September 9, 2015 Show with Jerry Johnson on “Beware of False Prophets: The Case Against Charles G. Finney”

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Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

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Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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Now here's our host Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania and the rest of humanity living on the planet earth who are listening via live streaming.

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This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this ninth day of September 2015 and I've been waiting to do this interview for quite a long time with my old friend

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Jerry Johnson during those years when my program was on hiatus. I was in many conversations with Jerry to conduct an interview and I'm just so thankful that the

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Lord has brought me back to the airwaves and I am able to interview this brother in Christ about a very important subject.

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For seven years Jerry Johnson was president of Nicene Council, a Christian apologetic ministry.

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He earned his MA in Christian Studies and a Master of Theology in Theology, Master of Philosophy in Theology and Apologetics from Whitfield Theological Seminary.

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He is currently working on a doctorate from Knox Theological Seminary in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Jerry was the researcher and senior writer for numerous documentaries including the best -selling

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Amazing Grace, The History and Theology of Calvinism, The Marks of a Cult, A Biblical Analysis and The Late Great Planet Cherth.

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We're also going to be discussing one of those documentaries today as our main theme, Beware of False Prophets, The Case Against Charles G.

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Finney. Jerry has served as a member of the Board of Regents for Whitfield Theological Seminary and as an adjunct professor at Knox Theological Seminary since 2005.

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Jerry has been a chaplain for Baseball Chapel, currently serving a minor league team in Southwest Virginia and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever as a guest on Iron Sharpens Iron, Jerry Johnson.

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Thank you Chris, it's good to be with you. And this is a very important topic as I mentioned before.

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We are discussing the documentary that Jerry wrote and produced,

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Beware of False Prophets, The Case Against Charles G. Finney. If you yourself count

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Finney among your heroes or if you know others who do count

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Finney among their heroes, please call them up and tell them to go to their laptops or computers and go to ironsharpensironradio .com

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to listen to this live broadcast because you and they need to know about this individual from history who you call your hero.

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An individual that Jerry Johnson, my guest today, believes is a very dangerous heretic and he has done a convincing job in stating that case in the documentary

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I mentioned earlier. Well first of all, let's go into his background before we even get into certain aspects of his theology.

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I know that Charles G. Finney was born in the latter part of the 18th century and grew up in the 19th century.

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Tell us something about his upbringing. I know that he was not from a Christian home.

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That is correct, yeah. He writes that quite frequently and I mean that's something that I think a lot of us can identify with.

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I wasn't raised in a Christian home and he wasn't raised in a Christian home. He actually went to work with an attorney and took under an apprenticeship to become a lawyer.

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According to him, he had this radical, almost charismatic like experience.

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In fact, Chris, before we get into it, I want to share this because I think it's paramount in explaining something to somebody is when somebody has a conversion to Christ.

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My personal conversion to Christ, it wasn't radical. I didn't hear angels singing. I wasn't a great sinner.

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I was just your run -of -the -mill average Joe six -pack sinner. And you know, when

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Christ saved me though, he did save me. What was the first thing when

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I really started researching Finney? I read Finney's memoirs. Now, it's a 900 -page book and I've read it through twice.

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And the thing that grabbed me was Finney, actually when he's giving his testimony, he is talking about things.

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In fact, let me see if I can quote it here. It's a rather lengthy quote so I don't want to quote too much.

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But he talks about how he was baptized with the Holy Spirit, how he felt like there were waves of liquid love going through him.

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He expressed things like holy laughter that he started laughing and couldn't stop.

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He would burst. And it just went on and on and on.

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If you actually read it in his memoirs, it's on page 23 to 25. He gives what you would believe is a very abrupt, a very emotional, spiritual conversion that most

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Christians don't really have. I mean, it just sounds like, wow,

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God came down and touched him and appeared to him. Now, what got me was when

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I started researching the basis of his memoirs, this was not something that he wrote over his lifetime.

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It was near the end of his life that he wrote his memoirs. So he's going back 30, 40 years, maybe 50 years, and recalling the experience.

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He does mention his own pastor, a guy named George Washington Gale.

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And he talks about how Pastor Gale wrote a book around 1852, 1853, and he condensed the book in numerous passages in his memoirs.

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And so I wanted to read Pastor Gale's book. Now, Gale's book did not become as popular as Finney's book.

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Nobody remembers George Washington Gale today. So it took me almost 18 months to track down a copy.

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And when I read through it, I was fascinated by the fact that when

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Gale recounts Finney's conversion, he leaves out all of the baptism of the

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Holy Spirit. He leaves out all the spiritual manifestations that took place.

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He leaves all of that out. And I thought, man, that's really weird that he would do that.

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Why would the pastor who wrote 20 years before Finney leave that out?

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And why would Finney include it in? Now, we can speculate why this would happen, but you've got to remember, as Finney looked over the history of his own revivals, and how upper state

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New York and Pennsylvania and other areas where he did his labors became known as the

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Burned Over District, where Finney himself called his revivals a failure. I can't help but wonder if he was trying to validate somehow his life's work by almost perpetrating a fraud on people, by making his conversion sound like it was appointed by God, and that his commission was appointed by God.

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So you mean these supernatural things in the description you're saying may have been fabricated to make his testimony sound more remarkable.

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And that was the first thing that hit my mind. And trust me, I used to be a charismatic, so I know how these things go.

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I've seen this happen many times where I would be at a service and somebody else would, and all of a sudden, two years down the road, their story of what took place there was more fantastic than what actually took place.

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And that was the first thing was Finney wanted to validate his life's work.

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And I became concerned with that. So I started digging more into Finney after I'd read his memoirs.

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And one of the things that bothered me really about Finney, now, you know, Finney is associated with a so -called second

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Great Awakening. And I call it so -called because I don't believe it was a biblical awakening.

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I believe it was very humanistic. It was very emotional. It was a religious awakening, but it was not ordained by the

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Holy Spirit. So I take a very dim view of what took place during the so -called second

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Great Awakening, because the doctrinal perversions that came out of that, I just have a hard time believing that that is from the

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Spirit of God. Now, weren't there men like Asahel Middleton that were contemporaries of Finney, who you would believe were involved in genuine revival?

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Well, I mean, there were guys like, oh, good night. I told you earlier, it's been a couple of years since I read about him.

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Lehman Beechin, I think was one guy. There was another and Banner of Truth published his work.

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And I read it again, probably four years ago, and I can't recall the And I won't even go so far as to say this.

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I'm not saying nobody was converted out of the so -called second Great Awakening.

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Let me tell you a little story. I used to be in a counter -cult ministry. I met a guy up in New England who actually came to Christ reading the

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Jehovah's Witness translation, known as the New World Translation. And that is because no matter how much they perverted the

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New Testament and the New World Translation, there's still enough of the Gospel in there that God can use it.

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But I wouldn't encourage people to hand out New World Translations as an evangelistic methodology, just like I wouldn't encourage them to read

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Finney, you know, to find the nuggets of the Gospel. I would prefer them, if they're going to read sermons, read

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Spurgeon or read Calvin or Luther or, you know, Knox or somebody along those lines.

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So, you know, even though there were people that were converted during this time, its implications for the body of Christ, I think, were detrimental, because it was a fabricated revival that really was built on emotionalism.

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And when emotions wear off, they fell right back into the same sinful, almost demonic lifestyle.

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In fact, when parts of upstate New York and Pennsylvania and New England became known as the

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Burned Over District, people were so tired of hearing of the Gospel and the Gospel preachers that it eventually got to be futile for them to go there and try to preach.

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In fact, that section of the country is still suffering today.

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I mean, you look at that compared to the South, where those type of revivals didn't take place.

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Yeah, explain something about the concept of the burnt -out districts and so on, that you just described.

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Yeah, the burnt -out district was Finney and some of his laborers would go into an area, and they would have a revival, and they employed methodologies that had never been used before in the history of the

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Christian church. They had very dramatic music. They used what

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I call guilt manipulation, and this gets into Finney's view of the atonement, which

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I know we'll get to later. And then they would have something called the anxious seat, where people would come down and sit and wait for the

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Holy Spirit to move upon them, and then they would have an emotional outburst somehow, someway.

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And as this happened over and again, and then false converts began to fall away, it got to be where people didn't go hear the revivalists anymore.

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And eventually they became ineffective, and in many cases, they became despised in that community.

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And so that's why it became known as the burned -over district. Supposedly the fire of the

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Holy Spirit had swept through, but these people were heart and heart, and now had no heart, no tenderness towards the gospel at all.

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So that's why it became known as the burned -over district. I don't think Finney gave it that name. I think it was critics of him that gave it that name.

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Right. And there was a deception very early on at the outset of his ministry when he was ordained as a

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Presbyterian minister. He lied about having read the

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Westminster Confession of Faith, didn't he? I've got the quote right here, and this was something very early on in my studies that I had to ask myself.

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I mean, we say it's a lie. You know, there are some people that lie, and they know they're lying.

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There are others that are pathological liars. They're lying, but they really don't believe what they're saying.

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Finney was downright deceptive, and here's what he says, unexpectedly to myself.

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Now, this is from his memoirs, the Complete and Restored Text, published in 1889,

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I'm sorry, 1989, pages 53 and 54. He says, unexpectedly to myself, they asked me if I received the

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Confession of Faith of the Presbyterian Church. I had not examined it.

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That is, the large work containing the catechisms and the Presbyterian Confession.

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This had made no part of my study. I replied that I received it for the substance of doctrine as far as I understood it.

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Now, how can you make that assertion? You received it for the substance of doctrine so far as you understood it when you already admitted that you didn't read it.

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That's duplicity at its finest. Then he goes on to say that I spoke in such a way that plainly implied,

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I think, that I did not pretend to know much about it. So what he's saying is he shrouded his answer.

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He hemmed and hawed. He spinned, you know, the whole thing about what he really believed.

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And then he says, I did not pretend to know much about it. However, I answered honestly as I understood it at the time.

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No, you didn't answer honestly because you never read it. But you received it for the doctrine that it is, the

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Presbyterian Confession. When I was ordained as a Presbyterian minister, I studied the confession. I went through it.

