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by Charlie Wolcott

“Do not remove the ancient landmark, which your fathers have set.” ~Proverbs 22:28

Back in 2011 when the Japanese Tsunami hit, I remember watching a lot of pictures and videos about the destruction. But one picture in particular stood out. It was a solitary post (in Japanese) but it said: “Do not build beyond here.” Needless to say, many of the buildings hit were built beyond that mark. Why would such an old post be in that location, a good ways in from the shore? The answer is simple: This was where the previous tsunami or an earlier one reached.

When I grew up in Colorado, we had a fence between our house and the empty lot next to us. That fence was not on the formal survey boundary, however it had been there for well over 50 years. When we moved, a new family bought our house and the city was preparing to build a duplex on the empty lot. The city waited for the new owners to leave for work and then tore down the fence and moved it. The new owners could do nothing about it.

Today, there is a near total disregard for the elderly and the ancient traditions. There is a huge push to erase the symbols and the records of the past. When we discovered the Holocaust concentration camps in Germany, General Eisenhower brought in as many cameras and video records as he could because he feared the day would come when people would disbelieve these events ever happened. And today, there are a number of people who deny the Holocaust actually took place.

One of the reasons why people ignore ancient markers is because they do not understand why they are there. There is this mindset that the previous generation was not as smart or educated as we are, and because of that, we know better than they do. Despite the fact that we stand upon the shoulders of the giants who went before us, there is a huge disregard for them. Our society has acquired an arrogance in thinking we do not need that which brought us here because we “have arrived.” Such arrogance is a common precursor to a great fall.

A Facebook meme tweaks a well-known saying: “Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it… and those who do learn it are doomed to watch those who did not learn it repeat it.” The Founding Fathers of America knew their history, so they set checks and balances to prevent it from happening again. Today, there is such a push to remove the historic boundaries, completely disregarding why they were set up to begin with.

The liberals who want freedom from the rules do not understand why the rules were set up; yet on the other side, the conservatives who want the rules remaining in place have tended to fight for keeping the rules, also without knowing why they are there. My pastor said one time that ‘tradition’ is the practice of doing what you usually do without knowing why you do it. And because the reasons for why the rules were set up are forgotten, many are questioning the purpose of those rules.

But what about us in our spiritual lives? It is not just in politics that the ancient landmarks have been removed; it is also on the spiritual plain. When the deep time models which helped launch Darwin got going, the Bible was removed from having authority in the public square. We no longer began to examine claims on the basis of what the Bible says but on the basis of what modern science and experts say. For most of history, the Bible had authority in the public square. Now it is no longer recognized. The ancient landmarks have been moved so no one can go back and say, “This is what it should be and here are the records that prove it.”

Psalm 11:3 says, “If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?” Truth is something firm, concrete, and immovable. Those who stand on the truth cannot be touched, so what the enemy does is not attack the person standing on the truth but attack the truth the person is standing on. If the truth goes down, so does the person.

Removing the ancient landmarks may not affect you right away, but it does open the doors for other issues down the road. There are many people who fell for the old earth deception, and when I hear them speak that seems to be the only blemish in their doctrine. However, because of allowing that in, the next generation has figured out you can believe certain doctrines, reject others, and still be fine (that is not true, by the way). Sound doctrine incorrectly became an issue of picking and choosing what you think is important and disregarding what you think is not. This puts you at the top of the authority chain, because you get to decide what you have to follow and what you don’t. The next generation after that takes it even further, and so on until the Bible and sound doctrine is not only not considered, but actually despised.

Now we have preachers who utterly disdain ancient landmarks, describing such notions as “Brickianty.” They describe these sound doctrines as being treated like walls that keep some people in and keep some people out. They instead describe the doctrines in terms of a spring of a trampoline and they adjust and stretch depending upon the weight of the person jumping. Yes, I know precisely who the person who says this is, but I am not going to mention him here. This author/pastor rightfully complains about stiff religionists, however, he puts the blame on the doctrines of Scripture, not the person who misuses them. This is the same pastor who counseled a young Christian musician whom our leader, Jason DeZurik knows personally, to divorce his wife, leave his kids, and go open into a homosexual lifestyle. Why? Because the foundations were destroyed, and the ancient landmarks had been removed.

We need to place the landmarks back into position, and fortunately, while they have been broken down, there is still the evidence of where they once stood. But it is not enough to replace them. We need to establish formally why they were there to begin with. And it starts with the Bible having its proper place in our lives. When we have the Bible defining the territory of what goes where and what belongs in which areas, then our lives will make much more sense. When the storms of life come, we won’t be as the Japanese who were caught off guard in the tsunami. And because we have an enemy hell-bent on removing the ancient landmarks, we have to keep a vigilant guard at all times against him to protect them. In my studies of Paul’s letters, he talks about false teachers and false doctrines more than any other topic. Let us keep the ancient landmarks in place and let us guard them with our everything so those who come after us can know the truth and live accordingly.

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