The Postmodern Church (1970 - Present)

Billy Graham and the Postmodern Relativizing of Truth

Amen. So this'll be our final lesson on church history covering the age of the postmodern church. So this is the postmodern period. So I wanna begin with a video. We ended last time talking about Billy Graham.

Billy Graham, of course, was known as the world's leading evangelist. So what you're going to see, I think really fits the postmodern age in which we live where people think that there's no such thing as absolute truth.

Not that Billy Graham's ever said that. It's not what I'm saying. But here's a man who preached the gospel his whole life and at his crusades, he was very solid about biblical truth and the gospel, very clear.

And yet at the same time, he could also say things like this. So watch.

Tell me, what do you think is the future of Christianity?

Well, Christianity and being a true believer, you know, I think there's the body of Christ which comes from all the Christian groups around the world or outside the Christian groups. I think everybody that loves Christ or knows Christ, whether they're conscious of it or not, they're members of the body of Christ.

And I don't think that we're going to see a great sweeping revival that will turn the whole world to Christ at any time. I think James answered that, the apostle James, in the first council in Jerusalem when he said that God's purpose for this age is to call out a people for his name.

And that's what God is doing today. He's calling people out of the world for his name, whether they come from the Muslim world or the Buddhist world or the Christian world or the non-believing world.

They are members of the body of Christ because they've been called by God. They may not even know the name of Jesus, but they know in their heart that they need something that they don't have and they turn to the only light that they have.

And I think that they are saved and that they're going to be with us in heaven.

Well, what I hear you saying that it's possible for Jesus Christ to come into a human heart and soul and life even if they've been born in darkness and have never had an exposure to the Bible. Is that a correct interpretation of what you're saying?

Yes, it is because I believe that. I've met people in various parts of the world and tribal situations that they had never seen a Bible or heard about a Bible and never heard of Jesus, but they believed in their heart that there was a God and they tried to live a life that was quite apart from the surrounding community in which they lived.

This is fantastic. I'm so thrilled to hear you say that. There is a wideness in God's mercy.

There is, there definitely is.

My point in showing that is I really think it helps to illustrate the postmodern period where the man could say in front of one audience, in front of his crusade audience, which was typically a very conservative Baptist audience, he could say Jesus is the only way, but when he gets in front of a different audience, he seemed to say the exact opposite, or at least that's how it sounded.

Vatican II, Ecumenism, and the Collapse of Clear Boundaries

So whatever inconsistency there was there, there's many inconsistencies today. Another thing that happened that we didn't cover last time was the Catholic church held what is called the Second Vatican Council.

Who's aware of, it's called Vatican II. Basically, the Catholic church, remember back in the Reformation, they condemned all the Protestants. Protestants are anathema. But after the Second Vatican Council, which happened in the 1960s, now the Catholic church considered Protestants separated brethren.

So now they're calling Protestants brothers and sisters. Now they're separated, but they're still brothers and sisters. Pope John Paul II, who was very close to Billy Graham, Billy Graham called the Pope the greatest religious leader of the 20th century.

Pope John Paul II said, all who live a good life will be saved. So which is it? Are Protestants anathema or are they brothers in Christ? Are they saved or are they not? So it's very common these days to have people kind of giving what sounds like contradictory messages.

So do Catholics and Protestants and evangelicals, do we all have the same gospel? Well, I mean, I have an answer for that, but it really depends who you ask. You never know what kind of answer you're gonna get.

So there's so much confusion today in the postmodern world. Go back a hundred years, everyone was certain that their way was the right way. Now, hey, who knows? So let's all come together. That's the idea.

Another major event that took place in the postmodern era was in 1994. There was a document called ECT, Evangelicals and Catholics Together. Who remembers this? Has anyone even heard of it? Okay, Evangelicals and Catholics Together.

There were men who basically said the Protestant Reformation was just one big misunderstanding and that Catholics are saved too. And it turns out we really do have the same gospel. So the Reformation stuff, the Anathema, Council of Trans, it was all just a misunderstanding.

Those who took that position and signed the document were men such as Chuck Colson, Pat Robertson, J .I. Packer and Bill Bright of Campus Crusade for Christ. Now known as CRU. Those who opposed this, who stood with the reformers saying, no, Catholics and Protestants, we have different gospels.

Men who took that position were R .C. Sproul, John MacArthur and D. James Kennedy. So, and there's still that divide today. You can go into any Baptist church, evangelical, non-denominational, Protestant, and yeah, you just don't know what you're gonna find.

So part of the postmodernism, part of this idea is that people are reassessing everything. Reassessing religious beliefs, reassessing gender and sexuality. Who's to say, you know, it's based more on feelings.

We can all have our own truth. You know, you can speak your truth. We've heard stuff like this. Now what's our response? We talk about the truth, the truth of God's word, but today it's, you can have your truth.

Separation from Unbelief and the Call to Holiness

Let's turn to 2 Corinthians chapter six. I think one of the big issues, obviously the authority of scripture and always going back to scripture is, that tends to be what's underneath it all. But I think we're living in a day and age where there's really very little religious separation.

So the postmodern church, you've heard me talk about this, is very anti-doctrine, anti-doctrine. So the mantra is doctrine divides and what? Love unifies. Doctrine divides, love unites. So groups that would have never come together a hundred years ago or even maybe 60 years ago, now we're all coming together.

Now here's the thing, people coming together could be a very good thing, but it could and often does signal compromise. So there was the ecumenical movement where the different Protestant groups started to work together.

And I could see where some of that might be helpful, but then it quickly jumped from Catholics and Protestants working together. And now it's jumped to the interfaith movement where you have basically all religions are equally valid.

I know you've seen this, the coexist bumper sticker. Those are pretty common. And what's being communicated? It's not just coexist, because we all want to kind of live in peace and harmony with one another.

