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Charles Spurgeon’s call for bold-hearted Christian leaders to stand for the faith no matter what a hostile and secular world — or soft, cowardly Christians — might say or do to silence them
still echoes loudly today.
One strange feature of modern Christianity in America is how so many pastors and evangelical leaders love to praise “bold heroes of the faith” who are long dead but then turn around and scold or silence men of our own day and age who strive to emulate said heroes in their own lives — and, more specifically, in their words and actions.
With one breath our Christian “leaders” hail how Luther bravely faced down the Catholic Church and said, “Here I stand” in his defense of God’s Word — and in the next breath they look at a man standing today and tell him to sit down.
Take, for example, William Wilberforce, who is remembered, and rightly praised, for his unapologetically Christian political work to end the British slave trade. He had already started his political career, serving in the House of Commons, when in 1784-1785, he underwent a profound conversion experience and became an evangelical Christian. This change was influenced by John Newton, a former slave trader turned pastor. His Christian faith led him to become interested in social reform. He then dedicated the rest of his life to a dogged pursuit of abolishing the British slave trade — and all from a Christian foundation.
But were a modern-day William Wilberforce to arise in American politics — say, working to abolish abortion — he would be derisively labeled a “Christian nationalist” and told to keep his faith out of the public square. Even many pastors and Christian leaders would most likely tell a 2023 version of Wilberforce to “tone it down” and “remember that Jesus is neither Right nor Left.”
There are many reasons why this sort of squeamishness has so infected American Christianity. Old dead guys, with their courage frozen in the history books and their words stuck on the pages, don’t pose a threat to the ministerial industrial complex and company men of modern American evangelicalism. It’s easy to quote Luther, Calvin, Wilberforce, Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell Sr., etc. But when a man comes along and tries to live and speak like those brothers, it’s not something that can be sanitized or controlled.
Courageous men are honored when they are dead. They cause conviction in the cowardly when they are alive and in the flesh.
One great man of the faith, the famous Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon (1834-1892), addressed this perennial and problematic phenomenon in his own day. In his sermon entitled “Holding Fast the Faith,” delivered in 1888, Spurgeon thundered out a call for bold men to stand firm in the faith and ignore the naysayers that echoes down through the decades and challenges us even now.
For now, as then, one of the greatest needs of the hour is men who are firm in the faith, men who are willing to fight for the Christian truth, to contend for God’s good order and the Gospel, no matter what a hostile and secular world might say or do to silence them — and even more importantly, no matter what effeminate and soft Christian men might say and do to silence them.
Here is Spurgeon, calling on “men for the day” to rise up:
“So, we admire a man who was firm in the faith, say four hundred years ago; the past ages are a sort of bear pit or iron cage for him; but such a man today is a nuisance, and must be put down. Call him a narrow-minded bigot, or give him a worse name if you can think of one.
Yet imagine that in those ages past, Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, and their compeers had said, ‘The world is out of order; but if we try to set it right, we shall only make a great row, and get ourselves into disgrace. Let us go to our chambers, put on our nightcaps, and sleep over the bad times, and perhaps when we wake up things will have grown better.’
Such conduct on their part would have entailed upon us a heritage of error. Age after age would have gone down into the infernal deeps, and the pestiferous bogs of error would have swallowed all. These men loved the faith and the name of Jesus too well to see them trampled on. Note what we owe them, and let us pay to our sons the debt we owe our fathers. It is today as it was in the Reformers’ days.
Decision is needed. Here is the day for the man, where is the man for the day?”
The “Prince of Preachers” puts his finger right on the problem: The men who were firm in the faith in the days of old exist in an “iron cage.” They pose no threat to anyone’s ministry, expose no current compromise, and issue no real-time challenge or conviction. Yet if a man comes along and rallies Christians to contend for the truths of the Christian religion now — against social justice, critical theory, the sexual revolution, Black Lives Matter, abortion, and the LGBT+ agenda — that man is “a nuisance, and must be put down.”
But a decision is needed. Here indeed is “the day for the man” — a day of abortion on demand up until birth in many states across America. Where is the “man for the day” who will challenge the bloodthirsty regime and deadly platform of abortion supporters? Where is the modern-day William Wilberforce who will give his life to work for unapologetically Christian political reform? Where is the pastor who will rebuke the Marxism, feminism, and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) that is overrunning Christian churches and parachurch organizations?
Do we want to leave a “heritage of error” for our children? Will we, like the men that Spurgeon imagines, try to simply sleep our way through one of the most tumultuous and anti-Christian eras in American history?
No. No! A thousand times no! May we love Jesus and His name “too well to see them trampled on.”
Spurgeon concludes this sermon with a call for Christians to again consider the heritage we will leave our children. If we stand firm and defend the Gospel, and all the truths of the Christian faith, we can hope and pray our children will follow in our footsteps. If not, they will “curse our names” for our unfaithfulness:
“We who have had the gospel passed to us by martyr hands dare not trifle with it, nor sit by and hear it denied by traitors, who pretend to love it, but inwardly abhor every line of it.
We have come to a turning point in the road. If we turn to the right, mayhap our children and our children’s children will go that way; but if we turn to the left, generations yet unborn will curse our names for having been unfaithful to God and to his Word.”
Let these words from Charles Spurgeon embolden you to stand firm against the gathering forces of evil and darkness in America today. Don’t just admire dead men who were firm in the faith— aim to live and speak like them today.
And who cares if they call us narrow-minded bigots, or even worse? Remember, as the always-quotable Spurgeon said elsewhere: “Oh, my brethren! bold-hearted men are always called mean-spirited by cowards.”
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