State of the church: then and now

A late-night conversation with Ligon Duncan, Kevin DeYoung, Albert Mohler, and Scott Logsdon. They compare the church of the fourth century with the church today, looking at what has changed and what has not.

Panel discussion, “State of the church: then and now,” with Duncan, DeYoung, Mohler and Logsdon, Nicea Conference 2025, Istanbul. Speakers aren’t labelled in the source captions.

Opening

You know, in many ways, I can’t help but think how this entire conference is one huge celebration of God’s faithfulness. Like the fact that 1700 years we in this place are saying we believe and describing and describing all the things that have happened and the in the state of the church in from that time carried throughout history, the years, the centuries and to this day and thinking even today what that means for us today in the state of the church today as we look ahead. And so what the topic for our discussion is the state of the church.

But I think in the Spirit of Nicea, we should be thinking of this in terms of what is the hope that we have of the faithfulness that we expect God to express to show us in the years ahead in the state of our church today. So, as you guys think about h how would each of you describe let’s say the state of the church as you see it recognizing that we are three American men who each have limited perspectives but different perspectives but also realizing that none of us no one has a global perspective on the state of the church as well But we’re here to hear from you three. What how do how would you describe the state of the church as you see it today,

Dr. Mohler?

Encouraged or worried?

Brother, I look to you. You’re at that end. You’re at that end of the row. Okay.

I think let me say something globally. All of us travel pretty regularly and get to see a lot of what is going on out there in the churches. And I can say as I travel I am very encouraged by what I am seeing in Bible-believing theologically conservative gospel proclaiming Protestant evangelical congregations. On every continent I see young people that really care about biblical doctrine. They really care about growing in the Christian life. They are seeking out robust deep teaching. They believe in a theology of the sole final authority of Scripture and they have a big God theology. They believe that sinners like us need God’s sovereign grace if we are going to be saved. And I meet that everywhere that I’m going.

Does that mean that everything in the church is great? No. But I do think there is still a thing going on. I think that I think we ran into that thing, Al, when we started together for the gospel 25 years ago.

And you thought you were already seeing it then. I hadn’t seen it. You had seen it. I see that everywhere still now. Now, are there is there polarization going on in our world? Yes. Are is there fracturing in the church going on in the world? Yes. But that thing that Al first brought to my attention back in the late 1990s is still happening out there on every continent that I go to. And so the church is always going to be imperfect. But you number one want to have your savior’s attitude towards the church. He loved the church and gave himself for her. And you want to have an ultimate long view optimistic confidence that Christ is going to have his way and he is going to build his church. And I think that we are in a place right now where there are really good things happening and you people in the room are evidence of that. Okay? So you’re here to encourage us. I hope we’re encouraging you, but you’re encouraging us

by the conversations that we’re having with you. So I’m encouraged. I’m wideeyed to the problems that are out there as in the American church. I can talk you about our problems till the cows come home. That’s an idiom that may not be familiar with all of you outside of the American.

So apparently the cows come home in Mississippi. So

that’s exactly right. But I’m still actually encouraged.

Amen to all of that. Especially the cows. We all live just with a distance until the ca until the camels come home. Do you have I don’t know. I would say in addition to what Ligon said and I agree with that is trust your real eyes more than your internet eyes.

It’s not entirely accurate to just with to just say the internet’s not the real world or Twitter’s not the real world or that that’s that’s not true. You know to some degree we don’t know how many things you see there are bots and other AI generated but there are real people real discussion takes place on the internet all of us have taken place in that and so there are meaningful things and there are nasty all sorts of other things just to realize that it can be very disorienting it I don’t check Twitter very often I really try not to check my Twitter mentions. It is Al. I really wouldn’t I wouldn’t check your Twitter mentions.

I don’t check yours either. I’m just imagining. But it is. Yeah. It’s about 10 to one negative.

Yeah. And at least for me it has moved from one set of people that I expected to be negative to a different set of people and those are you know American dynamics which may be applicable or not.

So I’m not discounting that there are real people behind it in real discussion. But what I mean is on both ways. If you just think of the internet and the things you think are big and shiny or even people you think are impressive even if it was one of us you shouldn’t trust that from the internet. And if you look with your eyes around you either that wow that seems amazing and this seems so small.