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I am thoroughly convinced that the Westminster Divines were non -instrumental and exclusive psalmist.

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And as much as I love the old Presbyterians and the Westminster Confession, I believe they were wrong.

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And so I stood up and I said, I have an objection to the confession because I believe that they were non -instrumental and exclusive psalmist.

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And the moderator said, well, we take an exception as a denomination to that.

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And I said, that's fine. But I wanted on record that I have an exception because I don't want to deceive.

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I don't want to lie. I don't want to give the implication that I'm in full agreement with the Westminster Confession when

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I'm not. And they accepted that. And they noted it in the minutes of the meeting that I had an exception to the

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Westminster Confession at that point. I think it's one of the greatest confessions ever written. Yeah, well, obviously in 1824 when

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Finney was ordained as a Presbyterian minister, the body that ordained him must have been quite lax in their examining him because they should have really quickly understood that he did not only know what the confession said, but that he didn't teach or believe what the confession teaches.

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Well, you've got to remember that at this time, there were a lot of things going on in the frontier

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America. John Wesley and the Methodists had been making great inroads planning churches and establishing circuit riders.

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And the Presbyterians and the Congregationalists, who were for the most part in harmony doctrinally, they required a minister to have training either through a seminary or under the tutelage of an approved minister.

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They produced gospel preachers at a much slower rate because they were concerned with doctrinal purity.

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The Methodists were just, if somebody was called to preach, three weeks later they'd be in a pulpit.

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So the Presbyterians and the Congregationalists saw themselves getting left behind.

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That's no reflection on Tim LaHaye. They saw themselves getting left behind.

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So in 1801, if memory serves me correctly, in 1801 there was what was called the

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Plan of the Union. And what happened was Presbyterians and Congregationalists kept distinct denominations, but they merged pulpits and seminaries.

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Now, at first this sounded good, but there was a group of men called Old School who did not like the

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Union. And one of the most notable was a fellow named Benjamin Breckenridge, who was the grandfather of the great

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Princeton scholar, Benjamin Breckenridge Warfield. And he objected to the

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Union altogether, and a lot of people that were in his camp. There was a second camp, and they were known as the

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Log Cabin Presbyterians. And if you recognize that from church history, those were the guys that eventually founded

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Princeton Seminary. And, oh my goodness, I'm having a senior moment here of who some of their guys were.

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Uh, 19th century, like B .B. Warfield and so on? Well, Warfield may have been in that group later on.

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They were very orthodox, but I mean, if you would have asked me three or four years ago when I was reading this,

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I could have popped off some of them. Timothy Dwight is one of them. I'm just having a senior moment here, brother.

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Well, now we know Princeton is filled with Log Cabin Republicans. Well, see, the school originally started in a log cabin, and that's why they called it, you know, the

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Log Cabin School. And again, Banner of Truth has published some excellent history on this.

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So anyway, and I think Charles Hodge may have been part of this. These guys were doctrinally just like the old school, but they entered into the

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Union with caution. Then you had a third group known as the

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Hopkinsians, and the Hopkinsians tolerated more than the old log cabin guys.

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And there was, of course, great consternation between the old school and the

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Hopkinsians. The log cabin guys could tolerate the

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Hopkinsians, but a lot of times they would hold their nose. And then the final group, I believe, ended up becoming what is known as the

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New Divinity. But that was later on that they developed. But what had happened is,

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Congregationalism started slipping in its doctrinal purity. And Finney happened to show up just probably within seven or eight years before the

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Union collapsed. And it was believed, even though he had been tried once and was acquitted of heresy, that in 1836 when the

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Union fell apart, that he was probably going to be tried again. And he, of course, ended up leaving the

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Presbyterian Church and becoming Congregationalist. So it was a terrible time for him.

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There were a lot of people, including his former pastor, George Washington Gale, who really were concerned about the theological direction that he was going.

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And there's so much about his theology in the documentary, Beware of False Prophets, the case against Charles G.

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Finney. We document this. We document every page, everything, and we make sure we do not take anything out of context.

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That's right. And a lot of it comes directly from his, Finney's, own lectures on systematic theology.

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Yeah, systematic theology, his memoirs, his revival lectures. Finney has had probably,

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I mean, there are two men in the 19th century that really had a profound impact,

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I believe, for the worst on evangelical Christianity.

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Finney may have done more doctrinally, specifically as it related to his revivals, to make the

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Church impotent, because I believe it takes out the true gospel and substitutes it with a humanistic gospel that's really based in moralism.

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The other one would have been C .I. Schofield. And just an interesting fact, probably right now, the man in the

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United States who's done more research on Finney than anybody is Dr.

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Richard Belcher. And Dr. Belcher, I happened to find this out when

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I was studying and working on our documentary, The Late Great Planet Church, The Rise of Dispensationalism.

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Finney started a college called Oberlin College, and he became the president of it.

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And one of the graduates of Oberlin College was a man by the name of Lewis Ferry Cheaper, who actually started

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Dallas Theological Seminary. Because you see emerging today of Finneyism, the doctrine of Finney, and Dispensationalism, where most of your

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Baptist churches today are infected with that false theology, both of them.

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But Finney, and I've got a quote here, and this is something, whenever I'm talking with somebody about this or whenever I'm doing a radio interview on Finney, I need them to understand, because there may be people out there listening who said, well,

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I've read sermons by Finney, or I've read sections of his work, and they always fail to miss this one thing.

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Because I can isolate statements of Finney, where he sounds like an evangelical.

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But what most people do not realize, and I'm reading here from his lectures on Systematic Theology, the abridged edition, published by Bethany Fellowship in 1976.

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This is pages 166 and 167. Finney writes this, moral depravity cannot consist in any attribute of nature or constitution, we'll go back to that in a second, or in any lapse or fallen state of nature.

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Moral depravity, as I use the term. Now, back in the day when

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I was a young Christian and I got involved in studying and researching cults and cult theology, one of my favorite writers was a man by the name of Dr.

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Charles, I'm sorry, Dr. Walter Martin. And Dr. Walter Martin wrote the book

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The Kingdom of the Cults, and he wrote The New Cults, and he wrote many different books that dealt with cultic theology.

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And the thing that always surprised him, whether you're dealing with Mormons, or Jehovah's Witnesses, or Christian Science, or Christadelphians, or Seventh -day

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Adventists, or whoever it may be, one of the Pentecostals, they will use evangelical terminology, but they always redefine the term.

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Yes, same words, different dictionary. Yeah, and now here's Finney saying moral depravity, as I use the term, that should send up a red flag.

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Yes. And he's getting ready to redefine moral depravity, or what we call total depravity, outside of its historical and evangelical context.

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He's going to put a new definition in there, so he's still going to use the term, but he's going to use something very different.

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And the more I read Finney, the more it came to things like original sin, and justification, and grace alone, and faith alone, and the

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Bible alone, I started having to really go through and examine what is he saying?

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What does he really mean? Because if you take those words and apply evangelical terminology or definitions to it, you're going to misunderstand

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Finney totally, and that shocks me also, Chris. You know how many of these guys

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I will sit down and talk with, and they've never really sat down and read

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Finney. Right. And they'll do a sermon here and there, and that's it. Yes, and one of the things that you mentioned before about Oberlin College, it is absolutely astonishing that he became president of Oberlin College, and he had no former training at all.

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Not at all. I can't remember. He claims he was accepted to Princeton.

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That may be true, but he refused to go. The Presbytery wanted him to study under George Washington Gale, but those ended up being arguments, and he was still ordained anyway, and he misled the

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Presbytery. And I'm not even sure if it would have made any difference at the time.

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Maybe it would have, but I think the Presbyterians were at a very weak point historically that Finney's popularity at the beginning of the so -called

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Second Great Awakening is really what motivated them to put him into their ranks, because I think a lot of them saw that their ranks could swell, and that was their key motivation.

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Yeah, you were saying in your documentary that a lot of local pastors were very upset with Finney when he would have revival meetings in their area, but it was because of the numeric growth of those who attended his revivals.

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That's what gave him a seal of approval in the minds of many. And a lot of these people would go back to those churches, the local churches, and these churches would split.

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They would have awful, awful arguments. And when all was said and done, they ended up with lower numbers than what they had started with.

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If you'd like to join us on the air with a question about Charles G. Finney, whether you agree with what's being said or whether you disagree, whether you're just not certain.

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Maybe you've never heard of Finney before, which would be unlikely if you're an evangelical Christian for any number of years.

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But we would love to have your input at chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

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C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

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And please give your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

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U .S. That's chrisarnsen at gmail .com. We were discussing how pastors were very upset very often when

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Finney would come to town and set up a revival meeting. But even though the local pastors were upset due to the things that were going on that were unconventional, that were novel, that were not being, hadn't had any record of being performed in church history, even though these things were all new, because of the rapid growth of his audiences, people began to put a seal of approval on him.

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And a lot of people listening, Jerry, as you know, may be totally unaware that the altar calls or public invitations where people are invited to walk down an aisle and recite a prayer and will be deemed very often as being born again as a result of this, a lot of these people think that's old time religion, that's a part of the good old -fashioned fundamentalist faith.

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But this didn't even exist in church history until Finney did it. No, it didn't.

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And see, just to make a comment, the critics of Finney of the day criticized his methodology.

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Now, you know, and I've seen it before, that, you know,

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I've talked with people that are specifically like in Baptist churches or Pentecostal churches, and if you know anything about Reformed Presbyterians, we don't have altar calls.

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We encourage people to go to Christ, not walk to the front of the church. Not to mention, the front of the church is not an altar.

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What happens on an altar? A sacrifice. A sacrifice.

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But Christ was the sacrifice once for all, and he hung on the cross. So there is nothing to offer anymore on any altar.

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So people ask me, well, what do you call it? Well, we call it the front of the church. By the way,

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Reformed Baptists typically do not have altar calls either. Correct. Correct. And so, you know,

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Finney's whole thing of the dramatic music of the guilt manipulation and the anciency and the altar call, that was not known for 1 ,800 years in church history.

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And I have people ask me, well, how did people come to Christ? And their mindset is such that, gee, you would think nobody could become a

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Christian prior to Finney. And that was what the critics were objecting to.

