Fundamentalism vs. Apostasy by Dr. Ian R. K. Paisley

Bible Text: Jude; Genesis 1

Preached on: Saturday, March 2, 1969

Martyrs Memorial Free Presbyterian
356 Ravenhill Road
BT 5 Belfast, Ulster
Northern Ireland

I trust you will open your New Testament with me at this epistle of Jude.

In every evil age that we read about in God’s Word there has always been a challenge to that evil age, a challenge to that darkness of that evil age, a challenge to the leadership of the apostasy of that evil age. And there has always been—thank God—the triumph and the victory of God’s people in an evil age.

You know, there’s some people and they live in a spiritual defeatism and they say, “Well, things are going to get worse and worse and the devil is going to have a field day in that day Christ is going to be revealed and so on and so forth and we can’t do anything about it.”

I believe, friends, not only that we can do something about it, but I believe God Almighty is going to do something about it and I believe that we have a responsibility to share the triumph of Christ in an evil age.

The darkest days in Church history were always the brightest days for the Church of Jesus Christ. When they were burning the saints of God, thank God the gospel burned with mighty fire. And thank God it was said in Scotland when they burned Patrick Hamilton, the first martyr of the Scottish Reformation, that everybody his smoke blew upon became a Christian and left the harlot, scarlet Church of Rome.

We need to discover that in the darkest day God has victory for his people. “This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.” ^[1] And thank God for the faith once for all delivered to the saints, ^[2] the faith of God’s elect people.

Now do you know that when the Bible opens it sets down the great principle in regard to the confrontation against darkness. First few verses of the Bible set down a principle that is worked out all through the Scriptures. So let’s open the Bible at the first chapter of Genesis and when you come to verse two, after the declaration, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth,” ^[3] you read, “And the earth was without form, and void,” ^[4] and then you get mention of the darkness. Darkness! And we are confronted today in our day with darkness. And the darkness doesn’t come so much from secular society as it comes from religious society. The greatest darkness of our day comes from darkened men who are blind leaders of the blind, darkness in the pulpits, darkness in the colleges, darkness in the universities, darkness in the assemblies, darkness in the conventions, darkness in the council of churches; ecclesiastical, religious, spiritual darkness! Darkness covers the earth and gross darkness the people. ^[5]

But then when you come down to verse three, thank God, you have light. So God doesn’t leave the darkness unchallenged. What God did in creation he is still doing today.

The Lord Jesus Christ said, “My Father worketh…and I work.” ^[6] God the Father is still working, hallelujah! And he is working by sending forth light.

Listen. “God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness [Hallelujah!], hath shined in our hearts.” ^[7] What glorious light when God shines into our hearts.

So you have light, light confronting, challenging the darkness. But you have something else. Between the darkness, the darkness of verse two and the light of verse three you have, praise God, two things. You have the Spirit of God and you have the Word of God. “The Spirit moved upon the waters. And God said…” ^[8]

That is God’s Word.

The Spirit of God.

“When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the LORD shall lift up a standard [what?] against him.” ^[9]

I like that word “against.” There are things that you and I are against. Yes, we are against them. I am against the pope. You remember that. I am against the World Council of Churches. I am against the National Council of Churches. I am against the great apostate denominations whether they be Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Baptist or called by any other name. I am absolutely and totally against them from the top of my head to my big toe. I am against them, every bit of me against them.

And I want to tell you, brethren, when you go to a little country town to start a church you let people know you are against something. You let them know you haven’t come as a sob voiced sissy to be another pulpit ornament two times on Sunday, that you are not a soft pedaling, fence straddling cream puff pie preacher, that you are a man of God with fire in your belly and you are going to preach the Word with power.