Well, every one of us is a whole lot more ordinary than you think really. And the things that are going on even behind the biggest ministries and biggest are a lot of ordinary. And then in the reverse, lest you think the internet is telling you how bad things are, because you just realize the internet works by polarization. That’s what grabs eyeballs. It works against constituency building and toward small vocal active and it can do some good things if you got to punch through and nobody’s listening to you and it can really do some destabilizing things to encourage more and more smaller more virulent tribes. That’s what it does.

But I say trust your eyes because I will talk to people who are so discouraged and then I say tell me what’s going on in your church. Oh boy. Wow. We’ve really we’ve really been blessed maybe with numbers but certainly with just we just had a woman come to know the Lord or someone will say actually in my local area pastors are getting together and you know what I was just traveling in this part of the world and I’ve seen books being translated I never thought we would have available and I’ve seen so many resources we are absolutely live the most resourcerich time in history for theological education and good biblical resources. So I think wow it’s easy to get discouraged and yet wow I see a lot of good things happening at Christ Covenant I see a lot of good things happen in my presbyter good things in Charlotte I actually think our denomination liar in the same one for all of the turmoil and there’s issues there’s by and large mostly really good ministry going on and we get to go to places like this and other places in the country and around the world and see people who are like you hungry Give me the Bible. Tell me about Jesus.

I want to learn theology. I’m risking it all in hard places. So, there are so many good things. The church will always be weaker than we think. But it’s also always stronger than we think. The regular ordinary people who are plodding one foot after another doing all the ordinary things that only heaven will know about and rejoice.

Well, I’m encouraged by both of my brothers here. I’m going to go to a strange place. When I was an undergraduate college student, I was assigned to read Michael Walzer’s book on the history of just war theory. Exactly what you expected me to say here.

No, I was. Were you going to say that? I was going to say

Thick and thin

But every once in a while, unexpectedly, you read something and it changes the way you think about everything from that book on. And so I’m not commending the book. It just was at a moment for me because he said all ethical theory can be distinguished between thick theories and thin theories.

And he said the thick theories are complex. You have arguments and subarguments and they’re in the flow of a history of moral theory and they’re really thick. He said the thin ones are those that just lack the kind of substantial moral reasoning and all the rest. And he said the thin ones could be very faddish, but only the thick ones survive.

And you know, I’ve just kind of thought in those categories from the time I read that book. And so I kind of look at things to see whether they’re thick or thin. And if you’re just talking about Christianity and let’s just talk about Protestant Christianity I’m old enough to have known a time when thin was winning.

Well, thin disappears.

It’s not only true in moral theory in the academy, it’s certainly true in church life. And so, I’m just incredibly encouraged by the thick I see. I mean, we’re here at a conference on the Council of Nicea. That’s thick. I mean, this ain’t prosperity theology because you’re not naming or claiming anything here. And you’re not going home with any door prizes. You’re going home with books about the gospel, you know? And that’s thick, right? That’s just really thick. And the conversations and the messages have been thick. And the hunger for thick is the most encouraging thing I know. And I do see it. I had the opportunity to speak at the World Congress on Evangelism in Berlin.

Almost exactly 60 years after the first world congress on evangelism there and in order to kind of situate myself giving a plenary I went back and read every address from the meeting 60 years ago and then I experienced the one that was in June much thicker and that was Carl Henry chairman of the first one it’s just much thicker And the attitude has fundamentally shifted.

The attitude of the first world congress on evangelism is with people like John Sto and so many other wonderful people is we’re on the threshold of winning this thing. The mentality of the brothers and sister Christians who met at this world congress. It was Jesus Christ is Lord. Jesus saves. We’re going to keep preaching this. We see the increase of it. The world is more hostile even than it was then. And that’s one of the interesting things. Then meant divided Berlin, di divided Germany, divided Europe just in that cold war context. Well, the Cold War is over, but it hasn’t been replaced with Christian revival. But where you do find the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, increasingly you’re finding thick representations of it. And in Protestantism, that means it takes a really thick impulse to bring Protestants to Turkey to talk about a creed adopted 17 centuries ago and what’s at stake. I rejoice in that. And I believe that all the folks here from all different parts of the world drawn here for this.

