Charles Finney: Fiend or Foe?

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, but we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.

Charles Finney’s Legacy and Why He Matters

Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. My name is Pastor Steve Cooley. And I'm Mike Abendroth. Mike Hafferhorf and Steve collateral damage. Today, we wanna talk about a very interesting subject and one that will provoke you, prod you, poke you.

You might not like it, or you will really like it, depending on who you are and what your theological background is. When I say Charles Grandison Finney, do you respond with glee, joy, heroes of the faith?

See, I think he used to own the Oakland A's.

Well, actually, I thought he was an actor named Albert Finney. He was from England.

No, you remember the guy who used to, the guy with the orange baseballs and all that? Nevermind. I don't remember that. Really? No. Oakland A's owner during the 70s and I think maybe the 80s. Did he have a handlebar mustache?

No, but he liked his players to wear a handlebar mustache.

Okay, so moving around. I'm looking at a picture of Charles Finney right now, and he doesn't even have a mustache. He's got one of those big, huge kind of Amish beards with no fuzz on the lip.

And his lack of a smile pretty much looks like, I mean, you know, stereotypical Amish kind of guy.

Charles Finney, he was born in 1792, died in 1875. And I would say, Steve, that he has had a impact upon evangelicalism that is far reaching.

Huge impact. And I don't think, you know, many of our listeners today probably won't know too much about Charles Finney, but the legacy he left behind the church is pretty devastating.

It's interesting that people today, they usually love Finney. And I don't know why they love Finney, Steve. I actually think it's ignorance because if they really understood what Finney taught, believed, promoted, they would not like him.

So today I think, what do we want to do? We want to educate people on what Finney really believed.

Well, he's perceived, you know, looking back at things, he's perceived as this great evangelist, a man who caused a so-called great awakening. And yet what he really brought about was deadness, theological deadness, spiritual deadness, a vast vacuum here in New England is actually his legacy.

Most people think of Finney and they'll think of Billy Sunday. They'll think of revivalists. We love revivals here in America. And I just have a problem. Just listen to Phil Johnson, MacArthur's, I don't know, he's not MacArthur's ghostwriter because that's not what he does, but he takes John's sermons and put them into books.

Phil Johnson, he used to be an elder at Grace Church. This is the title of his article, A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing, How Charles Finney's Theology Ravaged the Evangelical Movement. It sounds pretty harsh.

Those are fighting words. I kind of like that. It's like the lovey-dovey feel-good message of Charles Finney.

Well, I think Phil Johnson would take Charles Grandison Finney apart in some kind of debate or something like that.

So how can Jerry Falwell call Finney, or he did call him before Falwell went to heaven, how can he call him one of the heroes of his faith?

Well, I think it's because he really popularized some ideas that many current evangelicals hold onto, and he's become kind of an authoritative source. If you can't really prove your case by the Bible, then you can appeal to Finney.

Keith Green loves Finney. I still like Keith Green, but I just don't. We have this little slogan around here. What are people thinking? You know, if youth with a mission loves Finney, that's fine because, you know, what do they know, I guess, is what I say.

But when it comes to the Bible, my question to you, no-compromise radio listeners, why do you like Finney? Because it feels good, because your old pastor liked Finney, because he really teaches what the Bible says.

He has really become, as Phil Johnson said, a poster boy for evangelicalism, and we have fallen quite far if that is the case.

Finney on Original Sin and Human Depravity

Well, maybe what we should do, because we've talked about Finney a little bit here, maybe what we should do is give some of the quotes from his systematic theology, some of the things he actually taught, and then let's talk about how they measure up to the Bible.

I like that, except I know I'm going to be on the receiving end of some of these quotes, so we'll try to do our best to make it provocative and spicy.

Okay, well, let me ask you, what would you think of this, Pastor Mike? I disagree wholeheartedly. Really? Hmm. Well, give me a moment here. Okay, this is from Finney's systematic theology about original sin.

We deny that the human constitution is morally depraved.

I mean, just some bold statement like that. We deny that the human constitution is morally depraved. Well, then I mean, how far do I need to go? Do we go to Romans 5? Do we go to Ephesians 2? Do we go to Jeremiah 17, 9?

Do we go to Ephesians 4, 17 -19? Do we go to Genesis 6, 5 and following? I mean, here's what I want to ask you, Steve. Why is he trying to push that so far?

Not really, well, I think it's ultimately in an attempt to preserve the idea of free will. Listen to what he says, because he's talking about sin now and whether or not we have a sin nature. And he says this, he says, sinning must be a quality of choice or intention, a quality of choice or intention.

In other words, it's not something natural. It's something we must be free to either do or not do.

Steve, tell me if you think this is right along those lines. If he has a revival and his big issue is not preach the truth like a herald and let the spirit of God regenerate and call and do those kinds of things.

