means to go back up to the pent-house — to restore a higher way of seeing things, a loftier perspective. Hear what has happened: the sorrow over sin has been quietly drained out, and an upgrade of the mind poured in. The word still stands in the sentence, familiar as ever. But it is no longer the same word. The bottle is not changed; the wine is. Do that to enough words — repentance, salvation, the gospel, the kingdom, the cross, even the name of Jesus Himself — and you have built a different religion entirely, inside the standing shell of the old one, without ever ringing a single alarm. This is the quiet method. And it is why discernment, in our day, must learn to listen past the words to the things the words are now being made to carry.

Section Two:

A BOLDER WAVE, NOW SMOOTHED

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It will help to have something concrete in view, since not everyone has been walking the road long enough to watch this unfold. A few decades ago a bold and thrilling wave broke over the church. For most of us who met it, it came wrapped in a real hunger for more of God, and promised a powerful encounter with Him. The hunger was often good, and most of us were sincere.

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And in those bolder days, the work was untidy, it was called a kind of "holy chaos" where things were openly said and done that are rarely seen so plainly now. We were told the work of the Spirit that had been hidden in times past was returning in these last days as God progressively restored His church in the end-times. And with that wave came a flood of teachings and practices, some of which needed far more testing than they received. Like those who said we were “little gods” able to call things into being by the power of our own words. Like how the mission of the church was recast: no longer chiefly to carry lost souls to the Saviour, but to take the reins of society and build God’s kingdom on the earth before Christ returns. A new “anointing” spread from church to church with strange and powerful manifestations, carried along with a repeated instruction: do not weigh it, do not question it — only receive this new thing.

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Now, we are aware of how many reading this will hold fond memories of those days. We have no wish to wound any sincere soul who still treasures them. We have said from the start that our aim is to hold ourselves up to the Scriptures to allow God and them to test our hearts and the truths we hold. So notice this: those bold ideas crossed enough lines to meet resistance, and so they became quieter, gentler, more agreeable — but they never went away. And in their softer form they reached even further than the louder version ever could, into places that would never have opened the door to it before. What was once startling enough to make a person pause is now smooth enough to slip past unremarked. What once moved only a select group has now slowly seeped into the whole — which makes it need a closer eye now than ever. And so the safest thing any of us can do, whatever we make of those earlier days, is simply this: to take up the old tests, and look — honestly — at what is being taught all around us now. 

How, then, do we look? We have four old tests, and they have never failed. Let’s take them one by one.

Section Three:

THE FIRST DRIFT — WHAT SITS ON THE THRONE?

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The first test asks what holds final authority. And in the smoothed version of modern Christianity, the Bible has not been thrown out — heaven forbid; that would sound the alarm. It is still carried, still quoted, still loved. It has simply been quietly moved off the throne and set on a lower chair, while something else takes the high seat beside it: a fresh word, a prophetic impression, the latest thing “God is doing,” and above all, experience. When we are told not to analyse it, just receive it — when the very act of weighing a thing by Scripture is treated as the unspiritual reflex of a cold heart, the bonds of religion or legalism — then the throne has already changed hands. The Bible is still on the shelf. It simply no longer has any authority to bring correction. It has been reduced to cherry-picked passages that illustrate whatever is already believed. But the old paths run the other way:

“To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is

no light in them.” — Isaiah 8:20

In days past Christians were commended when they weighed even an apostle against the text rather than the text against the apostle (Acts 17:11). If we have turned that order around then we are in very real danger:

“For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears.” — 2 Timothy 4:3​

Itching ears. Not teachers who shout obvious lies, but teachers gathered precisely because they say the warm, flattering, comfortable thing the ear was already itching to hear. And listen for what has gone quiet where this drift has taken hold: test the spirits has fallen silent; try the prophets has fallen silent; the patient, reverent weighing of all things against the Book is met with accusations of "don't touch God's anointed", or "you have a religious spirit". But when the test of Scripture has gone quiet, then we "will not endure sound doctrine" (2 Timothy 4:3) and the throne has moved — however much Scripture is still fondly quoted on the way past.​

Section Four:

THE SECOND DRIFT — WHERE DOES THE WEIGHT FALL?