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Unfortunately, if you read the critics of the day, they missed the point that the methodology that Finney was using and employing is not the problem, it was the theology that gave birth to the methodology.

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Right. Decisional regeneration plays a large role in this whole concept.

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If you could define that for our listeners. Now ask the question again. Decisional regeneration,

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I said, plays a large role in this whole practice of the altar call or the public invitation to come forward and receive

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Christ, that kind of thing. If you could define decisional regeneration for those of our listeners who are unfamiliar with that.

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All right, well, before I do that, I want to do this, okay? Because what I want to do is demonstrate what

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Finney's theology was and what led to this, and I think it'll make more sense to the listener, okay?

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Now, in our documentary, I was reading the works of Reverend John Wesley. Now, let me just go on record.

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I am a Calvinist. I am a five -point Calvinist. I hold to the

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Synod of Dort and all of the great creeds that come out of the Reformation period. I also believe in evangelism.

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My goodness, the school that I'm working on my doctorate, Knox Theological Seminary, was founded by Dr.

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D. James Kennedy, who wrote probably the greatest curriculum of evangelism of the 20th century known as Evangelism Explosion.

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I believe in evangelism. Many people mistakenly believe that the debate between us

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Calvinists and Charles Finney is the age -old debate between Calvinism and Arminianism.

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And yet, I know you've probably seen Amazing Grace, the History and Theology of Calvinism, and I did not put this in the documentary because it just didn't fit, but it was a great response when

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I asked Dr. R .C. Sproul, are Arminians our brothers and sisters in Christ?

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And Dr. Sproul said, yes, but barely. And I thought it was a great response because I understood what he meant.

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God does not call us to be theologians before he saves us. He saves a lot of us in spite of our bad theology, but because we are called to study to show thyself approved and to learn the great doctrines and teachings of the

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Bible and apply them to our lives, I see, and I could open up a whole can of worms here that I'm not going to go down this rabbit trail.

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Let me just say that there are many

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Arminians, free will Arminians, who I believe do not connect the dots right now, and yet they are still my brothers and sisters in Christ.

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The debate between Calvinists and Charles Finney is not between Calvinism and Arminianism, it is between Calvinism and moralism.

36:29

And the funny thing is, when I was reading this sermon by John Wesley, and this comes from his works, published in 1827, volume 5, page 195, and I want everybody to listen to this, it's a rather lengthy quote.

36:46

Rev. Wesley starts out, all who deny this, call it original sin or by any other title, are but heathens still, and the fundamental point which differs heathenism from Christianity.

37:02

They may indeed allow that men have many vices, that some are born with us, but here is the

37:09

Is a man by nature filled with all manner of evil? Is he void of all good?

37:16

Is he wholly fallen? Is his soul totally corrupt? Or to come back to the text, is every imagination of the thoughts of his heart only evil continually?

37:28

Allow this. Wesley is saying if you affirm this, you are so far a

37:35

Christian. Deny it, and you are but a heathen still.

37:42

Now I cannot agree with John Wesley anymore. I give a hearty amen.

37:49

He is absolutely right. A denial of original sin is proof positive that you are still a heathen.

38:00

So you are saying that this is really an argument between Christianity and Pelagianism?

38:06

Yes, absolutely. It is a debate between Christianity and the heresy of Pelagianism.

38:13

So even our Arminian brothers who learn these things about Finney, if they are biblically orthodox, even while remaining

38:21

Arminian, they should be just as appalled as we are by what Finney taught.

38:27

With John Wesley's statement right here, he just condemned Finney as a heretic.

38:34

That's what he just did. That's why I bring it out. In fact, let me read here.

38:42

This is from the memoirs of Charles Finney, page 48, same reference I referenced earlier.

38:49

He's talking about his pastor, George Washington Gale. He wrote,

38:55

Gale taught that men are passive in regeneration. Passive is another word to say they're dead in sins and trespasses.

39:04

Gale was teaching the orthodox doctrine that men were dead in trespasses and sins.

39:11

Finney is saying Gale taught that men were passive in regeneration. So he understood what Gale was teaching.

39:18

And in short, he, that's Gale, held all those doctrines that logically flow from the fact of a nature sinful in itself.

39:28

That's original sin. Finney says, these doctrines I could not receive.

39:36

And this is not the only place he denies original sin. We documented over and over in Beware of False Prophets, where Finney states over and over and over that he denies original sin.

39:53

And I don't get why Christians do not really open up their minds and look at what

40:02

Finney was teaching. Because when you do, you have to come away with the conclusion that what

40:08

Finney was teaching was not orthodox Christianity. It was Pelagian. He denied original sin.

40:15

And he went on to deny moral depravity, as we saw in that quote that I had earlier.

40:23

And let me just go back to that quote. This, by the way, was given in his 1851 lecture, 38.

40:32

It's called Moral Depravity. You can find it in his Systematic Theology. But he writes, moral depravity, as I use the term, does not consist in, nor imply, a sinful nature.

40:47

In the sense that the substance of the human soul is sinful in itself. It is not a constitutional sinfulness.

40:57

So, there's nothing sinful about man. And yet, Scripture tells us, when Adam and Eve fell in the

41:04

Garden of Eden, Romans chapter 5, that sin passed from one man to all of his posterity.

41:15

All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. None is good, no, not one.

41:21

In iniquity did my mother conceive me, or in sin did my mother conceive me, and iniquity did she bring me forth, citing

41:28

David. So, the evangelical church has always believed, and here's what

41:34

I like to tell people, original sin tells us how we became sinful. Yes.

41:40

Total depravity tells us the depth of that sin. Amen. And I mean, the biblical evidence that we inherited sin from Adam after his fall, or at his fall, is clear enough evidence that evangelicals predominantly have held to that, even if they are frightened of terms that sound too

42:04

Catholic to them, like original sin. It's been a universally held belief by evangelical

42:11

Christianity and Protestantism that we are born in sin. I'm quoting from the same book.

42:20

That would be the memoirs, page 122. Then he goes on to write, the

42:27

Bible, he stated, and the he, I believe he was referencing Gale again, teaches that God has imputed

42:35

Adam's sin to all his posterity. That we inherit the guilt of that sin by nature, and are exposed to eternal damnation for the guilt of Adam's sin.

42:48

This is a direct contradiction of my irresistible conviction of right and justice.

42:57

And Finney went on to affirm that he disagreed with the doctrine. Now, he also used, and I don't want to sidetrack you because you're on a very important part here, but he, according to your documentary, according to the quotes even by Finney, he really did not believe in what we call the

43:20

Reformation Principle of Sola Scriptura. He didn't believe that the Bible was his sole inerrant authority, did he?

43:28

Well, you know what, Finney had legal training, he never had theological training, and he even admits, he says that at one point, he likes to say that he goes to his

43:44

Bible in his own reason. And what you see there is, and I think

43:50

John MacArthur in his book, A Shame to the Gospel, he actually did an addendum on Finney that was very well done.

43:57

But he mentions here that the reason that he's going to is his own unaided reason, really his fallen nature, and he's superimposing his humanistic mindset on the

44:12

Scripture. So a lot of people will say they're Christians, and a lot of people will carry the

44:18

Bible with them, but they're going to read it either through humanistic lenses, or they just have some sense of morality, and they superimpose that and make that equal with Scripture.

44:32

And I think that's what Finney did. Yeah, well, Finney probably would not have spelled it out that he didn't believe in the sufficiency of Scripture inerrancy in quite those vivid terms, but the way in practice he functioned was a denial of Sola Scriptura, wasn't it?

44:47

Right, and I would agree, I would agree there was a denial of Sola Scriptura. But brother, and this is the legacy of Charles Finney today.

44:53

I mean, how many times do you hear people say, well, I'm praying to God, and I'm asking him for a piece.

45:03

A piece of what, I always say. A piece of pie?

45:09

What do you mean, a piece? Where in Scripture does it say that we're to pray and ask

45:14

God for a piece? You know, if the Bible tells us this is then do it.

45:21

If the Bible tells us this is not good to do, then don't do it. You don't have to pray and ask

45:27

God to give you a piece. You don't. Now people, and just to make sure your audience understands where I'm coming from, because I had a man, oh, this goes back about 10 years ago, and he worked for a company, and finally he got a promotion that he was looking for.

45:47

And he was asking God for a piece on whether or not he should take it.

45:53

And he's talking with me about it, and brother, I'm not trying to play a prophet or anything, but I could see in his eyes and the tone of his voice that he had already made his decision.

46:05

He just wanted to give it enough time so that if anybody objected, he could say, well,

46:11

I prayed about it, and I asked God for a piece. And see, if somebody says, I asked

46:17

God for a piece, and God confirmed me that I should take this job, then you have no grounds by which to argue.

46:25

None. He's wide open to do whatever he wants to do. So he wasn't really coming to me for advice as much as he wanted me to validate the decision he had already made.

46:37

Now one of the things... Hold on, let me continue with this, because he asked me, he said, well,

46:43

Jerry, it doesn't say in Scripture that I can or can't move to such and such a town.

46:50

And I said, you know what? You're right. God never says, hey, this is okay to do, or moving here is okay to do, or taking this job is okay to do, or marrying this girl is okay to do.

47:01

He doesn't ever do that. But what he does is he gives us principles. And I always tell people, when you've got a decision like that, yes, you should seek the face of God, but you're going to seek that face in his word.

47:15

And the question you have to ask yourself is, if I took this job, would

47:20

I be sinning? That is a key question you have to ask yourself.

47:27

Would I be sinning? So, if you're... And this is what I spelled out for him, and I keep trying not to say his name, because who knows, he may listen to your radio broadcast.

47:39

But he said to me, I said to him, brother, because he asked me, well, how do

47:45

I ask those questions? How do I figure that out? And I said, well, first off, you've got to realize that you're going to be moving about five hours away from your family, and from your wife's family, and from the home your children have come to know and love.

48:00

Now, there's nothing wrong with that, if the move is good for them, but money cannot be...

48:06

Money and prestige, being a supervisor, cannot be your main motivators. The first thing you need to do is you need to go to that area and find if there is a church that can minister to your family.

