The weapons of the Religious Reformer – the strongholds he is called to demolish, Ignorance

I. THE STRONGHOLDS WHICH THE RELIGIOUS REFORMER IS CALLED ON TO DEMOLISH.

1. Ignorance. — All religious error is the offspring of ignorance and mistake. God is true, and His Word is true. No religious error can find any support there. Yet we know that error does exist to a vast extent. How mighty, then, is this fortress! and how strong! Look at the ignorance of heathen nations. See the ignorance of those who are under the dominion of the Papacy. Behold the lamentable ignorance of a vast majority of Protestants. Now the reformer meets this stronghold wherever he undertakes to labor. He beholds willful ignorance of plainly revealed truths. He beholds one body of men willfully ignorant of the views and practices of another body which they condemn. He finds himself misrepresented, misunderstood, and opposed, because men are entrenched in this stronghold. The Apostle Paul once found himself a victim of misrepresentation which had gained currency simply through the inexcusable and willful ignorance of those who believed them. “Art not thou that Egyptian,” he was asked, “which, before these days madest an uproar, and leddest out into the wilderness four thousand men that were murderers?” The religious reformer is frequently assailed with questions as absurd, betraying the willful ignorance of those who oppose him in his work. This ignorance he labors to remove.

John Q. Adams – Baptists the only thorough Reformers – Lecture III.