Updated January 2, 2006 (first published in O Timothy magazine, Vol. 12, Issue 9, 1995) (Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) -

The following was preached by T.T. Shields in 1935 at a Bible League meeting in England.

I count it a peculiar privilege to speak under the auspices of a Society which is set for the defense of the Gospel. Mr. Spurgeon in his day observed and frequently remarked upon the tendency on the part of many of the Lord's people to desire to take a neutral position in respect to matters then at issue. He said in effect that on the one side there was to be found Mr. White, and on the other side Dr. Black who believed the opposite; and between the two a Mr. Whitey-Black who believed both and neither. I think you will agree that that strange color, “whitey-black,” has become very popular in religious circles in our day.

Now Spurgeon in his day found it necessary to make clear distinctions between things that differed, and to state positively his convictions. Notwithstanding, many of the celebrations in honour of the Centenary of his birth have entirely ignored that which I venture to believe was chiefly characteristic of the man, namely, that which has been called the “Down-Grade Controversy.” It is a mistake to suppose that that controversy was an incident in his great career. It was rather the culmination and climax of the testimony of his whole life. Spurgeon was always a controversialist, as every “convictionist”--if I may coin the word--must in the nature of things be. If you have a conviction in respect to the truth, then you cannot possibly allow that which is in its very nature and essence entirely opposed to it,--you cannot allow that that also is true. Truth is always intolerant, utterly intolerant of error. The multiplication table is the most intolerant thing in the world.

And surely there must be some law, some standard to which our religious views may be brought, some scale in which our opinions may be weighed, that we may know whether they are true or false.

My dear Friends, the attitude, the defensive and the offensive attitude which C.H. Spurgeon assumed on the great principle for the advocacy and conservation of which this Bible League, as I understand it, exists, THAT OFFENSIVE ATTITUDE IS JUST AS NECESSARY TODAY AS IT WAS IN SPURGEON'S DAY.

Indeed I think it is far more necessary. I greatly fear there has been no improvement in religious conditions since the late Eighties and the early Nineties. Evangelical principles are at a greater discount today than they were in Spurgeon's day. If it be true that the departure from the truth in that day was worthy to be called “Down-gradism,” I think we might well call it today “Tobogganism.” Did you ever see a toboggan when it shoots down at the rate of sixty miles an hour?

If the anti-Evangelical movement travelled in a coach-and-four in Spurgeon's day, it hops about from place to place in our day by aeroplane. If the enemies of the truth used rifles then, they use machine guns now. I have re-read Spurgeon's articles on the Down-Grade controversy, and I have marvelled at their moderation and their mildness. It did not seem to me that there was anything in them that was at all offensive, and why they should have stirred up such bitterness would be difficult to understand were we not thoroughly aware of the seriousness of the issues that were involved. Things have greatly changed since Spurgeon's day. In that day he saw individual Modernists as isolated units. Now they have become a trained and disciplined army, and the Modernists whom he observed privately practising their goose-stepping about their own barracks, are now thundering at the gates of Paris and air-raiding London. Indeed there is a true analogy between the tactics of the Germanic powers in the Great War and that of the Modernists, or Modernism. The departments of propaganda, of espionage, their prison camps with their tortures, their aeroplanes, their submarines, every kind of deception that Hell itself can devise, is now employed by the armies of Modernism wherewith to oppose the Gospel.

We may indeed frankly recognise that[Modernism] is not a dilution of Christianity but an absolute denial of it. It is not a modification of the Gospel, but the deliberate murder of it. It involves the crucifixion of the Son of God afresh and the putting of Him to open shame. I greatly fear that there are comparatively few Evangelicals who have awakened to the seriousness of the present situation. They seem to think that it is still possible to be on good terms with the enemy, to live in association with the enemies of Christ. Let us frankly admit, dear friends--I say no new thing--everybody who has thought at all about it must recognise that the Bible of the Modernist is not God's Bible at all; it is another one. The God of the Modernist is not the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He would not make a decent schoolmaster, so small, so insignificant, so remote is He. ... There is no greater enemy of the Gospel of Jesus Christ anywhere in the world than a man like Harry Emerson Fosdick, and you have them in your country, plenty of them. Do not charge me with uncharity. I recognize them, I identify them as the enemies of Jesus Christ. I say the Christ of the Modernist is not the Christ of the Bible at all; the salvation of the Modernist is not the salvation that comes to us by the grace of God; the Heaven of the Modernist is not the city which hath foundations, “whose builder and maker is God.” And as for the Hell of the Modernist, it is a special one that they have created in order that they may deal with Fundamentalists, and to which they would consign us all.