48:21

Now, this guy happened to be Reformed Presbyterian. I don't know how devoted he was to the doctrines of the church, but he went to a

48:30

Reformed Presbyterian church. Secondly, you've got to make sure you're not moving your family into Sodom and Gomorrah.

48:37

What is the spiritual makeup of that community? Are they going to be friendly to a

48:43

Christian family like yours moving in that area? You need to also check out the finances of that area.

48:50

Suppose you get the raise, and you get the position, but it puts your family in financial straits.

48:58

These are the questions that will be answered if I make this move, would I be sinning?

49:03

Because if there's not a church that can minister to your family, if you're moving your family into a den of iniquity, and if you're going to actually be losing money because the economics of that area are worse off than where you are, then your decision is clear.

49:19

You can't take it. Well, to make a long story short, he took the job. Six months later, it was such a nightmare, he got fired and he moved back.

49:29

And I wasn't the guy standing there saying, see, I told you so. I never even said anything to him.

49:35

We never talked about it again. But what Finney and his approach to Scripture was, does it make sense to me?

49:44

Does it resonate with me? It's kind of like the old, hey, read this passage, what does this passage mean to you?

49:52

That's the wrong question to ask. What did God mean it to mean to us? That is the right question to ask.

49:59

In fact, it's a very liberal hermeneutic. I know that Finney was morally conservative, but that is the type of approach that the liberal

50:10

Bible scholar or liberal minister who has any use of the Bible, he will use that approach in hermeneutics when he's attempting to exegete the

50:22

Bible. Yeah, and so that's why I'm looking at a quote here from Finney's lectures on systematic theology.

50:28

This is the 1851 edition, page 320. He asks a rhetorical question here.

50:35

Does reason affirm that we are deserving of the wrath and curse of God forever for inheriting from Adam a sinful nature?

50:45

And if you read the whole thing in context, you can understand that Finney is fishing for a no answer. No, it doesn't stand to reason.

50:52

Well, whose reason is that? It's Finney's reason. And that's why Finney is not an

50:58

Arminian. Finney was a Pelagian who denied original sin, how we fell, and total depravity, the effects of that fall.

51:08

Now, one of the things that our listeners may find remarkable, especially those who are Reformed and are very familiar with the terms monergism and synergism, they may be shocked to hear that Finney was a monergist, but not in a way.

51:25

No, and I've often made that distinction. You know, the term mono, and I forgot the

51:35

Greek. Mono is one, of course, everybody knows that. And then the

51:40

Greek word for work, I just totally forgot it. But as Christians, specifically as Reformed Christians, we believe that justification is monergistic, primarily the beginning of justification more so than anything, and we recognize that as the catalyst which leads us to belief by the

52:04

Spirit, but that it is only work of God, and only a work of God, and we contribute nothing to it.

52:12

Just like regeneration as well. Say it again? Just like regeneration as well.

52:17

Just like regeneration. And see, the idea is that as a result of the fall of Adam in the

52:25

Garden of Eden, and prior to our conversion, we are dead in our sins and our trespasses.

52:33

The very thoughts of our imagination are evil continually. Nobody is good, no not one.

52:40

Our heart is deceptive and evil and wicked, and we can't understand it.

52:45

We are slaves to sin, we are dead in our trespasses and sins, we are spiritually a walking corpse.

52:55

And regeneration is the act of God, through the preaching of His Word, putting

53:01

His Spirit in us, and we are now alive. It's really the first time we've been truly spiritually alive, and now we see and understand that we are sinners, and that we not only commit actual sins, but we're born with a sinful nature.

53:25

And this is a very important point. We do not become sinners when we sin.

53:31

We sin because we are born sinners. And this is what

53:37

Mr. Finney could not get, what he could not grasp. This is what his legal studies told him, not his biblical studies.

53:47

And if you could differentiate between monergism and synergism, and then differentiate between theomonergism and anthromonergism.

53:58

Yeah, monergism basically stated is that it's all a work of God, and we could throw the word monergism that it's a work of one, because we believe that God does all the work.

54:13

That's why we have no grounds by which we can boast. That's why justification is not of works.

54:21

It is all of God. Synergism, in the Arminian understanding, sin is the word for together or two, and again you have the latter part work, and I think it's ergof, but I'm not real sure.

54:38

I don't remember. But anyway, so in monergism you have the work of one, in synergism you have a cooperating work, and this is where we differ with the

54:48

Arminians. Now the funny thing is, I read that quote by John Wesley, and I've read so much of Wesley over the years that I'm often astounded how the dear man could not connect the dots.

55:01

He would affirm original sin, and he would affirm total depravity, but he couldn't understand that as a result of the depravity that we inherited, we were dead in our sins and trespasses, and we needed a supernatural work of God to bring us back to life.

55:18

And of course, as I like to say, a dead man can believe nothing. So we have to be brought back to life.

55:26

But the Arminians believe that they with the grace of God. And so the sin, the prefix

55:35

S -Y -N, you'll find it in words like synchronize. You know, we're going to synchronize our watches, so it's together.

55:44

It means working together. And so the Arminian believes that they work with God to bring about their salvation.

55:53

Now, Finney did not believe in synergism. In fact, one could argue that his doctrine of regeneration was really no regeneration at all.

56:05

It's really a moral change of mind. And this goes right to the heart of his moralistic philosophy and theology.

56:13

And what he was, was where we would affirm a theomonergism.

56:20

It's a work of God alone. The theos would be God. Monergism, work alone.

56:27

Finney was an anthromonergist. It was a work of man alone.

56:33

Now, there are times he hints to that God may help us in that. For instance, his view of the atonement or the crucifixion of Christ, which we'll get to in a minute.

56:44

But he basically believed that that man converted himself.

56:50

In fact, his most popular sermon, the one that is often cited in red, is actually called

56:56

Sinners Bound to Change Their Own Hearts. I mean, that's a title of one of his most popular sermons.

57:04

And I can't tell you how many times when I was researching Finney, that was the number one sermon that people quoted over and over and over again.

57:15

And because Finney denied original sin and because he denied total depravity, so that's not there.

57:21

And see, Chris, this goes to the heart of the debate between the historic church and the

57:28

Pelagians. When Pelagius did not believe in original sin, the question was posed, well, then why does man need a

57:37

Savior? Is it possible for a man to live a perfect moral life and never sin?

57:43

And Pelagius answered that question in the affirmative. Well, if that's possible, then the death of Christ was not absolutely necessary.

57:53

And this is what the early church wrestled with. After all of the debates in the patristic period dealing with the deity of Christ, the next big issue was the

58:06

Pelagian issue, which rose to the same level as the debate over the deity of Christ.

58:13

The Orthodox Party, after they had beaten all of the enemies, the Nestorians, and the

58:19

Eutychians, and the Monophysites, and the Sibyllians, and the Arians, you know,

58:24

I think they thought they had a moment to breathe. And lo and behold, along comes

58:29

Pelagius, who objects to a prayer that Augustine had written, God grant what thou commandest, and command what thou wilt.

58:40

And Pelagius objected to that, because it implied that man could not live a moral life, or that man could live a moral life without God.

58:52

Well, if man could live a moral life without God, then when he died, did he go to heaven? Yes. Man did not have to have

58:58

Christ. Christ was there for those who had sinned, but it was theoretically possible for people not to sin.

59:06

Now, here's the irony, is that you have so many fundamentalists who rightly condemn the

59:14

Roman Catholic Church for their heretical view of justification and salvation by adding the works of men, and denying sola gratia and sola fide, that here you have

59:30

Finney that they uphold as a hero, many of them, not all of them, but many of these fundamentalists, these same fundamentalists uphold

59:37

Finney as a hero, and yet he was so man -centered in his view of salvation that he believed in something that even

59:45

Rome condemned. Right, right. No, and in many ways, they actually are.

59:52

They're gravitating towards a more Roman Catholic view of justification, but I actually think they go further than that.

59:59

Right, right. Because, now, let me build the case. There's a denial of original sin by Finney, there's a denial of total depravity, and there is the belief that man can convert himself, he can regenerate himself.

01:00:14

I call it anthro -monergism, instead of theo -monergism.

01:00:19

It's all done by man. Now, the question comes up, so Finney gravitates towards this

01:00:27

Pelagianism, and this is what none of his critics in the 19th century really ever brought up, but Finney gravitates towards this position, so now he stands in a clear line of denunciation by the early church who condemned

01:00:44

Pelagianism in 412 at the Council of Carthage, 416, 418 when they reaffirmed it after the

01:00:52

Bishop Zosimus had actually exonerated Pelagius.

01:00:57

The African churches came back and said, no, no, no, no, no, Bishop of Rome, you are wrong!

01:01:05

Which is interesting, because so many people have led to believe that nobody bucked the system of the popes or the papacy until Martin Luther, but no, we see it in the early church that before the ascension of the papacy, many of the early church fathers said that the

01:01:23

Bishop of Rome was wrong. But Finney is affirming their rightness.

01:01:29

And I mean, you have all the way up to 431 at Ephesus when a general council condemned

01:01:36

Pelagius again. And then you had the Lutheran, the

01:01:42

Concord, and the Formula of Concord condemned Pelagius, and then of course, again, with the

01:01:48

Synod of Dort. And unfortunately, those reaffirmations have not been touted loud enough that modern churchgoers don't even know what we're talking about.

01:01:59

We're talking about Pelagianism. Of course, the classic debate was with Augustine, who stood on the right, biblical side of the question.

01:02:10

Right. And remember his nickname, the Doctor of Grace. And Augustine was the man who took up the mantle.

01:02:19

He had just finished battling the Donatists, and he was one that was hoping, wow, now I can get back to just ministering.

01:02:26

But no, the Pelagian heresy reared its ugly head, and Augustine had to get back in the thick of a theological debate.

01:02:35

And he often lamented that he even got involved in it. But it was continually affirmed.

01:02:41

You know, not one time in the history of the Church was Pelagianism ever counted as right except by the

01:02:48

Bishop of Rome. Mm, wow. The fundamentalist, King James -only Baptist ought to consider that.