It just makes me very happy. So you ask me right now what I think about the state of the church. Obviously we have trouble. We have prosperity theology. We got fruit loop stuff going on everywhere. You know but that doesn’t last long on the ground. Gospel Christianity, biblical Christianity turns out to last on the ground. That makes me very happy. Praise Jesus. Amen.

Signs of health around the world

Where is it that you’re seeing around the world some examples of these thick phenomenon in especially in the church that in that really encourages you. You mentioned a couple

just a few quick examples. I a few years ago I landed in Cape Town, South Africa and preached at the Kemp Park Baptist Church in one of the townships near O Tambo airport in Johannesburg. And two young black South African men came up to me and they gave me their cards and their cards said Township Reformation. And these two young men were spreading you know the doctrines of grace in the townships of Johannesburg.

Later on that same trip I met a young man who had been a pastor in training for the largest Assemblies of God congregation in one of the large townships in Cape Town. And his pastor had been murdered. It’s a the townships are a hard place. And so the leaders of the congregation came to this young man and said, “We want you to be the pastor now that our pastor has been murdered.” And he said, “Well, I believe reformed theology.” And so I don’t think I can be your pastor. And they said, “Well, what’s that?” And he described it to them and they said, “Well, I mean, why can’t you be our pastor?” Well, he became the pastor of that congregation and led a reformation in that congregation. I’ve seen that in Indonesia. I’ve seen that in Korea. I’ve seen it in Hong Kong. I’ve seen it in Brazil. Everywhere I go, things like that I’m running into where young people to go back. They want thick biblical, rich, deep teaching and they want the church to be the church. And I just see it everywhere I go. Where have you all seen it?

I mean I think about some of the opportunities we have people coming to us and I think we have pastoral interns 10 and at any one time like count we okay we got two guys from England we got somebody we have a couple guys from Canada we just sent off I’m sad that we don’t we’re absent Mexicans right now I really like the Mexicans I sound like Donald Trump right now

Just This is the way that came out. Just for the record, they like me. Okay. They but these guys and you’ve seen it too. You talk about some of the places they are going to places where whether

we are from America here. Okay. So in the Spanish speaking world or you know in Brazil even better I mean these are places now Brazil has had a strong history in you know there’s more Presbyterians probably in Brazil than in the United States now but places where the reformation didn’t come to the Spanish-speaking world and the excitement that so I come out of a Dutch reformed tradition Scottish Presbyterian tradition now I’m in the Presbyterian church And it’s wonderful to have that tradition that goes back a really long ways. And yet the excitement all around the world of people wanting to get the best theological education. And you don’t have you can get it at schools in America. You can get it the Gulf Seminary in UAE. There’s all sorts of places to get it and then go in places where there hasn’t been a reformation. And you get to be at the very ground level introducing people to the doctrines of grace and the doctrines of the faith. Things like the council of Nicea. And what an opportunity to say, “Oh, and by the way, all these pl Nicea, the next council, Constantinople Ephesus, Chalcedon, they’re all right here. I mean, if you’re in Turkey. So there is a wherever you are almost wherever you are there is some history of Christian presence there it may have been almost eliminated for a time

but it’s often much older than one might think and that’s exciting to see people who are going to these places and doing these things and saying you know this is not a western religion started with well God a Jewish savior in this part of the world and has had a massive influence in the western world more than anywhere in the last millennium and yet it has had tributaries from Africa and from the east and now from the twothirds world and God is doing an amazing thing I mean within a in a span of a hundred years you talk about the Edinburgh world missionary conference 1910 10 it was what I mean almost entirely Anglo-American and now in a hundred years the preponderance of Christians are in the global south it’s completely flipped from 2/3 to now twothirds in the other direction and to see those brothers and sisters continue to take indigenous ownership and theological acumen and to see what God is going to do in those places and to have to re-evangelize places in the west that have compromised on the gospel.