I tell you, my dear friends, this Down-Grade controversy is far more than a controversy. It is war, cruel, bloody war to the death. It is nothing less than that. Unless you recognise that and are prepared to face the consequences of it, I beg of you, have nothing to do with it. I say there is a thousand-fold more reason for not only defending the faith but for contending for it, and taking the offensive against Modernism everywhere, than there was in the days of C.H. Spurgeon.

Since his day Modernism has dug itself in. In his day it skirmished about in the open on the surface. Now you find it in entrenched positions. It has dug itself in, I say, to editorial and professional chairs; into administrative positions; in augmentation and sustentation departments; it has dug itself in everywhere, and today we face an army that is firmly entrenched everywhere. I talk to men of different denominations, from India, China, Japan, and the United States and Canada, from the Antipodes and from Great Britain, and I have learned what the Bible teaches, that Beelzebub is never divided against himself.

Has it ever struck you as being singular that in His day there were two religious sects that, so far as their own personal views were concerned, were as the poles asunder? The Pharisees and the Sadducees had nothing in common. The Pharisees were the orthodox Supernaturalists of their day, and the Sadducees were the Rationalists, the Naturalists of their day. But when the Incarnate Word came into contact with them, a dead orthodoxy having to choose between a vital spirituality and a cold rationalism, preferred the cold rationalism to the vital spirituality, joined hands in a campaign against the Incarnate Word and brought Him at last to the Cross.

You have the same thing today. Great multitudes of people profess an intellectual adherence to the great evangelical principle that the Bible is the Word of God--they have it in their heads and none of it in their hearts--and between that and a vital, aggressive godliness that has not only the form but the power, they always choose the Modernist, and in any great religious assembly you will see the Pharisees and the Sadducees joining hands and voting for the crucifixion of the Holy Book.

It is the same thing. Why are we so slow to recognize it? The battle is on and we must fight it with all vigor in our day as Spurgeon did in his day.

WHY WE SHOULD ENLIST IN THIS WARFARE

So then, dear friends, I want you to consider some reasons why we now should enlist in the same warfare in which the great Spurgeon drew his sword.

MY FIRST REASON IS THIS: I KNOW NO OTHER WAY OF BEING LOYAL TO CHRIST.

After all, Modernism is something vastly more than an academic dissection and appraisal of the value of a particular Book. ... Just as surely as the Bible is inspired from above, Modernism and all its works is inspired from below. There is no doubt about it. If once that be admitted, then our duty is clear. We are to resist the devil, and not invite him to lunch and make him a member of our club, much less confer upon him the degree of Doctor of Divinity!

But what is it all aimed at? At the person of Christ! It does not make any difference where you begin, from Genesis to Revelation, the Modernist at last lays his protest at the feet of Christ. Christ's knowledge is discounted; His veracity is impugned; His infallibility is denied; and His Deity utterly repudiated. You cannot be a Modernist and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. It is useless to speak of these men as amiable gentlemen, as fine Christian characters. The man who denies the Deity of Christ and repudiates His authority, I do not care if he is Dean of St. Paul's, he is not a Christian and never was.

Surely there is a sine qua non of Christian faith, there must be an irreducible minimum somewhere, and all this is directed against the person of Christ. How then can I as one who has been bought with His precious blood be loyal to Him to whom I owe everything for time and Eternity, how can I be loyal to Him and be silent in circumstances like these? Can a wife be loyal to her husband if she allows without protest his honor to be dragged in the mire? It is not only the written Word, it is still the Word Incarnate, for in every trial of this written Word the Living Word is put on trial; when the Word Incarnate is on trial before the modern Sanhedrin, and even the secular arm is invoked to give effect to the wicked will of a faithless religion, the man who for fear of consequences will withhold his testimony, is guilty of Peter's sin--denying his Lord. ... I cannot be loyal without protesting, to the last drop of my blood if I must, against those who are the enemies of the truth of Christ.

LET ME SAY FURTHER, WE MUST NEEDS TAKE UP THIS DEFENSIVE ATTITUDE FOR THE HEALTH OF OUR OWN SOULS. I met a lady of great discernment, a cultured woman in Los Angeles, some years ago, and she said, “Mr. Shields, I find that for my own soul's sake I have to fight every day of my life for the truth that saved me.” Of course we must. There is no other attitude. ... There can be no neutral position for the moral man where moral issues are concerned. It is a simple impossibility.

Talk to your physician. ... Unless there be that physical resistance that is always at war with everything that would injure the body, you will not live very long.

My dear friends, there must be an analogy to that in our spiritual nature. The new man which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness, that new life that comes from God, should ever be opposed to everything that is alien to God, so that we should deliberately cultivate an inherent antagonism to everything that is alien to Jesus Christ. “Beware,” said the Apostle, “lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.” Beware of everything that is not after Christ. If you take that principle it will make you a warrior from this minute, fighting against that which would take the crown of Deity from His wounded brow.

