The Need For Spurgeonistic Hard Preaching!
It reminded me of the problem of one church that claimed to be a Bible-believing Evangelical church and another claimed to be a Baptist church. I remembered there was this Christian retreat that I never saw any change to the people who attended the retreat. One Evangelical church I knew was downright messed up with how it was. How can it claim to be a God-fearing church but they were indifferent about sin, the preacher wasn't really a serious preacher, the deacons (it was deacon ran anyway which is NOT Biblical) were involved in operating unethical activities like a brothel, one of the deacons was involved in trading drug trade... how can that be considered a God-fearing assembly? Another Baptist church claimed to be a Baptist church but had a very shallow presentation of the Gospel. The pastor showed very ungodly behavior not only in allowing children to run around and shout but also, he had a habit of heckling any pastor who was truly on fire for God. If Charles Spurgeon were alive, he would slam his face on the desk hearing about these two examples! If Spurgeon were alive, he would probably slam these pastors with a verbal lashing and tell them, "How sure are you, that you are saved?" on their faces. If you are a truly saved person, then you must be really be angry with sin and continuously repent of it. Even if a Christian may not be sinlessly perfect, he or she cannot live like the rest of the world.
From Spurgeon's autobiography he did write this about a drunkard claiming to be a Christian, "While I was minister at Waterbeach, I used to have a man sitting in front of the gallery who would always nod his head when I was preaching what he considered sound doctrine, although he was about as bad as an old hypocrite as ever lived. When I talked to him about justification, down went his head; when I preached about imputed righteousness, down it went again. I was a dear good man in his estimation, without doubt. So I thought so I remarked, "There is a great deal of difference between God electing you and you electing yourself; a vast deal of difference between God justifying you by His Spirit and your justifying yourself by a false belief or presumption; this is the difference," said I - and the old man at once put me down as a rank Arminian - "you who have elected yourselves and justified yourselves, have no marks of the Spirit of God; you have no evidence of genuine piety, you are not holy men and women, you can live in sin, you can walk as sinners walk, you have the image of the Devil upon you and yet you call yourselves children of God. One of the first evidences that anyone is a child of God is that he hates sin with a perfect hatred and seeks to live a holy, Christlike life." The old Antinomian did not approve of that doctrine but I knew that I was preaching what was revealed in the Word of God."
I started to examine the problem of false conversion and why it happens. I studied through the videos of Pastor Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron called "True and False Conversion", "Hell's Best Kept Secret" and "Revival's Golden Key". I read through Pastor John F. Macarthur's "The Gospel According to Jesus" and one person that was always mentioned is the great preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon. Charles Haddon Spurgeon himself was a hard preacher against sin. One of his famous sermons was called, "Turn or Burn". Today, we fail to see the reality that salvation is a turn from sin and even if it's not a perfect turn, the evidence of true salvation is continual turning from sin or a continual repentance of sin. While I cannot expect a perfect repentance from the new converts but I expect their repentance to continue. Repentance continues if you are truly saved just like true faith in Christ continues. If one's faith is genuine then it continues, if one's conversion is genuine, that conversion continues. If that repentance is genuine, then that repentance continues. Philippians 1:6 says that if God has begun a good work, then He will finish it. But sad to say a lot of preachers today are watering down the presentation of the Gospel.
Now it is true repentance is a change of mind, that is true. However Spurgeon's sermons "Repentance Unto Life" warns about false repentance. Ahab was used as an example in that sermon as an example of false repentance. Now why did Ahab "repent" and "humble himself"? It was only because Elijah told him of his possible fate. Was it a real repentance? Absolutely not as we read later, Ahab was still as wicked as ever. Here we also see the true repentance and false repentance between Ahab and Jehoshaphat. If Ahab was truly repentant, why would he gather all the prophets of Baal and hate the prophet of God, Micaiah? Micaiah was prophesying evil against Ahab because for a good reason. Ahab was a wicked king, he formed an evil union with Jezebel, daughter of Ethbaal and did more wickedly than every other king before him. When I think about it, Ahab's repentance was really a phony. When Jehoshaphat was reprimanded by the prophet Jehu about his wrong alliances, the former repented of his sin although it was too late to undo the damage he did which led to Athaliah's terror, continuing the evil legacy of her parents Ahab and Jezebel. Another false repentance was Judas Iscariot evidenced by what he did. He was only guilt-ridden by the fact that he betrayed an innocent man for money. Instead of asking Jesus to forgive him, he instead confessed before the Pharisees and then he hanged himself proving he was a false convert. Both repentance are emphasized as false and not repentance unto life.