One of the trends that I’ve seen that we might consider thick is whenever we see Christians committing themselves to careful faithfulness yet also carrying a passion and zeal to make Christ’s name known. When these two things are combined, then what I tend to see is a steady not fast almost never fast but steady and unstoppable increase. And I thought that today we had a meeting today of believers from this country that I just sat and thought I just praise God for what’s happening in this country. I it was a meeting that I felt like I don’t know that this meeting could have happened. Now one of you guys said this earlier about this the Nicea meeting. I’m talking about the discussions and the meeting that we had with these brothers and sisters in a room on the side here. I don’t think could have happened 20 years ago when we first got here. And we I praise God for that. Not only is that a an example of increase and thick, but it’s unex it’s surprising in some ways. I’m really curious Kevin what you said about social media is actually much more applicable in many areas of the world and in places where people are coming from to this conference than you may even be aware when you consider tabloids and the newspapers and the social media that that they get their input.

Challenges in America

I’m curious what are you guys seeing in your country in America that might be the challenges that you’re facing there that you that your churches are addressing?

I’m not plugged into the question yet just challenges in America that the church is facing where you are.

Oh, there are none. No I mean the I think the most dangerous thing is you’re being co-opted by the culture in the United States. A consumer culture will basically buy everything as a commodity.

And so Christianity can just become another thing that adds a little zest to your life. And so I mean the nullification and you know frankly just the neutering of religion t taking everything out any transcendence. I mean, even before you just get to gospel Christianity, it’s this banal omniculture that gets created. And increasingly, it’s a hostile omniculture. And so I mean I think the challenge is how in the world does in the United States the problem is the church thought it was at the center of the society and arguably it was for a long time. It’s not anymore. You may have noticed and especially you just take some of the things that are shaping the culture right now. I’ll be honest, the biggest engine for social change in the United States has been for the last 30 years the LGBTQ revolution.

Now it’s hit some stumbles with T,

but the fact is it has basically advanced unabated on the other letters and so much so that it’s created a very I mean you can see the liberal denominations capitulate to it and turn into the you know the high church of LGBTQ. But to stand against any of that it takes again thick takes deep theological resources and u I think there’s always the danger that anything in the United States can simply be turned into a consumer product and bought and sold and I think that’s the you ask about the danger in North America. I think that’s the big danger. Yeah,

David Wells, one of my professors at seminary whom we all know I never forget the line in one of his books, “Worldliness is whatever makes sin look normal and righteousness look strange.” That’s a great definition because it gets at the insidious nature of worldliness. And it can be different from town to town, let alone on a different side of the world. Now, at a heart level, there’s the same pull we have toward sex, money, fame, greed, covetousness, all of breaking any of the ten commandments. And yet the way in which in one culture a certain kind of sin or even in a time you talk about the United States you know the vibe shifts I mean they happen quickly and to both be aware of them is wise and yet to re-engineer one’s purpose or ministry according to it is unwise. The old adage that he who you know marries the spirit of the age this age will be a widow in the next and it won’t even take till the next age it’ll just be five years technology makes things change really quickly and that’s why to be maybe I’m just defending my own personality or my own style of ministry to be a little boring to be a little hey isn’t this hasn’t people been doing these ordinary means of grace for a long time okay so what do what did you got going, “Well, we’re going to pray. We’re going to read the Bible. We’re going to meet with people. We’re Yeah, that’s kind of never in style and it’s kind of never out of style.” And I think you’re right, Al, that especially in America, it is a hyper advertising, hyper marketing, hyper everything, big shiny platform. I think it’s one of the things we probably notice most different, especially if we with our friends in say the British Isles.

You know they cut down the tall poppies you know if you seem to be too big they cut you down to size and sometimes there’s a danger there people aren’t allowed to have a personality and the danger in America is if all you got is personality you can make it a long way and sadly you can make it a long way in the church with just that and not having to have anything else so last thing I’ll say just thinking here where we are in Revelation 2 and three I’m always coming back those seven letters to the seven churches some of you maybe got to visit some of them they’re different challenges and if we think you know what everyone in my denomination or everyone in my country they’re all Ephesus Christians they lost their first love well you’re going to tool everything one particular way or they’re all Pergamum Thyatira Christians and they’re all compromising they’re over toler tolerant. They’re well that’s their challenge and Laodicea is rich and affluent and Philadelphia is weak and struggling. You go through all the seven churches. I think it’s very easy to get on our high horse and think we’ve seen because of our narrow experience what the whole church needs to hear and you become lopsided to the message of the Bible and you end up just riding a hobby horse.

