Demas the quitter is still very much around.
Ask him his name and, like the unclean spirit, he will have to say: “My name is Legion; for we are many.”
You may run into Demas anywhere. Talk with him about something besides the weather and who won the ball game, and chances are you will soon recognize Demas for what he is.
For example, that day when Demas and I met at an intersection downtown. We had known each other as boys; and then for some years our paths had not crossed. Both of us had received the nurture of a Christian home, a Christian school, and the Christian Reformed Church. He had become very successful in his profession and was well known around town.
Somehow we soon got beneath the surface and began to talk church and religion; and that’s when Demas showed his colors. “The Heidelberg Catechism,” he scoffed, “dry as dust!” He had turned his back on what he had been taught, and it was painful to find him so outspoken in his denunciation of his heritage. It left me feeling something the way Paul must have felt when from a Roman prison he wrote to Timothy: “Give diligence to come shortly unto me; for Demas forsook me, having loved this present world, and went to Thessalonica.”
Of course, this wiseacre Demas I met that day didn’t really know what he was talking about when he supposed he could disdainfully dismiss the Heidelberg Catechism with one grand sweep of his superior knowledge. Williston Walker, one-time professor of church history at Yale University, was in all likelihood not committed to the Reformed faith as you and I are. But, scholar that he was, when Walker comes to mention this doctrinal standard in his A History of the Christian Church (p. 443) he recognizes merit where he finds it and speaks of “the remarkable Heidelberg Catechism . . . the most sweet-spirited and experiential of the expositions of Calvinism.”
Was it the familiarity that breeds contempt that led Demas to fulminate as he did that day against the Catechism? Was it perhaps because he had become wise in his own conceit? Or was it that the circles in which he had come to move were not congenial to the faith in which he had been trained in youth? Only God knows. But let every Demas beware! God knows the secrets of our hearts and will surely call every quitter to account, if not already in this life, then surely in the final judgment of the living and the dead.
But why write about the Demas danger?
For one thing, because I was asked to do so.
And for another thing, this danger of quitting the faith becomes very real and prevalent when the going gets rough. Apostasy has a way of becoming contagious and enticing when the heat is on. “Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall” (I Cor. 10:12).
Why write about this? Also because quitters like Demas have been around for a long time; and, of course, every leader who contends for the historic Christian faith knows from heartbreaking experience that they are with us today also. Followers like Demas come a dime a dozen and those who look to them for support know only too well that so often the price of leadership is loneliness.
Jesus Himself knew what it meant to be forsaken by the quitters. “Upon this,” John reports, “many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him. Jesus said therefore unto the twelve, ‘Would ye also go away?” (John 6:66). Betrayed by Judas, denied by Peter, and forsaken by the whole band of His disciples, as the Man of Sorrows our Lord was engulfed by an agony of loneliness greater than mortal tongue can ever tell.
It was no less a leader than Saint Paul on whom Demas of the New Testament had turned his back. If this was the lot of one so outstanding and illustrious as Paul, lesser lights should then not think it strange if they have the same experience. No longer willing to share the reproach of Paul bound by a chain in a Roman prison, Demas succumbed to the lure of “this present world” and became a quitter. This act of perfidy could hardly have been directed against a greater man in thc service of his Lord than Paul; ane why then should other contenders for the faith think that this could not happen to them? Deceived by his wrong sense of values, Demas was blind to the true greatness of Paul once described in classis prose by John Lord in his Beacon Lights of History as follows:
“Paul is the most prominent figure of all the great men who have adorned, or advanced the interest of, the Christian Church. Great pulpit orators, renowned theologians, profound philosophers, immortal poets, successful reformers, and enlightened monarchs have never disputed his intellectual ascendancy; to all alike he has been a model and a marvel. The grand old missionary stands out in history as a matchless example of Christian living, a sure guide in Christian doctrine. No more favored mortal is ever likely to appear; he is the counterpart of Moses as a divine teacher to all generations.”