I shouldn't say call, that's more an eternity past, but convert, then here's the way we do it. If my job is to get people to yield to God, then he has to back up and say, when it comes to sinning, their sin is because they didn't yield to God.

And so it's a message of how do I manipulate the people? Easy for me to say.

Born Again, Free Will, and the Anxious Bench

Yeah, well, you know what I remember is, you and I went to hear your old pastor, Raul Reiss years ago, and Raul Reiss kept saying, you must be born again, you must be born again, you must be born again.

And he was preaching right out of John three. And I thought, how could Finney do that? Stand up there and say, you must be born again, and then kind of put the word, you must choose to be, because if you must choose to be a sinner, and you must, as we're gonna see in the rest of his teaching, you must choose to be saved.

What did Jesus mean when he said, you must be born again? And he basically said it was all up to the Holy Spirit. What was he talking about?

The way people try to get around these verses, you know, if I was Finney, I'd say, yes, but what about John three 16? Not dealing with the issue. If you try to get people to yield to your message, here is Jesus, you take the first step, yield in the anxious bench, or the anxious seat in the altar call, which we'll talk about soon enough, make the decision.

Then I think in symmetrical thinking, in a mirrored way, Steve, he goes back to sin and say, the same way people became born again, making an act of the will, it's the same thing for becoming sinful. They did it.

They were constituted sinful because of their sin versus you were born in iniquity by nature, you're sinful, you're in Adam, you're fallen by a federal representative Adam.

Yeah, and why would, of course, why would anybody choose to be sinful? And I mean, it's such an obvious violation of scripture. And I mean, I've said this before, but if you put two little one year old kids in a little room and you give them one toy in there, are they gonna share and play nice?

Or are they gonna eventually wanna wrestle over that toy? And of course, we know the answer. And no one has to teach them how to be sinful. Nobody has to teach them how to be selfish. No one has to teach anyone how to be selfish.

We are by nature, sinful. We come out of, we're estranged from the womb, the Bible says. There's no doubt about that. But let's move on to some of the other things he says were to really actually worse, because he starts talking about salvation.

It's one thing to talk about sin. And I mean, we could go to 2 Timothy 2 and talk about how we're, unbelievers are ensnared by the devil to do his will and all those kinds of, whether or not that means free will.

But listen to this. What'd you say to this, Pastor Mike? He says, we see that if a righteous man forsake his righteousness and die in his sin, he must sink to hell. Whenever a Christian sins, he comes under condemnation and must repent and do his first works or be lost.

Finney’s Salvation by Works and Pelagian Theology

When I first hear that, Steve, if it wasn't Finney who said it in a systematic theology book, I'd say that sounds like Rome. That sounds like Roman Catholicism. And in the day of Edwards preaching and Whitfield's preaching of the second great awakening, you have Finney coming right alongside with this kind of, I wouldn't even think it's Arminianism.

I think it's not semi-Pelagianism. I think it is rank Pelagianism. You by yourself, by your own bootstraps, sola. Bootstrapsa. Can save yourself. Now it might be cloaked in the language of grace and mercy and kindness and Jesus, the son being sent by the father.

It's all that kind of language. But he understands nothing of federal righteousness, alien righteousness, justification by faith alone when God the son takes upon himself, God the father's wrath for sins past, present and future.

And so if you don't finish the call, then you're not going to be saved. And if you die in your sin, you're sinking to hell. This is just man centered salvation. And it's, as we say in California, muy mal.

Salvation by works.

But let's just say something about Pelagius here. Pelagius is someone who taught that Adam's sin affected only Adam. And so that every person after him was a free moral agent. And this is the teaching of Mormonism and so many others.

And this is so closely related to what Finney taught. It's not even funny. This idea that we're morally neutral out of the womb is not found in the Bible. You know what I think, Steve?

Is I think of the paradigm good, better, best. I think some people say to themselves, well, you know, I really like Finney because a lot of people came to Christ under his ministry and they have all these fanciful ideas.

But if you're going to have a hero in the faith, why settle for somebody who in your mind is good? Why don't you go for the best? Why wade through all these horrible things? I don't think Finney's good.

I think he's horrible. But in your mind, if he thinks he's good, can't you find, here's my question, can't you find somebody better than Finney? Let me just tell you what he said when he got saved as he experienced salvation.

Quote, a mighty baptism of the Holy Ghost, which like a wave of electricity, felt like a wave of electricity going through and through me seemed to come in waves of liquid love. Now, can't you find a better testimony than that?

That's straight off TBN. Liquid love. This is called avatar salvation. Liquid love.

I mean, you know, certainly when you get saved, there is that feeling. I mean, I just remember thinking, being amazed at the idea that God could love me, but it was also in recognition of my sinfulness and that God would forgive my sin.