AND THEN THERE IS ANOTHER THING. THERE IS A DISTINCT ADVANTAGE TO ANY MAN WHO TAKES A DEFINITE POSITION. My first pastorship was in a little village at a little village church of about 100 members. I made a solemn vow to the Lord on a very simple matter, that I would never under any circumstances anywhere be pastor of a church for 24 hours that dishonored the Lord by holding bazaars and tea-meetings and all that sort of thing for the purpose of raising money. I promised the Lord that I would face that thing wherever I found it, and if I could not overcome it I would get out, but I would never for a minute be a party to it. I had not been long in my pastorate before some good sisters wanted to have what they called “some doings”--what kind of doings they were I forget now. But I quietly said, “I am under a solemn vow to the Lord, and the moment you initiate that movement, that moment you become pastorless.” “Oh, but Pastor!” I said, “There is no discussion about it. I am no Pope, I am no priest; you can have it if you like, but I am master of my own course under God, and if you have that, you cannot have me.” “Well, then,” they said, “we will not have that.” I said, “Thank you.”

The Oxford Group Movement [an ecumenical movement which attempted to bring together Protestants and Catholics, Modernists and Evangelicals] came to Toronto. Some of their leaders to my certain knowledge had letters of introduction to me. I think I can say without immodesty that the place where I preach is not the least conspicuous of the places in Toronto. There are a few places that are less widely known and perhaps somewhat smaller.

They came, a team of them, two or three times. Not one of them ever called on me, not one of them ever asked for entrance to my pulpit, not one of them ever presented a letter of introduction. Why? Can you tell me? Why did not they come? Because they said, “It is no use.”...

My point is simply this. We save ourselves from many temptations if we put the flag to the top of the mast and announce to the whole world exactly where we stand. You have made your decision in advance of the overture and the overture never comes, and you go sweetly on your way in respect of many of these things. The minister who thinks he is going to avoid difficulty by being diplomatic is likely to find himself greatly entangled after a while.

I tried diplomacy for a long time. I used to be the champion conciliator of the Baptist denomination in Canada, and if ever they had a Church row they sent for me. If ever there were differences to be composed I was asked to preside at a Council. I have done it often and there is a place for legitimate compromise. But in respect to this matter I tried it too, on Boards and Committees, behind closed doors where our discussions could never possibly reach the public ear. I did exactly what the statesmen of Great Britain did in the summer of 1914, exhausted every possibility of diplomacy, and when they reached the end of it they declared war. There was nothing else to do. So I screwed up my fountain pen and resigned from the diplomatic corps and joined the army. There was nothing else to do under the circumstances, and so far I can see there is no prospect of my being demobilized until the Lord comes, or any of the rest of you for that matter. It is a real warfare.

THEN, MY DEAR FRIENDS, WE NEED TO TAKE THIS DEFENSIVE ATTITUDE FOR THE SAKE OF THE UNINSTRUCTED AMONG US, LEST THE UNWARY SHOULD BE BEGUILED. ... It is for the sake of the blind that we would rob them of their blind guides lest both should fall into the ditch. That is our reason.

Therefore, for the sake of the multitudes to whom the first principles of the Gospel are strange, for the sake of a generation that is arising that knows nothing about the Bible except to reject it and scoff at it, we need to be on the defensive and to begin over again teaching the very alphabet of Evangelical Faith.

WE NEED TO BE ON THE DEFENSIVE BECAUSE WE OUGHT TO IDENTIFY THE ENEMY.

Perhaps you do not believe in that. Do you? Perhaps he had a reason for it that I have never quite been able to discern, but very humbly I would venture to say that if Spurgeon made one mistake in that Down-Grade controversy, it would appear to me that his mistake was in his not actually naming the men. If you do not name anybody, they say,” Oh well, he deals in generalities.” If you name them, they say, “He indulges in personalities.” So as they say on the other side of the water, they “get you going or coming or both.” After all, I do not see why the Modernist should be ashamed of his Modernism. If I were a Modernist I would not object to anybody charging me with it. That is what I am doing all the time, anyhow. Is there any value in it? Yes, sir. We had a certain English brother come to our country [Canada] and I named him. I told him at once what would happen to him, and after two or three years he returned to England. Why? Because I had named him and there were not twenty pulpits in Canada that were open to him. The Modernists said, “We had better get somebody that is not identified,”--not that they repented, but they did not want him, and he had to go.

I think it is eminently fair that when Nathan has told his trouble, he should just look straight into David's eyes and say, “Thou art the man”!