Demas was so near to true greatness, but with his faulty vision he failed to see it. Paul’s cruel chain and wretched prison life repelled Demas so that one da\’ he headed for Thessalonica and left his leader in the lurch. And the saddest thing of all is that we have no reason to believe he ever came back. The name of Demas the quitter with its infamy stands on the sacred page as a warning for all the world, and especially for all who profess to be followers of Christ.
The trouble with followers like Demas who become quitters, dropout’s, or casualties, is that they fail to count the cost.
To point this out is not the least of the reasons for writing about Demas at this time. I have been asked to write along this line to counteract a possible misunderstanding of what someone said recently at a Reformed Fellowship meeting to the effect that, at such a time as this, it has become a question of to be or not to be for such an organization as ours. The report that came to me, together with the request to say something about this, was that some members present were concerned that thought was being given to discontinuing the Reformed Fellowship and its program of activities.
Let it be said then emphatically that nothing is farther from the truth. And I do not believe that the speaker really had that in mind at all. I would rather believe that his intention was to sharpen the realization on our part that to carry on means that we must be ready and willing to run the gamut of misunderstanding, criticism, opposition, disinterest, the disheartening I-couldn’t-care-less attitude, and frequent frustration.
The Reformed Fellowship is eager to have its membership maintained and increased; but it would be both unwise and dishonest to solicit and encourage the affiliation of those who fail to first stop to count the cost.
Winston Churchill had more sense than to promise an easy berth or a bed of roses to his countrymen whom he rallied to hurl back Adolf Hitler and the German Nazis. Revealing his stature as a statesman. Churchill spoke of blood, sweat, and tears.
When one day a scribe came to Jesus saying: “Teacher, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest,” our Lord answered him: “The foxes have holes, and the birds of the heaven have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head” (Matt. 8:20). In other words, first stop and count the cost! But the other side of the coin is this: regardless of the price, it will cost infinitely more, even eternal loss, if one refuses to be a follower of Jesus Christ and a contender “for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3).
It takes real intestinal fortitude to he true till death to the faith of our fathers. Demas the quitter didn’t have it because he failed to count the cost. wishy-washy and never-rock-the-boat church members who call themselves “soldiers of the cross” must make Satan and his demons chuckle. We are indebted to Halford Luccock for the report of the stinging rebuke by a critic of the church who once described the average congregation as “the uninspiring spectacle of a docile and mild-mannered gentleman trying to persuade a docile company of people to be still more docile.”
Dropouts or quitters like Demas arc deserters from the ranks of those determined to be true till death to the historic Christian faith.
Without apology, we make hold to say that, by God’s grace, as members of the Reformed Fellowship we arc determined to he thus committed. That’s what the Reformed Fellowship is all about. Of course, this commitment at such a time as this is indeed a question of to be or not to be; but the sufficient answer to this disturbing question is still found in our Lord’s reassuring word : “In, I am with you always; even unto the end of the world” (Matt. 28:20).
Caveat emptor (Latin: Let the buyer beware) is a rule of thumb applied in the world of business. In signing a sales contract or buying an insurance polity it makes sense to be sure to read the fine print. Even so, anyone interested in affiliating with the Reformed Fellowship must know what he or she is getting into. Don’t be satisfied to accept a pig in a poke. New members are welcomed wholeheartedly, but only if they come in with both eyes wide open.
The cause of the Reformed Fellowship is the most difficult, the most unpopular, the most demanding, and so often the most reviled cause in the world. But also the most challenging and glorious; it’s second to none! It is the cause of the historic Christian faith espoused so magnificently by Paul in prison, John on Patmos, by a galaxy of martyrs, by Calvin, Hodge, Warfield, Machen, Kuyper, Bavinck, Berkhof and a host of others.
The Reformed Faith is what our cause is all about. THE OUTLOOK attempts to say it in this carefully prepared statement: “This periodical is owned and published by Reformed Fellowship, Inc., a religious and strictly non-profit organization composed of a group of Christian believers who hold to the Reformed Faith. Its purpose is to give sharpened expression to this Faith, to stimulate the doctrinal sensitivities of those who profess this Faith, to promote the spiritual welfare and purity of the Christian Reformed Church particularly and also of other Reformed churches, and as far as possible to further the interests of all Christian action and institutions of Reformed character.”
