May 16
7
When the children of God see, hear, and are confronted with the “damnable heresies” of false prophets (2 Peter 2), they should have thoughts of pity and compassion, both for the deceivers and the deceived. And when these pitiful, perishing religionists will not receive us, nor our doctrine, nor our sovereign and gracious Lord, it is not ours to seek their personal destruction, to call down fire upon their heads. That is not the spirit and attitude of the saints (Luke 9:51-56).
If we be stoned like Stephen, that is alright; but we shall die with no stones in our hands. We shall leave these “Sauls of Tarsus” to the pleasure of our sovereign Lord. He just might make a “Paul” out of some of them. However, like Stephen, we shall, as God grants grace and the opportunity, speak plainly and boldly, both of them and to them, of their “stiff-necked” resistance and opposition to the truth, exposing, as best we can, their “damnable heresies” which destroy men’s souls. And, we will not assist them (silence does assist them!), wish them well, or even permit them into our homes, if they come bringing and spreading their false religion (2 John 10-11).
We dare not help a man purchase a shotgun to blow our neighbor’s head off, nor do we assist in doing that which is infinitely worse — murder and destroy the immortal souls of men and women and boys and girls with lies and deception! Why is it that men find this so hard to understand? Why are they horrified and repulsed by physical murder, while showing total indifference to the spiritual slaughter of men’s precious souls? Must it not be because they do not really believe? Is it not because spiritual and eternal things to them are merely dead doctrines, rather than living realities?
Pastor Maurice Montgomery