–– Tim Cantrell
Audio version of this article is available here: YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.
Potholes have been a way of life on roads in Africa for a long time; with South Africa now attributing 25% of all road accidents in the country to poor road conditions. Fail to spot a pothole and you’ll pay for it in lost time and replacing that tyre! How much more crucial then in our spiritual lives that we learn to spot potholes and pitfalls, where eternal souls are at stake and everlasting consequences await us?
Jesus warned His disciples often about stumbling blocks to be avoided in the minefield of this enemy-occupied territory, a Satanic system of darkness and deception. Jesus said, “Woe to the world because of its stumbling blocks! For it is inevitable that stumbling blocks come; but woe to that man through whom the stumbling block comes!” (Matt. 18:7). Believers toy with temptation and stumble into sin because they don’t see the stumbling blocks. Our Lord plainly shows that Heaven and Hell are at stake, as He urgently pleads with us about this life-or-death struggle against sin (Matt. 18:8-10).
Who’s Fault Is It?
Christ definitely holds people responsible for stumbling into sin (Matt. 18:8-9); yet He also accuses those who caused the stumbling – and not just in the church, but also in “the world” (vv. 6-7). Just because we know true believers cannot lose their salvation it does not mean they cannot be harmed and injured. Meanwhile, professing Christians can stumble into ultimate and final ruin and apostasy, proving never to have been truly saved (1 Jn. 2:19; 1 Cor. 10:1-12).
God is fully sovereign in all of this, and those who stumble are fully responsible, but those who cause the stumbling are not exempt either. If they do not repent, they will pay. Only the sinless Son of God and His gospel were prophesied to be an innocent “stone of stumbling and rock of offence” (Isa. 8:14; 1 Pet. 2:8; 1 Cor. 2:23); but all sinful causes of stumbling are condemned. The context of Matthew 18 is especially warning fellow Christians about causing one another to stumble; yet in verse 7 Jesus broadens His rebuke to include the entire world system that threatens and divides the Church.
‘You’ve Done It Unto Me’
On Judgment Day when Christ returns, every culprit will answer to the Almighty for allowing Satan and the world to co-opt them as His weapons for harming the Church. You mess with God’s kids, you pay a steep price! All of Matthew 18 shows us God’s heart for His children, His jealous protection of His “little ones”. It works both ways – receiving Christians is receiving Christ; rejecting them is rejecting Christ (Matt. 18:5-6). When you’ve tempted “the least of these” believers, King Jesus says, “you’ve done it unto Me” (Matt. 25:41-45). “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?!,” said the risen Lord in righteous indignation over His unbreakable bond with His Body, the Church (Acts 9:4).
What Stumbling Blocks?
Hollywood will answer – with every beloved celebrity and every movie star responsible for destroying civilisation as we know it, ruining marriages and homes across the globe with their immoral examples and their propagation of harmful worldly philosophies. Planned Parenthood and the infanticide industry will answer for leading professing Christian mothers to abort their precious babies.
With South Africa appearing among the top 20 porn-consuming countries in the world, that billion-dollar industry of immorality will answer to the Judge of all the earth – for preying upon our churches and creating an entire society of sex addicts and voyeurs who objectify women and indulge in every conceivable debauchery. Sangomas and promoters of traditional religion and animistic lies will answer for holding our African continent captive in fear, superstition, and darkness, crippling the Christian Church.
YouTube, Netflix, Disney, DSTV and the rest of BigTech (with Google, Open AI, Meta and the rest) will answer before the great white throne for every show, every byte of information, and every social media platform that spreads lies to our ‘screen-ified’ society, defiling hearts and minds, tormenting the Church with wasted time and tempting traps of every kind. The news industry moguls and media will answer for all anti-God, immoral and unjust propaganda that deceives the masses. Big businesses, corporations, and economists will answer for every cent they spend promoting greed, materialism, woke agendas, climate panic, the socialistic ‘Great Reset’, and more.
Advertising agencies will answer to God for being the ‘Stumbling Specialists’ who’ve perfected the art of ‘bait and switch’, hooking consumers with well-disguised lies about what you need and what will satisfy. The fashion industry will answer for ensnaring many with their Satanic seductions about what is truly good and beautiful, about what it means to be human. The aggressive gay agenda and transgender perverts will answer for their attacks on the visible Church – for redefining marriage, grooming children, promoting bodily mutilation, leaving our youth butchered and broken, and deceiving millions with their homosexual lies.
Educators, schools, colleges and universities – all these will answer to Him for making millions “walk in the counsel of wicked, stand in the way of sinners, and sit in the seat of scoffers”, despising God’s Word – for using the academy to take professing believers captive with their hollow, deceptive and Christless philosophies (Ps. 1:1; Col. 2:8). Many studies claim that some 80% of youth who grew up in the Church will walk away from the faith in university. Yes, parents and churches are to blame; but so is the world.
The list could go on: Philosophers and artists, musicians, culture-makers and culture-shapers will answer to the highest Court for how they’ve treated followers of Christ. Judges and magistrates who’ve locked down churches and unjustly ruled against innocent believers, corrupt politicians and policemen who’ve failed to uphold law and order and to punish evildoers – all these will pay. The prolific video game industry, the disastrous gambling empire, the drug cartels, the alcohol/liquor sellers, the smoke/vape trade and more – each of these will give an account for all the stumbling they’ve caused in the Church.
In closing – no doubt, Christ’s greatest condemnation will not be against outsiders, but against those inside the Church who did the most harm – the false teachers (Jm. 3:1). Judgement “begins with the household of God”, but it will not end there (1 Pet. 4:17-18).
Our Lord wants to wake us up to the very real threat and influence of worldliness, of Satan’s strategic stumbling blocks in society that we must learn to spot and avoid (cf. Rom. 12:2). In doing so, we’ll hope more in God’s perfect coming justice, and we’ll cause each other to stumble less and learn to love one another more, so that we can reach lost souls and rescue them from stumbling before it’s too late.