It is no surprise to me that there be those within the body
of Christ who claim that there should be no need of discernment ministries [1] but those who claim
that we don’t need “discernment” ministries will also claim that we do not need
“apologetics” ministries and that apologetics, which is to make a case and
defense of our faith, is not important.
That is a very
dangerous position to take and we ought to be suspicious of those who claim that being
ready to make a case and defense for one’s faith is a trivial matter or that guarding
ourselves against any lies, deceits, and falsehoods that might infiltrate the
ranks of the saints is not of any critical importance
because if Christians regard apologetics as a trivial matter, then they will be
ill-prepared to defend their faith against the intellectual, philosophical, and
theological challenges with which they may be confronted and will be rendered
ineffective in reaching those lost souls who might otherwise come to repentance
if a persuasive case for the Gospel message is made and not only that, they
will also be unprepared to confront the false doctrines and heresies that have
entered and are still entering into our ranks which results in many professing
Christians being deceived by false doctrine and heresy and even being led away
from the faith altogether.
When necessary, we
are called upon, to the best of the ability God bestows in each and every one
of us, to answer those challenging questions and to refute the arguments
presented against our faith with which we may be confronted because scripture
says that we are to be prepared to give an answer for the faith and the hope
that is in us to all who ask (1 Pet. 3:15) and to earnestly contend for the
faith. (Jude 3)
Apologetics not
only requires that we defend our faith from attacks from the unbelieving world,
but it does require that we defend the purity of doctrine upon which our faith
rests from false doctrines and heresies that enter into our ranks. There is a reason why the Bible warns
repeatedly against false doctrines and heresies and why we must hold accountable
those teach false doctrines and heresies. (Mt. 7:15-20, Acts 20:28-31, 2 Cor.
11:3-4, 12-15, Gal. 1:6-9, 1 Tim. 1:19-20, 4:1-3, 7, 5:22, 6:3-5, 20-21, 2 Tim.
2:16-18, 23, Titus 1:10-16, 2:11, 2 Pet. 2, 3:15-16, 1 Jn. 4:1-3, Jude, Rev.
2:14-15, 20-23)
And if you would
like, discernment ministries are in all honesty, apologetics ministries except
they do not focus on just one issue confronting the Church, but a variety of
different matters ranging from false doctrines and heresies to even social and
cultural issues.
Our work for the
Kingdom of God is not just about attempting to win souls over to
Christ, but it is also about discipleship in the teachings and instruction of scripture,
in an adequate and proper knowledge of and understanding of the Lord, His attributes, character, nature, and how He is to be approached in our worship,
instructing and admonishing them in godly and righteous living,
prioritizing the things of Heaven above the things of the earth,
preparing them for the difficulties they may face in their walk with the Lord and in their service to Him,
teaching them to rely upon the sufficiency, instruction, and authority of scripture by which the Gospel message is delivered and admonishing them to become as well versed and as well studied in it as possible,
preparing them to make as sound and as reasoned of a defense for their faith as possible that they may be made steadfast therein and to defend doctrinal purity against all falsehoods that may challenge it.
But because much
of the Church has neglected their due diligence in the teaching of the Word and
of the upholding and defense of sound doctrine, various false doctrines and
heresies have infiltrated the Church, causing members to disobey the instruction,
admonitions, commands, and counsels of scripture, to believe in a counterfeit
God, a counterfeit Jesus, and a counterfeit Gospel, or even to doubt and leave
the faith altogether.
What error and
falsehood are allowed to enter into the Church will also be propagated by the
Church and only by shielding ourselves from error and falsehood can the Church
continue serving as the bastion of truth and enlightenment that it was established
to be but we must, as followers of Christ, make diligent study of the
scriptures, teaching from the scriptures, the defense of the faith, and the
upholding of sound doctrine top priorities for the more pure in faith and doctrine
we succeed in keeping ourselves, the greater of a light we will be to a dark
world, and the better able we will be in being representatives of Christ and of
the Kingdom of Heaven to a world in need of redemption.
And if we are unable to persuade the lost to come to
repentance, it should not be due to our failure to represent Christ to the best
of our ability,
it should not be because we failed to give as sound and as reasoned of a defense for the faith when required of us,
it should not be because we failed to uphold the soundness of doctrine within our ranks, or because we did not expose and bring correction to the works of darkness,
it should not be because we neglected the diligent study and teaching of scripture,
and it should not be because we did not have confidence in the authority of scripture,
and it should not be because we did not rely on the sufficiency of the scriptures.
