By Robert R. Kopp
Umpire Marty Springstead's first major league appearance behind home plate was memorable.
It was 1966 in Washington, D.C. Frank Howard, the mountainous slugger of the Washington Senators, stepped up to the plate. The first pitch to Howard was a knee-high fast ball. Springstead called it a strike.
Howard turned around and thundered at the rookie umpire, "Get something straight, buster! I don't know where you came from or how you got to the major leagues but they don't call that pitch on me a strike. Understand?"
The next pitch was a knee-high fast ball. Springstead yelled, "Two!" "Two what?" roared Howard. "Too low, much too low," said Springstead.
Every now and then we meet someone who wants us to compromise our values. They want us to call balls when they are strikes or call strikes when they are balls. They want us to say it's safe when it's out and say it's out when it's safe.
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And sometimes there are some pretty intimidating incentives to forget who we are and who He is and what He expects us to do and who He expects us to be. Sometimes there are big people and big bucks and big politics and just a lot of big things that try to influence us to be and to do what betrays who we are as His. You know what I mean.
It's nothing new. As he said good-bye to the Ephesian elders, Paul said, "I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them. So be on your guard!" (
see Acts 20). Jesus Himself said, "Watch out for false prophets" (
Matthew 7:15).
"There will be scoffers," wrote Jude in quoting the apostles, "who will follow their own ungodly desires." There's always somebody trying to get us to forget the Word and fit into the ways of the world.
It's nothing new. And Jude acknowledged that Christians know their Christianity will be constantly challenged in the world. He wrote, "Though you already know all this, I want to remind you." Jude wanted Christians to remember who they are in Him and the many worldly attempts to intimidate or sometimes entice Christians to compromise or even abandon their witness to the Word for the ways of the world.
Jude identified those anti-Christian influences who "have secretly slipped in among you" as "god-less men, who change the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord." The primary purpose of the letter was to alert the church to the problem of Satanic forces which sneak into the church with the intent of replacing the church's witness to the Word with the wicked ways of the world.
Jude wrote, "I felt I had to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints. For certain men whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you."