FLAT EARTH IS THE SIMPLEST OF LITMUS TESTS. The Christian, who is presented with facts yet still manages to reject what the Scripture proclaims as truth—should it not adhere to his intellectual preferences—is a humanist. The doctrine is sound. For almost three-thousand years of Judeo-Christian history it was sound. And now quite suddenly, among the self-rationalizing humanists, it is not. For this we can thank great apostates such as John Locke. He has poisoned the well, so to speak. He has contaminated even the waters from which the Christian bends down to drink. And suddenly, yes quite suddenly, the man who thirsts only for and nothing else but the Written Word begins to see his face, Locke’s that is—balancing among the necks and shoulders of those he only a moment ago recognized as lifelong church friends and colleagues.

This, the true Christian will surely come to find, having also learned of his own glaring error—a lifelong oversight regarding the doctrine of FLAT EARTH—and now, repentantly adhering to God’s Word as a lamp unto his feet and light unto his path, will be immediately apprehended by his contemporaries, should they come to find out about it. They will only wish to spare him of his foolishness, as though he is easily detoured, and speaking as an Obstinate unto the Christian Pilgrim, who is fleeing from the City of Destruction, feverishly proclaim: “There is a company of these crazy-headed coxcombs, that when they take a fancy by the end are wiser in their own eyes than seven men that can render a reason!”

See, the Latitudinarian will not conform to such doctrines which fail to please him, unlike those silly-stitious Puritans of old, who rightly kept to their Biblical beliefs. To such an admirer of the self, human intellect decides what is necessary and what is not. Human reason, he believes, when combined with the Holy Spirit, is a sufficient guide for determining doctrine, including what he may throw out or simply choose to ignore. Special instructions from God make individuals less amenable to human reason, whereas compromise is preferable. This is broad-based Protestantism. Under such leadership, the congregation has forsaken its birthright, Holy Writ, and in a vile adulterous act, has replaced sound doctrine with the autonomous reasoning of its choosing, casting aside dependence on God in hopes of raising human wisdom metaphysically above Him.

John Locke (1632-1704) was a true Latitudinarian, and his influence cannot be overstated. Locke’s “tabula rasa,” an idea which first appeared with “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding,” cleverly understood the human to be born knowing nothing, without original sin that is, and thus through reason and education may soon himself be improved upon. He wanted nothing to do with theological mysteries, even though the Bible is filled with them. The Old Testament, he concluded, was far too irrational for civilized thinking. If it cannot be fully explained, he has a right in his “latitude thinking” to reject it.

And besides, what God ultimately cares about, according to Richard Hooker (1554-1600) in his book, “Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity”—he was a precursor for the Latitudinarian—is the moral state of the individual soul. This is still the calling card of the modern-day Latitudinarian. And they’re everywhere.

The man who has repented of his glaring error holds up the pages of Holy Writ for all to see. He runs his finger across any number of scripture passages, there’s over a hundred of them, which give in great length the nature of the Lord’s created cosmology. He shows them the firmament (Genesis 1:6, Psalm 19:1), how it is spread out as molten glass (Job 37:18), the Earth being created before the sun and the stars (Genesis 1:1), the waters above the firmament which once drowned the world in the Great Deluge and, according to the Psalmist, still resides there (Genesis 7:11, Psalm 148:4), God’s throne built upon the firmament (Ezekiel 1:26), the sun and the moon under the firmament (Genesis 1: 14-18), the pillars of the Earth (Proverbs 8:29), the waters below the Earth, fountains of the deep (Proverbs 8:28), the sun moving in our stead, and with a circuit  to run (Psalm 19:4-6), the stars shall fall to Earth (Matthew 24:29, Revelation 9:13), and last but certainly not least, the Earth is fixed forever in place, immovable (Psalm 93:1, 96:10).

He shows his fellow Christian this most basic doctrine, which for thousands of years has been well understood, but the humanist’s mind is darkened, and even the special revelation in which he receives from God is mishandled in order to fit his worldview. Such are the times we live in, that a man who adheres to the complete written Testimony of God is considered a degenerate. After guiding him through all of these things the humanist cries out to him, as one would a fool, proclaiming the very line which will likely resound from the highest-sounding prayer towers in hell, “God is lost in the translation!”

Maranatha from Nova Scotia!

Noel