But it should only be because hearts have simply become
too hardened against our Lord and Savior and because those lost souls to whom
we have been commissioned to preach the Gospel of salvation would simply prefer
to remain in their sins and take pleasure in the things of evil. At least then when we do stand before the
Lord our God we will have as little to be ashamed of as possible for at least then
we may have some honor for having done all that we can to persuade the lost to
repentance while they stand eternally condemned for having rejected so great a gift
of redemption which God, in His love for mankind, has graciously and mercifully
offered to all who are willing to receive it in Christ Jesus our Lord who came
into this world to take away the sins of the world which He did take away in
His death and after having purchased our redemption by His blood that He shed
upon the cross on which He was crucified for our sins and after having by His
death taken away our sins, was raised again from the grave for our
justification (Rom. 4:25) so that we who will place our faith in Him alone for
the forgiveness of our sins and for the redemption of our souls will not be subject
to eternal damnation but will be admitted in to Heaven and into the direct
presence of our Lord, but the work of redemption doesn’t stop with our
souls. It begins with our souls and the
reason why it begins with our souls is because sin condemned the soul to
eternal damnation before it corrupted and eventually killed the body and then
went on to taint, corrupt, and defile everything that it has touched which is
why redemption begins with the soul but doesn’t end there. Redemption begins with the cleansing of our
soul in Christ Jesus and it is the washing away of our sins that reconciles us
to our Creator from whom we were previously estranged because of sin and just
as our souls are redeemed in Christ from condemnation, so one day, we also look
forward to the liberation of our bodies from death itself when that in which
sin dwells and is subject to corruption is transformed into that which is
incorruptible and in which sin does not dwell (1 Cor. 15:51-55, 1 Thess.
4:13-18) and finally, creation itself will be liberated from the bondage of the
curse when it is made anew and into a world in which there is no sin, no death,
no evil, and no suffering (Rev. 21-22) but only peace, joy, happiness, and
contentment before the Lord God Almighty because that is the world that God had
intended from the beginning.
When God first created the world, He intended it to be a
world filled with peace, joy, and happiness, life, and light with no death, no evil,
and no suffering and in this world existed a perfect and uninterrupted harmony
between God, man, and nature but it was when sin entered into the world that
this perfect harmony was disrupted and it was through one man that sin had
entered into the world and with sin came death and it entered into the world by
way of a fateful transgression committed by the first man Adam and Eve the
first woman who was the wife of Adam when they had eaten a fruit from a certain
tree called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, having been warned of
God that in the day that they ate thereof, they would surely die. (Gen. 2:16-17,
3:3) and it was upon the eating of that fruit that sin entered into them which
then brought about the eventual sentence of death to which they eventually succumbed.
(Gen. 3:19)
But the sentence of death did not stop with Adam and Eve,
but was extended to all of humanity for it is from Adam and Eve all of mankind
descends and it is from Adam and Eve that we inherit the sin that entered into
them when they committed that transgression (Rom. 5:12) and it is for that
reason that we all sin and why we all die, for as it is written, the wages of
sin is death (Rom. 6:23) but the consequences of sin still did not stop there
as creation itself was made subject to pain, death, and decay due to a curse
that came upon it because of sin which is why it is written that the entire
creation groans and travails in pain to this very day. (Rom. 8:19-22)
And it is due to the defiling touch of sin that God, who
is without sin, is unable to allow that which is in sin into His Kingdom which
is undefiled by sin lest Heaven itself be defiled just as the earth itself has
been defiled and it is due to sin within us that we will never be able to
attain salvation on our own merits because it is due to sin that our own merit
will always fall short of what God requires (Rom. 3:23) which is nothing short
of moral perfection.
Sin is not merely defined by just our actions and what we
say, but it is the corrupted condition of our very nature which does not just
influence our outward behavior or even what we say, but also the very thoughts,
motives, and attitudes behind all that we say and do and it is by way of
corrupting our very inward nature that sin causes a separation and estrangement
between man and his Creator which, if there is no repentance and no cleansing
of sin, will only result in an eternity of torment due to an eternal estrangement
and separation because that is the penalty demanded of all sin no matter how
great or small but the Lord God Almighty, because of His love for us, is not
willing that any of us should perish and be eternally damned to Hell, but that
all come to repentance (2 Pet. 3:9) and in His love for us, He has mercifully
and graciously given us redemption in Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior who,
being without sin (2 Cor. 5:21, Heb. 4:15) was that perfect and unblemished sacrifice
(Heb. 7:26-27) that was needed to take away our sins which He did by the shedding
of His blood upon the cross on which He was crucified and afterwards was raised
again from the dead so that any placing their trust in Him alone for their salvation
and for the forgiveness of sins and be made citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven
and of that new and better world to come.
