We do wish the church could completely break free of the seeming barrier of race. We can personally attest that Blacks and Whites both make wonderful friends and Blacks and Whites, on the downside, are all just sinners saved by grace. We need to remember the wonderful and freeing truth that “If God be for us, then who can be against us?”  Who indeed? For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise. (Galatians 3:27-29) As believers, we are to honor and serve other believers regardless of ethnicity or gender, treating them as we would our savior, Jesus Christ.

If the Apostle John were to write his epistles today, perhaps 1 John 2:19 might read more like this:
They progressed from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us.
Seems like a lot of people are progressing away from us today. By “us” we mean the Christian faith. We are not suggesting that those who have shifted toward or even fully embraced Progressivism are no longer Christians. That is, of course, between them and God alone and not something we can really judge. All of us are prone to sin, rebellion, and often judgmentalism for that matter. When we are addressing certain issues, we often think about the comment the late Dr. J. Vernon McGee made in one of his sermons:
If you knew J. Vernon McGee like I know J. Vernon McGee, you wouldn’t be listening to me. But don’t get up and leave because if I knew you like you know you; I wouldn’t be preaching to you.
Sometimes the church acts more like a circular firing squad than a family of believers, it seems. Yes, there is such a biblical remedy such as “Church discipline” for obvious sin. Yet, we are called to live holy lives and to keep our eyes less on the faults of others and more on “the founder and perfecter of our faith.” (Hebrews 12:2). And yet, an extremely essential area of our faith is the call to be like the Bereans in the Bible, practicing discernment and guarding ourselves and others against being deceived. And there are many deceivers out there, just as there were back in the first century. It has been said that to that end, all of the New Testament, with the exception of Philemon, was written to address and correct false teaching, false prophets, and bad behavior and to clarify sound teaching and proper behavior. The Apostle Paul took great pains to instruct and warn the Ephesian Elders:
Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood. I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them. Therefore be alert, (Acts 20:28-31a)
We note the Apostle started by telling them they must guard themselves first and then guard the flock against outside influences seeping in and from individuals in the sheepfold rising up among them with false teaching. The growing progressive movement within the evangelical church has changed the way many understand and interpret the word of God. As George Yancey points out:
For progressive Christians, Jesus is primarily the model of inclusion and tolerance. For example, one progressive Christian drew a cartoon of Jesus saying, “The difference between me and you is you use Scripture to determine what love means and I use love to determine what Scripture means.” Progressive Christians focus on the actions and teachings of Jesus that reinforce their values of tolerance and inclusion, which they see as examples of love.1
Feelings or “inner knowingness” about an issue are now asserted to be the truth. Elements like the context of a text, facts, evidence, and reason are jettisoned in favor of their new narrative. Dr. Thomas Sowell, a former Marxist who is now a prominent black conservative, addresses this issue:
It is usually futile to try to talk facts and analysis to people who are enjoying a sense of moral superiority in their ignorance.2
This moral superiority shows up in the claims of Southern Baptist Pastor J.D. Greer, who speaks of the “closet racists and neo-Confederates” inhabiting the Southern Baptist churches:
“We should mourn when closet racists and neo-Confederates feel more at home in our churches than do many of our people of color,” he thundered from the platform of the SBC’s national convention in 2021. Of course, the megachurch pastor did not back up this shocking accusation with evidence or identify these rank and unrepentant sinners.3
No evidence is offered, just assertions. Was J.D. Greer informed by an inner knowingness or some other magical power? The church closets may be inhabited by all sorts of miscreants, we might suppose. Because people in closets are somewhat difficult to see, let alone judge, we might think they should be given the benefit of the doubt as to whether they are worse than possible sinners in other closets if no evidence is presented. Because we are all sinners, saved by grace, correct?
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While many churches are replacing the teaching of the word of God with other “spiritual tools” and “spiritual disciplines,” the knowledge and understanding of the actual word of God is receding to the background in the information base of many Christians. This sad phenomenon has reached “crisis status” in our opinion. However, as far as the Church has wandered, the only antidote is still the word of God, studied in context and applied liberally, which strengthens the spiritual immune system.

Nehemiah is one of my favorite Old Testament books, and while reading it this week, I came across a familiar favorite passage of mine. Though I am familiar with the passage, I was struck anew with its importance. Nehemiah had overseen the rebuilding of the Jerusalem wall after Israel’s return to her land after exile. In this passage they were installing the new gates to the city.
Nehemiah states in Nehemiah 7:1
“The gatekeepers, the singers, and the Levites had been appointed.”
At this point Nehemiah turned over the charge of Jerusalem to his brother and the governor of the castle. Exiles were returning from Babylon and were sorted out according to their genealogies. Anyone who did not appear in the register “were excluded from the priesthood as unclean.” (Nehemiah 7:64b). They had all been in Babylon for many years, which was rife with idols and pagan beliefs. With the core reconstruction completed and the people organized, the hearts of all the people seemed to turn as one to focus on the word of God:
And all the people gathered as one man into the square before the Water Gate. And they told Ezra the scribe to bring the Book of the Law of Moses that the Lord had commanded Israel. (Nehemiah 8:1)
They stood for the reading “from early morning until midday” (Nehemiah 8:3) and listened attentively. (Nehemiah 8:4) The line in the historical narrative that grabbed my attention was in Nehemiah 8:8:
They read from the book, from the Law of God, clearly, and they gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading.
There was a hunger for the word of God and a desire to not only hear it read but understand what it meant. Not only did they want it read aloud but wanted Ezra and the other readers to exegete the text. They wanted to know its meaning. Having returned to the land, they were in the process of reconstructing their faith.
We host a live online evening study group on Tuesday evenings. A few weeks ago, while we were discussing the phenomenon of “deconstructing faith,” I (Don) mentioned that something plaguing the church today is the wild spread of “spiritual A.I.D.S.” among the flock. Dr. Donald Williams, who is part of the teaching team, looked a bit puzzled by my statement. I explained that “Spiritual A.I.D.S.” is a phrase we coined about two decades ago.1 The acronym stands for the “Acquired Ignorance of the Doctrines of Scripture” and it is to us a spiritual equivalent of physical A.I.D.S. which stands for Acquired ImmunoDeficiency Syndrome. A compromised immune system leaves the individual largely defenseless in fighting off various illnesses.
As we compared the two, Dr. Williams agreed it was an apt description and thought be might adopt it himself. While many churches are replacing the teaching of the word of God with other “spiritual tools” and “spiritual disciplines,” the knowledge and understanding of the actual word of God is receding to the background in the information base of many Christians. This sad phenomenon has reached “crisis status” in our opinion. However, as far as the Church has wandered, the only antidote is still the word of God, studied in context and applied liberally, which strengthens the spiritual immune system.
We can clearly see the results when Biblical training is lacking, demonstrated in studies like the 2022 State of Theology. 41% of Evangelicals in 2014 agreed that:
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