And that concept too was just, it was amazing to me.

Joy, we're for joy. We're against liquid love. There's five kinds of love in the Bible, storge, eros, phileo, agape, and liquid goo. All right, let me ask you one thing, because we've got a lot of these quotes back and forth.

Sinners Bound to Change Their Own Hearts

Tell me what you think of this very popular sermon of Finney's, maybe one of his most popular of all time. And if you are listening today on No Compromise Radio on WVNE 760, you are going to be shocked.

You're going to think I'm making this up. Sinners bound to change their own hearts.

I think that's just great. Look, you do this, you take students over to, and some people are going to find this hard to believe, he takes his preaching students over to the graveyard and encourages them to preach to the tombstones.

Why? Because you can expect that kind of response when you preach to dead people. And this idea that sinners are bound to change their own hearts, again, and appealed to free, meaning no sin impacted on their lives will.

A man must choose to be born again. A man must choose to be regenerated. A man must choose to believe in Christ as if faith itself were a choice. Faith is not a choice. Faith is a gift, the Bible tells us.

I mean, imagine how we'd have to alter the Bible to fit Finney's theology. You know, it is by grace you've been saved through faith, and that is a choice of your own.

Steve, you're right, and what we would never want to do on this ministry here, No Compromise Radio, we wouldn't want to say that God believes for you, God repents for you, you don't have to believe. But when you speak of language of faith and repentance, somehow conveying the idea that it's all in the hands of the sinner and what he says or does has to turn the mind and will of God, we don't like that kind of language.

We want to say God is sovereign and you must repent, but in no way, shape, or form do we think that salvation is found in the hand of the sinner because the sinner only sins. He's bound never to change his own heart.

If he was bound to change his heart, why send Jesus and kill Jesus and pour out God's wrath when we could just give the sinner a few more inducements to change?

And I'm gonna say something shocking. I'm ready for that, I like shocking. Shocking. If you are out here and you really believe, if you're listening and you really believe that men have completely free, unfettered will to change themselves as Finney taught, sinners bound to change their own hearts, then why do you pray for anyone's salvation?

Why? Because God can't do it. And again, I'm not saying this is the case because it is clear. You know, God, who opened Lydia's heart? Lydia or God? It was Lydia. And you could go on and on and on. You will not find this sort of language anywhere in the Bible.

And that's why we call Finney a heretic because he looks at the Bible and says, well, that's all well and good, but.

Why the Anxious Bench and New Measures Are Unbiblical

Well, you're right. And I don't care so much for the anxious bench and for the altar calls and for these methods that are unbiblical. I'm not so against them, although I am, but I'm more against the theology that drives those things.

Wrong view of sin, wrong view of Savior, wrong view of salvation, wrong view of justification by faith. Then they flow into what was called in those days these new measures. And I learned something back at seminary, Steve.

You probably learned the lesson as well. 99 of the time, anything new. Is bad. Is bad. I don't want new. Tell me the old, old story. Preach it. And so when it comes to the revival part, am I glad that people get saved?

Am I glad that there's some kind of revival? Yes, but I'm not glad when it comes out of a theology that is horrible and man-centered and this fainting and weeping and all these kinds of other things trying to play to the will of man.

And Finney did not understand the depths of depravity and the slave nature of fallen man. Well, and here's the thing. I mean, I think you're giving,.

Maybe giving him too much credit because for all these reports of all these salvations and everything like that, what is the legacy of it? I mean, we don't know how many of these people actually came to Christ and how many of them were just caught up in the moment, made some kind of emotional decision or wanted to please someone in the audience or thought they were doing the right thing.

And there was no conversion whatsoever. We have no idea. We have no way of knowing. Well, you're right.

And I stand corrected. You think about the burnt out district. Actually, you're seated. I feel like I want to stand. This burnt out district in New York. And basically that was when Finney came along and taught what he taught, these new measures of salvation, these new measures of how to get saved, that people then responded but realized it wasn't a true change in their life.

They did not have that liquid goo, love, joy, salvation experience, and then walked away, never to return to Christianity because they knew it was fake. And so they called it the burnt out district. And so when you look at his salvation track record, as it were, how many people came to Christ under Finney, most of the people turned away.

He was not like Ashahel Nettleton in Connecticut where most of his converts, quote unquote, they were God's converts through his preaching, they stayed because it was the real gospel.

Right, when you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, the one presented in the Bible, you will not turn away because you have believed and God will keep you. It was his work in the first place. But just talking about Finney, it reminds me of early on, as a convert from Mormonism, I was asked to participate in an outreach in an evangelism program.

