The Last 100 Years

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Tonight, we are concluding our 14-week study on church history, and over the course of the past 14 weeks, we have looked at some of the most important periods in church history.
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From the ancient creeds of the early church to the formal confessions of the Protestant Reformation, we have seen that throughout her existence, the church has always had people within her who were willing to stand for, and sometimes even die for, truth.
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We truly stand as a church today on the shoulders of giants.
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Men like Augustine, Chrysostom, Boniface, Wycliffe, Huss, Calvin, Zwingli, Bunyan, Edwards, Spurgeon.
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The list goes on and on and on.
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Some of these men we have not had time to engage in this short series, because time is limited.
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But I want to say this, in the coming weeks and months and years, hopefully we will have time to engage some of these men.
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Men like Jonathan Edwards, who we could take an entire series and just study his life and his ministry.
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And Charles Spurgeon and others.
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I'm sorry? Yes, so many, so many.
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And tonight, we conclude this series of studies with an examination of what we are going to call the recent developments which have arisen within the church.
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And I understand the idea of recent is somewhat relative.
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Because recent, you know, you sort of have to look at it from the perspective of, well, what do you mean? You mean recent in the last year, recent in the last five years.
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So when we say recent, we're going to look at the last hundred or so years of church history.
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We're limiting our time, basically, to that.
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Can you really fathom all that has happened in a hundred years of human history? Within a hundred years of human history, we've gone from the primary mode of transportation being the back of an animal, which was the same for thousands of years prior.
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And only within the last hundred years has the primary mode changed to a vehicle that is not powered by an animal, but rather by an engine.
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We've gone from being able to cross the sea in a boat to cross the heavens to the moon.
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Less than a hundred years.
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So much has happened in just the last century, in human history alone, that it boggles the mind.
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Many of you probably remember a time before there were so many of the modern conveniences.
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I jokingly say my daughter will never know of a time when a house didn't have a computer and a cell phone in it.
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And I remember when phones had cords.
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And there's a lot of teenagers here tonight that don't remember that.
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You know why they call it an icebox? Because it used to not be a refrigerator.
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It used to be a box that they put ice in.
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And milk was delivered.
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We've seen these shifts and changes in a hundred years.
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Well, beloved, there have been many changes in the church also in the last hundred years.
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So in an attempt to simplify tonight's lesson, because that's my ultimate goal, is to always try to bring the complex down and make it easy to understand, I want to simply separate the movements of the last hundred years into two categories.
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And I did notice a small typographical error.
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It should say the negative movements rather than just movement.
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It should say negative movements in church in recent history.
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So we're going to separate tonight by the negative and the positive movements of church history in the last hundred years.
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Now, I must say, much more is going to have to be left out than is put in because of time.
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We've had to do that for two thousand years of church history.
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Certainly we're going to have to do it even for the last hundred years.
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But I've tried to in my choosing of what to teach on, I've tried to choose things that I consider to be not only negative, but influential, so that these are things that are things that we're actually dealing with when we look at the last hundred years of church history.
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So when we talk about the negative movements, these are the ones that we would say have been harmful in the proclamation of the truth of the gospel.
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So that's why we would say they're negative.
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Now, I want to before we go on, I want to make this point.
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Not everyone would agree that these are negative.
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But when I say they're negative, I'm saying from the perspective of our understanding of the Bible, God and theology, these have been negative movements.
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Somebody may want to argue with me later and feel free.
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But these are ones that I would say, looking at the last hundred years of history, these have brought with them very negative things.
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The first one is what is known as the social gospel movement.
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The social gospel movement.
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This is a movement which arose in the latter part of the 19th century, and it gained its footing and popularity in the 20th century.
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It is focused on seeking to correct social ills such as poverty, lack of education, crime and war.
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The concern in this movement, according to its adherence, is the promotion of justice and equality.
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The social gospel movement is at the heart of what we would call liberal Christianity.
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A few weeks ago, we discussed the seven sisters of mainline Protestantism.
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I don't know how many of you remember us talking about the seven mainline Protestant denominations.
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And we said that those churches are generally, and by and large, liberal churches.
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The adherents would argue that social justice was the concern that Jesus had, and it's the concern that we should have.
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They would say, Jesus ministered to the poor, Jesus ministered to the sick, Jesus ministered to the outcast.
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And they say that that's what Jesus did, so that's what we should be doing.
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And here's the thing.
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None of those things that are promoted among the social gospel proponents are necessarily bad per se.
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Giving aid to the hurting is a good thing, and it's something that Christians should do.
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We have a mandate to help widows and to help orphans, to help those who can't help themselves.
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That's part of the mandate of the gospel.
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However, the problem with the social gospel movement is that it downplays the biblical teachings of sin, salvation in Christ alone, heaven and hell, judgment, and the future kingdom.
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Essentially, the social gospel movement makes the gospel about social justice rather than cosmic justice.
