We have been talking about liberalism in Christianity. I want now to talk about a fundamental, local, New Testament church like this one and others, scattered across America. There is coldness and worldliness even in these churches.
Jesus predicted that it would happen, in Matthew 24:12: “And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.”. This is the day of “situation ethics”. This is the day when people say, “everyone’s doing it; so why not me?”. The Bible says, “And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.”. Now folks, we have reached that coldness in the true, fundamental churches of America. I know organizations of fundamental, Bible-believing churches that are sound in the faith but dead. Coldness leads to liberalism. You can’t stay cold and stay true. If you are cold, you will soon depart from the truth. “And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.” Saved people are cold to each other. I see in the true church of Jesus Christ men struggling for their own personal benefit. There is a coldness toward each other, a no-care attitude about other Christians, and a disregard for the true body of Christ. God knows there is a coldness toward lost souls. How few Christians really care that multitudes are without God.
There is a coldness and an indifference to old-fashioned Bible preaching. God said, speaking to Isaiah, “Lift up thy voice, cry aloud, spare not, make my people know they have sinned.” You think of God’s admonition in 2nd Corinthians 6:14, “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers…”. You think of Christians being joined in lodges and associations with unbelievers. You think of Christians in business with unbelievers. You may not be able to find a grocery store run by Christians. The mechanic who works on your car may not be a Christian. The man who cuts your hair may not be a Christian. I am not talking about a Utopia but about a communion. God said there is never to be a communion between a saved and an unsaved person. “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers…” Here is what God says we are to do about it: “Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate…” (vs. 17). You say, “What is the answer to it?” That is the answer. I am preaching to people who belong to modernistic churches. I have people tell me, ”I don’t hear the truth where I go.”. But you keep going! You send in your money. You help support it. You pay a man of the cloth to speak who denies the Bible. So you are as guilty as he is. “Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate…” is the answer.
Folks, worldliness and coldness have come even into the true churches. You see it in the imitation of the world. First, I mention immodest dress. God knows the women of America are helping to send this country to Hell. Women, God bless you! We love you and we want to respect you, but for God’s sake, dress like a Christian. Paul wrote in 1st Timothy 2:9 and 10: “In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with broided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array; But (which becometh women professing godliness) with good works.” Why wouldn’t a Christian woman want to dress modestly? Some of you don’t like it, and you will whisper back and forth at the dinner table. But some of you want to be like the world. The people around you are going to Hell because you are no different from the world There are coldness and worldliness even in the church.
Let me tell you something else and I say it in love. You may say, “You don’t love men with long hair.”. Oh yes I do! But the Bible says in 1st Corinthians 11:14, “Doth not even nature itself teach you, that, if a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him?”. And the word “nature” there is “instinct”. What the verse is saying is, “Does not even instinct itself teach us it is a shame for a man to have long hair?”. That chapter is dealing with the fact that a lady ought to have long hair and that her covering before God is her hair. The same chapter says that instinct teaches us that it is a shame for a man to have hair like a woman. This long hair on men and short skirts on women are not pleasing to God.
We need to clean up. Don’t give me this old line, “Jesus had long hair”. All you have seen are pictures not more than two or three hundred years old, some artist’s conception of what Jesus looked like. Don’t give me that line. We don’t know whether Jesus had long hair, or sideburns, or what! but the Bible says it is a shame for a man to have long hair. While talking to someone the other day about the discipline and dress code in our school, this one said, “You mean people will put up with that?”. I said, “Put up with what?” “Put up with what you put them through.” I said, “We are not going to put them through anything but a happiness mill. They are happy that way.”. The most miserable people in the world are these folks who go around crabbing about the establishment because they want to be different. If you want to be different, get saved, get an old-fashioned revival in your heart, get a Bible under your arm and some tracts in your pocket and start soul winning and going to church. Folks will say, “Well boy, that fellow sure is different, isn’t he? In fact, I believe he is a little nutty!” Then you will really be enjoying it, right up to the hilt!
— Tom Malone, pastor of Emmanuel Baptist Church, Pontiac, Michigan, excerpt from 1971 sermon titled Can America Survive?