The pulpit, brethren, is a throne and kings sit upon the throne. And every time you get into your pulpit—it may be a small, little pulpit in a small little church—but, thank God, you are a king and you are going to preach the King’s Word, hallelujah! And it does something. It shakes the place. It’s the Bible. That’s what Luther had. He just had a Bible, but he gave the pope spiritual rickets and the pope has been suffering from them ever since. Yes. You have got the Bible, the Word and the Spirit.

So you have the principle.

Ah, but what is the outcome? Do you know what the outcome is? God divided. Separation is always the outcome. That’s what heaven…separation. And you have darkness and then you have light. And you have the Spirit of God and you have the Word of God and—glory to God—you have separation right there in the first chapter of Genesis. And the Bible is all about that. That is what the Bible is all about.

Now I can’t stay in Genesis today. Now let’s look at Jude. This epistle is about fundamentalism. That is what it is about. It is fundamentalism versus apostasy. And right down through this epistle you can see the fundamentalist stand here and you can see over against it the stand of the apostasy. And fundamentalism and apostasy don’t dialog.

Let me say, friends, a fundamentalist disputes with the apostate. He doesn’t dialog with him.

I am quite happy to be called a fundamentalist. I like to be identified with those that are fighting the Lord’s battles.

You know, there are some fellows would like to be called fundamentalists, but they have no right to the name. They are fundamentalists, pseudo-fundamentalists. They come in to the fundamentalist nest, they would use the fundamentalist’s money and they would destroy the fundamentalist stand. Yes. You need to cast them out. You need to finish with them once and for all. I hope you understand that. You’ll not need a dictionary to understand when I am through this afternoon. You’ll understand all right. Yes.

The Bible says, “No other foundation can any man lay than that which is laid which is Jesus Christ.” ^[10] A fundamentalist is a person who has no other foundation but Jesus Christ. He is built upon the Rock of Ages. And, thank God, no potency will disintegrate that rock. It will stand forevermore.

Now there are five views of fundamentalism in the epistle of Jude. You get fundamentalism in its persons and you find out who the true fundamentalists are. It is a good thing to identify them, isn’t it, to know who the fundamentalists really are.

In this day when people want to go one way one day and another way the next day, it is a great thing to be able to identify them; say, “Those are the fundamentalists. That is a fundamentalist Church.”

Then we have not only fundamentalism in its persons, but you have fundamentalism in its preview and you have a preview of the fundamentalist battle in the past. But, you know, this battle didn’t start yesterday. It didn’t start with the modernistic fundamentalist war that you had in this country and we had in our country when higher criticism came in like a flood. Do you know where it started? It started one day when the devil challenged God Almighty. That’s when it started. This war that we are in started in heaven and God started a war.

You know, some people say, “We don’t like churches that there’s wars in, like these fighting people. Why can’t we have peace and everything be nice?”

I had a woman came to me some time ago. She said to me, “I don’t like your church. You are always battling. There is always a scrap, a fight on. You are always fighting.” She says, “In our church we have perfect peace.”

I said, “Madam, I have been in many a graveyard. There’s plenty of peace there, the peace of the dead. You can have that. We don’t want the peace of the dead. We want to be in the battle for the Lord.”

And the Lord declared war upon the devil. Apostasy is the offspring of hell, the begotten of the pit. That’s what apostasy is. That’s why it hates the blessed Son of God, challenges the deity of my Savior and the sinless purity of the incarnate Christ. So it is of the devil. It is begotten of the pit, apostasy.

But, thank God, we have a preview of the fight and it is encouraging. There was a man called Enoch. He didn’t belong to the World Council of Churches. He was an old fashioned preacher of the Second Coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. Before the Lord came the first time he was preaching the Second Coming, this man Enoch. And he walked with God in a dirty, filthy, degenerate, apostate age. He walked with God and he cried out. What a sermon he preached against the hard speeches of ungodly sinners.

Man, you study this book and you will get a preview, yes.