It is then to the historic Christian faith that we are committed—to the appreciation, the dissemination, and the activation of it. Why? Because the Bible demands this, because Christendom becomes the salt that has lost its savor without this, because the world so desperately needs this, because otherwise we cannot live with ourselves and our convictions, and because God wills it!
Quitters like Demas are to be pitied; they have everything to lose and nothing to gain.
There is a frightening finality in what the Bible has to say about Judas Iscariot, Hymenaeus and Alexander, and also about Demas. Like an epitaph, Paul’s solemn words hold no promise concerning his former co-worker who deserted him: “Demas forsook me, having loved this present world, and went to Thessalonica.” And that was that, period—not a ray of hope or comfort about the eternal destiny of Demas.
But, thank God, quitting is not an unpardonable sin. Quitters like John Mark who let Paul and Barnabas down on their missionary journey, and Peter who denied his Lord—these did return, were graciously forgiven, and also reinstated with honor. The difference is that, whereas some quitters merely {all into this sin, others remain in it.
How different the sequel to Paul’s life was from that of the quitters who never return to the battle for the truth. Writing from the wretchedness of a Roman prison and held captive by a chain, the old warrior knew that he was more than a conqueror in and through Christ as he poured forth this claim to victory:
“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith; henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give to me at that day; and not to me only, but also to all them that have loved his appearing” (II Tim. 4:7, 8).
To their shame and consternation, quitters like Demas must learn at last that the case of Thessalonica or of any other place of escape is hut for a season and has nothing but gloom and doom to offer when life’s brief day is done.
Faithful unto the end, Paul found that death was not the end but the glorious beginning. But the great apostle had no monopoly on this marvelous grace of God. Our Lord is still calling for recruits for the battle to hold high the Truth as He says:
“And he that doth not take his cross and follow after me, is not worthy of me. He that findeth his life shall lose it, and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.” (Matt 10:38, 39).
Ask him his name and, like the unclean spirit, he will have to say: “My name is Legion; for we are many.”
You may run into Demas anywhere. Talk with him about something besides the weather and who won the ball game, and chances are you will soon recognize Demas for what he is.
For example, that day when Demas and I met at an intersection downtown. We had known each other as boys; and then for some years our paths had not crossed. Both of us had received the nurture of a Christian home, a Christian school, and the Christian Reformed Church. He had become very successful in his profession and was well known around town.
Somehow we soon got beneath the surface and began to talk church and religion; and that’s when Demas showed his colors. “The Heidelberg Catechism,” he scoffed, “dry as dust!” He had turned his back on what he had been taught, and it was painful to find him so outspoken in his denunciation of his heritage. It left me feeling something the way Paul must have felt when from a Roman prison he wrote to Timothy: “Give diligence to come shortly unto me; for Demas forsook me, having loved this present world, and went to Thessalonica.”
Of course, this wiseacre Demas I met that day didn’t really know what he was talking about when he supposed he could disdainfully dismiss the Heidelberg Catechism with one grand sweep of his superior knowledge. Williston Walker, one-time professor of church history at Yale University, was in all likelihood not committed to the Reformed faith as you and I are. But, scholar that he was, when Walker comes to mention this doctrinal standard in his A History of the Christian Church (p. 443) he recognizes merit where he finds it and speaks of “the remarkable Heidelberg Catechism . . . the most sweet-spirited and experiential of the expositions of Calvinism.”
Was it the familiarity that breeds contempt that led Demas to fulminate as he did that day against the Catechism? Was it perhaps because he had become wise in his own conceit? Or was it that the circles in which he had come to move were not congenial to the faith in which he had been trained in youth? Only God knows. But let every Demas beware! God knows the secrets of our hearts and will surely call every quitter to account, if not already in this life, then surely in the final judgment of the living and the dead.
But why write about the Demas danger?
For one thing, because I was asked to do so.
