The campaign to make Christianity seem “contemporary” and sophisticated in the world’s eyes is proving especially disastrous right now. As postmodern culture becomes more and more hostile to authority, clarity, and authoritative proclamations of truth, evangelicalism is blithely drifting more and more into postmodern ways of thinking about truth, imagining that this is the way to “reach” the culture. Consequently, Christians are less and less willing to fight for truth.

– John MacArthur

Apostasy can have far-reaching and disastrous effects on an entire congregation’s spiritual health. When false teaching goes unchallenged, it breeds more confusion and draws still more shallow and insincere people into the fold. If not vigorously resisted, apostasy will spread like leaven through seminaries, denominations, missions agencies, and other Christian institutions. False teaching thus attacks the church like a parasite, affecting our corporate testimony, inoculating people against the real truth of the gospel, proliferating false and halfhearted “disciples,” and filling the church with people who are actually unbelievers. By such means, entire churches and denominations have been taken over by apostasy.

– John MacArthur

Evangelicals who are desperate to follow the culture invariably lag several years behind anyway, somehow managing to look awkward and clumsy by always failing to keep in step, no matter how hard they try. But, then, the church is not supposed to ape the world’s fads or court the world’s favor anyway.

– John MacArthur

A few apostates are outspoken and aggressive in their opposition to the truth, but most are subtler. Regardless of how friendly, benign, or self-effacing they may appear, these wolves in sheep’s clothing are invariably driven by evil and self-aggrandizing motives—such as pride, rebellion, greed, lust, or whatever (2 Peter 2;10-19). That is not to suggest they always know full well that they are apostates. Many of them are so blinded by their evil desires that they really imagine they are serving Christ when in fact that are opposing Him (John 16:2).

– John MacArthur

Much of the evangelical movement has been acting for a long time as if our main duty is just to keep in step with the fads of worldly culture in order to gain the approval of each succeeding generation. That strategy will never fail to find enthusiastic support among those who are immature, weak, ignorant, or cowardly, but it can never be truly effective. Without truth, no spiritual transformation is possible (1 Peter 1;22-25; John 17:17).

– John MacArthur

People who embrace apostasy are destroyed by it. Churches wither and die because of it. Consider the fact that by the end of the first century, when the apostle John wrote Revelation 2-3, five out of the seven churches in Asia Minor were either beginning to defect from the faith or were already apostate bodies. . . . Christ’s central message to all but two of the churches included a mandate to deal with apostates in their midst. The battle for truth in the church has always been a very, very difficult but necessary conflict.

– John MacArthur