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The gospel of Jesus Christ is about sinful man being divided from a holy God.
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We have committed cosmic treason against God.
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Our Creator is angry over our sin, and only through Christ can His anger be propitiated.
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That's the gospel.
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And the social gospel movement has not only rejected that, but they have replaced this issue of cosmic treason and they've replaced it with social justice.
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And they've made the gospel of no effect in regard to salvation.
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I'll give you an example, because sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words and a word picture is worth even more.
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So I'll give you an example.
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If I were to say that Jesus Christ fed 5,000 people with five loaves and two fish, and He fed them to the full and there was even scraps left over, you would believe that that was a miracle.
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Yes? I hope we would all agree that that's a miracle.
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That in some form or fashion, there had to be some multiplication.
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That through the hands of Christ, those five loaves and those two fish became more than five loaves and two fish.
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That in some way, there was a creative action on the part of Christ, whereby a miracle occurred and 5,000 people were able to eat and eat to the full.
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Right? There's a man by the name of John Dominic Croson.
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How many of you have ever heard that name? Only a few.
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Well, my children, of course, have heard.
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John Dominic Croson is a liberal theologian.
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He is very popular in the social gospel movement, and he is one of the people who created the Jesus Seminar, which is a liberal group which seeks to teach a very different Jesus than what the Bible presents.
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John Dominic Croson, in teaching on the feeding of the 5,000, he said it's a parable.
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It's not what actually occurred.
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What actually occurred was that Jesus convinced those who had food to share it with those who did not have food, and through that, the miracle was the miracle of socialism.
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It was the miracle of sharing, of commune, of coming together in community, and those who have share with those who don't have.
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And Jesus's miracle was the convincing of the haves to share with the have nots.
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Now, I'm not sure if you're familiar with the term eisegesis, but that means to read into the text something that is not there.
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That's it.
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And I realize it can also be pronounced eisegesis, because Richard wants to say something about that.
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But yes, eisegesis.
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But it is to read into the text something that is not there.
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Right? Is there any better example than what I just gave to you? Someone who's reading something into the text that's not there? But that is the best example of someone who is a part of the social gospel movement, who is robbing the gospel of truth and replacing it with a social justice mentality.
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And there are many other examples I could give, but that one I think just really drives home the point of the danger of the social gospel movement.
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What happens is that the church goes from becoming a church to becoming a social club.
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A lot of churches with the social club mentality have abandoned the gospel.
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They've abandoned the truth of the gospel, and then they've replaced it with this idea that it's all about doing right in society.
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It's all about doing justice in society, and it's not about preaching sin.
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And that's why you don't hear sin preached.
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It's why you don't hear salvation by grace through faith preached.
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It's why you don't hear justification by faith preached.
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You don't hear these things because that's not a part of the social gospel.
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Yes.
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Oh yeah, good example.
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Jack will remember this, and Shirley will as well.
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Pat will as well.
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Back whenever our former minister went to the Disciples of Christ National Conference, they were discussing not the gospel and how to get people saved, but they were discussing something about the diamonds in Sierra Leone or some kind of social issue that was one of the major concerns of this national conference.
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I couldn't imagine walking into a conference with R.C.
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Sproul and him standing up and saying, you know, we need to do something about those diamonds in Sierra Leone, you know, because his concern is the gospel.
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Our concern should be the gospel.
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And the social gospel is not the gospel.
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In fact, to call it a gospel is to actually miscommunicate the truth of what it is.
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So that is one of the major concerns, I think, of the last hundred years that has crept in and has really influenced.
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Yes.
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Yes, it's politics wrapped in the veneer of the sacred, you know, of the religious.
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You know, in the world, we have the divide between the sacred and the secular.
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And what happens is the secular makes its way into the sacred and makes the sacred secular.
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And that's what has happened.
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All right.
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So we understand the social gospel movement.
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Let us now move to number two, the charismatic movement.
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Yeah, we're going to let me write this out for everyone.
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The charismatic movement.
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Most of us are familiar with churches which define themselves as charismatic.
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In fact, some might even challenge me for putting this in the negative category.
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Some might say putting that in a negative category is not fair.
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My mom goes to charismatic church.
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My mom actually does.
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I can say that.
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But some of you might be thinking that it's unfair.
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Well, this is the fastest growing religious group in the world.
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It's growing faster than Islam.
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People say Islam is fast growing religion.
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That's not true.
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The fastest growing religious population in the world is charismatic movement.
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Yet overwhelming numbers do not a positive make.
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The charismatic movement was birthed out of a series of Methodist sponsored revivals, which occurred at the Azusa Street Mission in California in 1906.
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In fact, this is why a lot of churches you will see call themselves congregational Methodists or congregational holiness, because this is the out of which they were birthed.
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People claim to be baptized in the Holy Spirit as in Acts chapter 2 and receiving miraculous signs as gifts of healing and tongues.
