PRÉCIS ON THE TERRIBLE IMPORTANCE OF SOUND DOCTRINE IN THE LAST TIMES: BECOMING LIKE THE GREAT APOSTLE

SCRIPTURE. “Till I come, give attention to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine.Do not neglect the gift that is in you, which was given to you by prophecy with the laying on of the hands of the eldership. Meditate on these things; give yourself entirely to them, that your progress may be evident to all. Take heed to yourself and to the doctrine. Continue in them, for in doing this you will save both yourself and those who hear you.” – 1 TIMOTHY 4:13-16, NKJV

KEY TERM: “TO DOCTRINE!” ‘DIDASKALIA’ [διδασκαλίᾳ]: “‘The Instruction, the Teaching, the Learning, the Law.’ NOTE: “‘Didaskalia’ primarily refers to the act or content of Edification. In the New Testament, it is often used to denote the Instruction given by Jesus, the Apostles, or Church Leaders. It encompasses both the process of teaching and the Doctrines being taught. ‘The term underscores the importance of Sound Teaching in the life of the Church and individual believers.’”

QUOTATION. “Laws and Principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: They are for such Moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour … If at my convenience I might break them, what would be their worth?” ― CHARLOTTE BRONTË, Jane Eyre: An Autobiography, 1847; edited

COMMENTARY. “‘Those who Teach by their Doctrine, must teach by their Life.’ Their discourse must be Edifying; their conversation must be Holy; they must be Examples of Love to God and all good men, Examples of Spiritual-Mindedness. Ministers [especially] must mind these things as their principal work and business. By this means their profiting will appear in all things, as well as to all persons; this is the way to profit in Knowledge and Grace, and also to profit others.

‘The Doctrine of a Minister of Christ must be scriptural, clear, evangelical, and practical; well-stated, explained, defended, and applied!’ But these duties leave no leisure for worldly pleasures, trifling visits, or idle conversation, and but little for what is mere amusement, and only ornamental. May every believer be enabled to let his profiting appear unto all men; seeking to experience the Power of the Gospel in his own soul, and to bring forth its fruits in his life.” – MATTHEW HENRY, Exposition of the Old and New Testaments, 6 vols., 1708-1710; edited

DK’S TAKE. By these Unassailable Standards, beloved, the American Pulpit and their Shepherds are on the whole, miserable failures, having switched out the Power of Godly Truth for the worldly Elixir of Ear-Tickling. The Canon for cultural Fairy Tales fit for little children, and yet a toxic brew for even those!

In his book, The Abolition of Man (1943), C.S. LEWIS effectively played The Prophet in pointing out that ‘Relativism’ [that we now know as ‘Postmodernism’] —the idea that there are no absolute truths—would lead to the Decay of Morality and a Lack of Virtue within society. Without a belief in and the Teaching of Universal Moral Laws, we fail to educate the heart and are left with intelligent men who behave like animals or as Lewis puts it, “Men without Chests.”

For the second time I therefore present Lewis’ Full Apologetic, so fit for the American Shepherds of today. Indeed, their Grotesque Concavity has become the stuff of Legend, not unlike the Collective Collapse of nearly the entirety of the German and Catholic Churches a century ago.

THE WARNING. Pay very close attention to Mr. Lewis’s scintillating Indictment of Church leadership in his day, reminiscent of Christ’s Broadside toward the Religious Elites of His hour. (Matthew 23:1-36).

“It still remains true that no justification of virtue will enable a man to be virtuous. Without the aid of trained emotions the intellect is powerless against the animal organism. I had sooner play cards against a man who was quite skeptical about ethics, but bred to believe that ‘a gentleman does not cheat’, than against an irreproachable moral philosopher who had been brought up among sharpers.

In battle it is not syllogisms (logical arguments) that will keep the reluctant nerves and muscles to their post in the third hour of the bombardment. The crudest sentimentalism … about a flag or a country or a regiment will be of more use. We were told it all long ago by Plato. As the king governs by his executive, so Reason in man must rule the mere appetites by means of the ‘spirited element’. The head rules the belly through the chest—the seat, as Alanus tells us, of Magnanimity, of emotions organized by trained habit into stable sentiments. The Chest-Magnanimity-Sentiment—these are the indispensable liaison officers between cerebral man and visceral man.

It may even be said that it is by this middle element that Man is man: For by his intellect he is mere spirit and by his appetite mere animal. The operation of The Green Book (a book promoting Relativism) and its kind is to produce what may be called ‘Men without Chests’ … A persevering devotion to truth, a nice sense of intellectual honour, cannot be long maintained without the aid of a sentiment … It is not excess of thought but defect of fertile and generous emotion that marks them out. Their heads are no bigger than the ordinary: It is the atrophy of the chest beneath that makes them seem so.

And all the time—such is the Tragi-Comedy of our situation—we continue to clamour for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. You can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that what our Civilization needs is more ‘drive’, or ‘dynamism,’ or ‘self-sacrifice,’ or ‘creativity’. In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful!

The Apostle Paul writes: ‘Whereas the object and purpose of our instruction and charge is love, which springs from a pure heart and a good (clear) conscience and sincere (unfeigned) faith’ (1 Timothy 1:5, Amp.). IF followers of Christ live as people with chests—strong hearts filled with God’s Truth—the [whole] world will take notice!”

Therefore, because our Shepherds refuse this Wise and Desperate Counsel, all we Remnant Lower Magistrates must become like unto PAUL, THE APOSTLE, and Stand in the Gap for Sound Doctrine!

I now realize we were all meant for ‘Such a Time as this,’ beloved, each to his or her own Mission-Field, as we race toward that stupendous Day of Rescue just a little further down that Narrowest of Magnificent Roads.