The Ill Effects of Decades of Shallow Teaching

The dearth of solid expositional preaching and teaching have given way to multitudes a congregants who are now vulnerable to the various forms of false teaching prevalent in evangelicalism today. Phil Johnson in his recent post put it well:

"But the accrued apathy of at least four-plus decades of neo-evangelical influence has left evangelicals virtually defenseless against doctrinal error—especially the subtle varieties. The Emerging movement has aggressively exploited that weakness, challenging (on one front or another) practically every historic evangelical doctrinal distinctive. The Emerging Church has therefore become practically the mirror opposite of what fundamentalism was supposed to be."

Scripture illustrates the devastating consequences of not growing in our knowledge and understanding of God's Truth. The Corinthians fell into this trap and it made them vulnerable to deception. (2 Corinthians 11:2-4) In fact, their lack of growth in the knowledge and application of Scripture resulted in a sin infested congregation. (1 Corinthians 3:1-3;1 Corinthians 5) It is of vital importance that believers continually study and understand the text of Scripture in order to build wisdom and understanding to keep them from falling victim to various false doctrines and to keep their hearts pure before God. In fact, it is the primary function and duty of the local church to actively pursue the task of equipping the congregation to thoroughly understand Bible doctrine, so that they are not tossed about "by every wind" of false doctrine, regardless of how subtle the nuance may be (Ephesians 4:11-16). It is tragic that the shallowness of contemporary evangelicalism has left multitudes vulnerable to every false teaching that blows their way, especially those errors that are ever so subtle.