The Gospel message is quite simple. The way to redemption is quite easy and yet
at the same time so hard for many to receive and the fact that there are those
out there cast doubt on its truth and even make the way into Heaven out to be
more difficult than it actually is, does not make the ability to convince those
who have yet to be persuaded of it truth to repentance any easier. In fact, the falsehood and error that have infested
the Church have made the ability to convince the lost to place their trust in
Christ alone for their salvation or to even see their need for salvation much
more difficult than it otherwise would be.
If we are to have any hope of effectively persuading the
lost to repentance,
in convincing them to have confidence in the authority of the Bible by which the Gospel message is delivered,
in showing ourselves to be worthy representatives of our Lord and Savior,
and in impacting the world in a manner that will bring honor and glory to His name,
then we need to make sure that we ourselves have steadfast and unwavering confidence in the faith we profess, that we ourselves have an adequate understanding and knowledge of what it is that we profess to believe in, make it a top priority to preserve within our ranks the purity of doctrine as delivered to us by the divinely inspired scriptures, hold accountable anyone who persists in teaching anything in opposition to the accounts, teachings, and instructions of scripture and to which the scriptures bear no witness, and to test all that we read or hear against the general revelation of scripture to determine if what we are hearing or reading is of God or not.
The purpose of discernment ministries is not just to
expose error and falsehood, but also to challenge us to test all thing against
the authority of scripture which should be our only rule of faith.
That doesn’t necessarily mean we have to come in
agreement with everything any given discernment ministry says (they can be overly
critical at times) but what they should motivate us to do is to approach all
things with a healthy sense of skepticism and instead of blindly trusting in
anything that is preached from the pulpit, reported in the news, posted on
social media, taught in academia, affirmed and celebrated by our entertainment
industry, or published in any given book, blogpost, or article that we might
read, or broadcasted by any given internet figure or influencer, to verify
everything that we read or hear and to test everything preached and taught in
our churches and the nature of every trend and movement that takes place within
the body of Christ against the testimony, accounts, teachings, and instruction
of the divinely inspired scriptures themselves so that we not fall prey to
being deceived and led astray by the various falsehoods and heresies that are
being propagated both from without and from within the Church.
It is the failure of one man and one woman to test the
claims of a lying spirit in the first place that brought the entire world down
from the good place that God made it to be into the present condition that it
is in now because that lying spirit who came in the form of a serpent and
deceived Adam and Eve into eating of that forbidden fruit through false
assurances and worthless promises (Gen. 3:4-5) which then caused sin to enter
into them, and then into us which then brought death to them first and then to
the rest of us by way of the corrupt condition of our nature that we inherited
from them and ever since that day and from that day on, that lying spirit who
is called Satan or the Devil who deceived Adam and Eve into the eating of that
forbidden fruit continues to spread his lies and deceit throughout the world
today and it is upon lies that he builds and maintains his power and by which
he holds souls captive and enslaves them to a spiritual darkness of which they
may not even be aware and leads them into an eternity of everlasting torment that
they may not even know they are in danger of facing because he has blinded them
to the very truth that would set them free from that spiritual darkness that
they are in and deliver them from a Christless eternity in the fire torments of
Hell (Jn. 8:32) and it isn’t just the unbelieving world that he has deceived, blinded,
and led astray with his lies, but his lies have also sadly infiltrated the
ranks of the Church whose members are supposed to be stewards and preachers of
that very truth which exposes and undoes the lies that Satan has poisoned
hearts and minds with because too many have been negligent in their duty to be
ready to give a defense for the faith and hope that is in them (1 Pet. 3:15)
and to earnestly contend for the faith (Jude 3) in as often as it becomes necessary
and not just from the falsehoods and lies from without but even from the lies
and that falsehoods that rise up from within our members.
As founder John Adams once rightfully stated:
There is so much
King Craft, Priest Craft, Gentlemens Craft, Peoples Craft, Doctors Craft,
Lawyers Craft, Merchants Craft, Tradesmens Craft, Labourers Craft and Devils
Craft in the world, that it seems a desperate and impracticable Project to
undeceive it. [2]
And yet we have a duty to undeceive as much of it as we
can because salvation is at stake as is the credibility of the testimony of the
Church and its ability to effectively represent the Kingdom of God to the
world.
Darkness, evil, and oppression began with a lie. Therefore, goodness and freedom can only
begin with truth and it is only with truth that the darkness which has
enveloped many minds and has blackened many hearts can ever be dispelled.