And they asked me to speak to the leadership one day about Mormonism. And so they said, can you just kind of tell us some of the keys? And so I had this whole presentation, super nervous. And I went through and I said, they have a wrong view of the Bible, wrong view of sin, wrong view of man, wrong view of God, wrong view of salvation, wrong view, wrong view, wrong view.

And I get done and they go, okay, well, is there just like one verse that you can have? No, and it's the same with Finney, wrong view of man, wrong view of sin, wrong view of salvation, wrong view of God, wrong view.

And you want to say, he's not a heretic, he taught a different gospel.

If justification by faith alone is the article by which the church is standing or falling, Martin Luther, then when he calls justification by faith alone, a theological fiction of imputation, that's in his autobiography, page 56.

Isn't that enough? That is plenty for me. So how can he be your hero? He's only your hero because your old pastor, old Sunday school teacher with little felt flanagraphs has constructed an idea of Finney as this great guy.

And you go, yes, use of the Lord, preach the gospel. Lots of people got saved. And we all, as Christians, like those kinds of people. The problem is your teacher and your pastor did not tell you the real scoop about Charles Finney.

Now we don't want to try to ruin your day. We want you to think biblically and think truthfully. And we want you to have better heroes than that. Like Paul, like Stephen, like Spurgeon, like Mary Schleser, I almost said Mary Glover.

Mary Queen of Scots. We want you to have those kind of heroes. It's good to have heroes of the faith. It is wonderful to have this kind of, these may all who come behind me find me faithful kind of Steve Green, saint, faith, promoters.

What am I saying? I don't know what I'm saying. I get so many emails about, how could you say that about Finney? Well, if I somehow say that this is theological fiction, imputation is, then I think you should probably call me a Roman Catholic.

And I think that's a perfect standard.

Justification by Faith Alone and Christ’s Imputed Righteousness

Here's what I say. You know, when we're dead and buried, if people want to pick apart our teaching, I say, fine. Look at it. I mean, they could do it now. Look at what the Bible says. And if we vary from the Bible, then hold us accountable to it.

And when Finney writes things like this, regeneration implies an entire present change of moral character. That is a change from entire sinfulness to entire holiness. And what he's talking about, regeneration, of course, in his mind, being a choice.

And so when you choose to be regenerated, you become entirely holy, which you then can walk away from. We're not entirely holy. You know, all of Romans 7 is a denial of that. Paul says the things that he wants to do, he doesn't do.

The things he doesn't want to do, he does. And he wrestles with it because we understand that sanctification is a process. We're not perfectly holy. We are positionally holy. We are not perfectly actually holy.

Well, to quote Finney against you, this error has slain more souls, I fear, than all the universalism that ever cursed the world. Talking about the simultaneously justified and sinful.

Yeah, well, you know what? I'm still going to be able to go to sleep tonight. The fact that Finney disagrees with me, well, you know, I may get extra sleep.

If you're listening today and you like Charles Finney, here's what I'd ask you to do. Why don't you just go online and pull up Phil Johnson's expose on Finney, see where the quotes are from. These men are not lying and somehow trying to get you to hate Finney for no reason because they think they can sell things.

Or pull up Michael Horton's article on Finney and just take a look with your own eyes and say to yourself, if I had to pick someone to follow, would it be someone who would teach the imputed righteousness of Christ or someone who is preaching another gospel, Roman Catholic gospel?

I personally, Steve, want to follow those who teach what Romans 4 teaches. Blessed are those whose lawless deeds have been forgiven and whose sins have been covered. Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will not take into account.

And why won't the Lord take it into account? Because he has placed that sin on Christ and Jesus has paid for it. And I don't think that's a theological fiction at all.

Finney, Perfectionism, and the Call to Biblical Discernment

Well, I mean, think about this. If you're listening to us today on NoCompromiseRadio .com, if you're listening to us today and you think that you can stop sinning, that you have stopped sinning, that you are now somehow perfect, I would encourage you to do a 2 Corinthians 13 5 and examine yourselves and see if you're in the faith, because this idea of Finney's, that we can be perfect in this lifetime is nowhere found in the Bible.

Well, today we've been talking about Charles Finney, and most people love Charles Finney. And if you're a Roman Catholic or you're a Pelagian, then I think you should probably love Charles Finney because he echoes your own theology.

But if you're evangelical and you love to listen to WVNE and you like preaching like John Piper, Alistair Begg, John MacArthur, R .C. Sproul, those men would all stand up against this error, not because it's a person, because it's a system of theology that is man-centered and not God-centered.

And so we're gonna tape another show about Charles Finney, because if we can't convince you with one show... We'll do two shows. So this is Mike Abendroth and... Steve Kulin. And we're at Bethlehem Bible Church.

We'd love to see you on Sunday.

See you tomorrow. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible-teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God's Word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 10 .15 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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