In this newsletter we will take a look at a few things A.W. Pink said on the subject of truth and the church. We face a great battle as indeed all people of all time periods have. We have deceitful hearts that are more deceitful than all things (Jer 17:9). There is also the deceitfulness of sin (Heb 3:13) and the devil is the deceiver as well. The human heart is depraved and is in the slavery of love to its lusts and pleasures. We have been looking at how the spirit and deeds of the Pharisees are alive and active in the modern professing Church. Pink has some powerful things to say on this subject and we will do well to read them with great care and solemnity. What his writings do at this point is show us the great danger we are in of being like the Pharisees in principle while standing against them in our own minds. Satan, as the great imitator, has indeed transformed himself into an angel of light. He has replaced many of the core teachings in the churches with his own teachings. He has replaced true love with niceness, politeness, and a refusal to say anything that would make another uncomfortable. He has replaced true grace with that which we think only helps us to do what we cannot do by ourselves. He has replaced true humility and brokenness of heart with simply thinking that we may not know everything or be right about anything. He has done this by shifting our definitions and hearts from being centered on God to being centered on man. This has been brought into the churches by psychology and man’s wisdom.
What we must also learn is that the Gospel of Jesus Christ has been replaced as well. When sin is denigrated to be that which harms man rather than that which is against God, the Gospel becomes something totally different. Sermons will no longer be on the horrid nature of sin and on the greatness of the new birth, but instead they will be on moral behavior and on religious excitement. Where doctrine is taught it will be to the intellect alone and leave the heart untouched. Regeneration and the new birth will be replaced by a walk up the aisle, a prayer, or perhaps an intellectual agreement to a doctrine. Perhaps we have the information of these things in our heads, but we must have the Spirit open our eyes and drive these deeply into the depths of our hearts so that we will be awakened from our slumbers. If the professing Church is going to see reformation and revival in our day, it must be awakened to its great danger. The gospel that is going about in our day, if we follow the thought of Pink, is much like what he called the “Gospel of Satan.” We must see this and cry to the Lord for His mercy. Perhaps He will grant us repentance and perhaps He will send revival. But we must have our hearts broken over these things.
Satan is not initiator but an imitator. God has an only begotten Son-the Lord Jesus, so has Satan-“the son of Perdition” (Thessalonians 2:3). There is a Holy Trinity, and there is likewise a Trinity of Evil (Revelation 20:10). Do we read of the “children of God,” so also we read of “the children of the wicked one” (Matthew 13:38). Does God work in the former both to will and to do of His good pleasure, then we are told that Satan is “the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience” (Ephesians 2:2). Is there a “mystery of godliness” (1 Timothy 3:16), so also is there a “mystery of iniquity” (2 Thessalonians 2:7). Are we told that God by His angels “seals” His servants in their foreheads (Revelation 7:3), so also we learn that Satan by his agents sets a mark in the foreheads of his devotees (Revelation 13:16). Are we told that “the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God” (1 Corinthians 2:10), then Satan also provides his “deep things” (Revelation 2:24). Did Christ perform miracles, so also can Satan (2 Thessalonians 2:9). Is Christ seated upon a throne, so is Satan (Revelation 2:13). Has Christ a Church, then Satan has his “synagogue” (Revelation 2:9). Is Christ the Light of the world, then so is Satan himself “transformed into an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14). Did Christ appoint “apostles,” then Satan has his apostles, too (2 Corinthians 11:13). And this leads us to consider: “The Gospel of Satan.” Satan is the arch-counterfeiter. The Devil is now busy at work in the same field in which the Lord sowed the good seed. He is seeking to prevent the growth of the wheat by another plant, the tares, which closely resemble the wheat in appearance. In a word, by a process of imitation he is aiming to neutralize the Work of Christ. Therefore, as Christ has a Gospel, Satan has a gospel too; the latter being a clever counterfeit of the former. So closely does the gospel of Satan resemble that which it parodies, multitudes of the unsaved are deceived by it. It is to this gospel of Satan the apostle refers when he says to the Galatians “I marvel that ye are so soon removed from Him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel: which is not another, but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the Gospel of Christ” (Galatians 1:6-7).
This false gospel was being heralded even in the days of the apostle, and a most awful curse was called down upon those who preached it. The apostle continues, “But though we, or an angel from heaven preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.” By the help of God we shall now endeavor to expound, or rather, expose this false gospel. The gospel of Satan is not a system of revolutionary principles, nor yet a program of anarchy. It does not promote strife and war, but aims at peace and unity. It seeks not to set the mother against her daughter nor the father against his son, but fosters the fraternal spirit whereby the human race is regarded as one great “brotherhood.” It does not seek to drag down the natural man, but to improve and uplift him. It advocates education and cultivation and appeals to “the best that is within – It aims to make this world such a comfortable and congenial habitat that Christ’s absence from it will not be felt and God will not be needed. It endeavors to occupy man so much with this world that he has no time or inclination to think of the world to come. It propagates the principles of self-sacrifice, charity and benevolence, and teaches us to live for the good of others, and to be kind to all. It appeals strongly to the carnal mind and is popular with the masses, because it ignores the solemn facts that by nature man is a fallen creature, alienated from the life of God, and dead in trespasses and sins, and that his only hope lies in being born again.
In contradistinction to the Gospel of Christ, the gospel of Satan teaches salvation by works. It inculcates justification before God on the ground of human merits. Its sacramental phrase is “Be good and do good”; but it fails to recognize that in the flesh there dwelleth no good thing. It announces salvation by character, which reverses the order of God’s Word-character by, as the fruit of, salvation. Its various ramifications and organizations are manifold. Temperance, Reform Movements, “Christian Socialist Leagues,” Ethical Culture Societies, “Peace Congresses” are all employed (perhaps unconsciously) in proclaiming this gospel of Satan-salvation by works. The pledge card is substituted for Christ; social purity for individual regeneration, and politics and philosophy, for doctrine and godliness. The cultivation of the old man is considered more practical than the creation of a new man in Christ Jesus; whilst universal peace is looked for apart from the interposition and return of the Prince of Peace.
The apostles of Satan are not saloon-keepers and white-slave traffickers, but are for the most part ordained ministers. Thousands of those who occupy our modern pulpits are no longer engaged in presenting the fundamentals of the Christian Faith, but have turned aside from the Truth and have given heed unto fables. Instead of magnifying the enormity of sin and setting forth its eternal consequences, they minimize it by declaring that sin is merely ignorance or the absence of good. Instead of warning their hearers to “flee from the wrath to come” they make God a liar by declaring that He is too loving and merciful to send any of His own creatures to eternal torment. Instead of declaring that “without shedding of blood is no remission,” they merely hold up Christ as the great Exemplar and exhort their hearers to “follow in His steps.”
In addition to the fact that today hundreds of churches are without a leader who faithfully declares the whole counsel of God and presents His way of salvation, we also have to face the additional fact that the majority of people in these churches are very unlikely to learn the Truth themselves. The family altar, where a portion of God’s Word was wont to be read daily is now, even in the homes of nominal Christians, largely a thing of the past. The Bible is not expounded in the pulpit and it is not read in the pew. The demands of this rushing age are so numerous, that multitudes have little time and still less inclination to make preparation for the meeting with God. Hence the majority who are too indolent to search for themselves, are left at the mercy of those whom they pay to search for them; many of whom betray their trust by studying and expounding economic and social problems rather than the Oracles of God. (Another Gospel by Arthur Pink)
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