What To Do When Christian Leaders Fall Away | Joe Bonifacio

I’ve had conversations with so many people about what to do when prominent Christian leaders fall away. It can be very disturbing and unsettling for new Christians and veteran leaders. But like all things that shake our faith, these can be used by God to bring us closer to him.

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Charles Spurgeon Quote:

One of the most shocking trials to young Christians is the fall of an eminent teacher. I have known some that have been almost ready to give up their faith when some one who appeared to be very earnest and faithful has suddenly apostatized.

Such things have happened in our memory, to our intense grief; and I want, therefore, to put it very, very plainly. If it should come to pass that any one whom you revere as having been blest to your soul— whom you love because you have received from him the word of life— if such a one upon whom you may, perhaps, have leaned too much, should in the future turn out not to be true and faithful, and should not believe, do not follow his unbelief, for “if we believe not, yet he abideth faithful: he cannot deny himself.”

“Peter denies his Master: do not follow Peter when he is doing that, for he will have to come back weeping, and you will hear him preaching his Master again. Worse still, Judas sells his Master: do not follow Judas, for Judas will die a wretched death, and his destruction shall be a warning to others to cling more closely to the faith.

You may see the man who stood like a cedar in Lebanon fall by one stroke of the devil’s axe, but do not, therefore, think that the trees of the Lord, which are full of sap, will fall too. He will keep his own, for he knows them that are his. Pin not your faith to any man’s sleeve. Let not your confidence rest on any arm of flesh, neither say “I believe because of the testimony of such a one, and I hold to the form of sound words because my minister has held it”; for all such props may be smitten away, and on a sudden may fail you.

Do let me put this very, very plainly,— if we believe not— if those that seem to be the choice teachers of the age, if those that have been the most successful evangelists of the period, if those who stand high in the esteem of God’s people, should, in an evil hour, forsake the eternal verities and begin to preach to you some other gospel which is not the gospel of Jesus Christ, I beseech you follow us not whoever we may be, or whatever we may be. Suffer no teachers, however great they may be, to lead you to, doubt, for God abideth faithful. Keep you to the revealed will and mind of God— for “he cannot deny himself.”

Link to the full sermon:
www.spurgeon.org/resource-library/sermons/eternal-faithfulness-unaffected-by-human-unbelief/

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