What I am amazed is how the easy believism crowd says, "Stop lying about Spurgeon." or stuff like that. Let me get this straight - Lordship salvation DOES NOT teach you can lose your salvation, rather your lifestyle determines whether you are saved or not. There is a distinction of Lordship salvation vs. easy believism. Some people have confused Lordship salvation with Arminianism, even to the point to say that I have once taught the Gospel truth (easy believism) and later Lordship salvation crawled into me, saying that I wasn't saved to start with. The problem is that easy believism has misquoted Romans 4:5 saying, "Well that verse proves that the believer can live like the rest of the world and still be saved." which deserves a huge "HUH?!" to that. Although Romans 4:5 says that, but that is not the only truth about salvation. If one is counted for righteousness, certainly there has to be a change. Ephesians 2:8-9 is often quoted and Ephesians 2:10 is often ignored. If you are truly saved, then there has to be changes in the life. Even if a good tree can have some rotten harvest (due to the corruption of sin) but you can see the long course, that tree is good overall even if it has some bad fruit, still the tree is overall good that it is not cut down and thrown into the fire.
As I did mention, they tell hard preachers to stop lying about Spurgeon. Now, here's the reality... when Pastor John Macarthur and company created the Spurgeon archive, I would dare say they studied everything about Spurgeon. While I do not agree with Spurgeon 100% nor do I agree with John Calvin 100% (both men also had mistakes), I would like to admit that the Spurgeon archive had been more true to quoting Spurgeon's works than any of the easy believism ministries. Spurgeon himself said something like,"Another proof of the conquest of a soul for Christ will be found in a REAL CHANGE OF LIFE. If a man does not live DIFFERENTLY from what he did before, both at home and abroad, his repentance needs to be repented of and his conversion is a FICTION. Not only action and language but spirit and temper MUST BE CHANGED... Abiding under the POWER OF ANY KNOWN SIN is a mark of our being servants of sin for his "servants ye are to whom ye obey." Idle are the boasts of a man who harbors with himself the LOVE OF ANY TRANSGRESSION. He may feel what he likes and believe what he likes, he is still in the gall of bitterness and the bonds of iniquity while a single sin rules his heart and life. True regeneration implants a HATRED OF ALL EVIL and where one sin is delighted in, the evidence is fatal to a sound hope... There must be harmony between THE LIFE AND THE PROFESSION. A Christian professes to renounce sin; and if he does not do so, his very name is an imposture."
What does it mean to be a conquest of the soul? Remember that Jesus saves people FROM THEIR SINS NOT FROM THEIR SINS (Matthew 1:21). If a person is saved from sin, there must be a change of life. Titus 2:11-14 shows the power of the grace of God. Those who turn God's grace for sin aren't even saved to start with. The grace of God teaches those who are in Christ to resist ungodliness and to live soberly, righteously and be zealous unto good works. When a person is converted, they go from a tare to a wheat, from a wolf to a sheep, from a bad tree to a good tree and from unrighteous to righteous. 1 Corinthians 6:11 says, "And such were some of you..." after warning in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 talks about the unrighteous. When God saves a person, it changes the person and makes them oppose sin because it is offensive towards a holy and righteous God. Although a Christian cannot achieve sinless perfection because the flesh is corrupted, otherwise 1 John 1:8-9 would be unnecessary and two, Hebrews 12:5-6 talks about the chastising of God. When repentance happens, it's not merely "I am sorry." but instead, it results to true actions. True repentance will yield good works as a result, it is continuous and it continues to change the person for the better. If there is really no change at all, even for a bit, then something is really wrong.
Fortunately that there are a handful of Independent Baptists are God-fearing, they never watered down the Gospel, they are die-hard fundamentalists and even if they reject Calvinism, I could still do fellowship with them even if they are somewhat misinformed. Pastor David W. Cloud rejects Calvinism through and through but he is solid when it comes to true and false conversion and has shown evidences that he is indeed a brother-in-Christ. Way of Life ministry still has had some utter rejection for evil and teach this, "The sinner who would be saved must repent, which repentance will always result in a changed life. This means that we cannot have the attitude that we will only deal with specific sin after the person receives Christ. That is the philosophy of many. If the sinner brings up his love for liquor, or his love for immoral relationships, or his love for gambling, some think it best to delay dealing with such things until after that one has come to Christ. And sometimes this is the best policy, but only if the sinner is clearly under the conviction of the Holy Spirit about his sin and is clearly ready to turn to Christ. On the other hand, if the sinner obviously still wants to hold onto his sin, the personal worker must deal with the fact that he must turn from it." That is, if you are truly saved, you cannot keep living in sin.
Looking at Spurgeon's harsh preaching against sin, preachers must do this hard preaching because there is the danger of false converts flocking, pretending to be saved and devouring the flock. If there is truly a tight, Biblical root for Biblical preaching, then even the most slick Jesuit coadjutor is either repelled from the flock or he/she gets saved. The best weapon to drive out Satan's infiltrators whatever they may be is a preaching that's hard as a rock, that shreds the pride of man, that goes against sin and is not afraid to call sin as sin like Spurgeon did. Although Spurgeon did smoke cigars (probably due to the cold weather), he was in control of it. Not that I encourage pastors to be occasionally smoking cigars like Spurgeon did... but I would encourage them to follow the good Spurgeon did in his preaching and putting it into action.