And if there are any of you out there who have not already done so already and yet feel that you are in darkness, then I urge you to call upon the name of the Lord Jesus today for the forgiveness of sins then I urge you to call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins today so that you will be out of spiritual darkness and experience what it is to walk in the light, what it is to be enlightened, and have assurance that you will enter into the Kingdom of God at the end of this present life. It is but a sincere prayer of repentance away:
“Lord Jesus I
need you.
I realize that I am a sinner
who has fallen short of the glory of God
and that my goodness falls short
of your standard of Moral perfection.
Please forgive me of all of my sins.
Come into my heart and into my life
to be the Savior and Lord of my life.
Make me into the servant and follower
that you want me to be.
In your name Lord Jesus, I pray.
Amen.”
End notes:
1. Editors at Lighthouse
Trails, “Discernment Ministries Not Needed?
Would the Apostle Paul Agree?” Lighthouse Trails, August 26, 2025
https://www.lighthousetrailsresearch.com/blog/discernment-ministries-not-needed-would-the-apostle-paul-agree/
2.
From John Adams to Benjamin Rush, 21 December 1809
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-5485
Scripture references:
1.
1 Peter 3:15
2.
Jude 3
3.
Matthew 7:15-20
4. Acts 20:28-31
5.
2 Corinthians 11:3-4, 12-15
6.
Galatians 1:6-9
7.
1 Timothy 1:19-20, 4:1-3, 7,
5:22, 6:3-5, 20-21
8. 2 Timothy 2:16-18, 23
9. Titus 1:10-16, 2:11
10. 2 Peter 2, 3:15-16
11. 1 John 4:1-3
12. Jude
13. Revelation 2:14-15, 20-23
14.
Romans 4:25
15.
1 Corinthians 15:51-55, 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18
16.
Revelation 21-22
17.
Genesis 2:16-17, 3:3
18. Genesis 3:19
19.
Romans 5:12
20.
Romans 6:23
21.
Romans 8:19-22
22.
Romans 3:23
23.
2 Peter 3:9
24.
2 Corinthians 5:21, Hebrews 4:15
25.
Hebrews 7:26-27
26.
Genesis 3:4-5
27.
John 8:32
Christ, but it is also about discipleship in the teachings and instruction of scripture,
in an adequate and proper knowledge of and understanding of the Lord, His attributes, character, nature, and how He is to be approached in our worship,
instructing and admonishing them in godly and righteous living,
prioritizing the things of Heaven above the things of the earth,
preparing them for the difficulties they may face in their walk with the Lord and in their service to Him,
teaching them to rely upon the sufficiency, instruction, and authority of scripture by which the Gospel message is delivered and admonishing them to become as well versed and as well studied in it as possible,
preparing them to make as sound and as reasoned of a defense for their faith as possible that they may be made steadfast therein and to defend doctrinal purity against all falsehoods that may challenge it.
it should not be because we failed to give as sound and as reasoned of a defense for the faith when required of us,
it should not be because we failed to uphold the soundness of doctrine within our ranks, or because we did not expose and bring correction to the works of darkness,
it should not be because we neglected the diligent study and teaching of scripture,
and it should not be because we did not have confidence in the authority of scripture,
and it should not be because we did not rely on the sufficiency of the scriptures.
in convincing them to have confidence in the authority of the Bible by which the Gospel message is delivered,
in showing ourselves to be worthy representatives of our Lord and Savior,
and in impacting the world in a manner that will bring honor and glory to His name,
then we need to make sure that we ourselves have steadfast and unwavering confidence in the faith we profess, that we ourselves have an adequate understanding and knowledge of what it is that we profess to believe in, make it a top priority to preserve within our ranks the purity of doctrine as delivered to us by the divinely inspired scriptures, hold accountable anyone who persists in teaching anything in opposition to the accounts, teachings, and instructions of scripture and to which the scriptures bear no witness, and to test all that we read or hear against the general revelation of scripture to determine if what we are hearing or reading is of God or not.
And if there are any of you out there who have not already done so already and yet feel that you are in darkness, then I urge you to call upon the name of the Lord Jesus today for the forgiveness of sins then I urge you to call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins today so that you will be out of spiritual darkness and experience what it is to walk in the light, what it is to be enlightened, and have assurance that you will enter into the Kingdom of God at the end of this present life. It is but a sincere prayer of repentance away:
I realize that I am a sinner
who has fallen short of the glory of God
and that my goodness falls short
of your standard of Moral perfection.
Please forgive me of all of my sins.
Come into my heart and into my life
to be the Savior and Lord of my life.
Make me into the servant and follower
that you want me to be.
In your name Lord Jesus, I pray.
Amen.”
https://www.lighthousetrailsresearch.com/blog/discernment-ministries-not-needed-would-the-apostle-paul-agree/
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-5485
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