THE NEW ICONOCLASM

A New Call to Cleanse the Temple

"And it came to pass the same night, that the LORD said unto him, Take thy father's young bullock, even the second bullock of seven years old, and throw down the alter of Baal that thy father hath, and cut down the grove that is by it: And build an altar unto the LORD thy God upon the top of this rock, in the ordered place, and take the second bullock, and offer a burnt sacrifice with the wood of the grove which thou shalt cut down. The Gideon took ten men of his servants, and did as the LORD had said unto him: and so it was, because he feared his father's household, and the men of the city, that he could not do it by day, that he did it by day."

Judges 6: 25 - 27

"For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty to the pulling down of strongholds;) Casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ; And having in a readiness to revenge all disobedience, when your obedience is fulfilled."

II Corinthians 10: 3 - 6

he Bible, like church history, is a record of iconoclasm. It tells the story of an age-old and ongoing struggle for the purification of worship from the corrupting elements of carnality, worldliness and false doctrines which cloud and obscure the glory of God, the truth of Scripture and the simplicity which is in Christ. It preserves the testimony of a great pantheon of heroes of the faith who took up the spiritual weapons of our warfare to cast down every imagination and high thing that exalted itself against the knowledge of God.i

It is also a record of Separatism. From the earliest chapters of Genesis it relates this theme of a separated people, a holy people, a peculiar people,ii who counted themselves as strangers and pilgrims in the earth, men and women who were looking, not just for an earthly promised land, but for a heavenly country and for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.iii From the days of Seth's godly line to the Separatist manifesto of the first Psalm to the great command to come out from among infidelity and the unbelieving and be separate, the Bible is the story of Separatism.iv

At the outset, Scripture focuses primarily upon this Separatism. It tells us of Seth and his godly lineage, of Noah, of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and of the nation of Israel. It presents this picture of a separated, holy people standing out against the corruption and degeneracy of the world around them and worshipping the true and living God, while the rest of the world lived in spiritual bondage to idolatry and, ultimately, to the god of this world, Satan. During all of this, iconoclasm is scarcely more than a faint drumbeat. We do notice it when Jacob cleansed his household of idols, v when Moses destroyed the golden calfvi and commanded the destruction of the Canaanite idols,vii and when Joshua ordered the nation of Israel to put away the strange gods among them.viii But beyond this, it takes second place to the story of Separatism.

But in the book of Judges, this rhythm changes. The focus shifts away from an outward perspective of God's people emerging from and opposing a pagan world to an inward view of Israel's internal spiritual conflict. Although idolatry had clearly been an internal problem beforehand,ix it is the book of Judges that brings it most sharply into focus.

Up to this point, this internal iconoclasm stands more as an implied iconoclasm. Except in reference to the preexisting Canaanite idols, the commandment for God's people to put away their own idols is more implied, more understood than overtly commanded. This is in keeping with the contrasting focus between the outside pagan world and the people of God.

But when we come to the book of Judges, the focus changes. The history of Judges is a chronicle of idolatry, not merely against a backdrop of pagan societies, but among the people of God themselves. Beginning in Judges, we see a heightened conflict among God's own people over who they would worship. For a season, a godly man would lead God's people in worshipping the true and living God. Then, after his death, idolatry would rear its head once again, and new idols and new corruptions would begin to invade and obscure the truth and the glory of the living God.

It is at this point, when God begins to work through Gideon, that the great internal iconoclastic struggle among God's people begins to intensify. Here we have God explicitely commanding the destruction, not of idols worshipped by the Canaanites, but by God's own people. The first specific act of Gideon commanded by God under his new commission was to be the pulling down the altar of Baal and the grove connected with it. Only after Gideon had obeyed in this matter of internal idolatry will God grant the revelation necessary for him to take the next step and overcome the external threat of the Midianites.

From this point onward, this is the story that the Bible tells us. It is a story of constant conflict that continues throughout the book of Judges and the record of the Jewish monarchy. The internal failure among God's people in their worship continually brings about external attacks and suffering from pagan military powers. In the Old Testament, this climaxes with the invasions of Nebuchadnezzer and the destruction of Jerusalem.

In the New Testament, we see this same conflict in a different form. Although the blatant paganism of the Old Testament had disappeared among the Jewish people in Christ's day, the idolatry of greed and covetousness had corrupted the worship of God. Later on, the Apostle Paul and John the Beloved would wage polemical warfare in their epistles against the corruption of the Gospel by Jewish legalists and Gnostic Docetists. The Apostle Paul speaks of the imagination itself as a battleground for rivalry with God's preeminence, glory and Sovereignty.

