True reformation doesn’t come easy.
It is won on the spiritual battlefield with spiritual weapons (2 Cor. 10:1-6; Eph. 6:10-18). It is not for those who want to promote retreats and weekend revivals; who desire men of God to go along to get along. It takes men of courage; men of conviction; men of the Scriptures; men of prayer; men of the gospel; and men of the Spirit. They are not men defined by their times; but men defined by the truth!
It is for those who are unafraid to call sacerdotalism’s practice sorcery and worldly methodology seduction. Beware of the culturally relevant – for they seek not the will or glory of God, but the building of their own kingdoms. To such a time Spurgeon pens the following powerful words written below. They are designed to unmask Romanism’s baptismal rite to infants as false religion and false gospel. They are not for the faint of heart or those who embrace a sentimental form of Christianity. They are straight-forward weighty words; without scatology and without compromise.
We have among us modern day papists promoting still the Galatian heresy – that is a given. But my friends, where are all the Luther’s unfazed and unconcerned about the popularity of men and the politics of religion that will speak the truth of God’s Word absent of their own agenda to these things once again?
Keep pounding on Wittenberg’s Door beloved.
We need a new Reformation today.
Pastor Steve
2 Cor 4:5
An Excerpt by C. H. Spurgeon
Why, there are those who pretend to save souls by curious tricks, intricate manoeuvres, and dexterous posture-making! A basin of water, half-a-dozen drops, certain syllables—heigh, presto—the infant is made a child of God, a member of Christ, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven! This aqueous regeneration surpasses my belief; it is a trick which I do not understand: the initiated only can perform the beautiful piece of magic, which excels anything ever attempted by the Wizard of the North. There is a way, too, of winning souls by laying hands upon heads, only the elbows of the aforesaid hands must be encased in lawn, and then the machinery acts, and there is grace conferred by blessed fingers! I must confess I do not understand the occult science, but at this I need not wonder, for the profession of saving souls by such juggling can only be carried out by certain favoured persons who have received apostolical succession direct from Judas Iscariot. This episcopal confirmation, when men pretend that it confers grace, is an infamous piece of juggling. The whole thing is an abomination. Only to think that, in this nineteenth century, there should be men who preach lip salvation by sacraments, and salvation by themselves, forsooth!
Why, sirs, it is surely too late in the day to come to us with this drivel! Priestcraft, let us hope, is an anachronism, and the sacramental theory out of date. These things might have done for those who could not read, and in the days when books were scarce; but ever since the day when the glorious Luther was helped by God to proclaim with thunder-claps the emancipating truth, “By grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God,” there has been too much light for these Popish owls. Let them go back to their ivy-mantled towers, and complain to the moon of those who spoiled of old their kingdom of darkness. Let shaven crowns go to Bedlam, and scarlet hats to the scarlet harlot, but let not Englishmen yield them respect. Modern Tractarianism is a bastard Popery, too mean, too shifty, too double-dealing to delude men of honest minds.
If we win souls, it shall be by other arts than Jesuits and shavelings can teach us. Trust not in any man who pretends to priesthood. Priests are liars by trade, and deceivers by profession. We cannot save souls in their theatrical way, and do not want to do so, for we know that with such jugglery as that, Satan will hold the best hand, and laugh at priests as he turns the cards against them at the last.
(From Spurgeon’s Sermon, “The Soul Winner”)