And then we have the devil fighting over the body of Moses. That is a very interesting one, isn’t it? And Michael the archangel had a rough time that day and he found that angelic strength couldn’t deal with Satanic strength, but he found that God’s strength could deal with the devil. And he says, “The Lord rebuke you.” ^[11] “I may not be able to deal with you, Lucifer. I may not be able to silence you, Beelzebub, but God almighty will silence you. Amen.”

Thank God we can call in the Lord. It’s a great thing to be able to call in the Lord when you are having a rough time, bring the Lord in. He will handle the apostates all right, yes, the great champion of the cross, Emmanuel, victor. He is able to deal with all apostates.

So you have a preview. Then you have in this great passage, this epistle, the program of fundamentalists. And I want to tell you that evangelism is not the first in the program. I want you to get that. Oh, there is evangelism in the program and don’t misunderstand me. I am an evangelist. I am preaching evangelistic campaigns all the time and I believe in soul winning with all my heart and soul and a preacher that doesn’t win souls get rid of him. He’s no use. That’s right. If I was in a shop selling books and I never sold one you wouldn’t keep me. They’d say, “Get him out. He’s no good. He can’t sell.” And a preacher that doesn’t win souls, he is no use. You have to win souls for the Lord. And I want to tell you God will give you souls for your hire. He will give you souls for your hire.

But you ever remember this, young man, that you bring forth your fruit in season and every period in the Church is not a revival period. Every season is not a revival season.

It’s easy, you know, to be on fire for God and praise the Lord when revival is on and people are getting saved. But old Habakkuk said, “When there is no oxen in the stall, when there is no food in the larder, when there is no harvest in the field, I will rejoice in the God of my salvation.” ^[12] And until you learn that you will never be a true man or woman of God. To put your rejoicing…

You remember they came home and they told the Lord about the great mission that they had, the campaign they had and the devils were subject to them and the Lord said, “Don’t rejoice because you have been successful. Rejoice because you are saved, your name is written heaven.” ^[13]

Oh, you will have a hard time at time. The sun will not shine. There will be dark nights you will have to go through with the Lord.

The program is not, first of all, evangelism. The first thing in the program is contending. You get that in verse three. You don’t get the evangelism until you come down the chapter to verse 22. “And of some [of them] have compassion, making a difference: And others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire.” ^[14] That’s where you get the evangelism. But the first thing you do is contend, yes.

I think that we would need to get back to Scripture and we need to get our priorities right. The fundamentalist has a program. And then we have fundamentalism in its purity. It’s a pure thing. And I am sad when I see fundamentalism in your country. It hasn’t come to our country, but we have a fundamentalism that has deteriorated here in the United States of America where the Church is trying to win an ear for the gospel with things that are polluted. And I want to say that to you today. Young man, there is only one way to build a church. It is with that book. That is all I have got. I have no gimmicks. I have nothing. But let me tell you I have a book and that book will build a church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. ^[15] And you are not called. Young man, let me say this to you. You are not called to be, first of all, an organizer and, secondly, to be a manager and, thirdly, to be a promoter. You are called to be a preacher. That is what you are called to be, a preacher. And you go and preach it. And you say, “Well, if I don’t have…”

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Listen. You don’t need anything. You get on fire in the pulpit and people will come out to see you burn. They will say, “There is a fire up the road. Come on out.”

We had a great preacher in our country called William P. Nicholson. He was a great revivalist. And he had a little church in the heart of Scotland and he couldn’t stir it. And he got down one day on his knees and he said, “Lord, stir this sleepy, little, half damned village and do something.”

W.P. Nicholson, when he was at the height of his ministry in our country, it was nothing to see 1200, 1400 people saved in one campaign of three weeks. He discovered something. He discovered that the book will do the job. And when you have to turn to anything but this book there is something wrong. Search your heart. This Word will do it. It is a pure thing. It is a holy faith we have. It doesn’t need the gimmicks of the devil or the worldly methods. It just needs a pure faith. Give me a holy man with faith in his soul and a Bible in his hand and he will shake the community God puts him into. He’ll shake him. He doesn’t need anything else. He doesn’t need to say, “If I get 150 out to the morning service you can put shaving soap all over me. I’ll swallow a goldfish if we reach the 500 mark.” Yeah. He doesn’t need that. That’s polluting. That is polluting the gospel. Away with it. It is not part of the fundamentalist witness.

