Articles · Apologetics
The Truth, the Whole Truth, Nothing but the Truth
David Grisham calls a sleeping church to tell the whole counsel — sin, righteousness, judgment, and the gospel — because Jesus is coming.
A church can know the gospel and still tell only the part that keeps the room comfortable. Pastor David H. Grisham wrote The Truth, The Whole Truth, Nothing But The Truth against that sleep. The subtitle is A Watchman’s Call to a Sleeping Church. It is the first book in The Street Preacher’s Apologetics. Christina Berg edited it.
The book is for believers. Grisham’s charge is that half a truth is not a kindness. The church owes people the whole counsel: sin, righteousness, judgment, where the saved and the lost are headed, and the gospel that answers all of it. A softer message can leave someone sure they are safe when they are not.
“For I have not shunned to declare to you the whole counsel of God.” — Acts 20:27
He writes as a watchman. The watchman does not invent the warning. He hears God’s word and says it. If he stays quiet, the blood of the one he never warned is required at his hand. If he warns and the hearer will not turn, the hearer bears his own iniquity, and the watchman has delivered his soul.
“So you, son of man: I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel; therefore you shall hear a word from My mouth and warn them for Me. When I say to the wicked, ‘O wicked man, you shall surely die!’ and you do not speak to warn the wicked from his way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood I will require at your hand. Nevertheless if you warn the wicked to turn from his way, and he does not turn from his way, he shall die in his iniquity; but you have delivered your soul.” — Ezekiel 33:7-9
That is the book’s urgency. Stay awake. Repent in earnest. Hold sound doctrine. Say the warning out loud. Christ is coming. Prepare now.