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This led to a tremendous enthusiasm which spread all over the United States.
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The name charismatic, by the way, comes from the Greek word charis, which means gift.
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So the idea of the charismatic is gift focused ministry or the sign or miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit.
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Sometimes they are called Pentecostal because they hearken back to the gifts that were given on the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit fell as tongues of fire and people spoke with other languages.
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The problem which the charismatic movement has given rise to is the idea which I have entitled, and I'm sure I'm not the first one to ever think of this, but the problem with the charismatic movement is it has given rise to the theology of the experience.
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The theology of the experience.
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If a person claims to have an experience no matter what the experience is, then it must be true whether or not that experience lines up with Scripture.
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This has led to some of the most dangerous teachings which have ever been promoted throughout the ranks of those who claim to be Christians.
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The most dangerous, of course, being the new revelations.
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People say, well, God spoke to me and thus and so.
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For instance, Richard, do you believe the apostle Paul wrote the book of Hebrews? No, and I don't believe he did either.
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However, and I agree with you, but I knew you didn't, so I asked you that question.
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You don't believe Paul wrote the book of Hebrews? There was a very popular charismatic teacher who was teaching and he was opening his Bible to the book of Hebrews and he said during his lesson, he said, a lot of people debate who wrote the book of Hebrews, but God told me Paul wrote it, so Paul wrote it.
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As I said, Richard and I would disagree with this man based on the text of Hebrews.
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I don't believe Paul wrote it.
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It has been an issue down through the ages of controversy, but the point is this man just said God revealed it to me.
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I don't have to wonder anymore.
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God just told me.
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That's a very small example of the massive problem in charismatic theology.
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The theology of experience.
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I meditated and went to heaven.
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I heard a guy one day, he was talking to this group.
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He's a very popular Louisiana minister.
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I think he's from Louisiana, and I'm not sure that's the way you would say Louisiana.
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He's a guy from Louisiana.
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A very popular guy, and he was talking to these people and apparently some woman had lost a child and he said he had been to heaven and saw her child and she was with Jesus and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
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Just such garbage.
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I mean, I'd tell him to his face.
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Just garbage.
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This whole idea of...
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And here's the big thing that they'll say.
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A man with an experience is never at the mercy of a man with an argument.
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That's a lie.
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Experiences lie.
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People hallucinate all the time.
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Don't tell me that an experience is the determinator of truth.
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Such a thing is highly questionable.
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But anyway, getting back to the lesson.
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If a group is unwilling to be challenged by Scripture because of their allegiance to their experience, then the experience becomes the arbiter of truth.
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And thus, there is no way to determine truth outside of the experience.
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That's the problem in charismatism.
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You can say, well, speaking in tongues is an issue.
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You can say prophecy is an issue.
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You can say all these different things.
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The biggest issue is the theology of experience that you can't question.
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People say, you can't question Benny Hinn because he's had these experiences.
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Well, no, that's not true.
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Benny Hinn has lied to the people of God so many times he has spoken false prophecies.
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And this is their thing now.
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Well, the prophets of the New Testament are not held to the same standards as the prophets of the Old Testament.
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Because in the Old Testament, if a prophet spoke something that did not come true, he was to be stoned.
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And they say, well, we're no longer under law, under grace.
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But don't tell me that a prophet is held to a lower standard.
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But that's their argument.
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Because he said, I have it on video, where he said in the 90s that Fidel Castro would die.
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In the 90s.
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Well, Fidel Castro sure outlived his prophecy.
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I have it on video where he said that the homosexual community would be judged by God and eliminated before the new millennium.
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Guess what? They didn't marry.
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He was wrong.
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And yet people will continue to support his madness.
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You might say, well, that's a low-hanging fruit.
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He's a good, he's a hard one.
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You're picking on the low-hanging fruit.
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Beloved, there's a lot more than Benny Hinn out there.
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But Benny Hinn's not the only one.
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There's a lot of these guys.
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And the charismatic movement allows within its ranks the potential of major heresy because it does not align what it says with Scripture.
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It aligns what it says with experience.
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And when experience is the arbiter of truth, then there's a problem.
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So, that's number two.
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Yes.
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Oh, sure, sure, sure.
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Yes.
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In fact, I will add, I love John Piper.
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John Piper is a good, godly pastor.
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But this is one area where he and I differ much.
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You and I, and at least I know Holly has, I don't know if you have, have seen the video of John Piper talking about speaking in tongues.
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What does he express more than just his desire for an experience? He wants this experience, right? And he says it comes and goes in our church, and it flows in and out.
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It's not a constant thing.
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It's in seasons.
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But there's nothing in Scripture that would legitimize anything he said other than that's what he's experienced.
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Now, I'm not saying John Piper's a heretic.
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I'm saying on this issue, I think he's wrong.
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I love John Piper.
