The Enemy Within the Evangelical Gates

Addressing the peril of an enemy within the gates, Caldwell (2017) wisely cautions,

“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist.”

Similarly, American evangelicalism is under assault from within by a faction of false teachers regarding the doctrine of sin.?They, too, move about freely within the evangelical walls, familiar faces slying whispering in once-orthodox spaces, yet all the while undermining theological foundations and infecting the body of Christ with toxic ideology.

Bishop J.C. Ryle stressed the devious and grievous nature of this assault:?

“The plain truth is that a right knowledge of sin lies at the root of all saving Christianity. Without it such doctrines as justification, conversion, sanctification, are ‘words and names’ which convey no meaning to the mind. The first thing, therefore, that God does when He makes anyone a new creature in Christ, is to send light into his heart, and show him that he is a guilty sinner. The material creation in Genesis began with ‘light,’ and so also does the spiritual creation.”?

We would be wise to heed the Apostle Paul’s warning to the church in Rome:

“Now I urge you, brethren, keep your eye on those who cause dissensions and hindrances contrary to the teaching which you learned, and turn away from them. For such men are slaves, not of our Lord Christ but of their own appetites; and by their smooth and flattering speech they deceive the hearts of the unsuspecting” (Romans 16:17–18).

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References:

Caldwell, T. (2017). A pillar of iron : A novel of ancient Rome. Open Road Integrated Media.

Ryle, J. C. (1879). Holiness: Its nature, hindrances, difficulties, and roots.