Teach No Other Doctrine
by Pastor Cornelius R. Stam
In strong language the Apostle bids Timothy to
“charge some that they teach no other doctrine”; no other
doctrine, obviously, than that which he had taught them. In 1 Tim.
6:3-5 he closes his epistle by saying:
“If any man teach otherwise, and consent not to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ… from such withdraw thyself.”
In these passages the Apostle emphasizes the
importance of fidelity to that heaven-sent message committed to him
by revelation; that message which he says in Tit. 1:2,3 was “promised
before the ages began” but made known “in due time… through
preaching which is committed unto me…”
Ever since Paul’s day religious leaders have
substituted other messages for that committed by the glorified Lord
to Paul. The law of Moses, the Sermon on the Mount, the “great
commission,” and Pentecost have all been confused with God’s
message and program for the dispensation of grace. This is what has
bewildered and divided the Church and ripened it for the apostasy.
With all the confused thinking about the Ten
Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount fifty years ago it was
little wonder that modernism swept so many off their feet with its
teachings about Jesus of Nazareth, the Man of Galilee, following his
footsteps, social betterment, political reform, etc. Multitudes were
so taken up with the social gospel, so eager to help make the world a
better place to live in, that they did not even notice or believe
that the modernists denied the very fundamentals of the Christian
faith.
But the new evangelicalism of our day is still
more dangerous. It is big. It is well financed. It is popular. It is
subtle. Perhaps its greatest danger lies in the fact that while
claiming to be “conservative,” it minimizes the importance of the
fundamentals and the danger of apostatizing from them.
Thus the inspired words of the Apostle Paul:
“Charge some that they teach no other doctrine,” are more
urgently needed in our day than they were in his.
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