It is an astonishing fact in itself that the then acknowledged leader of UK Anglican evangelicals chose to write a book about guarding the gospel.
The very title presupposes that the gospel is revealed truth from God that is not culturally conditioned. The gospel needs to be guarded because it is a precious gift from the true God who has made himself definitively known in the Lord Jesus Christ.
The politically incorrect terms in which Dr Stott described the insidious activity of the false teachers in the church at Ephesus would cause even a conservative evangelical writer today to hesitate. Commenting on 2 Timothy 3v6-9, he wrote:
Using no doubt the back door rather than the front, these tradesmen of heresy would insinuate themselves into private homes or 'households'. Choosing a time when the menfolk were out (presumably at work), they concentrated their attention on 'weak women'. This expedient, comments Bishop Ellicott, was 'as old as the fall of man', for the serpent first deceived Eve.
The sound biblical presuppositions wrapped up in that paragraph would be truly consensus-busting if uttered by a speaker at a congress of Anglican evangelicals today.
A book called 'Re-imagining the Gospel' would be a far better career move by an aspiring Anglican evangelical writer these days.
The very first time I travelled to the Philippines and doing missionary work there, my first sermon upon that Sunday was on 2 Timothy 3ff and inspired by Stott's "Guarding the Gospel" which I had read as an IVCF member at university.
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