Remove not the old landmark… Proverbs 23:10
It is a fact that most people live within fifty miles of where they grew up. That is not the case for me. I live over eight hundred miles from my home town. Naturally, I don’t get to go back home as often as I would like to, and things change a lot between visits. The home that I lived in for the first six years of my life is torn down; the little store I used to walk to to buy “penny candy” has been moved; and even the little grocery and hardware stores are no longer there. Some things have stayed the same, though. The gazebo in the center of town is still standing; the park by the river is still there; the church is still there; the library still exists, and many other things that remind me of my childhood are still in place. There are certain landmarks that I look for each time I go home to visit. When they are no longer there, it feels like a little piece of my childhood has gone with it. If my say mattered to those on the town council, I would beg them not to change a thing. I want things to be just the way I left them when I moved away.
That is exactly the same idea that God is trying to get across in Proverbs 23. When Jesus left this earth after He rose from the dead, He left faithful apostles and followers who would do the work of spreading the message of the gospel. Through the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, they wrote the Word of God as the standard for us to follow. Throughout every successive century, faithful men of God have followed and upheld that standard. Times of persecution have come and gone; apostasy has been lifted up from time to time; yet, there have always been men willing to stand against the crowd and uphold the standard. Those men made a deliberate decision to stand. They wanted the Lord to be pleased with what He saw when He came back. Many of those men are gone now, and there remains a void of those willing to stand for Christ. If you don’t make the decision to stand for what is right, then who will? The truth is only one generation away from perishing because if the second generation does not carry its torch, the light will be extinguished.
If it were possible for the old-time preachers to come back to this world, would they be disappointed by how many things you have allowed to be changed? Don’t try to change the truth. Don’t try to change the Word of God. Don’t try to lower the standards. Don’t let the devil get a foothold. Don’t change the spiritual landmarks, or our kids will have nothing to use as a marker for godliness.
Read also: 2 Thessalonians 2:13-17
Quote of the day: “Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are often stiffened.” – Billy Graham