And I want to tell you. When you go in for that, the next thing you will be in ecumenical evangelism. And I find these churches that go in for that, then, to go to ecumenical evangelism. And then they don’t take any stand on the issue.

Oh, there is nothing stands up to testing like holiness of heart, a dedication to the Lord, a desire to be like Christ. It was Jonathan Edwards of New England who preached the great sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” that cried out in prayer, “Oh, to be as holy as it is possible for a justified sinner to be.” That should be the prayer of our hearts.

Fundamentalism has its purity. And then, bless God, it has its preservation. God preserves it. Do you know why God preserved this school? Because it stuck to the book and it kept to the standards. That’s why. Stick to the book and keep to the standards.

“Oh, it’s not popular. If I take a stand I lose people.”

Better lose people than lose God. Better have nobody with you and have God for you than have the crowd with you and God against you.

As W.B. Hinson the great fundamentalist leader on the west coast of your country said, “There is something worse than an empty church. It is an offended God.” And so it is. Thank God there is a preservation of the fundamentalist way.

Isn’t it great that we are in the same great conflict that Abel was in? I’m glad Abel believed in the blood and he fought that old Unitarian Cain, yes, that unbloody Unitarian Cain. He fought him. And what happened? He became a martyr. And you will become a martyr if you stand for God, yes. And if they can’t kill you, they will kill your reputation. But don’t worry about it. You’ll survive. I have had everything said about me that could be said about any man, everything. I have had thousands of enemies. But if God be for you, who can be against you? ^[16] Oh, let me tell you, friends, the Lord will preserve us if we do what is right.

You know, I pray a prayer continually. I say, “Lord, if ever this mind of mine suggests that I should compromise, put a shroud on me. Put me into the coffin and get me out of this world.”

I had a great father, a wonderful man of God. He was a preacher, a fundamentalist preacher. Anything I know he taught me. And he used to say to me, “It is not how you start the race that counts. It is how you finish it.” And I want to have a good finish.

Do you know there are men who have destroyed all they have done at the end of their days by their folly and foolishness because they left off the anchorage? May the Lord preserve us to the end.

I want to finish with my guns blazing against the devil and his crowd. I want the last sermon that I preach to be 10 times hotter against the devil’s crowd than the first one. I want the to go out fighting the battle.

Do you remember that great Mr. Valiant-for-the-Truth? And when he passed over the river in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress he said, “I carry my scars with me as a testimony to my Lord that I loved him.”

Have you got any scars? I’m glad I have a few scars in my ministry. They are tokens that I have loved Jesus with all my heart. And he says, “I leave my sword to those that will take it up and fight the Lord’s battles. And I just long to see the face of the king.”

Oh, I want to tell you, friend, you will be called many a thing. But you have got to take a strong, bold stand and be certain about it and find out where that fellow stands, that other preacher stands. And let your people know where he stands. And when somebody comes to town with a big name don’t be afraid of him. If he doesn’t stand for God, go after him. You have got a weapon that can cut chunks out of him and that is the Word of God. And when you are finished with him… Many years ago when I was a young preacher Leslie D. Weatherhead, the president of the Methodist Conference in England came to our city. Leslie Weahterhead was an arch apostate. He is now in hell. He has gone to his own place. He was the man that said that Jesus Christ was the bastard child of Zechariah, John the Baptist’s father and Mary who was a prostitute of the temple. That is what he says in his book, The Christian Agnostic. That is about as vile a thing as anybody could say.