And for another thing, this danger of quitting the faith becomes very real and prevalent when the going gets rough. Apostasy has a way of becoming contagious and enticing when the heat is on. “Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall” (I Cor. 10:12).
Why write about this? Also because quitters like Demas have been around for a long time; and, of course, every leader who contends for the historic Christian faith knows from heartbreaking experience that they are with us today also. Followers like Demas come a dime a dozen and those who look to them for support know only too well that so often the price of leadership is loneliness.
Jesus Himself knew what it meant to be forsaken by the quitters. “Upon this,” John reports, “many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him. Jesus said therefore unto the twelve, ‘Would ye also go away?” (John 6:66). Betrayed by Judas, denied by Peter, and forsaken by the whole band of His disciples, as the Man of Sorrows our Lord was engulfed by an agony of loneliness greater than mortal tongue can ever tell.
It was no less a leader than Saint Paul on whom Demas of the New Testament had turned his back. If this was the lot of one so outstanding and illustrious as Paul, lesser lights should then not think it strange if they have the same experience. No longer willing to share the reproach of Paul bound by a chain in a Roman prison, Demas succumbed to the lure of “this present world” and became a quitter. This act of perfidy could hardly have been directed against a greater man in thc service of his Lord than Paul; ane why then should other contenders for the faith think that this could not happen to them? Deceived by his wrong sense of values, Demas was blind to the true greatness of Paul once described in classis prose by John Lord in his Beacon Lights of History as follows:
“Paul is the most prominent figure of all the great men who have adorned, or advanced the interest of, the Christian Church. Great pulpit orators, renowned theologians, profound philosophers, immortal poets, successful reformers, and enlightened monarchs have never disputed his intellectual ascendancy; to all alike he has been a model and a marvel. The grand old missionary stands out in history as a matchless example of Christian living, a sure guide in Christian doctrine. No more favored mortal is ever likely to appear; he is the counterpart of Moses as a divine teacher to all generations.”
Demas was so near to true greatness, but with his faulty vision he failed to see it. Paul’s cruel chain and wretched prison life repelled Demas so that one da\’ he headed for Thessalonica and left his leader in the lurch. And the saddest thing of all is that we have no reason to believe he ever came back. The name of Demas the quitter with its infamy stands on the sacred page as a warning for all the world, and especially for all who profess to be followers of Christ.
The trouble with followers like Demas who become quitters, dropout’s, or casualties, is that they fail to count the cost.
To point this out is not the least of the reasons for writing about Demas at this time. I have been asked to write along this line to counteract a possible misunderstanding of what someone said recently at a Reformed Fellowship meeting to the effect that, at such a time as this, it has become a question of to be or not to be for such an organization as ours. The report that came to me, together with the request to say something about this, was that some members present were concerned that thought was being given to discontinuing the Reformed Fellowship and its program of activities.
Let it be said then emphatically that nothing is farther from the truth. And I do not believe that the speaker really had that in mind at all. I would rather believe that his intention was to sharpen the realization on our part that to carry on means that we must be ready and willing to run the gamut of misunderstanding, criticism, opposition, disinterest, the disheartening I-couldn’t-care-less attitude, and frequent frustration.
The Reformed Fellowship is eager to have its membership maintained and increased; but it would be both unwise and dishonest to solicit and encourage the affiliation of those who fail to first stop to count the cost.
Winston Churchill had more sense than to promise an easy berth or a bed of roses to his countrymen whom he rallied to hurl back Adolf Hitler and the German Nazis. Revealing his stature as a statesman. Churchill spoke of blood, sweat, and tears.
When one day a scribe came to Jesus saying: “Teacher, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest,” our Lord answered him: “The foxes have holes, and the birds of the heaven have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head” (Matt. 8:20). In other words, first stop and count the cost! But the other side of the coin is this: regardless of the price, it will cost infinitely more, even eternal loss, if one refuses to be a follower of Jesus Christ and a contender “for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3).
