“For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light .” (Ephesians 5:8)
Christ Jesus said, “If the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness?” Matthew 6:23) Of course, light cannot be darkness. He was in effect saying, “If what you believe to be light is in fact darkness, you have great darkness in you.”
I believe that it refers to false converts, and weak people who have accepted heresy. They believe that they possess truth, but instead they have deception in a death grip. It is easier to win a lost individual than a religious-but-lost one. Lost people may reject the Gospel, and they still know that they are lost. The religious-but-lost individual believes that he or she is saved. They will reject attempts to deliver them because they believe that they have the truth.
Satan knows this fact very well. In this last days period of great deception and apostasy, Satan and his minions are putting much effort into making false converts. Christ Jesus also stated that false converts are “two-fold more the children of hell.” In other words, “how great is their darkness?”
The greatest source of false converts are professing Christians that dilute the Gospel, and mix it with the influences and philosophy of the world system, to make it palatable to people that do not want the biblical Christ. They attract individuals that have rejected truth, and are completely in love with the world system. They lead their false converts to church meetings designed so that there is no contrast between what they believe is godliness (false light) and worldliness (darkness).
They approach soul-winning with the belief that Christ Jesus, the Gospel, and the Holy Spirit, are not powerful enough to attract and convict lost people. In fact, they have abandoned conviction in favor of a method of convincing that is based on a compromised Gospel. In the spirit of one notorious truth-bender, they are saying, “If you like your worldliness, you can keep your worldliness.” It is another Gospel with another Christ, and it is greater darkness.
I’ve been around long enough to have witnessed this deception (based on diabolical pragmatism) develop and become prominent. It wasn’t the way David Wilkerson did it. When he went to the street gangs of New York, he did not adopt the image of a gang member, wear gang clothing, learn gangbonics, offer them a gangster Jesus, with a gangster-pleasing Gospel. Wilkerson looked like a preacher, talked like a preacher, boldly proclaimed the undiluted Gospel, and offered them the biblical Jesus unaltered. He gave them light, not darkness masquerading as light. How great was that light? Thousands of young people were saved and thousands are still being delivered because of Wilkerson’s belief in God’s method.
I’m glad that there wasn’t a how-to guide around to inform David Wilkerson that pure Gospel and Christ Jesus is not enough, that he would have to speak and look like a defeated and bound sinner to reach them. I’m glad that through prayer and the leading of the Holy Spirit, he knew that true light would be enough. It was enough for the early church, and enough in every great revival in history. It is enough today, if our goal is true converts to Christ Jesus.
“But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.” (1 John 1:7)
It’s basically a wrong understanding of what Paul meant when he said, “Become all things to all men.”