The Last 100 Years

The Social Gospel Movement and Its Replacement of the Gospel

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. 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.

We truly stand as a church today on the shoulders of giants. Men like Augustine, Chrysostom, Boniface, Wycliffe, Huss, Calvin, Zwingli, Bunyan, Edwards, Spurgeon, the list goes on and on and on. Some of these men we have not had time to engage in this short series because time is limited.

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, men like Jonathan Edwards, who we could take an entire series and just study his life and his ministry and Charles Spurgeon and others.

I'm sorry. Yes, so many, so many. 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. And I understand the idea of recent is somewhat relative 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. So when we say recent, we're going to look at the last hundred or so years of church history. We're limiting our time basically to that.

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.

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. We've gone from being able to cross the sea in a boat to cross the heavens to the moon.

Less than a hundred years. So much has happened in just the last century in human history alone that it boggles the mind. Many of you probably remember a time before there were so many of the modern conveniences.

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. And I remember when phones had cords. And there's a lot of teenagers here tonight that don't remember that.

How many of you know why they call it an ice box? Because it used to not be a refrigerator. It used to be a box that they put ice in and milk was delivered. You know, these are the ways we've seen these shifts and changes in a hundred years.

Well, beloved, there have been many changes in the church also in the last hundred years. 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. And I did notice a small typographical error. It should say the negative movements rather than just movement. It should say negative movements in church in recent history.

So we're going to look we're going to separate tonight by the negative and the positive. Movements of church history now in the last hundred years now, I must say much more is going to have to be left out than is put in because of time.

We've had to do that for 2000 years of church history. Certainly we're going to have to do it even for the last hundred years. 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. 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.

So that's why we would say they're negative. Now, I want to before we go on, I want to make this point. Not everyone would agree that these are negative. 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. Somebody may want to argue with me later and feel free. But these are ones that I would say, looking at the last hundred years of history, these have brought with them very negative things.

The first one is what is known as the social gospel movement, the social gospel movement. 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.

It is focused on seeking to correct social ills such as poverty, lack of education, crime and war. The concern in this movement, according to its adherence, is the promotion of justice and equality. The social gospel movement is at the heart of what we would call liberal Christianity.

A few weeks ago, we discussed the seven sisters of mainline Protestantism. I don't know how many of you remember us talking about the seven mainline Protestant denominations. And we said that those churches are generally, and by and large, liberal churches.

The adherents would argue that social justice was the concern that Jesus had. And it's the concern that we should have. They would say Jesus ministered to the poor, Jesus ministered to the sick, Jesus ministered to the outcast.

And they say that that's what Jesus did. So that's what we should be doing. And here's the thing, none of those things that are promoted among the social gospel proponents are necessarily bad per se. Giving aid to the hurting is a good thing and it's something that Christians should do.

We have a mandate to help widows and to help orphans, to help those who can't help themselves. That's part of the mandate of the gospel. 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.

Essentially, the social gospel movement makes the gospel about social justice rather than cosmic justice. The gospel of Jesus Christ is about sinful man being divided from a holy God. We have committed cosmic treason against God.

Our creator is angry over our sin and only through Christ can his anger be propitiated. That's the gospel. 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.

And they've made the gospel of no effect in regard to salvation. I'll give you an example, because sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words and a word picture is worth even more. So I'll give you an example.

If I were to say that Jesus Christ fed five thousand 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. Yes.

I hope we would all agree that that's a miracle, that in some form or fashion there had to be some multiplication. That through the hands of Christ, those five loaves and those two fish became more than five loaves and two fish.

That in some way there was a creative action on the part of Christ whereby a miracle occurred and five thousand people were able to eat and eat to the full. Right. There's a man by the name of John Dominic Cross.

How many of you have ever heard that name? Only a few of my children, of course, have heard John Dominic Crossman is a liberal theologian. 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.

John Dominic Crossman and teaching on the feeding of the five thousand. He said it's a parable. It's not what actually occurred. 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. It was the miracle of sharing, of commune, of coming together in community. And those who have share with those who don't have. And Jesus's miracle was the convincing of the haves to share with the have nots.

Now, I'm not sure if you're familiar with the term isogenesis, but that means to read into the text something that is not there. That's it. And I realize it can also be pronounced isogenesis because Richard wants to say something about that.

But yes, isogenesis, but it is to read into the text something that is not there. Right. Is there any 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's the that is the best example of someone who is who is a part of the social gospel movement, who is robbing the gospel of truth and replacing it with a social justice mentality. 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.

What happens is that the church goes from becoming a church to becoming a social club. A lot of churches with the social club mentality have abandoned the gospel. They've abandoned the truth of the gospel and they've replaced it with this idea that it's all about doing right in society.

It's all about doing justice in society. And it's not about preaching sin. And that's why you don't hear sin preached. It's why you don't hear salvation by grace through faith preached. It's why you don't hear justification by faith preached.