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I think he's a good man.
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I think he's a good pastor.
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But I think on this issue, he has given in to the idea of experience as being an arbiter of truth.
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And like I said, so I'm not saying that somebody in the charismatic movement is by necessity a false teacher.
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I'm saying that on this issue, I think that they're wrong.
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And I think that we have the freedom to say that.
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Thank God.
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All right, so there's more to go.
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Number three, the anti-lordship movement.
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The anti-lordship movement.
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Lordship salvation is the belief that when a person comes to Jesus Christ as Savior, he also must receive Him as Lord.
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His process of sanctification begins at that moment.
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And while never reaching perfect sanctification as the Wesleyans would teach, he does begin a process whereby he is being conformed to the image of Christ.
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Those who promote the anti-lordship perspective believe that a person can take Jesus as Savior, but not as Lord.
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And ultimately, they can believe on Jesus, and it have no external or internal effect on their life.
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These are the people who say, as long as you've raised your hand, as long as you've said this prayer, as long as you've come forward, as long as you've made your commitment, as long as you've been baptized, as long as you've done these things, your ticket is punched, your hell insurance is paid up, and now you're saved.
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This is also called, and I like this phrase maybe sometimes better, easy believism.
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And again, ultimately what it says is this.
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All you have to do is make a one-time assent of the mind, a one-time accepting of this proposition that Jesus is the Savior, and as long as you've made that one-time proposition assent of the mind, you are then eternally saved, and there is no reason you should ever question your salvation ever again, because you made that one-time assent of the mind.
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It's also a problem in a lot of Southern Baptist churches.
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Yes.
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Well, I would say Perseverance of the Saints, which is different.
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The Perseverance of the Saints says that once a person is saved, legitimately and genuinely saved by a change of the Holy Spirit, that that person's faith will persevere, that they will continue in faithfulness to Christ, because Christ has legitimately saved them.
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That is different than saying that a person can say, I believe in Jesus, tomorrow go out and reject Him and say, yeah, that person's saved.
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Because Perseverance of the Saints says that not only does Christ save you, but He continues your work.
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It is God who works within you, both to will and to do His good pleasure, that God will continue working in you.
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That's not to say a person can't have times of doubt or have times of failure, which we know that they do.
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The Apostle Peter rejected Christ three times, but Christ renewed him to his faith.
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I do believe that a true believer can have times of doubt and even times of grievous sin.
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The Abstract of Principles says that, that a believer can have times of grievous sin, but that God will restore him to repentance.
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That's part of what we believe about the Perseverance of the Saints, that God is persevering with us to bring us to the end.
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So I do not believe that a person can simply say, I believe in Jesus without it changing their life and it be considered a legitimate salvation.
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The Bible says they went out from among us because they were not of us.
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For had they been of us, they would have remained with us, but they went out from us to prove that they were never of us.
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1 John 2, verse 19.
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Oh, I would see it in the way that the gospel is presented.
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I would see that in the way the gospel is presented.
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The guys who do the hand raised thing, raise your hand, believe in Jesus, and that's it.
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And there's no expectation of discipleship, and there's no expectation of growth.
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That's seen, I think, in the methodology of how a person receives Christ.
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Let me give you a good example, and I know you had a question.
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Go ahead and say it.
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Yes, absolutely.
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In fact, Sunday I'm preaching a sermon.
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The title of the sermon is, How Can I Know I'm Saved? How can I know? What does Peter mean when he says in 2 Peter 1.10 to make our calling and election certain? What does he mean by that? That's what I'm going to preach on Sunday.
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How are we supposed to be confident? Oh, we're supposed to be confident because one time when we were six years old, you raised your hand at a church, but you've never since then had any longing for Christ.
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Should you be confident in that? No.
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There should not be confidence in such a vain acceptance of simply a proposition.
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Let me tell this story, and some of you have heard this before, but it's a good story, so I'll tell it again.
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I was in my truck driving on Merrill Road.
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I know right where I was, and I don't know why it is my brain works this way, but it just remembers right where I was and what was happening.
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I was driving because I almost had to go into a telephone pole when this happened because it freaked me out so much.
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Listening to a preacher, very local preacher, very popular preacher, and this is what he said, and I quote, You need to accept Jesus.
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This is on the radio.
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I'm listening to him preach.
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He says, You need to accept Jesus, because even if you don't like Him, once you've got Him, you can't lose Him.
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What possesses a man to say such a thing? What possesses a man to say that that's what it means to be biblically justified by faith? One thing that the reformers said, they said, Justification is by faith alone, but faith alone will never be alone.
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Let me say it again.
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Justification is by faith alone, but faith will never be alone, because faith will always be accompanied by the fruit of the Spirit.
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Galatians chapter 5, 2 Peter 1, the fruits that are increasing in our lives are the result of our salvation, not the cause, but they are the necessary outgrowth of our faith.
