Why do we keep warning? Because the train is still coming down the tracks

By Elizabeth Prata

Growing up in my town in the 1960s, there was a train track running along the shoreline. Behind the tracks there was a busy wharf with fishermen, moorings for recreational boaters, and shoreside homes and their children running about. There were a lot of train crossings, and many of them weren’t guarded by automatic gates and warning signals.

Sadly, we frequently read back then in our local paper of crossing fatalities, both vehicular and pedestrian. To my impressionable ears it seems like almost a weekly occurrence. It wasn’t that frequent but I do remember my father, who was on the town Zoning Committee for a time, talking about the Town Council’s plans to automate and/or close some of the crossings to reduce potential for fatalities.

It’s still happening. In my growing up town in 2016 a teenage girl was killed by a passing Amtrak train. For 50 years, people have been struck by the train passing through.

It’s hard to believe that someone couldn’t or wouldn’t hear or see something as big and obvious as a train, but sadly, that is not the case. Folk Singer John Prine was affected by the incident of a young altar boy who belonged to an Episcopal church that Prine was working in. The altar boy was struck from behind and killed by a slow moving commuter train. The boy was apparently day-dreaming as he ambled down the tracks. Prine wrote the song Bruised Orange about the incident.

We tend to be oblivious to these dangers, and that’s why cities and town erect crossing gates, lights, and signals, to warn us.

Is there a sane town or city mayor who would say “We’ve had those crossing lights and signals there long enough, everybody is sick of hearing the bells and seeing the blinking lights. Let’s take the warning paraphernalia down. We’re tired of them.”

Even from your own number, men will rise up and distort the truth to draw away disciples after them. 31Therefore be alert and remember that for three years I never stopped warning each of you night and day with tears. (Acts 20:30-31).

A few years ago there was yet another controversy surrounding the teacher Beth Moore. During the Truth Matters conference Q & A moderator Todd Friel presented a word association game to the panelists; John MacArthur, Phil Johnson, Mike Riccardi, and Justin Peters. Friel asked the panel to give a one or two word pithy answer to the names he’d say. When he said “Beth Moore,” after a hesitation, MacArthur said “Go home”. He followed that up with a 7-minute explanation.

In culture today when you tell a woman to go home or stay home, it’s fighting words. Feminism has made the God-ordained career of the woman at home in the form of homemaker a dirty word.

Through the succeeding week, many people weighed in on the response MacArthur gave. Much of it was heat without light, and many people, including me, attempted to give that light in the form of reasonable discourse and biblical answers.

5 years later, here is an 8-minute video from Fight for Truth, well done “Throwback” to when John MacArthur said about Beth Moore to ‘Go Home,’ from Fight for Truth. The video gives 3 reasons why MacArthur was exactly right for saying what he did and how he said it.

Beth Moore is “a lot more emotional than truthful…”

As the clamor began to subside, other people began complaining about the seemingly never-ending controversies. Discerners and truth-tellers hear these comments often: ‘We’re tired of hearing about it. There are other, better things to focus on. Why does social media have to be such a hotbed. Stop being so obsessed. Why are you so jealous?’ And so on and so forth.

I am reminded of Paul. He warned of false teachers. Warned. Night and day. With tears. Why? Satan is a restless evil. He lurks, crouches, prowls, and roams up and down upon the earth. He doesn’t stop.

When do we stop warning that a destructive false teacher is luring the unwary, poisoning the church with false doctrines, prying open the canon with dreams and visions and fanciful vain talk? Never. They used to kill false prophets who spewed empty visions and who put words into God’s mouth, (Deuteronomy 18:20), and they will do so again (Zechariah 13:3). Meanwhile, in this period of grace while Jesus is building His church, we warn. Night and day. With tears. Earnestly.

Can we say that enough people have heard the news that this or that teacher is false? That everyone is all set, perfectly topped up with enough discernment to make their own way? What about the lambs coming up? What about those who haven’t heard, or who don’t understand?

There are many successful satanic counterfeits operating in this and the last century. When I write about one of them, I have gathered a mountain of evidence to support this contention, I do not make it unwisely or rashly.

As long as the warning bells and train gates are down and flashing, it is a grace and a gift from the Lord to those with ears to hear.