Must We Be Silent?

Description

This volume is not a bedtime story, although some Bible students will stay up late reading it. Neither is it a devotional book, though it will lead some to serious heart-searching. It is certainly not an inspirational volume, although it will fire up some saints to rejoice and encourage them to hold on.  Rather, Must We Be Silent? is an apologetic book, a work designed to defend sound biblical teaching by counteracting the false.

 

Like many other Christian denominations, ours also has been infected by some malignant ideological tumors. By undertaking this critical examination, we may correctly understand the true nature of the church’s condition and the kind of surgery it needs.

Must We Be Silent? is actually five books rolled into one, tackling some of the hottest potato issues in the church: 

 

Part 1. Born A Gay and Born Again? (The Ideology of Homosexuality)

Why are Christians changing their attitudes on the question of homosexuality? What are the three major views on the subject?  Are the arguments being used to justify homosexuality biblically valid?  Can homosexuals change? 

 

Part 2. A Gender Agenda (The Ideology of Women’s Ordination)

Is ordaining women as elders or pastors new light for the church? What strategies are being employed in the campaign for women’s ordination?  Is the practice biblical? Did women serve as pastors in our early history? Did Ellen G. White ever call for women’s ordination?  Was she herself ordained? Must our churches ordain women as elders?

 

Part 3. Amazing Grace and Our Mazing Race (The Ideology of Racism)

Is there racism in the church? What religious beliefs lie behind this ideology? Why do we have racially separate conferences in North America?  Do we still need these black and white church structures? What should we do about racism?

 

Part 4. The Babble Over the Bible (The Ideology of Liberal Higher Criticism)

Why are our scholars divided into conservative and liberal camps? What is the nature of the cold war over the Bible? Why are some of our thought leaders revising certain of our Bible based beliefs and practices? What are the key issues regarding biblical inspiration and interpretation?

 

Part 5.  The Vocal Few and the Local Pew (The Ideology of Congregationalism)

What are the threats to our church unity? What’s wrong with using worldly gimmicks to proclaim the gospel? What happens when a GC session votes a biblically questionable practice into the Church Manual? What about situations where the Spirit-guided decision of the church body seem to clash with the Spirit’s leading of a person’s life and with the person’s conscience? Must we be concerned about innovations in contemporary worship styles?

 

The issues addressed in Must We Be Silent are so hot that anyone attempting to touch them is bound to be burned.  But should Bible-believing Christians remain silent or neutral when established biblical doctrines are being undermined? Should they uncritically embrace secular ideologies that masquerade in the church as sound theologies?

 

Ellen G. White responds: “If God abhors one sin above another, of which His people are guilty, it is doing nothing in case of an emergency. Indifference and neutrality in a religious crisis is regarded of God as a grievous crime and equal to the very worst type of hostility against God” (Testimonies, vol. 3, p. 281).

 

This is why we must not be silent.