With regard to the specific gross heresies that sweep a church away from Christ to antichrist, away from God to Satan, away from the true church to the false church, they include the following according to Scripture and the Reformed creeds.
There is the gross heresy that Jesus is not God come in the flesh (1 John 4:1-6). This is the lie of liberalism, particularly Protestant liberalism. But this lie has many aspects. And we must not suppose that this lie at once enters a church in the gross form of an outright denial of the deity of Jesus and of the Trinity. Usually, it enters a church in the form of a rejection of sovereign grace in salvation. Arminianism leads to theological liberalism. Arminianism is incipient theological liberalism. it is incipient theological liberalism by virtue of Arminianism's denial that God's (one) gracious will for the salvation of (elect) sinners is effectual. An ineffectual, dependent god is not the God of classical (biblical) Christianity.
There is the lie that salvation is earned by, or dependent on, the works of the sinner. This is the false doctrine of Rome. This error is exposed in the book of Galatians.
There is the lie of salvation by, and dependent on, the free will of the sinner. This is the false doctrine of much of evangelicalism, fundamentalism, and neo-Pentecostalism today. Paul condemns the doctrine of free will as a form of a false gospel that characterizes a false church: "[Salvation] is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy" (Rom. 9:16). The Synod of Dordt condemned this lie as a false gospel on behalf of all Reformed churches everywhere to the end of time.
But the doctrine of free will comes into churches subtly, usually by means of a teaching that, although there is a predestination of some to salvation (about which the churches hear less and less), there is also a universal love and grace of God in Christ that desires the salvation of all without exception and that goes out to all without exception, attempting the salvation of all.This universal grace, in the nature of the theory, is not efficacious, so that the implication is that the reception of this grace depends on the sinner's acceptance of it (about which the churches hear more and more as time goes on). The time to fight this false gospel to the death as at the point of its subtle introduction into a Reformed church). "Obsta principiis!" ("Resist the beginnings!")
In an informative book, the Presbyterian Gary North (with whom I have crossed swords over Christian Reconstruction post-millennialism) demonstrates that the apostasy of the once-great Presbyterian Church (USA), the church of the Hodges and Warfield, into deepest, darkest liberalism began in the early 1900s with the insertion into the Westminster Confession of an article teaching a universal love and grace of God and a desire of God for the salvation of all without exception. The revision of the confession, in 1903, consisted of a "missions-related affirmation that God loves humanity in general and seeks the salvation of all mankind - a denial, in other words, of God's 'double predestination' of fallen mankind to either heaven or hell."The apostasy of the Presbyterian Church (USA) went this way: "from Calvinism to Arminianism to liberalism."
I for one do not intend to be the reason that my grandchildren must fight criticism of Scripture, rejection of the deity of Christ, and denial of the resurrection of the body, because I would not fight the beginnings of liberalism in the denial of God's sovereignty in the salvation of elect sinners. Besides, I regard the false gospel of salvation by the free will of the sinner, making an inherently impotent cross effective for oneself, as being as much a denial of the gospel as is outright liberalism.
There is also the gross heresy that criticizes Scripture as a human word and a human book, full of errors, subject to the critical judgment of man's mind, whether his scientific mind, his philosophical mind, his ethical mind, or his religious mind. Invariably, it enters a church by the criticism of the opening chapters of the Bible. The battle should be fought there. If the battle with unbelief is lost in a church at Genesis 1, the end will be the criticism of the opening chapters of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
There is the gross heresy of mysticism: salvation not by faith in Christ according to the word, but by feeling, by direct, emotional contact with God. This is the horrendous error of the charismatic movement, in addition to its other errors. But this movement does not take a church over all at once with the introduction of new prophecies, holy laughter, being slain in the Spirit, and other such monstrosities. It will seek entrance by asking for the "mere" approval of the extraordinary gifts of the Spirit in our age.
There is the gross heresy of antinomianism. This appeared already in the apostolic churches, as 2 Peter, Jude, ad the Nicolaitans and Jezebel in Revelation 2 and 3 prove. This is the error of licentiousness as the lawful implication of grace. But also this evil does not appear in a church full-blown: "Let us sin that grace may abound." Rather, it comes in almost innocuously: "We must not discipline the man or woman, but in love receive him or her, even though he or she walks impenitently in sin. Is Jesus not merciful (especially to my son or my daughter)? Is not God a God of love? Doesn't God forgive sinner's?" This seemingly Christian attitude and mind are, in fact, an attack on the third mark of the church. Their sentiment is also another gospel than the gospel of Scripture. The gospel of Scripture teaches salvation from sin, not salvation only from the punishment of sin, as though the forgiven sinner can, and even may, continue impenitently in the bondage of sin, to the great dishonoring of a holy God. The evangelical churches in the United States, in addition to their other errors, are antinomian through and through.
These are the great heresies that have destroyed many churches in the past, and that are in the process of destroying many other churches today.
Every believer must be on guard against them in his or her own church and fight them if they begin to appear.
Out of a love of the truth!
Prof. David J. Engelsma
Bound to Join, pp.143-146
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