Hi John. I thought you might find this interesting. John Piper, well-known pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, identifies the apostasy in TH 9:12 to mean a falling away from the truth by those who once held it.So the question is: Why do so many Christians leave the truth and follow falsehood? Here's why according to Piper:
- Paul's answer at the end of verse 10 is that they refuse to love the truth (literally: they did not welcome a love for the truth). Notice: it is not merely an issue of knowing or believing in a merely mental sense: it is an issue of loving (the truth). Look at verse 12: " . . . so that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness." The opposite of believing the truth is delighting in evil.
And this means that saving faith--faith that will endure to the end through the affliction now and through the apostasy to come--is not merely an accepting of truth but a loving of truth. Verse 10: "They perish because they refused to love the truth."