Three Enemies of Truth
Three Enemies of the Truth
1. Appeasement To conciliate or pacify by making a sacrifice of a moral or spiritual principle.
* The world made this mistake with Hitler, then with Communist Russia, and so on. In the churches it only allows evil or rebellion the time it needs to put down roots, and spread and affect more people, making more difficult and painful the work of cleansing, discipline and correction that must inevitably be done anyway. Nothing is gained by appeasement, and in the long run more is lost.
2. Compromise To come to an agreement by concession or consensus; yielding; or conceding.
* This is the idea of democracy, the will of the majority, but it is not set forth in the Bible as a Scriptural pattern to follow. There was no voting or ceding to the consensus, but rather an earnest seeking of the will of God, which must be done even though all are not in agreement. The Scriptures teach us to be of one mind, but not to give in to a majority vote. The majority does not have a good track record in the Bible, yet man often finds comfort in the fact that others are of the same opinion as him, rather than being strong enough to stand for what the Bible says even if no one else agrees.
3. Expediency Subordination of a moral or spiritual principle, for the sake of facilitating an end.
* Epitomized in the worldly wisdom that says, “the end justifies the means”. The implication is, whatever makes the church grow in numbers must be good, and therefore we must accept it”. Overlooking or contextualizing the teachings of Scriptures is responsible for departure from the form of sound words which the Apostles charged us to hold fast.