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And so if a person says to me, I'm saved, but I don't have any desire for Christ.
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I don't have any desire for the Word.
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I don't have any desire for fellowship in the church.
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I don't have any desire for obedience to God.
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I don't have any desire for prayer or reading of Scripture.
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But I'm saved.
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I would say, You're lying to yourself.
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You are deceived.
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You are the one that Jesus spoke of.
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When He said in Matthew chapter 7, He said, On that day many will come to me and say, Lord, have we not done this? And have we not done that? In your name.
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And I would look at them and I would say, Depart from me.
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I never knew you.
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He didn't say, I knew you for a time and you fell away.
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See, that's the problem with those people who believe you can lose your salvation.
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That's false.
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But He did look at them and He said, I never knew you.
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So I think that's, I don't mean to wax on so much on that issue, but I think that's an important one.
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The anti-lordship crowd believes that there is no ultimate change which is necessary in a believer.
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And we would say that's wrong.
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And it's a false teaching.
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Yeah.
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No submission.
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It's not about submission.
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All right.
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Number four.
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This is a relatively newer one for some of you might not even have heard of this one.
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The emergent church, the emergent church, E-M-E-R-G-E-N-T.
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Sometimes called the emerging church.
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Emerging and emergent are synonymous.
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This term relates to a group of churches which are very concerned with adapting to cultural style and influence as a way to engage people.
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They say that as new cultures arise, a new church should also arise.
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And the movement is very concerned with cultural sensitivity.
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The movement is marked by a desire to re-examine doctrinal beliefs and the teachings of the Bible.
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This is even worse than seeker sensitivity because a lot of churches that might define themselves as seeker sensitive might still hold to some strong doctrinal truth.
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But in the emergent church, there is no specifically defined church doctrine which makes it really hard to pinpoint the error.
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It's like tying the nail jello to a wall.
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You just can't do it.
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But one of the things that's generally agreed upon by the emergent churches, or those who identify themselves as such, is that they're taking a stand against the traditional.
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They're standing against the man kind of thing.
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There's this idea that the traditional church is dead and they've got to have this new emergent culture, this new emerging church that meets the culture where they are.
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Let me read to you two quotes from emergent church leaders.
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I like to go to the source and kind of pull from you.
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This is what they say.
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One author describes the emergent church like this.
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He said, The emerging church is a place where people have felt the freedom to explore questions and experiment with new forms of lifestyle and corporate practice.
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End quote.
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It's experimenting.
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You know who I know of who experimented? A couple of guys named Nadab and Abihu.
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It didn't turn out so good for them.
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So I don't know if I like that idea.
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Now I'm being sarcastic.
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Yeah, Eve experimented, didn't she? All right.
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The second quote.
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They, speaking of the emerging generations, it says they are disillusioned with institutionalism and see the church itself as an obstacle to faith.
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End quote.
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So the idea of the emerging church is that this new culture needs a new conduit to faith because the church itself as a traditional institution is a wall or barrier to faith, not a conduit to faith.
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See, it's...
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And let me say this about that.
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Here's a concern.
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Would anybody in this room disagree with the fact that there are a lot of dead churches out there? No, we would agree, right? That there's a lot of churches that are dead.
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There's a lot of churches that don't preach the gospel.
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They have no love for the truth.
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They have no love for each other.
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They fight about the color of the carpet.
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They fight about the way the grass is cut or anything else.
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They fight about everything within them.
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And so, it stands to reason, and I'm not defending the emerging church, but I'm saying it stands to reason that a countercultural movement would arise.
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When a group shifts so far one way where a lot of churches have gone, then it's natural that a countercultural movement would arise.
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Here's the problem though.
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The problem with the group is they are not just worried about the culture, but they're also shifting beliefs.
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Because the only way for you to really engage the modern culture in its context is to eliminate a lot of the foundational Christian principles.
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Because the new culture will not accept them.
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The only way to really engage a modern culture is to be willing to discard some of the things that makes a Christian a Christian.
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And that's the problem.
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I have no problem personally saying that we have to engage the culture.
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Because we do.
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Why am I talking about a website earlier? Why am I talking about sending out emails and creating a blog and creating a YouTube page and putting my sermons online? Why? Because I know that's where the culture is and I understand the need that if I'm going to reach them, I've got to reach them in that direction.
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But what you cannot do, and this is what the emerging church has done, is you cannot sacrifice the truth in your mission to engage the culture.
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What has happened in the emerging church, the most dangerous thing, is now truth is being questioned and if you claim to know the truth, they will say this, and this is a popular term, if you think you're right, then you lack epistemological humility.
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It means you don't have enough worldview humility to understand that you might be wrong.
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Yeah, it's become relativism.
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That's what has happened.
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It has become relativism and that is an issue.
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That is an issue.
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Alright.
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I think we've talked enough about negatives, right? We've had quite a few negatives.