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The second test asks what a teaching truly pivots on. In the modern gospel Jesus is not removed from the sentence — His name is everywhere, on every banner and in every song. It has only, ever so gently, changed His place. He is no longer the End toward whom everything moves; He has become the means by which you arrive. Listen to the steady diet: your destiny, your breakthrough, your assignment, your purpose, your sphere of influence, your best life now. Christ is there — but as the power source for a project whose true subject is you. It is, very often, a message you could preach almost unchanged to a motivated unbeliever, if you simply swapped two words; and that should tell us something has slid off-centre. For the centre has always been one thing only:

“…I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.” — 1 Corinthians 2:2

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“And He [Jesus Christ] is before all things, and by Him all things consist… that in all things He might have the preeminence.” — Colossians 1:17–18

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A crucified Christ. Not first a Christ who funds your dreams, but a Christ who loves us enough to save us from our own wretched condition by taking our cross for us. But sin and nails and surrender are a gospel we hear less and less. Hear how Paul refused to let the weight slide anywhere else:

“But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ…” — Galatians 6:14

And so listen, again, for the silence. Where the centre has drifted, the cross grows strangely quiet. Sin grows quiet. The blood grows quiet. The scandal of a crucified God — the very thing the first preachers put in the centre of everything — is smoothed into something more positive, more useful, more about us. The name of Jesus may ring out a hundred times an hour. But if the cross has gone silent beneath the noise, the weight has already fallen off the only centre the true gospel ever had.

Section Five:

THE THIRD DRIFT — WHO IS BEING LIFTED UP?

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Now we come to the deepest tell of all, and the subtlest. The third test asks in which direction a teaching finally runs: does it lift the glory up to God, or slide it inward onto the self? The brash version of this new gospel said it openly — calling us “little gods.” But a claim that bold draws too much notice, and over the years it has been spoken less and less plainly. The teaching did not leave, though. It took off its bold clothing and put on respectable clothing, and now it says nothing so blunt at all. It simply assumes the self at the centre, in a thousand gentle ways. It is the ceaseless pull toward your greatness, your potential, your anointing, your call to rise, to take the mountain, to change the world. No one needs to say “you are a god.” You have only to be told, day after warm day, that because God loves you so much everything is finally about you — and the throne of self has been built without a single offensive word being spoken.

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But this is the very oldest lie, merely re-tailored. It was the serpent’s whole craft in the garden:

“…ye shall be as gods…” — Genesis 3:5

He did not need Eve to recite a doctrine of human divinity. He needed only to turn her gaze inward, onto her own advancement — and the fall was accomplished. The smoothed gospel of self does precisely this, with a smile, and calls it encouragement. And the true faith has always run the opposite way — downward, into smallness, into the losing of the self:

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“If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.” — Luke 9:23

Here we must share the heartbreaking thing because it reveals how far the centre has moved. When a believer’s whole weight rests where it was always meant to rest — on Christ crucified, and on the daily denial of self — he is now very often thought strange, even wrong in his beliefs. The mark that once defined a Christian — a self gladly poured out so that God may be all — has come to look like an oddity. And yet Jesus called the man who said these words the greatest who had ever lived:

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“He must increase, but I must decrease.” — John 3:30

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If holding fast to a crucified Christ and an emptied self makes you look strange, you are in the very best of company.

Section Six:

THE FOURTH DRIFT — WHAT DOES IT GROW?