01:02:57

I'm going to pause for, I'm not going to air a commercial because of the difficulties we're having, but I just need to give honor to whom honor is due here, to those who make

01:03:08

Iron Sharpens Iron possible. I'm just going to verbally give some contact information. First of all, we want to thank my sponsors, the

01:03:16

Thrivant Financial offices in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, for supporting this program.

01:03:23

And you can contact Mike Gallagher, the local representative for Thrivant Financial.

01:03:30

He's a born -again believer in Christ, and he will help you in any way he can through your financial counseling needs.

01:03:39

His phone number is 717 -254 -6433. 717 -254 -6433.

01:03:47

I also want to thank Wading River Baptist Church in Wading River, Long Island, New York. Without them, this program would not be on the air.

01:03:56

And I thank them from the bottom of my heart. Pastor Ron Glass and the brethren at Wading River Baptist Church are forever in my debt.

01:04:06

And I just cannot come up with the words appropriate to thank them.

01:04:13

And in fact, I reversed that statement. I should be, I am forever in their debt, is what I meant to say.

01:04:19

Wading River Baptist Church, their website is wrbc .us.

01:04:25

That's for Wading River Baptist Church, wrbc .us. Solid Ground Christian Books are also sponsoring this program, solid -ground -books .com,

01:04:36

solid -ground -books .com. And then finally, the

01:04:42

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, right here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, their website is cvbbs .com.

01:04:51

That's cv for Cumberland Valley, bbs for biblebookservice .com.

01:04:57

And they may even have some copies of the documentary that we are discussing today, because I know that they have had some of Jerry's other documentaries there in the past.

01:05:07

So go to their website and find out. Back to our discussion, there is a remarkable quote right from the pen of Charles G.

01:05:17

Finney on what we were just discussing, on his monergistic view that man alone is involved in his regeneration, and it's on...

01:05:28

I've got it right here. Great. If you want to shock our listeners with this one, go ahead, read it. Yeah, and we documented all this,

01:05:36

Chris, because I knew there were going to be people who were going to say, there's no way that Finney believed that.

01:05:42

And this is page 224 of his Lectures on Systematic Theology, a bridged edition, published by Bethany Fellowship in 1976, and I quote, several theologians have held that regeneration, that is being born again, is the work of the

01:05:59

Holy Spirit alone. But I might just as lawfully insist that it is the work of man alone.

01:06:10

That is utterly astonishing. Yeah, and see, when I sat there with my books open and I'm talking with people who were asking me back in the day when

01:06:19

I was studying this, why are you studying this? Because Finney had such a profound impact on the

01:06:25

Church, and his false doctrine is being felt today, and I believe the impotence of the modern

01:06:34

Church to answer everything from abortion to homosexual marriage can be traced back to the 19th century and two movements,

01:06:44

Finneyism and Dispensationalism. And that's why I was so astounded when

01:06:49

I saw that they were actually married at Oberlin College, the school that Finney founded, where their graduate,

01:06:57

Louis Perry Chaffer, who actually got his degree, I believe, in music, and he went on to start

01:07:03

Dallas Theological Seminary, which, by the way, I never found any evidence that he had a doctorate degree.

01:07:09

A lot of these guys just used to hand out doctorate degrees to each other. And I have the other quote about what

01:07:19

Finney believed the role of the Spirit was in regeneration, if you want to read that. If you don't,

01:07:24

I have it right in front of me. No, you go ahead and read it. I don't have it right in front of me. The Spirit takes the things of Christ and shows them to the soul.

01:07:32

That's it. Okay, now, here's this. That was a perfect segue to where we need to go.

01:07:39

Because now, I mean, the heresy of his understanding of original sin and moral slash total depravity, his anthro -monergistic view that man regenerates himself, now leads us to, then why did

01:08:02

Christ die? And this is a paramount question, and every

01:08:08

Christian who loves the gospel, who sings, Jesus loves me, this I know, for the

01:08:13

Bible tells me so, they ought to recoil at what I am prepared to tell you.

01:08:19

Yes. As evangelical Christians, we believe in substitutionary atonement.

01:08:28

That is, that Christ was the substitute payment for our sins.

01:08:36

Payment. And I don't know of any Christian, I do not believe you can be a

01:08:42

Christian and deny that what Christ did on the cross was a payment.

01:08:47

You may not understand the full implications of what it means to have a payment, but you still will affirm that Christ's death was a payment for sinners.

01:09:01

Many did not believe in substitutionary atonement. In fact, if I can find, give me a second here,

01:09:09

I'm going to look for a couple of quotes. And let me repeat, while you're looking,

01:09:14

I'm going to repeat our email address if anybody has any questions, it's chrisarnsen at gmail .com, c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com.

01:09:24

And please give us your first name, city and state, and country if you live outside the U .S. I have a quote from pages 320 to 322 on lectures on systematic theology,

01:09:36

I don't know if... Go ahead, read it. Christ's righteousness could do no more than justify himself.

01:09:46

It can never be imputed to us. It was naturally impossible, then, for him to obey on our behalf.

01:09:54

I mean, that's blasphemy. Oh, of course. I mean, there is no other way around that.

01:10:00

That is blasphemy. I'm going to grab his memoirs real quick, and I have them marked.

01:10:12

I know I hate silence, I used to do talk radio. Well, if you want, I could quote another one from his lectures on systematic theology, if you want.

01:10:23

I've got one right here, page 51. When I read it, I highlighted it in yellow.

01:10:30

In these things, I think

01:10:35

I fully succeeded in showing that the atonement did not consist in the literal payment of the debt of the sinners.

01:10:54

That it simply rendered the salvation of all men possible, and did not of itself lay

01:11:00

God under any obligation to save anyone. So he's saying that there's no payment for sinners, and God is not obligated to save anyone based upon the death of Christ.

01:11:11

Now, you and I would say that God is obligated to save sinners based on the death of Christ, because Christ died for sinners.

01:11:20

He's saying, no, Christ did not die for sinners. And this was the heart of the issue of justification.

01:11:28

Finney denied substitutionary atonement. He just denied it.

01:11:34

He said it's not there. Well, if you deny substitutionary atonement, now you've got the issue, and he did deny double imputation.

01:11:43

When Christ hung on the cross, our sinfulness was imputed to him, and his righteousness was imputed to us, those who believe.

01:11:56

This is the heart of the evangelical doctrine of justification by grace alone through faith alone.

01:12:03

If you deny this, in fact, if you overturn this, I would say, and still try to maintain yourself as a

01:12:11

Christian, you are touting blasphemy, because you are basically saying what Paul said in Galatians 2, that Christ has died in vain, without meaning, without purpose.

01:12:26

And in fact, I found the quote here. This is from his lectures on systematic theology, the 1851 edition, which is very hard to get a copy of, page 727 and 728, but I will tell you, it is online.

01:12:42

You can just look up Charles G. Finney, Lectures on Systematic Theology, 1851. And I quote,

01:12:49

For sinners to be forensically pronounced just is impossible and absurd.

01:12:56

As we shall see, there are many conditions, while there is but one ground of the justification of sinners.

01:13:04

As has already been said, there can be no justification in a legal or forensic sense, but upon, listen to this folks, but upon the ground of universal, perfect, and uninterrupted obedience to law.

01:13:25

How in the world can people call him a great preacher?

01:13:32

Right. So how can they do that? It's funny, because my copy of his

01:13:37

Revival Lectures is published by Pat Harbison and the 700 Club. Did they ever read

01:13:43

Finney before they put it out? Did Finney, I guess he must have believed that he met that criteria then.

01:13:52

Yeah, I mean, I would assume so. I mean, because remember, Finney held where you and I would hold to substitutionary atonement, and we would hold that that substitutionary atonement, the doctrine of double imputation, that our sinfulness when

01:14:08

Christ was on the cross was imputed to him, and his righteousness was imputed to us.

01:14:15

Finney would deny all of that. So he believed in what is known as the more governmental theory of the atonement.

01:14:24

And this all goes back to his Pelagian moralism. Right. The governmental theory of the atonement, and I wish

01:14:31

I had the quote here by my former professor, who passed away a few years ago, Dr.

01:14:36

Robert Raymond, and his new systematic theology of the Christian faith. But basically what

01:14:42

Finney, well, let me give you a history, okay, real quick. During the

01:14:48

Remonstrance, there were some guys on the

01:14:54

Reform side who were really sharp, and they were looking and listening at what the

01:15:00

Armenians were saying, and the implications that these doctrines would have.

01:15:06

One of the proponents of the Remonstrance was a guy named Conrad Borsteas.

01:15:13

And Conrad Borsteas, and this really went to the heart, that if man has a free will that God cannot violate, then how in the world could we have an inspired, infallible, inerrant word given by God to man?

01:15:31

That's right. How can we have that? That's right. And what's going to happen is, rationalism is going to come in.

01:15:41

And if you've ever spoken with any Unitarians, those who deny the deity of Christ, if you've ever spoken with any of these, they're very rationalistic.

01:15:53

They start with their own unaided reason, and from there, they judge the word of God.

01:16:01

And this is what Conrad Borsteas did. And some of the men at the Synod of Dort, and prior to that, now he held the chair of theology at Leiden University.

01:16:12

Some of the men started saying, wait a minute, if you listen to him, he denies the deity of Christ.

01:16:20

And at first, he objected to this. No, I don't. No, I don't. No, I don't. After the

01:16:25

Synod of Dort, I believe it was in 1620, he finally came out and denied the deity of Christ.

01:16:32

He just went on record. Wow. One of his fellow laborers was a man named

01:16:38

Simon Episcopius. He was accused of the same thing, but he never went as far.

01:16:44

But the implications of their doctrine, because remember, the Synod of Dort had called

01:16:50

Arminianism and the Arminian Remonstrance, the rebirth of the Pelagian era out of the gates of hell.

01:16:56

That's a quote. And by 1640, one of their students, a guy named

01:17:04

Grotius, I think it was Herman Grotius, I might have the first name wrong, articulated what became known as the governmental theory of the atonement.

01:17:15

The best articulation of that was done by a Methodist minister named John Miley. And what this doctrine taught is that when

01:17:23

Christ died on the cross, he did not make a payment for sins. Because Miley and Grotius and others recognized that if you said a payment was made, that if Christ paid for the penalty of a sinner's sins, then that sinner must of necessity be forgiven.