I agree with that. I think materialism, worldliness, individualism pragmatism is a big problem with Americans.

We think we can make anything work and we’ll apply that principle to the church whether God has told us to do it in the word or not.

Pragmatism is a problem. All of those things are characteristic problems. But let me say the best people that go out and work in the world from the American churches are the most resistant to those tendencies. So the Logans, the Josh and Jenny Manley’s of the world, they’re the people that want to be the most biblical and the most resistant to those kinds of cultural tendencies. And that’s why I think they’re most helpful to other people around the world. So be very careful what you consume from America.

In terms of the church in theology, we have exported a lot of bad stuff like the prosperity gospel that we apologize on behalf of our brothers and sisters for giving that

we name it and claim it, brother. We apologize for it.

You know, so you have to be very careful what you’re getting and it’s going to be the people that are most resistant to those tendencies that are going to be the most useful to people around the world. Are these challenges are they unique? Are they new? And how has the church if they’re not, how has the church, what can we learn from

the church, the history of the church and how God has been faithful or the way that the church has dealt with some of these in the past?

Nothing new under the sun

No, they’re not absolutely new. There is nothing new under the sun. I mean, I’m sitting two seats over from a guy who’s been thinking about the impact of modernity for 50 years. So I you may want to talk about that Al. I know that’s what Dr. Wells was thinking about. How has the conditions of modernity impacted the way we think about everything including God, the Christian life, the church, etc. And I do think that those there are some uniquenesses there. It’s not that they’re unprecedented. I mean, did was there ever a time in early Christianity where Christians became wealthy? Yes. Did that have an impact on the life of the church? Yes. So it’s they’re not I mean you’ve interviewed Peter Brown on that very topic you know in the late in the in sort of late antiquity issues. So yeah all of these things there are precedents for these challenges. I think we need to pay close attention to exactly what’s happening what are we cooking in what pot are we bubbling in? We need to pay attention to that. But I also think that that the Bible, just like the messages to the seven churches, addresses perennial issues. The Bible addresses perennial issues that we’re all going to face. We shouldn’t be surprised by those things.

Yeah. I think the good news is that the issues that we face are more the same than they are different, I think, around the world because human nature is the same, the gospel is the same. I think across history, if you get drilled down into it, you see the same humans with the same sins, the same need of a savior. So, in some of my very exciting doctrinal work, I got to read 18th century Presbyterian minutes.

It’s it really is better than it sounds. And so, I’m reading Elder Minutes. I’m reading Presbyterian minutes from Scotland in the 1700s. You know, the number one issue that shows up in there, sex, adultery. They would have these things, secret clandestine marriages. People would because their hormones are okay, well, we know it’s wrong. So, they would just get married without telling anybody and without having a formal cereed minutes about what do we do with these secret marriages that people do they count? Do they not count? So, they’re dealing with the same kinds of things. Now, is that perennial temptation just to name one sin? Sex isn’t a sin. I have nine kids, but sexual intimacy outside of marriage is a sin. Yes, it’s certainly the internet and the explosion, the absolute only I was going to say only heaven knows, but that but hell may know too.

How insidious. I mean, in some ranking of the evil things going on in the world, pornography has to be

in a top three of all of the things that the devil is using to destroy people, to destroy lives, to and it’s just going to take a deeper and deeper twisted turn. You’re AI porn. You know, people convincing themselves, well, nobody was trafficked and it’s not a real person and I had AI create this video for me. That that sort of thing is already here. So, the human heart is the same. The gospel is the same. Yes, we have a context. Yes, my sermons should sound and do sound sure even more American than I realize. And yet this thought goes through my head probably for you brothers too as you write things especially books or you preach I think is this any help to someone in Turkey is this any help if somebody were to listen to this in the Philippines is this any help to somebody in Brazil that doesn’t mean I have to we try to be so transcultural we don’t live in a particular time and space but if I think no nothing here really trans that I’m not talking about the most important things. I’m not talking about the main things. The things we talked about here, everyone in the planet needs to know.