So I said that as he had come to the city I wanted to confer a new degree on him. And I publicly conferred on him the title G.O.V.

And, boy, the press came after me. They said, “What does that mean?”

Generation of Vipers. That’s what it means. And I tell you we had some fun with Leslie D. Weatherhead. He never forgot his visit to Belfast.

He wrote afterwards to the press and he said, “That fellow Paisley is too quick with his sword.”

Hallelujah! Best testimony I ever had. Amen, yes. You couldn’t be quick enough with the sword.

My brethren, we have got to take a stand against certain men. And you have to back down. Don’t be backing down.

I know preachers and when Billy Graham comes to town they say, “Well, I am not going to say anything.”

Well, Billy Graham came to my town and he preached in the big Presbyterian Church that our congregation originally came out of and I put a huge advert in the press and I preached on him. Both services on the Lord’s Day I called his number, told the people. And people said of me, “You’ll hurt yourself.”

I said, “I don’t care whether I hurt myself. I am not going to let the Lord be hurt. No matter about…”

If you are looking, my friend, to yourself you will never get anywhere. You look to the Lord. Honor the Lord and the Lord will honor you.

But if I had only started on preaching on Billy Graham when he came to town people would have been confused. But I have been preaching against Billy Graham for years and I have my people well taught. If he comes to Belfast, I’m telling you, he will be in trouble because the people know all about him and his romanizing and his apostatizing and his backsliding and his compromise. Tell the people. Let them know. Yeah, let the people know. Don’t run around whispering in their ears. What you have heard in secret, shout from the housetop ^[17] That’s what the Lord says. Make no apology. Don’t clear your throat and blow your nose and say, “I’m terribly sorry. I have to say these things.” Nobody has any time for a man that makes apologies for what he is saying. Say, “I’ll not apologize. I’ll not take anything back I am going to say. This is what I am going to say and if my speech could be a thunderbolt and every word a lightning stroke, glory to God, let it be!”

That’s the way you preach. Get at it. Get at it. It is not pleasant language. It is Holy Ghost language and I pray every day that God will give me Holy Ghost language in my preaching like the prophets of old, what men they were. I wish Elijah was around today. I would love to be with Elijah when he would be challenging the prophets of Baal. Man, he really went. And he mocked them, too. Imagine mocking them. Oh, if you did that today these lovey-dovey crowd would say, “That’s not Christ like to mock them.”

Let me tell you something. The only standard of Christ likeness is revealed in the New Testament. Christ likeness is not what some old apostate professor thinks Christ was like. Christ likeness is what God says about his Son. And when the Lord went after the apostates in his day he didn’t say, “Lovely liars, delightful serpents, beautiful sepulchres.” No, sir, he didn’t preach like that.

I want to be like my Lord. Just let me come up to the Lord’s standard. You know, the way the Lord started his ministry? He started his ministry by cleansing the temple. He went into the temple with a whip and he scourged them. And he overthrew the money changers and he let all the pigeons off to fly around the temple court. And he cleared them out.

Tell you, “Oh, you should deal with them in love.”

I’ll tell you what love is. True love “rejoiceth not in iniquity.” ^[18] That’s true love. It doesn’t rejoice. It rejoices in the truth.

It’s a devilish thing, a damnable thing and it has got to be fought with all our heart and all our soul and all our mind. Oh to be a pure son of Levi, to stand outside the camp with the Lord in this evil day. “Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach.” ^[19]

I like Moses. Moses reckoned that the reproach of Christ was greater riches than the treasures of Egypt. ^[20]

Oh, that we may gladly bear the reproach of Jesus Christ. He is a wonderful Savior, isn’t he? He wore a crown of thorns, allowed his hands to be pierced with nails. Hung up on a tree to die, stark naked and ashamed. And, bless God, he did it for me. And all I can say is, “King of my life, I crown thee now. Thine shall the glory be. Lest I forget thy thorn crowned brow, lead me to Calvary.”

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