Sunday 16 September 2012

A Grand Line.

It is very interesting that two of the greatest and best known itinerant evangelists in the UK, Dr John Blanchard and Roger Carswell, believe in and preach that died for all men.  This is the essential of the biblical Gospel message.  It is this message that was preached so powerfully by all the great evangelists in the Church's history - Calvin, Amyraut, Daille, the Wesleys, Whitefield, Edwards, John Jones, McCheyne, Ryle, DMLJ.

What a delight it is to realise that we stand in the true Gospel succession when we preach such a soul-stirring message.  How great it is to know that when we preach Christ as the Saviour of the world, we stand in the most noble and exalted line imaginable.  Would there were more preachers who embraced this liberating Gospel message.  Would that God would change men's hearts and thinking so that they would come to preach Christ as the all-sufficient Saviour of mankind and Redeemer of the world.  Would that a real message of real hope was set before a perishing world and sinners urged and pleaded with to trust Christ as their Saviour and Lord.

It is this biblical message that knows the anointing of God upon it and its servant.  And how the church needs men who are Spirit-anointed, men who see what is needed and take the appropriate action to bring about God-glorifying change.  The church today is in urgent need to beware of the subtle and not-so-subtle encroachments of Rome.  Evangelicals must be aware of what Rome is doing through ministers in the Protestant ministers.  She has bought them over by her smooth and sweet words, and they have not even seen what was happening.  They have been deceived into believing and doing what Rome has always believed and done, not least the insufficiency of Scripture.  Just as Rome developed a most complicated liturgy for its services, so today the evangelical churches have mimicked Rome in adding complexity to church services with all the razzmatazz of worldly show business.  But that's for another post.

The church must return as a matter of urgency to the simplicity and directness of the biblical Gospel if she is to avert divine judgement.  Nothing else will prevail.  The Gospel is "the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes," (Rom.1:16).  Let the church preach that soul-saving message to everyone and seek to make them into disciples. 

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