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The first three tests examine the teaching. The last examines the life it grows, for our Lord gave us this plain rule for exactly this danger:

“Ye shall know them by their fruits.” — Matthew 7:16

And here too the fruit has been smoothed. The louder old version produced spectacles — the violent, the bizarre, the openly chaotic — which at least drew every eye. The respectable version produces something quieter, and harder to name. Watch for a warm dismissiveness toward any brother who hesitates — he is “stuck in religion,” “not moving with what God is doing,” “negative,” “operating in a critical spirit.” Watch for the restlessness that must always have the next conference, the next word, the next wave, because the last one wore off. Watch, underneath all the noise and excitement, for a strange and growing emptiness — much promised, little kept; prophecies that did not come to pass; healings that faded; a people forever told they are about to change the world, and quietly wondering why their own souls feel so thin. For the Spirit’s true fruit is not noise. It is this:

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance…” — Galatians 5:22-23

And the One whose Spirit it is described Himself like this:

“…learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.” — Matthew 11:29

Rest. Where the genuine Spirit moves, there is a deepening rest, a settledness, a gentleness even toward those who differ. Where the counterfeit moves, there is striving dressed as victory, and a hardness toward the hesitant dressed as zeal. Fruit ripens slowly, so this test takes time to show itself — but given that time, no tree can hide what it is by what it bears.

Section Seven:

LISTEN FOR THE SILENCE

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So how shall the ordinary believer, who cannot name a single movement and has read no books on any of this, keep himself safe in a day when the error has learned to wear such respectable clothes? Not, surely, by waiting for someone to stand up and say something outrageous — the man who waits for that could wait forever, and be quietly remade in the meantime.

No. He must learn the one test that no amount of polish can defeat. He must learn to listen for what has gone silent. For the smoothed error is detected not by the shocking thing it says, but by the essential things it has quietly stopped saying. Listen, then, for what is missing. Has the cross gone quiet? Has sin gone quiet? Has the narrow gate, the coming judgment, the call to deny yourself and die daily, the sufficiency of Christ’s finished work — have these gone strangely silent beneath all the activities and the new revelations? If there is silence where the heart of the thing used to beat, then error has already set in, no matter what wonderful thing now stands in the place of the old. To love Him is to keep Him at the centre, on the throne, and His finished work of the cross as our eternal hope.​

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From Knowing About to Entering In:

THE OLD PATHS

And so we arrive, as we always must, not at a warning but at an invitation. For it does us little good merely to know about this drift, to diagnose it cleverly while standing at a safe and bitter distance. There is a better thing to do, and the prophet named it long ago, in words that have been waiting for our generation:

“Thus saith the LORD, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls.” — Jeremiah 6:16

The answer to a faith being quietly transformed has never been to become a hunter of the new. It is to go back, ourselves, and walk the old way — the way of a crucified Christ and a surrendered self — until His is the most familiar voice we know.

Consider the wonder of what stands at the centre of the old paths: a God too vast to be fathomed, who stooped all the way down to a cross; a glory so great that the only fitting response of the soul is to grow small before it and let Him be all. That is the treasure being quietly swapped out, while the world and much of the church look on and find it strange. But a faith whose centre is a crucified God, and whose joy is a self poured out for love of Him — this is not the poor and backward thing it is made to seem. It is the most beautiful thing that has ever been, or ever could be. It was always going to look like foolishness to those running the other way. It has lost none of its glory for that. And it is still here, the old good way, unmoved beneath all the noise, waiting to give rest to any soul that will turn and walk it. Do not go hunting wolves, then. Go to the Shepherd. Learn His voice until no stranger’s can fool you — and you will find you are standing, all the while, on ground that has never once moved.

“Hold fast the form of sound words, which thou hast heard of me, in faith and love which is in Christ Jesus. That good thing which was committed unto thee keep by the Holy Ghost which dwelleth in us.” — 2 Timothy 1:13-14

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Our next discussion will step beneath the symptoms to the root, and ask why so many forms of error finally move in the same direction. For beneath the thousand costumes, there are only two roads. 

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