01:17:46

What they came up with is the governmental theory of the atonement. Go ahead. I just have a couple of more horrific quotes right out of Finney's lectures on systematic theology that I'd like you to respond to.

01:18:00

One is found on page 747. Finney writes,

01:18:06

It is not found in Christ's literally suffering the exact penalty of the law for them, and in the sense literally purchasing their justification and eternal salvation.

01:18:20

And then in page 750, he says, Neither is the atonement nor anything in the mediatorial work of Christ the foundation of our justification, in the sense of the source, moving, or procuring cause.

01:18:37

Just utterly astonishing. Yeah, and that is the denial of a payment.

01:18:44

And so, just real quick to let you know what his view of the death of Christ and the atonement was, the governmental theory of the atonement says that Christ, when he hung on the cross, since it was not a payment, everything, this goes back to the

01:18:59

Roman Catholic view, everything was on the suffering of Christ. Now, we believe as evangelical

01:19:05

Christians that Christ suffered the penalty of death. Because without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin.

01:19:13

The Old Testament tells us throughout that life is in the blood. Shedding of blood is a metaphor, if you will, for death.

01:19:21

Christ could not have just cut himself. He had to die. Not only was it prophesied, but it was clear that he had to die.

01:19:30

And I would say died by the shedding of blood. So he bled out, okay? Um, Finney and those who hold to the governmental theory of the atonement say that Christ hung on the cross only as an example, or a testimony, or a vision, if you will, of how much

01:19:51

God the Father hates sin. So for us, it's an object lesson.

01:19:57

When you're on the anxious seat, okay? Remember, you don't have the stain of original sin.

01:20:05

You are not morally slash totally depraved. You can regenerate yourself.

01:20:12

Christ did not make a payment, but he died as an example of how much the

01:20:17

Father hates sin. And upon seeing that example, we should be motivated to convert or regenerate ourselves.

01:20:28

Which, to Finney, means, quote, universal, perfect, and uninterrupted obedience to law.

01:20:38

And that's the good news. That is the good news. So, you know, think about this, because even

01:20:48

Arminians, for the most part, will not go this far if Chris Harns commits an actual sin tonight.

01:20:56

Now, Chris, I'm going to set you up with a fairly common sin, okay?

01:21:03

My common sin, that I'm sure you do also, is I get very impatient when

01:21:10

I'm behind the wheel of my car and somebody is in the fast lane going slow.

01:21:16

And I probably sin quite a bit when I'm trying to get around them.

01:21:22

They irritate me. Now, according to Finney, because I became angry, here's what he says.

01:21:32

Whenever he, that's anybody, sins, he must, for the time being, cease to be holy.

01:21:40

This is self -evident. Whenever he sins, he must be condemned.

01:21:47

He must incur the penalty of the law of God. It could be said that the precept is still binding upon him, but that with respect to the

01:21:57

Christian, the penalty is forever set aside, or abrogated.

01:22:03

I reply that to abrogate the penalty is to repeal the precept. For a precept without penalty is no law.

01:22:11

It is only counsel or advice. The Christian, therefore, is justified no longer than he obeys.

01:22:19

And he must be condemned when he disobeys. In these respects, then, the sinning

01:22:26

Christian and the unconverted sinner are upon precisely the same ground.

01:22:36

For all those Baptists out there who believe in quote -unquote eternal security, your man not only didn't believe it, but he goes further than a lot of Pentecostals I would know.

01:22:49

I don't know of a single Pentecostal pastor that would tell me if I commit the least sin, becoming angry with somebody, that at that moment

01:22:58

I'm no longer a Christian and I'm headed for hell. Yeah, this is pretty scary stuff, and it's just amazing that people just, it must be through total ignorance, that they know that the people in their club like this guy,

01:23:15

Finney, so I'm just going to say that I like him too, and I know that he was very opposed to immorality and he stressed repentance, so I'm just going to hail him as my hero too, but they don't even really investigate the person that they are.

01:23:32

They don't. They don't, brother. And that's what's so scary. If you ever saw the documentary

01:23:37

The Marks of a Cult, look, I'm not going to say this. If I can say this as an example, that's all

01:23:45

I want it to be. I don't want it to be a point of pride and boasting, because I don't mean it that way.

01:23:53

But I was not a great sinner, like I said at the beginning of this broadcast. I was your run -of -the -mill

01:24:00

Joe Six -Pack sinner. That was it. My family was C &E Christians.

01:24:05

You know what a C &E Christian is? Are you talking about Christian Missionary Alliance? No, we were

01:24:10

C &E, Christmas and Easter. Oh, C &E. I thought you said CMA. Okay.

01:24:16

No, C &E. We only went to church Christmas and Easter. That was it. And if we could find a good reason not to go, we didn't go, you know?

01:24:26

I mean, that's just the way we were. We were from the South, so I couldn't take the Lord's name in vain or anything like that.

01:24:34

But, you know, our Christianity went no further than our bathroom door.

01:24:39

I mean, that was it. You know, I praise the Lord. My dad passed away last year, and he had come to a saving knowledge of Christ.

01:24:48

He was a member of a Reformed Presbyterian Church for 20 years. My mom still goes. My sister received

01:24:55

Christ about four years ago. I believe, and now she goes to a Reformed Presbyterian Church where the gospel is preached.

01:25:03

And so, you know, I'm very grateful, but we weren't a Christian family. And I grew up, you know, thinking that my goal in life was to be a millionaire and have a trophy wife, you know?

01:25:15

And then a bunch of little kids that, you know, ran around. That was my goal in life.

01:25:21

When I became a Christian, that radically changed for me. Um, it was no longer my goal in life to be a millionaire.

01:25:29

Uh, only as you would count, you know, the treasures of heaven. Um, and I wanted to be a godly husband, and I wanted to be a good father and train my children in the fear and admonition of the

01:25:41

Lord. So everything changed. And I tell people the first three weeks after I came to Christ, I had read the whole

01:25:49

New Testament and two -thirds of the Old Testament. I became a Christian before my wife did.

01:25:55

And my wife, she, she, I married her because she was the trophy wife. She married me because she was sure

01:26:02

I was going to be a millionaire by the time I was 30. And not to mention, I'm a very handsome man. And humble.

01:26:11

And humble. But, but seriously, um, my wife thought I had gone off the deep end.

01:26:17

You know, she was like, what happened to my husband whose goal was to pursue wealth? I mean, three months

01:26:23

I'm sitting there reading and studying. I'm not watching TV. I'm not, I'm not doing the things I was doing anymore.

01:26:30

I'm reading God's Word. And I had notebooks where I was sitting taking notes. I mean, just sitting there taking them.

01:26:36

And, and my wife thought I was going nuts. And finally she came to Christ. And I tell people that because, you know,

01:26:44

I, I'm sure I didn't have all of my theology correct. But I knew that I wanted to study the

01:26:51

Word of God. And in, in Marks of the Cults, the documentary that we did right after Amazing Grace, I make the comment that, that in this day and age,

01:27:00

I don't think we've seen it since the dark ages, the medieval period, where they didn't have access to the

01:27:06

Bible. Because it was written in Latin and nobody understood Latin. Even the priests of the time didn't understand

01:27:12

Latin. And they recited the mass in Latin. But they just did it rudely. Right.

01:27:17

And, and so these people were ignorant. I think it was Miles Coverdale one time who got a hold of a copy of the

01:27:24

Gospel of John. And when he read it, he said to a friend with tears in his eyes, if this is the

01:27:29

Gospel of John, then we are not Christians. And, and I hate to say it, but those people in the medieval period had an excuse.

01:27:39

It's like when the children of Israel under Josiah found the law of God in the temple and read it and wept and ripped their clothes.

01:27:46

Because they realized they were children of God in name only. Not in lifestyle, not in devotion.

01:27:55

And I said in, in March of a Cult, with more information in front of us, in books, in documentaries, on the internet, we have one of the most ignorant churches today since the medieval period.

01:28:12

You know, you're very, yeah, and when you were talking before about Finney's understanding of the atonement being just an example, that's another area where he is using the same type of eisegesis or hermeneutic, bad hermeneutic that the liberals use.

01:28:33

They would believe that the atonement was, or should I say the crucifixion. The crucifixion was just an example.

01:28:40

They would have a different reason than Finney. They would say, not because of God's hatred of sin, but because of the, it's an example of the humility and selflessness and sacrifice of Christ on behalf of others.

01:28:55

They would use language like that. But it's still the same idea of it's just an example. It really didn't finish or complete the work of redemption or the work of atonement.

01:29:07

It was really just a play, if you will. A theatrical performance.

01:29:13

Yeah, and that's a good way of referencing it. By the way, I found Dr. Robert Raymond's quote here from his

01:29:19

New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith, page 479. And Dr. Raymond said this, this governmental atonement view holds that Christ by his death actually paid the penalty for no man's sins.

01:29:37

What his death did was to demonstrate what their sins deserve at the hands of the just governor and judge of the universe, and permits

01:29:45

God justly to forgive men if on other grounds, such as their faith, their repentance, their works, and their perseverance, they meet his demand.

01:29:56

But this is just to eviscerate the Savior's work of all its intrinsic saving worth, and to replace the

01:30:04

Christocentric or Christoesoteric vision of Scripture with the auto -satiric vision of Pelagianism.

01:30:13

And I thought, wow, Dr. Raymond, he had such a way with words. And he hit the nail right on its proverbial head.

01:30:23

Finney and the governmental theory of the atonement is no atonement at all, because there is no saving work in it.

01:30:32

And again, I have asked Baptist preachers primarily, and some Pentecostals, I ask them, look at what

01:30:40

Finney taught. Look at what he taught. He denies original sin.

01:30:46

He denies total depravity. He denies justification by faith alone through grace alone, believing that man is saved by complete obedience to the law.

01:30:59

He denies substitutionary atonement. He denies double imputation. These are all the things that every evangelical would say, if you don't hold to them, you cannot call yourself a

01:31:11

Christian. And see, his methodology of revival was a direct result of his denial of all these doctrines.