Not in the level of detail perhaps, but they all need to know these things. And so, it guards against a kind of provincialism. It guards against an arrogance that thinks we think we really know everything that’s going on in the world. I want to be doing the things that by God’s grace would speak to the lives of people 1500 years and500 miles around the world.

Preparing for what is coming

Yes, Scott, I appreciate the question and brothers, I appreciate your responses and I think a good theme that’s been hit here is that there are no new sins. Is questionable as whether there are any new heresies,

you know, because it you can find almost every form of heresy imaginable in the New Testament in one way or another, certainly in the early church. So, you ask the question, what has changed? And this is not just a North American perspective, but a global perspective.

It’s estimated this is easy to see that through the end of the 19th century most human beings lived and died within about 13 miles. That was it. They just didn’t travel much. You know they were very tied to land and the technologies of travel and transportation and all the rest. The most human beings simply lived and died pretty much in the same place and traveled very little. They had very little external world or communication. And when we’re talking about human history, we’re talking about just the vast majority of human history. It’s only in a thin slice of the last say 150 years things really began to change rapidly. But they really did be begin to change rapidly. So one of the aspects of modernity that is very noticeable to us is the force accelerator. It’s just everything’s fast now. And so one of the things I see in non-American, non-N North American and European context is that what happened in church history over 2,000 years now kind of happens over 2,000 weeks. It’s all happening really fast. Everything shows up everywhere. And then everything can be communicated by modern communications technology. You know, a 13-year-old in his bedroom has access to the internet. It’s just and by the way to parents, don’t do that. Don’t let that happen. But I mean, it’s just everything’s available everywhere. Now, there has been gain for the gospel in that. I mean, I think every one of us has a website in other words, and we they’re for a reason. And you know I think it’s a wonderful thing that more people can listen to Martin Lloyd Jones preach now than ever heard him preach during his lifetime. And evidently they are and that’s a wonderful thing. But nothing comes with neutrality. No technology comes with neutrality. I think the net result of all of this is tearing families apart, telling tearing nations apart and churches apart sometimes. And so you ask what I see as a current condition that gives me the great threat. I think the velocity of social change has left a lot of Christians completely baffled

and frankly kind of unprepared for a lot of these challenges. Brothers, what final encouragement would you give to the brother or sister out here sitting and maybe in a totally different context than you and yet not facing challenges that are totally different from yours. It may feel like it but or not totally different than what the church has faced in the past either that God has brought his people through. What final encouragement would you give to those in different areas of the church today?

Two quick thoughts, one from history, one from the Bible. Well, I just got done teaching of four years of church history in our Sunday school class, which was really fun. And one of the things that I’ve noticed as a recurring theme in church history is this tension, which Christians come down on one side or the other, but I think it’s just it’s a tension. And that is it better to be when does the gospel flourish? When is the church stronger when the cultural pressure is to conform to Christianity or the cultural pressure is against Christianity? Or to put it in a simpler way, when to be a Christian means you have to opt in or to not be a Christian means you have to opt out. And at different times I think Christians we were talking about this earlier can think sort of in a facile way in one way or another you can say well obviously when there’s cultural pressure that’s when Christians are really strong and the church is pure and the real Christians stand up and it’s so much better until you live in that and you realize no actually some churches capitulate some compromise.

And so on the other hand, if you say, “We only want a culture.” wouldn’t it be great to have a culture where you just you were a Christian because that’s what your mama did and that’s what your granddaddy did? Well, there’s some really good things about that kind of cultural pressure. And some of it exists in some pockets still in the southern United States. And yet we all know there’s big dangers of assumptions and presumptive Christianity and a veneer of Christianity that doesn’t get to the heart and a compromise then with the state. So you can ask the same thing. Is the church going to be better when it’s hand-in-hand with the state? Well, if you’re persecuted by the state, that sounds nice. And then quickly you can be hand-in-hand with the government and you become a compromised instrument of the government. It’s one thing to say would it be good if the government got religious? Maybe yes Christian? Yes.

Would it be good if the church became more political? Well, depends on what you mean by that term political. I think these are the tensions that exist where you live and where I live. So more quickly, the biblical exhortation from Mark 4 is just keep sowing. If you’ve seen Finding Nemo, does that translate cross-culturally? Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming. I think just keep sowing. The seed fell on the hard rocky ground. Some of it that’s the devil snatched it up. Some was choked out by thorns, the worries of life. Some grew for a time and then disappeared. This is what life is like. And yet that farmer who sowed his seed went to sleep and it grew up the Greek automate by itself. He knew not how.

