Alas, also, real servants of God, sound teachers, have now almost disappeared from the earth. 2Tim 4:3 is now fulfilled before our eyes, men ‘will not endure sound doctrine’. They will still tolerate what is called evangelism, they will listen eagerly to a talk on ‘the signs of the times’ (made up of sensational items culled from newspapers with a little scripture ingeniously fitted in to give respectability), they will listen to missionary addresses, but sound doctrine they will not endure! Hence we have, in that divine declaration, an infallible test by which the poor child of god may measure things in the Babel of tongues now going on in Christendom! That test is this: anything which is endured today in the religious world cannot be sound doctrine; anything which is approved of, well attended, popular, is not ‘sound doctrine’.
Where God works, he always does so consistently with his own Word. What I mean by that is this: when he raises up, equips, and sends forth one of his servants, that servant will necessarily preach the Word, and denounce all that is opposed to the Word: hence, his message is bound to be unpopular, in fact hated by all who are not regenerated. Was it not thus with the Old Testament prophets? Would even the Israelites of their day endure sound doctrine? Would they do so when the Lord Jesus preached it? Would they when the Apostles taught it? Would they in the time of Luther and Calvin? And poor, fallen human nature is the same now! Mark it well, my dear friend, that the people to whom the Old Testament prophets, Christ and the apostles preached were not irreligious! No, indeed far from it! They were very religious: but they were determined to have religion of their own, which suited them, and they would not tolerate anything which condemned them. So it is now. [Letter to Lowell Green, August 19, 1934]