01:31:19

That's why you can manufacture revival. And his revival lectures, he tells you how to do it.

01:31:27

You can manipulate people. And you can get them to make a profession of faith, but it's presumptive faith.

01:31:40

It's the stony ground here. I'm going to go - There's no true conversion there.

01:31:47

Yeah, I'm going to just quickly give another announcement for the sponsors of this broadcast, since we are having difficulty playing ads for you today.

01:31:57

And hopefully, God willing, that will be resolved tonight, even. But keep praying about that.

01:32:04

But I do want to thank another sponsor of this program, Linbrook Baptist Church in Nassau County, Long Island, New York.

01:32:11

Their website is linbrookbaptist .org, and that's l -y -n -b -r -o -o -k -baptist .org.

01:32:22

They've been a faithful sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron for many years. I'm talking about, obviously, when

01:32:28

I say many years, the old Iron Sharpens Iron through today, when we relaunched on June 1st.

01:32:35

They are still supporting this program, and we thank them so much for that. I also want to thank, again,

01:32:43

Thrivant Financial. And if you go to the Iron Sharpens Iron website, ironsharpensironradio .com,

01:32:51

ironsharpensironradio .com, and just scroll down to the sponsor sections, you will see all of the icons for the sponsors of this broadcast, and you could click on them.

01:33:03

They have hyperlinks to their own websites. So look for Thrivant Financial and all the other sponsors as well.

01:33:10

I also have been asked by our friends at the Preakness Valley United Reform Church in New Jersey.

01:33:18

We have been asked to announce their conference. It's a very controversial conference because it's really done in the format of a debate.

01:33:29

I'm not sure if it's going to be an actual formal debate, but there will be two sides of the

01:33:35

Two Kingdoms controversy presented at this conference at the

01:33:40

Preakness Valley United Reform Church. Their website is preaknessvalley .org.

01:33:46

That's P as in Peter, R -E -A -K -N -E -S -S. That's N as in Nancy, E -S -S, valley .org,

01:33:53

preaknessvalley .org. But let me ask you a question.

01:33:59

Because of the fact that Finney is really outside of the realm of not only evangelical or historic

01:34:09

Protestant theology, he even supersedes Rome in its heresies on justification.

01:34:16

Are there any figures of history that were identifying themselves as Protestant or evangelical that resembled him at all?

01:34:26

I'm talking about, obviously, people who are in writing somewhere, people who are noteworthy for a bad reason, obviously.

01:34:35

Do you know of anybody that compares to Finney in this way, or is he just an anomaly? No, I think he was actually kind of the grandfather, or maybe the father would be better, of the modern evangelical church.

01:34:52

And, you know, you can basically... I mean, if you look at the whole evangelistic movement that primarily really became predominant probably in the 60s and the 1970s as it moved forward.

01:35:07

I mean, I know you know of some names. The funny thing is, most people, and I'm going to go out on a limb here.

01:35:17

Take, for instance, Billy Graham. Billy Graham would embrace the methodology of Finney.

01:35:25

And I think he even wrote an endorsement for Finney's book. But I had to wonder at whether or not at his age he had actually read the book.

01:35:36

Because you can read Billy Graham's theology and, you know, understand I'm Reformed Presbyterian, and he's a

01:35:42

Baptist who embraces the Arminian doctrine of free will. We're going to have differences.

01:35:50

But I don't think... I think if I presented these quotes in their context, or I removed

01:36:00

Finney's name from the book and I had given it to Billy Graham and said, what do you think of this? I think

01:36:05

Billy Graham would have said, oh man, this is heresy. But because Finney's name is attached on it, people have a tendency to gloss over it.

01:36:17

Yeah, it's not only Billy Graham, the late Jerry Falwell praising

01:36:23

Finney. And the most uncomfortable for us in the Reformed camp, J .I.

01:36:28

Packer. Although it's no big shock to see, unfortunately, J .I. Packer's name attached to really horrible books and things like that.

01:36:37

This is still beyond the comprehension that J .I. Packer... Yeah, and I'm looking at his endorsement here, you know.

01:36:45

So now, the thing is, if they would have asked me to endorse the memoirs of Charles Finney, I could have said, this is a great work of restoration of Finney's original text, and one that all

01:37:01

Christians need to read and pay attention to. I might have been able to write something like that.

01:37:07

That doesn't mean I'm endorsing the theology. That means from a position of scholarship,

01:37:13

I'm glad this was done. Unfortunately, you mentioned J .I. Packer, and I think he actually gives an endorsement to the theology, which again makes me wonder if he ever read it, because he calls him a great man.

01:37:27

And, you know, I guess you could say, in many ways, he was a great man.

01:37:33

Like Time Magazine calls them the man of the year, even though Hitler was on the cover. I mean, they just...

01:37:40

Perhaps he just meant a figure from history that needs to be dealt with, or reckoned with, or whatever.

01:37:48

Yeah, years ago, I had made a comment on a radio show about General Rommel, the

01:37:57

Desert Fox. Right. And I was talking about how he was strategically one of the best generals of the 20th century.

01:38:05

And I had somebody call up and, how could you support that Nazi? I'm not supporting a Nazi! In fact,

01:38:12

Rommel wasn't even a Nazi, to my knowledge. I don't think he was actually ideologically a

01:38:18

Nazi. No, I don't think he did either. You know, I'm sorry. He was on the side of Germany during World War II, and I was not.

01:38:26

You know, of course, I wasn't even born then. But, you know, the thing is,

01:38:32

I can admire the man for his military prowess.

01:38:38

That doesn't mean I'm endorsing every single thing in his life. But Packer goes a little bit far.

01:38:44

And actually, Billy Graham and Jerry Falwell go even farther. But you see their influence in the revitalistic movements of the early part of the 20th century, up to Jack Hiles, and, you know, this whole mentality of praying the sinner's prayer.

01:39:03

And let me just let your listeners know, if they don't realize, there is no sinner's prayer in Scripture.

01:39:10

And there's nothing magical about taking that man -made prayer and praying it.

01:39:15

And, you know, the irony of it is so many of the non -conformists who came out of England, the

01:39:24

Puritans, who did not want their prayers written out for them, they're doing the exact same thing with the sinner's prayer, and they're giving it almost mystical power.

01:39:35

So years ago, I'm with a buddy of mine who I love, and I do not doubt he loves the

01:39:42

Lord and the Lord loves him. He's one of the most godly young men I've ever met, but he is one of these independent, fundamentalist,

01:39:50

King James -only Baptists, and we sat down for lunch, and he would not give the waitress his order until she prayed the sinner's prayer.

01:40:03

And I kept telling him, and I'm not going to say his name, I'm hungry! Well, I'm trying to get her into heaven.

01:40:11

You're not going to get her into heaven by prayer. She prayed the prayer just to get rid of it. You know?

01:40:19

And I'm sure he would, and it's funny, because his position has totally done a 180 from back then.

01:40:25

That was probably 15 years ago, and he and I have taught numerous times since then. And he says, you know,

01:40:31

I used to walk around with a sheet of paper in my hand, and I would keep a tally of how many people

01:40:36

I got to pray the sinner's prayer. And then Sunday morning at school, or Sunday school, we would all pull out our paper and say, yeah,

01:40:43

I got 29 people to pray it this week, and I got 32, and I got seven. And they would sit there and do that.

01:40:49

And he said, you know what, Jerry? I would run into these people six months later, two years later. There was no evidence of conversion in their life.

01:40:57

And he goes, now I know why. And this whole idea came from Finney and his view that revival could be manufactured if you simply followed a formula.

01:41:10

And let me tell every Christian out there, when you believe that you can have

01:41:16

God act by following a formula, that is not Christianity, that is

01:41:23

Christian science. And by the way, I think that you would agree that Finney's methodology and his humanistic approach to salvation is being imitated today by the evangelical church at large.

01:41:42

But wouldn't you say that they do not share— the one thing that he seemed to emphasize that was correct was the need of repentance.

01:41:52

That seems to be absent from the majority of evangelical pulpits, at least those in the limelight, those who are the big names in televangelism and the best -selling books and so forth.

01:42:04

Repentance seems to be almost non -existent in the message of the gospel. Yeah. No, and I would agree, and I think that they go further than Finney probably would have.

01:42:16

He would have called for repentance because he calls in complete obedience to the law of God in order to be saved.

01:42:23

Right. But yeah, it's a logical outward— you gotta remember, the nature of any aggressive movement is to go further than your forefathers.

01:42:35

And so today, there is superficial devotion to Christ based more on church programs and pizza blowouts and entertainment.

01:42:49

And so, you know, the funny thing is, if Finney came back and saw his legacy today, he would probably be appalled.

01:42:58

You know, I mean, because that's where the church is with this whole extemporaneous worship.

01:43:05

We've got to build up everybody's emotions. We've got to get people jumping up and down. You know, it's funny, because I mentioned earlier,

01:43:13

I was actually saved in a charismatic church, and for the first few years of my

01:43:18

Christian walk, I was a Pentecostal. And the idea of manipulating the emotions,

01:43:27

I'll never forget, and your audience may not like what I'm going to say, but I can remember one time we got our emotions so worked up, and I felt exactly the same way

01:43:40

I did when I heard Ronald Reagan give a speech in 1980.

01:43:46

And I can remember thinking, wait a minute, you know, was Ronald Reagan's speech on economics and deregulation?

01:43:58

Was that a religious experience? No, it was an emotional experience.

01:44:03

And a lot of what was going on in the church, I came to Christ in 1989, that was, you know, what

01:44:11

I was experiencing in the Pentecostal church made me feel the same way. And that's when

01:44:16

I realized nowhere in Scripture do any of the prophets or the apostles or Christ himself say that my people perish for a lack of emotions.

01:44:29

Let me ask you a question about, we were talking about at the outset of the program, the burnout district or the burned -out districts, where the false revivals came and went, and then you hardly saw any fruit of conversion in those areas for years, perhaps even until our modern day.

01:44:51

Until our modern day. Yeah, do you think a lot of it has to do with the false gospel of Phinney is, since it is impossible to meet the requirements of it, that people just give up?