It takes real intestinal fortitude to he true till death to the faith of our fathers. Demas the quitter didn’t have it because he failed to count the cost. wishy-washy and never-rock-the-boat church members who call themselves “soldiers of the cross” must make Satan and his demons chuckle. We are indebted to Halford Luccock for the report of the stinging rebuke by a critic of the church who once described the average congregation as “the uninspiring spectacle of a docile and mild-mannered gentleman trying to persuade a docile company of people to be still more docile.”
Dropouts or quitters like Demas arc deserters from the ranks of those determined to be true till death to the historic Christian faith.
Without apology, we make hold to say that, by God’s grace, as members of the Reformed Fellowship we arc determined to he thus committed. That’s what the Reformed Fellowship is all about. Of course, this commitment at such a time as this is indeed a question of to be or not to be; but the sufficient answer to this disturbing question is still found in our Lord’s reassuring word : “In, I am with you always; even unto the end of the world” (Matt. 28:20).
Caveat emptor (Latin: Let the buyer beware) is a rule of thumb applied in the world of business. In signing a sales contract or buying an insurance polity it makes sense to be sure to read the fine print. Even so, anyone interested in affiliating with the Reformed Fellowship must know what he or she is getting into. Don’t be satisfied to accept a pig in a poke. New members are welcomed wholeheartedly, but only if they come in with both eyes wide open.
The cause of the Reformed Fellowship is the most difficult, the most unpopular, the most demanding, and so often the most reviled cause in the world. But also the most challenging and glorious; it’s second to none! It is the cause of the historic Christian faith espoused so magnificently by Paul in prison, John on Patmos, by a galaxy of martyrs, by Calvin, Hodge, Warfield, Machen, Kuyper, Bavinck, Berkhof and a host of others.
The Reformed Faith is what our cause is all about. THE OUTLOOK attempts to say it in this carefully prepared statement: “This periodical is owned and published by Reformed Fellowship, Inc., a religious and strictly non-profit organization composed of a group of Christian believers who hold to the Reformed Faith. Its purpose is to give sharpened expression to this Faith, to stimulate the doctrinal sensitivities of those who profess this Faith, to promote the spiritual welfare and purity of the Christian Reformed Church particularly and also of other Reformed churches, and as far as possible to further the interests of all Christian action and institutions of Reformed character.”
It is then to the historic Christian faith that we are committed—to the appreciation, the dissemination, and the activation of it. Why? Because the Bible demands this, because Christendom becomes the salt that has lost its savor without this, because the world so desperately needs this, because otherwise we cannot live with ourselves and our convictions, and because God wills it!
Quitters like Demas are to be pitied; they have everything to lose and nothing to gain.
There is a frightening finality in what the Bible has to say about Judas Iscariot, Hymenaeus and Alexander, and also about Demas. Like an epitaph, Paul’s solemn words hold no promise concerning his former co-worker who deserted him: “Demas forsook me, having loved this present world, and went to Thessalonica.” And that was that, period—not a ray of hope or comfort about the eternal destiny of Demas.
But, thank God, quitting is not an unpardonable sin. Quitters like John Mark who let Paul and Barnabas down on their missionary journey, and Peter who denied his Lord—these did return, were graciously forgiven, and also reinstated with honor. The difference is that, whereas some quitters merely {all into this sin, others remain in it.
How different the sequel to Paul’s life was from that of the quitters who never return to the battle for the truth. Writing from the wretchedness of a Roman prison and held captive by a chain, the old warrior knew that he was more than a conqueror in and through Christ as he poured forth this claim to victory:
“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith; henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give to me at that day; and not to me only, but also to all them that have loved his appearing” (II Tim. 4:7, 8).
To their shame and consternation, quitters like Demas must learn at last that the case of Thessalonica or of any other place of escape is hut for a season and has nothing but gloom and doom to offer when life’s brief day is done.
Faithful unto the end, Paul found that death was not the end but the glorious beginning. But the great apostle had no monopoly on this marvelous grace of God. Our Lord is still calling for recruits for the battle to hold high the Truth as He says:
“And he that doth not take his cross and follow after me, is not worthy of me. He that findeth his life shall lose it, and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.” (Matt 10:38, 39).