It is a cruel warfare. You must be prepared for all the exigencies of war. Do not allow yourselves to be persuaded that you can oppose people on this issue and be good friends with them. You say--of course you can be a gentleman, you do not need to break friendships on an issue like this. An issue like what? An issue which will make all the difference between light and darkness, between Heaven and Hell, between God and the Devil. You cannot touch an issue like that and be friends with the men who deny the Faith. Mark my words, try as much as you like, if you do not wear a uniform nobody will know which side you belong to. Get into the King's uniform and you will soon find whether your friendships will be disturbed or not. They are bound to be. There is no trick known to the worst enemy in war--I say it advisedly--to which Modernism and Modernists will not descend.

I was a member of the Board of Governors of a certain University for a number of years. On one occasion I had to make a speech before that Board in protest against certain courses. The Registrar got a Chartered Stenographer and every word that I uttered was recorded. The next time I went to that meeting I found a storm was on. I deliberately went a little late in order to avoid the necessity of social intercourse because relations were sadly strained, and when the Minute of the last meeting relating to the matter that had produced the uproar was read, I recognized at once my own phraseology and recognized that there was not one word in that which purported to be a verbatim account of what I had said that was not mine. But by the deletion of every modifying clause, every qualifying adjective, and by the elimination of all my negatives, by using my words, they had made me say exactly the opposite of what I had said. I knew I was in the company of a lot of crooks, and from that moment I said, “Gentlemen, I will discuss these matters with you when I have two stenographers that will take an exact account and when every word shall be checked one against another; otherwise, you can talk until tomorrow morning and I have nothing to say. I will make my answer in the presence of witnesses.” They knew I could talk to a couple of thousand people any time I liked, and so they said, “We will have no stenographic report at all.”

Then in a Convention man after man got up to make a speech. A man that repudiates the authority of Scripture, mocks at the precious blood, an Englishman, got up and said,” I stand with C.H. Spurgeon on the Atonement. “The Chancellor of that University got up and read from Dr. Orr. I had two Parliamentary stenographers taking down every word, Hansard men. I happen to remember it because it cost me 600 dollars for that one session, which lasted from ten in the morning until half-past two the next morning. And when I had that report and I put it down beside that from which they claimed to be quoting, I saw at once that the speeches in that Convention had all been, so to speak, by one man. Spurgeon's sermons and Dr. Orr's, every quotation had been treated in the same way, and by taking part of a sentence here and part of a sentence there, and piecing them together, they had made Dr. Orr and Spurgeon and everybody else say the very opposite to what they had said. They had put a lie into the lips of truth, and my dear friends, you will get it here. I have had it.

The devil is back of Modernism and the devil never showed you any kindness yet and he will not in this warfare.

I must close with this one word. THERE ARE GREAT COMPENSATIONS. After all, in the war the Bible becomes a new book. I never knew the Bible until I went to battle on its behalf. I did not know what the Acts of the Apostles meant until I walked in their footsteps; then I was able to understand the book. I venture the affirmation that no man can ever understand the Acts of the Apostles merely in the study. He has got to be out on the battlefield, then it will speak to him its full message.

Then also you will have close personal fellowship with Christ. That is a great thing. The Hebrew children found an intimacy in converse with the Son of God in the furnace that they had never known before. Daniel was no stranger to the ministry of angels, but there was one angel with him he had no acquaintance with until he went into the den of lions. Do you know, the furnace and the den of lions are the Divine Teacher's training college, where He is training men to be officers in His army, where they have the advantage of the special personal instruction of the Son of God. And best of all, as we put the principles and precepts and promises of God's Holy Word to the test, seeking very clear methods to honor our Lord Jesus Christ and to serve the highest interests of souls for whom He died, we shall enjoy a fruitfulness in our ministry that can be had in other way.

I had some people, uninstructed for awhile, who thought I was unduly controversial, and some men who never had a convert, used to say, “Preach the Gospel.” Well I did, and one night I remember we had an enormous audience, and it was a fighting speech--anything I have said today would be of the homeophatic order in comparison--it was a bit of real militancy, I can assure you, but we were standing for the Book. When it was over I just said, “Now we have thus spoken because we have a Savior for Whom we would die if need be. How many of you will receive Jesus Christ as the sinner's Savior?” Without any further appeal that night I recall eighteen walked down to the platform, most of them men. They said, “If Jesus means all that to a believer, I want Him.”

Oh, the comradeship of the saints! Some pastors are troubled because they have churches they cannot trust, people who betray them, people who break their hearts. We all know something about that. But get into the furnace, get out into the place where the battle is raging, where men face difficulties with you, and by and by you will have people that would die for you as they would die for their Lord. There is a comradeship known in warfare which we can know nowhere else and I have not said a new thing to you. The Bible was born in controversy; every apostolic preacher was a defender of the faith; all down through the history of the Church the martyr fires have been kindled because there were men who would rather die than surrender this truth.