01:45:04

And they're like, I can't, I can't do this. Yeah. You know, when

01:45:09

I first became a Christian, and I can remember the strength

01:45:15

I seem to have to ward off any temptation, and when that emotion wears off and you're dealt with, you know, the false gospel today says, put on Christ and you'll have peace and joy.

01:45:32

And peace and joy are fruits of the gospel, but they are not the gospel.

01:45:40

And so when a person in an experimental way attempts to put on Christ to see if they get peace and joy, there may be a small period of time where they have that peace and joy, but when the grinding of daily life comes up to them and they realize, wait a minute, three months ago

01:46:03

I was able to drive in my car without getting upset at the person who's in the fast lane going 60 miles an hour down the interstate.

01:46:12

And all of a sudden they start becoming angry and other temptations rear their ugly head. And all of a sudden the devil's coming against them and he's throwing up everything and they fall away quickly.

01:46:24

And this was Jesus's analogy of the sower. And they were the seed that fell on the stony ground, but because they had no root, now what is that root?

01:46:35

That root is the word of God. And it's what the apostle Paul said, all scripture is given by inspiration of God and it's profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped to every good work.

01:46:54

That's what they don't have. All they have is an emotional experience that wears off real quick.

01:47:02

Hmm. Well, it seems like the way that modern evangelicalism differs from the days of Finney, even though the methodology is the same and the human centeredness is the same, it seems like today they want to give all the good news without the bad news.

01:47:21

And it seemed like Finney had the majority of bad news to tell and not really much good news or hope or any comfort or peace.

01:47:31

I don't know how anybody could find any hope, comfort and peace in a message that says you must fulfill the law perfectly without failure and without interruption.

01:47:42

I don't know how anybody... Well, and hey, this is what Finney and Pelagius and those in his lineage, in his spiritual lineage believe.

01:47:55

They believe that they could do it. I don't know if any of them ever believed that they actually did it, you know.

01:48:00

This is why we have this whole issue of rededications going on.

01:48:07

Because somebody dedicates their life to Christ and then they have this emotional high and it wears off and they fall back and sin.

01:48:14

And then a few years later, they rededicate their life to Christ and the same thing happens over and over and over.

01:48:20

And I tell people, the worst thing you could say as a Christian, the worst thing that you can say is,

01:48:28

God, if you forgive me one more time, I'll never sin again.

01:48:36

Because God knows and you know and I know that they are going to sin again.

01:48:43

And the minute they say that, Satan has got them on what I call the sin don't sin treadmill.

01:48:52

And that is a dangerous place for people to be. Do you know, historically, if a lot of Finney's disciples eventually went into Mormonism or any of the other major cults that came from that era?

01:49:09

Well, I do know this. I don't know if I could say that any predominant person did.

01:49:15

But one of the things that's interesting is after the collapse of the union of cooperation between the

01:49:23

Congregationalists and the Presbyterians, when the Congregationalists withdrew because they were fixing to get kicked out, the whole burned over district really immersed itself into the mind sciences and new thought.

01:49:45

And so what you do have is out of that, you have got the

01:49:50

Christian science, you have Phineas P. Quimby, who was some of the other ones that came out of that time period.

01:49:58

Of course, I mentioned Mary Baker Eddy and Christian science. And you have this really almost mystical, esoteric

01:50:06

Christianity. And even the occult, right? And even the occult too, right?

01:50:12

Yeah. Yeah, so you really have this blow up.

01:50:18

And I'm looking for a quote here if you can give me just a second. I know we're getting near the end of the second hour.

01:50:29

Oh, it was a quote that I wrote for Amazing Grace.

01:50:38

Well, I do have a question from a listener. We have CJ in Lindenhurst, New York, who asks, in your estimation,

01:50:47

I know that only God knows the heart, but do you expect to see Phinney in heaven in spite of his horrible theology?

01:50:56

You know, that is a question that I will tell you right now, I expect to see

01:51:03

John Wesley in heaven. I expect to see, and I know this is going to surprise people because they know how much of a non -dispensationalist

01:51:13

I am. I actually expect to see C .I. Spillfield in heaven. If I were to follow, which, remember, at the end of the documentary, we really debated on how to finish this, but we went down through all the church councils that said, if you deny original sin, then you are a pagan.

01:51:37

You saw the quote, because we bring it back up, John Wesley, that if you deny original sin and the effects of sin, you are but a heathen still.

01:51:48

I mean, it's everything from the second council of Orange in 529, the council of Carthage in 412.

01:51:57

These are the great pastors of the time who got together and said, these doctrines, if believed, will condemn a person to hell.

01:52:08

If I followed those doctrines, then I would have to argue that, no, then he will not be in heaven.

01:52:14

But your reader is correct. Only God knows the heart. So I don't know if the last six months of Finney's life, if he repented, if he maintained that posture, where he denies original sin, denies total depravity, denies substitutionary atonement, denies double imputation, embraces the governmental theory, where he believes that justification is achieved by perfect obedience from the law.

01:52:43

My goodness, if we listen to the words of Christ and the apostles, if I, or an angel from heaven, come unto you preaching any other gospel than that which you have received, let him be accursed.

01:52:55

In the Greek, let him be anathema, eternally condemned. So what your reader has to come to the conclusion is—

01:53:02

You mean my listener? My listener. I'm sorry, what your listener has to come to the conclusion is, was

01:53:08

Finney preaching a false gospel? Was he a wolf in sheep's clothing?

01:53:14

Was he a false apostle? Was his gospel a false gospel?

01:53:20

And that's why I left it this way. If he believed what he was teaching, there is no way he is in heaven.

01:53:29

And let me just go ahead and quote the Second Council of Orange. If anyone asserts that Adam's sin affected him alone, and not his descendants also, or at least if he declares that it is only the death of a body which is the punishment for sin, that's

01:53:45

Roman Catholicism there. And not also that sin, which is the death of the soul, passes through one man to the whole human race.

01:53:54

He does injustice to God, and he contradicts the apostles. That's the

01:54:01

Second Council of Orange canon two. We have another listener,

01:54:07

Christian in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, who asks, I know that we who are

01:54:13

Christians often honor and revere men and give them honor publicly, although they had heretical ideas of theology, men such as Thomas Jefferson and Martin Luther King Jr.,

01:54:29

who have accomplished great things for our nation, but themselves were very dangerously heretical in their theology.

01:54:37

Is there anything that we can find within Finney to uphold him as a hero or example in any sense?

01:54:44

Well, you know what? This is very dangerous. Chris, you know

01:54:50

I love to read Spurgeon, and for those of you that don't know, Spurgeon was a Baptist. I'm a

01:54:55

Presbyterian. Spurgeon and I disagree, but he was such a man of God. I've already admitted that I have read numerous large portions of John Wesley's sermons, and I'm looking here at my library, and there are a lot of things with people

01:55:10

I disagree with. But on the foundational doctrines of the

01:55:17

Christian faith, we're going to be in total agreement. My view is if we have a hero, our first hero is the

01:55:25

Lord Jesus Christ. I often make the comment that we only have one superstar in Christianity, and that is

01:55:33

Christ himself. I do not like celebrity Christianity.

01:55:39

I might love Spurgeon for how he labored and how he worked, but I'm going to tell you something.

01:55:45

Spurgeon was a sinner saved by grace. I don't have anybody that I can think of in what your listener called hero that would not be an

01:55:59

Orthodox Bible -believing Christian. And I would say that I would not call

01:56:05

Thomas Jefferson one of my heroes. I've actually read the letters between Jefferson and Adams where they mocked the

01:56:11

Trinity and mocked the Resurrection. I have no use for somebody like that. Now, may they still have done good as far as our country is considered, perhaps.

01:56:22

But still, to me, I'm not going to look to them as a hero. Same with Martin Luther King Jr.

01:56:31

And it goes for anybody along those lines. I'm going to look for people that, again,

01:56:39

I don't like to call them my hero, but people that I read and that I take counsel with,

01:56:44

I'm going to look for people that are Orthodox Christians.

01:56:50

I'm not going to go outside of that. And you have about two minutes to leave what you most want etched in the hearts of our listeners today,

01:56:57

Jerry. The thing I want you to know is that Christ died for our sins and made full payment.

01:57:09

We are called to believe that and we are saved. We do not have to work for it.

01:57:14

We do not have to earn it. We cannot save ourselves. We simply believe because the

01:57:22

Spirit of God has regenerated us. Christians, we need to know God's Word.

01:57:28

We need to know the great doctrines of Scripture. And every doctrine of Scripture is applicable to our lives.

01:57:37

From the doctrine of inspiration—that is our doctrine of epistemology or theory of knowledge— to the doctrine of the

01:57:45

Trinity, everything has application. And the better we know it and understand it, the more effective of a tool we become in the hands of a sovereign

01:57:55

God. Amen. Well, I tell you, Jerry, I remember—I have to chuckle about it now, but I remember before the program you were like,

01:58:04

I don't know, do you think we could stretch out a discussion on Phinney in two hours? And I was confident we could and we definitely did.

01:58:12

And there was never a dull moment and never a dead air that I can remember. And I just want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for being a guest for the very first time on Iron Sharpens Iron.

01:58:22

And I look forward to many future returns, God willing and your schedule permitting.

01:58:28

Hey, Chris, just to let folks know, if they want to get a copy of Beware of False Prophets, it is on Amazon.

01:58:37

Yes. Beware of False Prophets, the case against Charles G. Phinney. If they want to get it digital, they can go to ChristianReader .com

01:58:45

and they can order a copy and have it delivered to their computer in a matter of a few minutes.

01:58:51

Go to ChristianReader .com for the digital version and Amazon for the DVD. And you could also try one of our sponsors who

01:58:59

I know has carried some of Jerry's documentaries on DVD and they still may have some in stock.

01:59:08

Go to Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service and their website is cvbbs .com,

01:59:16

cv for Cumberland Valley, bbs .com. I want to thank you so much,

01:59:21

Jerry, for being on our program. And I want everybody to remember for the rest of their lives that Jesus Christ is a far, far greater

01:59:30

Savior than you are a sinner. God bless and we look forward to your returning to us tomorrow on Iron Sharpens Iron.