“Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth GOOD FOR NOTHING, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men” (Matt. 5:13).
Jesus said in Mark 9:50, “Have salt in yourselves.”
Paul tells us in Colossians 4:6, “Let your speech be alway with grace, SEASONED WITH SALT, that ye may know how to answer every man.”
Are you salty, Christian? Is the Body of Christ in America in these last days able to slow the decay and moral rot of the society around us? Does our stand for Jesus Christ have a bite to it, one that is in sharp contrast to the lifestyles of those around us? Does our speech have an edge on it, a cutting edge, or do we always speak with a mouth full of sugar?
What good are we without salt? We’re “good for nothing.”
What we see today in our frightful slide into spiritual bankruptcy is what Paul listed in 2 Timothy 3:1–5.Verse five is especially applicable to our time. “Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.”
We are loaded with religious people, walking about in a sanctimonious cloud of false piety, who enthusiastically major in sweetness and view controversy as a kind of spiritual leprosy. Where’s the salt?
Years ago, I read the following in a Christian book, and it stuck me in the gut. “To employ soft words and honeyed phrases in discussing questions of everlasting importance, to deal with errors that strike at the foundations of all human hope as if they were harmless and venial mistakes; to bless where God disapproves, and to make apologies where He calls us to stand up like men and assert, though
it may be the aptest method of securing popular applause in a sophistical age, is cruelty to man and treachery to Heaven. Those who on such subjects attach more importance to the rules of courtesy than they do to the measures of truth do not defend the citadel, but betray it into the hands of its enemies. Love for Christ, for His word, for the souls for whom He died, will be the exact measure of our zeal in exposing the dangers by which men’s souls are ensnared” (James Henley Thornwell, cited by George Sayles Bishop, The Doctrines of Grace and Kindred Themes, 1910).
Here’s the Apostle Jude wanting to write to the believers about the great salvation purchased for us by our Lord, but redirected by the Holy Spirit to pen the following:
“Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and EXHORT YOU THAT YE SHOULD EARNESTLY CONTEND FOR THE
FAITH which was once delivered unto the saints” (Jude 3).
ude appears just before Revelation. This is a last-days exhortation that calls us to “contend,” which is
a verb meaning “to dispute” and “to contest,” according to Noah Webster.
Where’s the salt in these last days? Is it in the sermons of Rick Warren, Joel Osteen, Paul Crouch, Benny Hinn, Joyce Meyer, et al.? God’s people have been “sugared” to death. Their mouths are full of decay, and cavities abound. Spiritually speaking, the last days apostasy has gone from bad to
worse, from the intensive care unit to the hospice.
Where are we prophetically right now? We are at the point of exchange. One woman is leaving in rebellion, typified by Queen Vashti in Esther chapter one, and another woman is about to take her place—a Jewish queen.
“And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under
her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars” (Rev. 12:1).
An out-of-this-world transfer will soon throw this planet into chaos (Tit. 2:13). The Lord’s Gentile bride will be removed to Heaven, and the way will be made clear on earth to replace her with a Jewish queen, a regenerated Israel. There are only two books in the Bible named for women. Ruth the Moabitess attaches herself to a Jewish redeemer. Later, the Holy Spirit positions Esther to become queen, first selected for her beauty and later found to be a woman of faith—see Esther 4:16.
Is there any salt left in the Gentile bride about to leave? Not much according to Revelation 3:14–22. She is “wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked” (Rev. 3:13), and has an eye infection (see Rev. 3:18). Materialistically speaking, the bride is doing fine. She is “rich,” “increased with goods” and has “need of nothing” (Rev. 3:17). She’s sweet, not salty; and she has little “desire to depart, and to be with Christ” (Phil. 1:23).
She looks with disdain upon street preachers and goes into an epileptic fit if you believe the 1611 King James Bible is God’s pure word. This is a woman in love with herself. How much longer will the Lord keep her here? She has become an embarrassment to His name.
In Esther chapter one, Queen Vashti is summoned to the king’s side at a banquet he has arranged for his princes and nobles. Vashti refuses to come and instead makes a feast for the women in the royal house. This act of rebellion didn’t just pop up out of nowhere. Like termite damage, rebellion in the heart at first is unseen. All seems to be normal, at least for a while.
For 270 years, the King James Bible went unchallenged as the word of God for the English-speaking people. That Book had a power and authority that frightened sinners and made believers to “walk circumspectly” (Eph. 5:15) and “work out [their] salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil. 2:12). With craft and cunning (I know more about the Jesuits than you do), the enemy of God’s people set about to remove the saltiness from the salt. In 1881, the veracity of God’s word was called into question with the publication of the Revised Version in England. The termites, those who wish to correct God’s word and not be corrected by it, had now come out into the open.
