ISSUE #13 // MARCH 2025
MOMENT OF TRUTH
All this talk of progressing begs the question: where exactly are we progressing to?
Progressing to Where?
Let’s pick up where we left off in the last issue: examining the dark recesses of ‘Progressive Christianity’ – a movement which has very little to do with Christ or sound Christian doctrine.
Keith Guinta summarised it like this: ‘a low holding of sin and a high holding of culture. A low holding of scripture and a high holding of self-actualization. A low holding of repentance and a high holding of affirmation. A low holding of the Majesty of Christ and a high holding of the innate goodness of humanity.’
Here is a quick comparison of popular Progressive beliefs and biblical truth:
Sexual purity
God isn’t too concerned about it, love is all that really matters.
Sexual purity is one of the most mentioned topics in the new testament. If you love God you are not going to practice something that grieves Him. Jesus told us how to recognise true love for God: ‘if you love me, you will obey my commands’.
Morality
We can lower the bar, since we are no longer under law but grace.
Yes, “the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ”.
But what do grace and truth do? God’s grace “teaches us to say ‘No’ to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age,” (Titus 2:11-14).
In his most famous teaching which compared the law with the truth, Jesus said things like: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” If you think this statement meant that we are all sinful and just can’t help it, think again. His very next words were: “If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell.” (Matthew 5:29)
What about the blood of Jesus? Doesn’t it cover our sins? Actually it does much more than legally cleanse us – it also cleanses the conscience (Hebrews 9:14), after we confess our sins and turn from them. But ‘if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment’ (Hebrews 10:26-31).
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
‘You ought to say plainly that you do not believe the gospel of Christ. For to believe what you please, and not to believe what you please, is to believe yourselves and not the gospel.’
ST. AUGUSTINE
Biblical historicity
Many biblical events may or may not have happened, like the virgin birth, the resurrection of Jesus and the creation account; why does it matter anyway?
If the virgin birth wasn’t real, Jesus is no different from any other human being. However, He was and is the Word made flesh, God himself in human form (John 1:14) and He was conceived by the Holy Spirit (Matthew 1:18) – if not then his death on the cross was not substitutionary and the entire Gospel is meaningless. It matters because ‘if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.’ (1 Corinthians 15:14).
Social Causes
We must protect the right of the mother to murder her unborn child, support globalism, affirm open borders, comply with every state mandate – even the unjust and ungodly ones – and promote confused philosophies on gender.
You’re not going to find these in the Bible. (You might have a better chance in Karl Marx’s ‘The Communist Manifesto’. Just a hint).
The Human Condition
We are perfect, ‘just as we are’.
The truth is, we are fallen beings living in a broken world, and we are inherently sinful. But through faith in Christ we can be transformed and begin a journey on the beautiful ‘highway of holiness’.
Tolerance & Inclusion
Be nice to people; Christianity is ‘acceptance’ and ‘making the world a more inclusive place’.
‘Nice’ is not a fruit of the Spirit. As for acceptance and inclusivity, it depends on your context: “Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers… what fellowship has light with darkness?… be separate from them.” (2 Corinthians 6:14,17).
As for tolerance: “I have this against you, that you tolerate that woman Jezebel, who… is teaching and seducing my servants to practice sexual immorality” (Revelation 2:20).
Progressives approach the Bible as if it were a man-made collection of fairy tales and fallible theories – a kind of travel journal from days gone by that can be interesting at times and maybe give us a few pointers for our lives, but certainly it has no right to dictate how we live our comfortable, ‘progressed’ lives! *Shiver*
This of course disqualifies ‘progressives’ from referring to themselves as true Christians or followers of Jesus, since He said ‘If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples.’ (John 8:31).
By undermining the authority of God’s Word, they have undermined the very basis of their ‘faith’. For the Bible is the literal dividing line between a godless world under the power of the kingdom of darkness, and the true church belonging to the kingdom of light. If you remove it, you no longer have any separation between the two.
To close, I’m going to borrow some words from the warrior-leader Joshua: If it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the god of secularism, or the god of progressivism. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord! (see: Joshua 24:15)
‘And when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is indeed at work in you who believe.’
1 THESSALONIANS 2:13 (NIV)
FACT OF THE WEEK
The Welsh Revival of 1904-1905, led by Evan Roberts and other passionate preachers of the true gospel, led to a remarkable transformation in the social fabric of Welsh society, with over 100,000 people turning to faith in Christ. Pubs were forced to close due to such significant drops in business and as for crime, the police were left with virtually nothing to do: courts were empty, public drunkenness was almost non-existent and old debts, many long forgotten, were paid off in full.
