this is to deny Christ’s human nature, for without a body He could not die. But such a view is in credulous for all the Gospels record our Lord’s perfect humanity. He was called a man who ate, slept, grew weary, wept, was tempted, suffered, and died. Despite what the Bible clearly teaches, an early Hellenistic view, Gnosticism, held that Christ could not be associated with a human body. These people taught that all matter was evil and therefore Christ was either a phantom with a seeming appearance of a material body or He came upon the human body of Jesus for only a short time. It was to refute this apostate sect that Paul wrote Colos- sians, John his epistles, and Irenaeus, an early church father, his books entitled Against Heresies. However, this view still remains in many sects today. A more subtle, much less obvious way to be cloud the clear Gospel of the cross, was to deny the deity of Christ. To die for sin, the Lamb must be without spot or blemish, both willing and able. The divine nature, though invisible, is abundantly attested by the miracles, activities, and charac teristics of Christ — things that only God could do. Only our Lord knew no sin, did no sin, in Him was no sin, and was apart from sin — He was the perfect Son of God. We may think that only modem theologians deny the deify of Christ, but as we examine the church age we discover that there have been many attacks upon our Lord’s deity. The Ebionites, exis tent as early as the Jerusalem Council, wrongly held that the Jewish law was a requirement for salvation and denied Christ’s deity. In the fourth century, Satanic opposition to the deity of Christ nearly destroyed the Roman Em pire. It all began when a popular preacher Arius attacked the message of his bishop Alexander, say ing that Christ was not co-equal, co-etemal, or co- substantial with the Father. To him, Christ was divine, but not deity. The controversy became so bitter that the Emperor Constantine called a coun cil of bishops to work out a plausible solution. Three hundred and eighteen leaders of the church met at Nicaea, near present-day Istanbul, for two summer months in 325 A.D. There was a young man Athanasius, slightly over thirty, demanded there be no compromise for Christ was indeed very God of very God. He insisted Christ could not be less than what the Bible stated Him to be or He could not be the Saviour of men. Although there were several years of bitterness and contention, the church later rejected Arianism as an unorthodox doctrine, and the true deity of Christ was made an article of the Christan faith. We can praise God for those who stood true to Him in time of such apostasy. However, a form of Arianism was again popu lar immediately after the Reformation. Founded
truth in order to set up his false religious system in the tribulation days. During the last days there will also come many false teachers who are apostates. But how can we understand what apostasy is today? We are living with an invisible war and like a morning fog it engulfs us everywhere. Never theless, apostasy did not happen overnight, and one way to penetrate the fog is to take a long- range perspective. If we see a panoramic view of the way Satan has worked throughout the church age, we can know the essential features of apos tasy in this the twentieth century. As we examine the history of the church, one striking characteristic is the denial of doctrine, especially that which involves the Person and work of Jesus Christ . As we examine the history of the church, we note that one striking characteristic is the denial of doctrine, especially that which involves the Person and work of Jesus Christ. That many other doc trines of Scripture have been denied is indeed true. But since the blood redemption of the cross is the central truth and value of the Christian faith, it being the “power of God unto salvation” (Rom. 1:16; I Cor. 1:23, 24), any counterfeit system of doctrine must omit this essential. The apostle John flatly says that “every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God” (I John 4:3). This is why during Old Testament times Satan sought to oppose the first coming of Christ and why he has tried through men and movements to deny the coming of the God-man throughout the church age. The most obvious way for false teachers to do
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OCTOBER, 1969
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