You don't hear these things because that's not a part of the social gospel. Yes. Oh, yeah, good example. Jack will remember this and Shirley will as well. Pat will as well. 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 the something about the diamonds in Sierra Leone or some kind of social issue that was one of the major concerns of this national conference.

I could imagine walking into a conference with R .C. Sproul and him standing up and say, you know, we need to do something about those diamonds in Sierra Leone, you know, because his concern is the gospel.

Our concern should be the gospel and the social gospel is not the gospel. In fact, to call it a gospel is to actually miscommunicate the truth of what it is. So that is one of the major concerns, I think, of the last hundred years that has crept in and has really influenced.

Yes. Yes.

It's politics wrapped in the veneer of the sacred, you know, of the religious, you know, in the world. We have the divide between the sacred and the secular. And what happens is the secular makes its way into the sacred.

It makes the sacred secular. And that's and that's what has come across. So we understand the social gospel movement. Let us now move to number two, the charismatic movement. Yeah, we're going to I let me write this out for everyone.

The Charismatic Movement and the Theology of Experience

The charismatic movement. Most of us are familiar with churches which define themselves as charismatic. In fact, some might even challenge me for putting this in the negative category. Some might say putting that in a negative category is not fair.

My mom goes to charismatic church. My mom actually does. I can say that for some of you might be thinking that it's unfair. Well, this is the fastest growing religious group in the world. It's growing faster than Islam.

People say Islam's fast growing religion, it's not true. The fastest growing religious population in the world is charismatic movement. Yet overwhelming numbers do not a positive make. The charismatic movement was birthed out of a series of Methodist sponsored revivals which occurred at the Azusa Street Mission in California in 1906.

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. People claim to be baptized in the Holy Spirit as in Acts chapter two and receiving miraculous signs as gifts of healing and tongues.

This led to a tremendous enthusiasm which spread all over the United States. The name charismatic, by the way, comes from the Greek word charis, which means gift. So the idea of the charismatic is gift focused ministry or the sign or miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit.

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.

The problem which the charismatic movement has given rise to is the idea which I have entitled and some 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, the theology of the experience.

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. 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.

The most dangerous, of course, being the new revelations, people say, well, God spoke to me and thus and so, for instance, Richard, do you believe the apostle Paul wrote the book of Hebrews? No, and I don't believe he did either.

However, well, I and I agree with you, but I knew you didn't. So I asked you that question. 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. As I said, Richard and I would disagree with this man based on the text of Hebrews.

I don't believe Paul wrote it. It has been an issue down through the ages of controversy. But the point is, this man just said God revealed it to me. I don't have to wonder anymore. I don't have to have any.

God just told me. That's a very small example of the massive problem in charismatic theology, the theology of experience. I meditated and went to heaven, heard a guy one day he was talking to these to this group.

He's very popular. Louisiana in minister, I think he's from Louisiana, and I'm not sure that's the way you would say Louisiana. And he's a he's a guy from Louisiana, 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, blah. Just such just such just such garbage, I mean, I tell him to his face, just garbage.

This this this whole idea of well, and here's the big thing that they'll say, a man with a experience is never at the mercy of a man with an argument. That's a lie. Experiences lie, people hallucinate all the time.

Don't tell me that an experience is the determinator of truth. Such a thing is is is highly questionable. But anyway, getting back to the to the lesson. 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.

And thus, there is no way to determine truth outside of the experience. That's the problem. And now you can you can say, well, speaking in tongues is an issue. You could say prophecies an issue. You can say all these are the biggest issue is the theology of experience that you can't question.

People say you can't question Benny Hinn because he's had these experiences. Well, no, that's not true. Benny Hinn has lied to the people of God so many times he has spoken false prophecies. And this is their thing now, while the prophets of the New Testament are not held to the same standards of the prophets of the Old Testament, because in the Old Testament, if a prophet spoke something that did not come true, he was to be stoned and they said, well, we're no longer under law, under grace, you know, but but don't tell me that a prophet is held to a lower standard.

But that's their argument, because he said I have it on video where he said in the 90s that Fidel Castro would die in the 90s. Well, Fidel Castro sure outlived his prophecy. I have it on video where he said that the homosexual community would be judged by God and eliminated before the new millennium.

Guess what? They didn't marry. He was wrong. And yet people will continue to support his madness. And I said, well, that's that's a that's a low hanging fruit. He's a good he's a hard one. You know, he's you're picking on the low hanging fruit.

Beloved, there's a lot more than Benny Hinn out there. But Benny Hinn is not the only one. There's a lot of these guys in the charismatic movement allows within its ranks the potential of major heresy because it does not align what it says with scripture.