Vashti rebelled openly against the king’s command. Subjection to authority has been the overriding issue in all human affairs since the fall of Adam and Eve. One thousand years of Jesus Christ reigning as King in Jerusalem will end with rebellion against His rule. Vashti’s act of defiance had to be addressed.
“For this deed of the queen shall come abroad unto all women, so that they shall despise their husbands in their eyes, when it shall be reported, The king Ahasuerus commanded Vashti the queen to be brought in before him, BUT SHE CAME NOT” (Esth. 1:17).
That was the end of Vashti. She was sent away. She had become “good for nothing,” and her dismissal opened a vacancy. A search committee was engaged to find a replacement, and Someone pulling the levers behind the curtain (like the Wizard of Oz) positioned a Jewish maiden to win the beauty contest and sit by the king’s side.
“And the king loved Esther above all the women, and she obtained grace and favour in his sight
more than all the virgins; so that he set the royal crown upon her head, and made her queen instead of
Vashti” (Esth. 2:17).
So where are we now on God’s timetable? Esther chapter one reads like a giant billboard along the highway to Heaven in these last days. You can’t miss it, unless your eyes are infected. In that case, you can get eyesalve and hope you see things the way they really are and not like you pretend them to be. We are becoming saltless. There are more Bible versions out there than Carter has liver
pills. Negative preaching is scoffed at. We want our preachers sweet and not salty.
When I street-corner preach at one of Pensacola’s long light intersections, I carry two signs along with a New Testament. Both signs are negative and have the word fear in them. One is Hebrews 10:31, and the other is Matthew 10:28. Maybe I’m too heavy on the salt, but in these last days,
diabetes has become rampant with all the sugar folks consume. I’ll take my chances at the Judgment Seat of Christ, O.K.?
Well, a number of times I’ve been heckled by some who read the signs and got upset. With a pious expression on her face, one woman, claiming to be a Christian, said to me that she didn’t believe in fear. I answered her thus: “If you don’t believe in fear and you exceed the speed limit by a good
amount and see a Florida Highway Patrol car off to the side, why do you slow down? You do believe in fear, although not when it comes to God’s word. So I’ll give you some sugar because that’s what you like. God loves you and have a nice day!”
The fool was answered according to her folly (see Prov. 26:5). Now that’s what you have today everywhere you go. Years of media brainwashing has conditioned folks not just to ignore negative truth, but to despise it. Many born-again saints have become so fearful of eliciting displeasure from nonbelievers that they have gone on a saltless diet. The soldiers that Jesus Christ has in His army in America seem more inclined to sell cotton candy at the county fair. Where’s the salt?
Thank God, the salt is not all gone. There’s still some around, but it is getting harder and harder to find. Back in 1980, I was a new Christian saved two years and eager to learn God’s word. Someone gave me a copy of The Sure Word of Prophecy by Dr. Peter S. Ruckman. Like any fish recently taken out of its natural environment, I needed to be salted. The apostles didn’t have ice machines by the Sea
of Galilee.
Every book and Bible commentary I read by Dr. Ruckman helped set my face against this world and its “rudiments” (Col. 2:8). I turned away from the sweets that kids enjoy and looked for salt, the saltier the better, like pretzels. In the summer of ‘79, I had begun street-preaching at lunchtime
on a corner across the street from the New York Stock Exchange: Wall and Nassau Streets. There were crowds of people there, many listening and others walking. I needed to get salty because the souls passing in front of me were in love with this world only. On that blessed corner, the Lord
showed me: “Be not afraid of their faces” (Jer. 1:8). “The fear of man bringeth a snare” (Prov. 29:25). This is why many blood-bought saints stay sweet and sugary while everything continues to decay rapidly. If the salt is not salty, it doesn’t belong on the table. It serves no function. Often, I have heard Dr. Ruckman say about Christians here in this area that 90% of them aren’t worth shooting. I don’t believe that is an overstatement, not at all.
In Luke 17, Jesus cleansed ten lepers who had cried out for mercy. “And ONE of them, when he saw
that he was healed, turned back, and with a loud voice glorifi ed God, And fell down on his face at his feet, giving him thanks: and he was a Samaritan. And Jesus answering said, Were there not ten cleansed? but WHERE ARE THE NINE?” (Luke 17:15–17).
Ten sinners got saved and nine disappeared. Where did they go?
Where’s the salt? Imagine what would happen to our nation if 90% of our military went AWOL. No wonder the modern Presbyterian hymnals no longer include “Onward Christian Soldiers.”
“Even so, come, Lord Jesus” (Rev. 22:20)
By Robert Militello, posted in the Bible Baptist Bulletin