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Now, let's deal with some positives, if we could.
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That might make us feel a little better.
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You know, if we'd have done the positives first, you'd have left on a bad note.
37:48
So we're going to make the...
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Yeah, let's leave on a positive note, shall we? I'll even change to the green, since the green is our sovereign grace color.
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Everything we do now.
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By the way, I've memorized this number and only Mike will be able to appreciate why that matters.
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This is the color green that we use on everything in our advertising.
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It's what's called a hex...
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What is it? Hexadecimal color.
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Every color in the spectrum is assigned a number, and this is the number that we use for everything that's green.
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So everything you get in your advertising, everything we do...
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And I know that matters not, but I just...
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I've memorized it because I've had to use it so many times.
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Yeah, I got to order some markers in that color.
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Wouldn't that be nice? Okay.
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So, let's talk about the positive now.
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Here are three things that I think are great.
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At least I think these three things have had a very positive influence.
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The first one is the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy.
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The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy.
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In 1978, a conference was sponsored by the International Committee on Biblical Inerrancy.
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This conference was meant to counter the problem of liberalism which had risen within the church and those who claim that the Bible contains error.
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By the way, one of the things that rose out of the social gospel movement was the idea that the Bible is filled with errors.
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You know what I mean? So really, this is countering this.
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Because you've got this idea.
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I remember sitting and having a conversation with a man.
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And he's no longer a member of this church, but he used to be.
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And I was talking about the Bible being inerrant, being the true Word of God.
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And in the midst of the conversation, he said, well, I don't believe that.
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I don't believe the Bible is...
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I believe the Bible has error in it.
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And my response to him? You're in the wrong church.
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That's what I said.
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You really are in the wrong church.
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Because that's not what we teach.
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I said, I can throw a stone and hit 15 churches that all believe the way you do.
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Feel free.
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But don't come here with that nonsense.
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Because we don't believe that.
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But be that as it may, this conference was all about defining the understanding of what we mean when we say the Bible is inerrant.
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It was attended by over 300 notable figures in 1978 from various denominations, including my guy, R.C.
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Sproul.
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Was there? J.I.
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Packer, Norman Geisler, James Montgomery Boyce, not James Pettigrew Boyce.
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It's been quite a bit of time for him.
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And many others.
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They produced a document which explained what is meant when we use the term biblical inerrancy.
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This became known as the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy.
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And I want to just read to you from Dr.
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Jay Grimstead.
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This is from Dallas Theological Seminary.
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Something that he wrote on this subject.
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He said that this statement was a landmark church document created by the largest, broadest group of evangelical Protestant scholars that ever came together to create a common theological document in the 20th century.
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It is probably the first systematically comprehensive, broadly based, scholarly, creed-like statement on the inspiration and authority of Scripture in the history of the church.
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Why did it come about? People came up saying the Bible is not true.
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So the men of God come together and say, no, it is.
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And when we say the Bible is inerrant, this is what we mean.
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And they codified their teachings just as if you think back to the time of the ancient creeds.
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Why did the Nicene Council arise? Because of the teachings of Arius.
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Why did these other councils arise? Because of heresy.
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Well, this heresy had arisen in the church.
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The idea that the Bible is filled with errors.
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So the men of God come together and say, no.
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We will not stand with this error.
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We'll stand for the truth.
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I want to read to you a couple of the articles from this.
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I know time is growing short, but I want to read to you.
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Because it comes to us in the affirmations and denials.
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I don't know if you've ever read a document like that, but some of the creeds, it says we affirm thus and we deny thus and so.
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This is how it writes.
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Article 1.
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We affirm that the holy Scriptures are to be received as the authoritative word of God.
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We deny that the Scriptures receive their authority from the church, tradition or any other human source.
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So we affirm it comes from God.
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We deny that the church has given its authority.
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Number 2.
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Article 2.
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We affirm that the Scriptures are the supreme written norm by which God binds the conscience and that the authority of the church is subordinate to that of Scripture.
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And we deny that church creeds, councils or declarations have authority greater than or equal to the authority of the Bible.
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And finally, I want to read to you Article 5 because this one deals with the issue of the fact that we no longer have the original manuscripts.
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We don't have the original copy of Mark.
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We don't have the original copy of Revelation.
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We have copies.
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So in Article 5 they address that.
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We affirm that inspiration, strictly speaking, applies only to the autographic text of Scripture, which in the providence of God can be ascertained from available manuscripts with great accuracy.
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We further affirm that copies and translations of Scripture are the Word of God to the extent that they faithfully represent the original.
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We deny that any essential element of the Christian faith is affected by the absence of the autographs, that is, the originals.
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We further deny that this absence renders the assertion of biblical inerrancy invalid or irrelevant because that's what a lot of people say.
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How can you say the Bible is completely inerrant? You don't have the originals.
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And they're saying we don't have to have the originals.