It aligns what it says with experience and when experience is the arbor of truth, then there's a problem. So that's number two. Yes. Oh, sure, sure, sure. Yes. In fact, I will I will add I love John Piper.

John Piper is a is a good, godly pastor. But this is one area where he and I differ much. You and I and I know at least I know Holly has I don't know if you have has seen the video of John Piper talking about speaking in tongues.

What does he express more than just his desire for an experience? Wow. He wants this experience, right? He and he says it comes and goes in our church and it flows in and out. It's not a constant thing.

It's in seasons. But there's no there's nothing in scripture that would legitimize anything he said other than that's what he's experienced. And I'm not saying John Piper's a heretic. I'm saying on this issue, I think he's wrong.

I love John Piper, I think he's a good man, I think he's a good pastor, but I think on this issue, he has he has given in to the idea of experience as being an arbiter of truth. And like I said, so I'm not saying that somebody in the charismatic movement is by necessity a false teacher.

I'm saying that on this issue, I think that they're wrong. And I think that we have the freedom to say that, thank God. All right, so there's more to go. Number three, the anti lordship movement, the anti lordship movement, lordship salvation is the belief that when a person comes to Jesus Christ as savior, he also must receive him as Lord.

His process of sanctification begins at that moment. 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.

Those who promote the anti lordship perspective believe that a person can take Jesus as savior, but not as Lord. And ultimately, they can believe on Jesus and it have no external or internal effect on their life.

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 health insurance is paid up and now. You're saved. This is also called and I like this way, I like this phrase maybe sometimes better, easy believism, easy believism. And again, ultimately what it says is this.

All you have to do is make a one time ascent of the mind, a one time accepting of this of this proposition that Jesus is the savior. And as long as you've made that one time proposition ascent 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 ascent of the mind. Yes, it's also a problem in a lot of Southern Baptist churches. Yes. Well, I would say perseverance of the saints, which is different.

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.

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 saved. Because perseverance of the saints says that not only does Christ save you, but he continues your work, you know, it is it is God who works within you both to will and to do his good pleasure, that God will continue working in you.

That's not to say a person can't have times of doubt or have times of failure, which we know that they do. The Apostle Peter rejected Christ three times, but Christ renewed him to his faith. I do believe that a true believer can have times of doubt and even times of grievous sin.

The abstract principles says that, that a believer can have times of grievous sin, but that God will restore him to repentance. 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.

So I do not believe that a person can simply say, I believe in Jesus without changing their life and it be considered a legitimate salvation. The Bible says they went out from among us because they were not of us.

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. First John, chapter two, verse 19. Oh, I would see it in the way that the gospel presented.

I would see that in the way the gospel said the guys who do the hand raised thing, raise your hand, believe in Jesus. And that's it. And there's no expectation of discipleship and there's no expectation of growth.

That's seen, I think, in the methodology of how a person receives Christ. This is let me give you a good example. And I know you had a question. Go ahead. Yes, absolutely. In fact, Sunday I'm preaching a sermon.

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 first or second Peter one ten to make our calling and election certain? What does he mean by that?

That's what I preach on Sunday. What do we suppose? How are we supposed to be confident? I was just 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 have any longing for Christ.

Should you be confident in that? No, there should not be confidence in such a vain acceptance of a simply a proposition. Let me let me tell the story. And some of you have heard this before, but it's a good story.

So I'll tell it again. I was in I was in my truck driving on Merrill Road. I know right where I was. I don't know why it is my brain works this way, but it just remembers right where I was and what was happening.

I was driving because I almost had to go into a telephone pole when this happened because it freaked me out so much. Listening to a preacher, very local preacher, very popular preacher. And this is what he said.

And. I quote, you need to accept Jesus, this is on the radio, I'm listening to him preach. 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.

This is 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 that the that the that the the reformers said, they said justification is by faith alone, but faith alone will never be alone.

Well, let me say it again, justification is by faith alone, but faith will never be alone. Because faith will always be accompanied by the fruit of the spirit. Galatians, chapter five, second Peter one, 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.

And so if a person says to me, I'm saved, but I don't have any desire for Christ, I don't have any desire for the word, I don't have any desire for fellowship in the church, I don't have any desire for obedience to God, I don't have any desire for prayer or reading of Scripture.

I don't have any. But I'm saying I would say you're lying to yourself. You are deceived. You are the one that Jesus spoke of when he said in Matthew, chapter seven, 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?

And I look at them and I would say, depart from me. I never knew you. He didn't say I knew you for a time and you fell away. See, that's the problem with those people who believe you lose your salvation.

That's false. But he did look at them. He said, I never knew you. So I think that's I mean, to wax on so much on that issue, but I think that's an important one. The anti lordship crowd believes that there is no ultimate change which is necessary in a believer.

And we would say that's wrong and it's a false. Yeah, no submission. It's not about submission. All right. Number four, this is a this is a relatively newer one for some of you might not even have heard of this one.