Throughout this conflict, we notice an immovable constancy in God's expectations. His constant command is the casting down, the utter overthrow of anything that rivals with his preeminence, glory and Sovereignty or that corrupts his pure worship. Nowhere do we find the slightest hint of permissiveness or tolerance of such corruptions. "Cast it down" is his constant demand.

The Lord Jesus Christ exemplifies this wonderfully throughout the Gospels, and especially when he cleansed the Temple. Nowhere do we find him casually acknowledging the corruptions of his day, much

less accepting them or trying to adapt them to his own views in order to accommodate the popular opinions of the time. Everywhere we find him fiercely hostile to the innovative practices that had corrupted the worship of God, vehemently opposing them and expressing in no uncertain language the utmost abhorrence and contempt for them. Not once, but twice, during his earthly ministry, his zeal drove him to such a pitch of righteous indignation that he physically drove out the guilty parties from the Temple, even going so far as to flog them with a whip as he did so! In our day, the leading pastors would rebuke him for being "imbalanced", "extreme" and "radical", but this is exactly what he did, and he is the Author and Finisher of our faith, not them.x It is the Son of God that sets the precedent about how we worship, because he is Lord and Head of the Church, the Saviour of the Body,xi and not some popular undershepherd somewhere, no matter how influential he may be.

The Apostle Paul takes the same severe tone repeatedly. He even expresses a desire that certain false teachers "be accursed"xii and utterly "cut off."xiii He commands us to actually avoid teachers of false doctrine in the book of Romans.xiv

Now I don't mean to say that anyone reading this ought to flog a compromising pastor or church leader with a whip. Undoubtedly many a pastor - not a few of them Evangelicals and Fundamentalists deserves exactly that kind of treatment due to their doctrinal or practical perversions, but we must leave that to the Lord. He will chastise them as we never can.xv However, we have no business looking smilingly at them and shaking their hand and cooperating with them or treating them with the least measure of approval. We have no business having them in our churches as guest speakers or running their advertisements in our publications. We have a God-given duty to separate from them completely, to mark such men and to actively avoid them, to break fellowship with them and to utterly abstain from their company until they repent of their compromises.xvi

The time has come for a new generation of iconoclasts to rise up, to cleanse the Temple, that is, the Church of the living Godxvii anew and afresh. It is time to pull down all of the corruptions and innovations of the past two centuries - from John Darby's Dispensationalism and the Scofield Reference Bible to the Critical Greek Text and modern Bible versions to Landmarkism to the Contemporary Christian Music industry to Easy-believism to Ruckmanism to the betrothal movement to the widescale worldliness and carnality that have infested the church in this generation. These corruptions, these commandments of men, these doctrines of devils have neither part nor lot among God's people and worship! It is time to drive them out from the house of God! We do not need to adapt them or make them palatable or to try to accommodate them in any way, shape or form! We must cast them down! We must drive them out! We must imitate the example of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ! We must walk in his footsteps!

My friend, think not that you are somehow exempted from this. Think not that you may somehow walk a different path than that of the godly martyrs of the Dark Ages and the Reformation, than that of the old Puritans and the Scottish Covenanters and our Baptist forefathers, than that path which the very Apostles and Christ himself walked. You are not exempted. I say that if you are saved, you are not exempted. You have a cross to carry and a warfare to wage against all that corrupts the worship of God and obscures his Lordship, Sovereignty, preeminence, and glory. Take up your cross then, and with it your Sword, that great two-edged Sword of the Spirit, the Word of God. Strap on your armor. Take the field. The gates of Hell shall not prevail against you,xviii nor all the power of the enemy.xix In all these things, we are more than conquerors.xx The weapons of our warfare are not carnal. They are mighty. Mighty to the pulling down of strongholds. Mighty to the pulling down of every high thing which exalts itself against the knowledge of God.xxi
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II Corinthians 10: 3 - 6 KJV. I Peter 2: 9 - 12 KJV. iii Hebrews 11: 1 - 16 KJV. iv II Corinthians 6: 14 - 18 KJV. v Genesis 35: 1- 3 KJV. vi Exodus 32: 19 - 20 KJV. vii Deuteronomy 12: 3 KJV. viii Joshua 24: 23 KJV. ix Acts 7: 42 - 43 KJV. x Hebrews 12: 1 - 2 KJV. xi Ephesians 5: 23 - 33 KJV. xii Galatians 1: 8 - 9 KJV. xiii Galatians 5: 12 KJV. xiv Romans 16: 17 KJV. xv Hebrews 12: 5 - 11 KJV. xvi Romans 16: 17 KJV. xvii Ephesians 2: 19 - 22 KJV. xviii Matthew 16: 18 KJV. xix Luke 10: 19 KJV. xx Romans 8: 37 KJV. xxi II Corinthians 10: 3 - 6 KJV.
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