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We have such a vast, copious amount of copies of those originals that we are able to establish what the originals said without doubt.
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We have over 7,000 Greek manuscripts.
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We don't have the originals, but we got a lot of copies.
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The New Testament is the greatest, most greatly authenticated work of antiquity.
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We have manuscripts and texts, papyri fragments, that date within 100 years of the original.
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Within 100 years, not 100 years later.
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You look back at any of the older works of antiquity, the Iliad and things like that.
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The earliest copies, 500-700 years after the originals.
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We have ones that are within a generation of the originals.
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Dead Sea Scrolls.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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In the Old Testament, that took us back 1,000 years.
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Prior to the Dead Sea Scrolls, the earliest copies that we had were the ones that were about 1,000 years later.
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So the Dead Sea Scrolls took us back and they demonstrated the tenacity of the text.
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Absolutely.
45:28
Alright, let's move on now to the next.
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This one is going to seem odd.
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Of all the things I could have picked from the last 100 years, what did I pick for number two? The Strange Fire Conference.
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The Strange Fire Conference.
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How many of you, just by a show of hands, know what I'm talking about? Great.
45:53
Okay, only a couple of you.
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Alright.
45:58
As I said, somebody listening to this might think this is probably the oddest thing I could have chosen.
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But let me tell you why it's important.
46:06
Dr.
46:07
John MacArthur, in 2013, yeah, only a year ago.
46:11
This is relatively recent.
46:14
In 2013, intending to draw a line in the sand regarding issues of the charismatic movement, held a conference wherein he and many men came together and demonstrated much of the charismatic teachings to be false from Scripture.
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And they had a conference and the name of the conference was called Strange Fire.
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Where did Strange Fire come from? Nadab and Abihu.
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Leviticus 10, which I mentioned earlier.
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Why did God strike Nadab and Abihu dead? Because they offered up a strange fire to the Lord, something that He had not commanded.
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And basically, MacArthur and the others were coming out and saying, look, this which is being offered by the charismatic movement, this theology of experience is Strange Fire.
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The purpose of Strange Fire was to demonstrate that much of what is promoted by charismatic theology is bad theology.
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In particular, there was an attempt to demonstrate that prophecies and miracles which are claimed by the charismatic movement are falsified.
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There was also an attempt to make a positive case for something called cessationism.
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What is a cessationist or a cessationism? Cessationism is the belief that the miraculous gifts that were given to the apostles in the first generation church were given for the establishment of the text of Scripture and the establishment of the church.
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The signs of tongues and miracles and healings were given to the first century church as a way of establishing the church and were never intended to continue on through the church and to be the normative practice of the church.
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Miracles have always been limited to certain periods of time.
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They have never been the normative part of church history or any of biblical history at all, even to the Old Testament.
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Miracles were always at specific times and at specific places.
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It was never as if miracles were just always the norm.
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And the miracles of the New Testament are an account which happened during the time of the New Testament and were not intended to continue, but did cease, thus the term cessationism.
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I, as the pastor of this church and the elders I know agree with me on this, we teach cessationism.
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We do not teach the speaking of tongues in the church.
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We do not teach the miraculous sign gifts in the church.
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And if somebody were to come into our church, we've talked about this before, if somebody were to come into our church and stand up and start speaking in tongues or speaking ecstatically, we would ask them to please be quiet and sit down because we do not believe such a thing as of God.
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So, that is why...
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And by the way, the great thing about Strangefire, where it's different from maybe much of this other thing, you can go online and you can watch all of this for free.
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The whole conference.
49:08
Just look up Strangefire Conference, John MacArthur, gty.org, grace2u.org.
49:13
You can watch the whole conference online for free.
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They make everything they do available at no cost.
49:19
So you can watch the whole thing if you want to know more about it.
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And I would encourage you to do that.
49:24
But my point is, this was the answer to this and this.
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I'm sorry.
49:32
This.
49:33
Emergent Church.
49:34
The biblical inerrancy issue is the answer to the social gospel movement and the social gospel movement has really given rise to this.
49:41
If you think about it.
49:43
Strangefire is the answer to the charismatic issue.
49:49
So finally, and thirdly, and this is the last thing in the last part of a 14 week series, the last blank you have to fill out.
49:59
Drumroll, please.
50:00
No, I'm just kidding.
50:02
Last thing.
50:04
The rise in reformed theology.
50:08
Gotta say it.
50:11
How could I not? A little biased.
50:16
I told you from the beginning I was going to be biased.
50:18
I made no bones.
50:20
I said this will be from our perspective what have been the negative social gospel, charismaticism, and a lordship.
50:26
Emergent Church.
50:27
These are negative things from our perspective.
50:29
From our perspective, what are good things? The Council on Biblical Inerrancy.
50:32
The Strangefire Conference, I think makes a strong case for what we teach and believe.
50:37
So certainly from our perspective would be a positive thing.
