Deacons in Diapers

As an evangelist, some of the biggest opposition I have faced through the years in churches has come from deacons who hated the doctrine of repentance. I've seen the fire in their eyes as they faced me in the sanctuary and denounced me in their church. So long as you give a carnal man a message he wants to hear, then things will be all right.

But as soon as you bring in a man who preaches heart-searching sermons that shine the spotlight of the Holy Spirit on the blackness of one's heart and call sin, sin, then all hell will break loose and the good deacons will take off their shiny shoes and throw them at you and cry away with him as fast as a nest of vipers will scatter when you pour gasoline on them. But they're okay with the preacher who will give them some soothing pablum that they can digest and go to sleep. But as soon as a preacher comes along and pesters their little gods and monkeys with their little pig pens, then they will arise, no small stir, because deacons in diapers like to be coddled like little babies in a nursery.

I like what Vance Havner had to say on this subject. He said, Paul speaks of spiritual babes who won't grow up. Some of these 150 to 200-pound church babies keep the pastor busy running around with a milk bottle when they should have been on beefsteak years ago.

When the church calls a new pastor, these infants may be heard to complain, I don't like the new preacher. He changed my formula. Well, you start preaching to God, they're unfamiliar with friends, and you first have to kill the gods they have and smash the ridles.

They think Jesus is just a love genie who came down here to make them happy, and they love sermons only on the love of God. Like Henry Ward Beecher, who was a popular preacher in his day, used to preach mainly on the love of God, and he never preached on the doctrine of hell, because he didn't believe in hell, because he was sleeping with several of the women in his congregation, and one affair led to a scandalous public lawsuit by an angry husband. But if you preach only on the love of God, to the omission of the justice of God, you will create a false concept of God that is opposite to the one found in my Bible.

And if you confront a deacon in diapers with the following flaming passage of scripture from 2 Thessalonians, it'll only enrage him because it goes against his concept of God who won't punish sin. When the Lord Jesus should be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his power. I've had churches stiff me for preaching the truth.

I preached at one church three times in a row in one week, and they didn't give me a plug nickel. I guess they think I live on angel food. They gave me no love offering nor any honorarium, and I gave them my services and poured out my heart to them, preaching a crucified Christ with a burden for the souls of men, and I suffered financially for it.

Well, who will support me if the churches do not? But I'll keep preaching the truth, even if I can't pay my bills, because no deacon in a diaper will shut me up.