Charles Spurgeon on the Gospel

"Avoid a sugared gospel as you would shun sugar of lead. Seek the gospel which rips up and tears and cuts and wounds and hacks and even kills, for that is the gospel that makes alive again. And when you have found it, give good heed to it. Let it enter into your inmost being. As the rain soaks into the ground, so pray the Lord to let his gospel soak into your soul."

"Never lose heart in the power of the gospel. Do not believe that there exists any man, much less any race of men, for whom the gospel is not fitted."

"Let this be to you the mark of true gospel preaching - where Christ is everything, and the creature is nothing; where it is salvation all of grace, through the work of the Holy Spirit applying to the soul the precious blood of Jesus."

"If God does not save men by truth, he certainly will not save them by lies. And if the old gospel is not competent to work a revival, then we will do without the revival."

"On Christ, and what he has done, my soul hangs for time and eternity. And if your soul also hangs there, it will be saved as surely as mine shall be. And if you are lost trusting in Christ, I will be lost with you and will go to hell with you. I must do so, for I have nothing else to rely upon but the fact that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, lived, died, was buried, rose again, went to heaven, and still lives and pleads for sinners at the right hand of God."

"We have an unchanging gospel, which is not today green grass and tomorrow dry hay; but always the abiding truth of the immutable Jehovah."

"If the Lord's bearing our sin for us is not the gospel, I have no gospel to preach."

"The heart of the gospel is redemption, and the essence of redemption is the substitutionary sacrifice of Christ."

"When we preach Christ crucified, we have no reason to stammer, or stutter, or hesitate, or apologize; there is nothing in the gospel of which we have any cause to be ashamed."

--- C.H. Spurgeon

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WHAT MAKES MUSIC... CHRISTIANLY? ...contending for biblical theology in CCM

Having ties to the Christian music industry, I could not agree more with Steve Camp. The things that you see and experience inside CCMI, will just make you sick. You soon come to the realization that much of what takes place in Christian music is no different than what takes place in the secular market place. Sadly CCMI is Christian by name only.

“Thy statutes are my songs in the house of my pilgrimage.”

- Psalm 119:54

CCMI-On The Down-Grade?
History is a lucid teacher and we can learn from her. Give ear to the account of one man’s battle against the roaring lion[17] of modernity in his time:

Charles Hadden Spurgeon spent the final four years of his life at war against the trends of early modernism which he rightly saw as a threat to Biblical Christianity. Spurgeon wanted to warn his flock about the dangers from moving away from the historic positions [of the truth]. ‘Biblical truth is like the pinnacle of a steep, slippery mountain,’ Spurgeon suggested. ‘One step away, and you find yourself on the down-grade. Once a church or individual Christian gets on the downgrade,’ Spurgeon said, ‘momentum takes over. Recovery is unusual and only happens when Christians get on the ‘up-line’ through spiritual revival.’ History has vindicated Spurgeon’s warnings about the down-grade. In the early part of the twentieth century the spreading of ‘false doctrine and worldliness’—theological liberalism and modernism—ravaged denominational Christianity throughout the world. Most of the mainline denominations were violently if not fatally altered by these influences. A hundred years later, we are seeing history repeating itself again…. ‘False doctrine and worldliness’—the same two influences Spurgeon attacked—always go hand in hand, with worldliness leading the way. Christians today tend to forget that modernism was not first of all a theological agenda but a methodological one.[18]

We are seriously close, beloved, to being on the down-grade in Christian music, if, in fact, we have not already begun the slide. Though we are seeing an unprecedented interest by the secular arena with more press and publicity, I believe there are some danger signs we can’t ignore: an absence of biblical truth; a reductionist gospel; being unequally yoked with the secular music industry; syncretism; pragmatism; aberrant and heretical themes accepted in lyrics; worldliness in business practice; relativism; moral pluralism; and experientialism. Could it be that the love of money is producing all sorts of evil?[19]

Brethren, God’s judgment is assuredly upon the Christian Music industry. Like the street courtesan, she has been sold by the “gatekeeper pimps” to the “secular johns” who have the deepest pockets and make the sweetest promises! It has patterned itself after the ways of the world rather than doing the work of God, by the will of God, according to the Word of God! There is no hope for gospel music apart from Heaven’s intervention. We need revival; we need renewal; we need repentance; and we need a new Reformation!

--- Steve Camp

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Steve Camp / CC BY-NC-ND 3.0

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