Keep sowing. Keep sowing. You don’t know when the Lord will water. You don’t know when the Lord will bring a harvest. If you’re given a ministry of harvest, praise God, somebody else sowed. Somebody else watered. And the Lord gave you that time to reap a harvest. Do your bit and just keep sowing.

Encouragement

Just one thing that encourages me and by way of encouraging you is just hearing your stories. I’ve been able to hear maybe 40 50 stories since I’ve been here this week. And I was over 50 years old before I had a good friend who had been in prison because he was a Christian. And I’ve met so many people here. Many of you have been in prison for the gospel. And you certainly have friends and family members that have endured significant pressure because you believe the gospel.

And your joy, your confidence, your commitment to the gospel, your desire to grow deeper in the word, work together with other Bible-believing Christians, that is a huge encouragement to me. I feel like I get to be around my heroes when I get to be around people like you. And that’s something we’ve been insulated from in North America by and large. But that is not something that Christians in the twothirds world have been insulated from. And there are pockets of enormous pressure and persecution going on in the world. And I’m just thankful that they’re godly, Bible believing Christians that are utterly undeterred by that. They’re absolutely committed to following God faithfully. Come what may. I want to be an encouragement and a help to you in any way that I can in that area. But I just want you to know you’re in my thoughts. I’m thinking about you all the time. You are encouraging me just because you are breathing and just because you’re being faithful to God.

And it spurs me on. I think I want to be a Christian like that. I want to be a Christian like those kinds of people. And I think that by the way, that’s the way it’s supposed to work. That’s exactly how the church is supposed to work. I want to be around Christians that are better Christians than me. And so it’s a good thing for us together in places like this just to encourage one another to keep on keeping on. Lloyd Jones used to that was what Lloyd Jones would say to people is he would say keep on keeping on and that was his Finding Nemo reference. And so that’s Yes. Keep on keeping on.

I wasn’t looking for Nemo. All right. When I first came to Istanbul years ago, I came here ostensibly to teach American seminary students a class that was ostensible. The real reason I was here was that this was a place where I could teach unofficially a group of pastors from a neighboring nation who would have endangered their lives under other circumstances. The Lord provided the opportunity here in a very quiet way for us to meet together. It was a unspeakably humbling experience for me. Changed the way I look at my own life and my own seminary and you know all we have. But at the end of the day I think there’s only one gospel.

There’s only one Bible there. One Lord, one faith, one baptism one gospel. And so the exhortations have to be the same everywhere all at once all the time till Jesus comes. And so preach the word in season and out of season is as true in consumer seduced western societies as it is in you know horribly oppressed and persecuted societies, young churches, old churches.

the ordinary means of grace as Kevin mentioned just being about the task of ministry fulfill your ministry contend for the faith once for all delivered to the saints it’s all the commands in the New Testament are to all Christians all churches in all places at all times and I hope we encourage one another in this and I also hope that we realize that the Lord brings glory to himself by spreading us places and you know Scott with you here sending us places where decisive advance for the gospel can be made but at the end of the day it’s still the same means of grace the same commands given to the church you know send into the nations preach the gospel contend for the faith raise your children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord forsake not the assembling of yourselves together.

And so I really think the best way I can end this discussion and my part is to say we don’t need anything new that we don’t already have in the New Testament, but it’s great to encourage one another in those commands and be thankful to God for them.

The church has faced emperors and heresies and persecutions and God incomprehensible and unchanging is faithful and continues to be faithful and tells us what to do. And we do that like that swer and we trust him and we hope in him and he is faithful and that is our hope whatever the state of the church.

Is that not true?

Amen. So brothers, thank you for helping us to think that through and to this week just dwell deeply on the truths that are pointed to in Scripture from our God by the church from 1700 years ago.

Prayer

Let me pray for us. Father, great are you and we pray that you would bring great glory to your name in our time. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. All right, you’re dismissed. We’ll see you in the morning. Thanks, guys.