The Emergent Church and Cultural Accommodation

The Emergent Church, the Emergent Church, E-M-E-R-G-E-N-T, sometimes called the Emerging Church, Emerging and Emergent are synonymous. 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.

They say that as new cultures arise, a new church should also arise. And the movement is very concerned with cultural sensitivity. The movement is marked by a desire to reexamine doctrinal beliefs and the teachings of the Bible.

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. But in the Emergent Church, there is no specifically defined church doctrine, which makes it really hard to pinpoint the error.

It's like trying to nail Jell-O to a wall. You just can't do it. 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.

They're standing up, they're standing against the man kind of thing, you know, there's this 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.

Let me read to you two quotes from Emergent Church leaders. This is I like to go to the source and kind of pull from you. This is what they say. One author describes the Emergent Church like this. 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.

And it's experimenting. You know who I know of who experimented? A couple of guys named Nadab and Abai who didn't turn out so good for them. So I don't know if I like that idea, but now I'm being sarcastic.

Yeah, Eve experimented, didn't she? All right. The second quote. They speaking of the emerging generations, it says they are disillusioned with institutionalism and see the church itself as an obstacle to faith, end quote.

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. See, it's and let me say this about that.

Here's a concern. 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. There's a lot of churches that don't preach the gospel.

They have no love for the truth. They have no love for each other. They fight about the color of the carpet. They fight about the way the grass is cut or anything else. They fight about everything within them.

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 when a group shifts so far one way where where a lot of the a lot of churches have gone, then it's natural that a countercultural movement would arise.

Here's the problem, though. The problem with the the the group is they are not just worried about the culture, but they're also shifting beliefs, 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 because the new culture will not accept them.

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. And that's the problem. I have no problem personally saying that we have to engage the culture because we do.

Why am I talking about a website earlier? What 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.

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. 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. It means you don't have enough worldview humility to understand that you might be wrong. Yeah, it's become relativism. That's what it has happened.

It has become relativism. And that is an issue. That is an issue. All right. I think we've talked enough about negatives, right? We've had quite a few negatives. Now, let's deal with some positives, if we could, that might make us feel a little better.

I don't you know, if we'd have done the positives first, you'd left on a bad note. So we're going to make the huh? Yeah, let's leave on a positive note, shall we? I'll even change to the green since that are the green is our sovereign grace color.

Everything we do now, by the way, I've memorized this number and only Mike will be able to appreciate why that matters. This is the this is the color green that we use on everything in our advertising.

It's what's called a hex hex. What is it? Hexadecimal color. Every color in the spectrum is assigned a number. And this is the number that we use for everything that's green. So everything you get in your advertising, everything we do, and I know that matters not, but I just I've memorized it because I've had to use it so many times.

Yeah, I got to order some markers in that color. Would that be nice? OK, so let's talk about the positive now. Here are three things that I think are great. At least I think these three things have had a very positive influence.

The first one is the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy. In 1978, a conference was sponsored by the International Committee on Biblical Inerrancy. 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.

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. You know, I mean, that's so really this is countering this. Because you've got this idea, I remember sitting and having a conversation with a man and he's no longer remember this church we used to be.

And I was talking about the Bible being inerrant, being the true word of God. And in the midst of the conversation, he said, well, I don't believe that. I don't believe the Bible is I believe the Bible has error in it.

And my response to him, you're in the wrong church. That's what I said. You really are in the wrong church because that's not what we see. I said, I can throw a stone and hit 15 churches that all believe the way you do.

Feel free. But don't come here with that nonsense. Because we don't believe that. 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.

It was attended by over 300 notable figures in 1978 from various denominations, including my guy, R .C. Sproul was there, J .I. Packer, Norman Geisler, James Montgomery Boyce, not James Pettigrew Boyce, but about a quite a bit of time for him and many others.

They produced a document which explained what is meant when we use the term biblical inerrancy. This became known as the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy. And I want to just read to you from Dr. Jay Grimstead.

This is from Dallas Theological Seminary, something that he wrote on this subject. 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.

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. Why did it come about? People came up saying the Bible is not true.

So the men of God come together and say, no, it is. And when we say the Bible is inerrant, this is what we mean. And they codified their teachings, just as if you think back to the time of the ancient creeds, why did the Nicene Council arise?

Because of the teachings of Arius. Why did these other councils rise? Because of heresy. Well, this heresy had arisen in the church. The idea that the Bible is filled with errors. So the men of God come together and say, no, we will not stand with this error.

We'll stand for the truth. I want to read to you a couple of the articles from this. I know we're time is growing short, but I want to read to you because it comes to us in the in the affirmations and denials.

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 this is how it writes. Article one, we affirm that the holy scriptures are to be received as authoritative as the authoritative word of God.