50:39
And the rise in reformed theology.
50:42
Obviously I would say that's a good thing.
50:47
But it is obvious that the recent rise in those willing to identify themselves as reformed has been what has influenced it.
50:56
That's the good thing.
50:57
And people ask me sometimes, in fact I had a guy at dinner the other night, one of our dads and dudes who comes, doesn't come from a reformed church, but he's open to learning.
51:07
Great guy.
51:08
And he and I are sitting there talking and he's on my Facebook, so he sees a lot of stuff that I put out about reformed theology.
51:15
And he says, why make such a big deal about it? He says, obviously it's what you teach, obviously it's what you believe.
51:22
Nobody doubts it.
51:23
It's not as if you hide anything.
51:25
He said, why do you make such a big deal about it? I said, because of this.
51:30
I said, one, I believe it's the truth and the gospel is centered on the biblical truth.
51:35
And when I say reformed theology, I'm saying biblical theology.
51:39
Because I believe it's biblical.
51:41
here's the other thing.
51:44
People who know what it is, need to feel confident and be able to stand up.
51:53
And they need to know the truth and they need to know that they're not alone.
51:58
You know, when I was learning about these things and coming up to the, coming to the knowledge of the truth on these things, you know, I really did feel like, man, this is not something that a lot of people believe and teach.
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And then I, then I open up, then I open up my MacArthur study Bible and I say, man, John MacArthur is reformed.
52:18
Everybody loves John MacArthur.
52:20
Even people who are not reformed like him because he's so powerful.
52:26
They just kind of skip over the Romans 8 and Romans 9 stuff.
52:30
They don't like that part, but they love him.
52:32
And I said, you know what? If he, if he's on the same page as I am, maybe I'm not alone.
52:37
And then I, then I said, well, here's R.C.
52:39
Sproul, wrote a book.
52:40
What is reformed theology? His whole ministry is based on teaching the truth of God's sovereign grace.
52:46
Man, I'm not alone.
52:48
I want people in our community who believe these things to know that they don't, they are not consigned to any other church where it's not being taught.
52:57
They can come here and be taught the truth and not have to be afraid to say that they're coming to a church and this is what they're being taught.
53:03
That's, that's one.
53:04
That's why I'm so prolific about putting it out there.
53:07
You want to know why? I want people to know, come home.
53:10
You don't have to, you don't have to drive across town.
53:13
It's right here.
53:15
That's one reason.
53:15
Another reason is a lot of people are so ignorant.
53:17
They don't know what it is and I want to introduce it to them.
53:21
So there's that too.
53:23
Obviously, it can be a turnoff for some people who've never heard it.
53:26
And obviously, you have to understand how to describe it in such a way that it, that it comes from Scripture and not from just vain drive.
53:35
You have to be able to describe it scripturally.
53:38
But once you do, then, it just, it's the truth.
53:43
And as Mike has said many times, you know, yeah, we haven't been friends long, but I'm quoting you.
53:48
You know, people, when they hear the truth, it tends to resonate with them.
53:53
You know? So, I'm all about preaching the truth.
53:56
I'm all about preaching hard truth, even though it's hard truth, preaching it anyway.
54:00
And I think that the rise in Reformed theology has come about as a result of men who are not afraid to preach the truth.
54:08
Al Mohler, John MacArthur, R.C.
54:11
Sproul, and on and on and on and on.
54:13
And you can list many names.
54:15
So, let me finish with my conclusion and then we'll pray.
54:21
I have said from the beginning of this course that this course cannot and would not be all encompassing.
54:28
We have certainly left out much more than we have put in.
54:32
We simply did not get into some of the great movements and teachers of the past because of our time restriction, which I realize we set on ourselves, but I also knew I had to give it some restriction in time because it couldn't just go on forever and we'd never end.
54:46
However, maybe in the future we will devote ourselves to the Puritans or to Jonathan Edwards or Spurgeon or someone else who are all worthy of our attention and time.
54:57
In the meantime, I pray that this lesson has been fruitful and will continue to be fruitful for you.
55:03
Everything that we studied over the past 14 weeks and for those of you who were here this whole time, everything that we have studied was specifically chosen for the reason of introducing you not just to certain individuals, but to historical movements and to confessions and creeds which shaped the church.
55:26
That's what this was about.
55:27
And I pray that God has used this series to help you grow deeper in your understanding of His sovereign hand which has managed the whole of church history.
55:38
Let's pray.
55:40
Father, thank You for giving us this time of study.
55:43
Thank You for the past 14 weeks.
55:46
Thank You for everything that You have shown us in and through Your Word and in this study of history.
55:52
We thank You for all that You have done and are going to do through this series.
56:00
And not only for those who have heard it in person, but for those who will be hearing it by means of electronic mediums that You would use this study to bring them closer to You.
56:14
In Jesus' name and for His sake, Amen.