What's really behind that is that every religion is equally valid. One is not right and the other is wrong. That's not the way it is. So this is really a radical new idea. This did not exist throughout history.

This is totally new. It's postmodern. This is why you see Catholics and Protestants holding joint prayer services with Muslims and Hindus and Jewish rabbis and just anybody and everybody. Matter of fact, there was a interfaith council locally where I know a man who sat on the interfaith council and he sat on the council with Catholics and Jews and Muslims.

He didn't quit until a Wiccan joined the council. So I'm glad he has some standards there. Look at 2 Corinthians 6, 14. Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. Now, I don't know about you, but to me, that's very clear.

For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness and what communion has light with darkness and what accord has Christ with Belial? That's Christ with Satan. Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever and what agreement has the temple of God with idols?

For you are the temple of the living God. As God has said, I will dwell in them and walk among them. I will be their God and they shall be my people. Therefore, what? Come out, come out from among them and be separate, says the Lord, do not touch what is unclean and I will receive you.

So the admonition is to be separate. In the book of Revelation, chapter 17 and 18, it talks about Babylon, the corrupt world system and religious Babylon or mystery Babylon, the false religion. Again, the admonition is the same.

Come out of her, my people, be separate. 1 Peter 1, 16, be holy, the Lord says, for I am holy. And what's the idea? Be set apart, be different. Don't be like everybody else. Don't join together with everyone else.

Free in Christ, Liberty, and the Loss of Holiness

So along the same lines, another movement that took place in the postmodern era. So again, you have ecumenicalism, interfaith, evangelicals and Catholics together. But another movement that took place is known as free in Christ, free in Christ.

Now, are we free in Christ? Yeah, I mean, the Bible says that we have liberty. We have freedom in Christ. Of course, how do you define that? So this wasn't actually a movement as much as it's sort of a permeating attitude that obedience and holiness, a lot of people look at holiness.

If somebody starts talking about holiness and separation, in their mind, they think legalism. So obedience is legalism. Holiness is legalism. They say that Christ has come to set us free from the law.

And again, that's true. We're not under law, we're under grace. But how do you define these things? The attitude that, from what I can tell, the attitude that a lot of people have is that now I'm free in Christ, so I can kind of do whatever I want.

I'm kind of free to do all sorts of stuff that, again, 50, 60 years ago, Christians just didn't do, but now we're free to do it because we've realized we have this liberty. So point is, things have radically changed since the 1960s, 1970s, and I'm pointing to that era because of the social revolution in the United States.

And I think some of you who are older, you remember the drastic change from 1950 to 1980, just totally different. And it's in the church too. So things have changed since then. Before the postmodern era, churches understood, for the most part, biblical teaching, that now that we're in Christ and we're free in Christ, we're free because we have the indwelling Holy Spirit.

We don't want to sin anymore. It's not about perfection, but it's a growing in sanctification, a growing in holiness, growing in grace. And the Holy Spirit gives us power to obey. Again, not perfection, but it's growth moving forward.

1 John 5, verse 3 says, "'For this is the love of God.'". Because again, this is the justification for all of it, love. Well, holy, no, love. Yeah, but God, the commandments say this. No, it's just about love.

Well, here's 1 John 5, 3, "'For this is the love of God, "'that we keep his commandments, "'and his commandments are not burdensome.'". So the Christian seeks to obey God, not just to follow rules, but because the love of God has been poured out in our heart, Romans 5, 5.

So the proper understanding is we obey God. Why? Because we love God. And he first loved us and we love him in return. So you can't disconnect love from the context. Remember when Jesus in Matthew 22, he summarized the law and the prophets by love, love God, love your neighbor as yourself.

But what's he summarizing? The law. So you can't separate love from its context, which is the revealed word of God in the law. One last comment on that. The apostle Paul said in Galatians 5, 13, "'For you brethren have been called to liberty, "'only do not use liberty as an opportunity for the flesh, "'but through love serve one another.'".

So if someone wants to disagree with me, that's fine. But I think that this free in Christ movement has sort of given people or in their minds, it gives them a license to sin. Okay, another major change that has happened in the postmodern church, we have lost the concept of the Sabbath.

Now, I don't want to get into the weeds because you say some people call the Lord's day the Christian Sabbath, and it's technically not the Jewish Sabbath. So again, I don't want to get into all of that, but people have lost the concept of a day set apart unto God.

Back in the 1950s, 1960s, completely different from today. Even when I was young, kids did not have a game or sports practice on Sunday. It did not happen. Now it's common, because we've just gotten rid of this idea of the Lord's day because we're living in a, it's not just postmodern, we're living in a post-Christian era.

So the point is, 50s, 60s, 1970s, Sunday was the Lord's day. Of course, it still is the Lord's day, amen. But people, Christians for 1950 years, understood that Sunday was different. Sunday was set apart, but today in the eyes of most Christians, Sunday is pretty much just like any other day.

The majority of professing Christians in the United States do not even attend church on Sunday, nevermind setting the whole day aside like was done in time past. So again, a lot has changed. Am I wrong?

Is this true? Can I get a witness from somebody? No. Okay. Football games on Sunday. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I don't know how a Christian could have functioned in the NFL. Was it, I forget the, there was a movie about it.

I wanted to say Chariots of Fire, but I don't think that's it. There was an Olympic athlete. He was in contention for the gold medal, but the race was on Sunday. Was it 1930, something like that? 1926.

1926. Eric Lytle. Yeah, and he chose not to race because it was the Lord's day. And he didn't get the gold, but yes. You want to fill in the gaps of that story?

He wouldn't run that race. And he went to another team member that raced. I think his was like the 400 meter. And he said, I will switch and run the 800 meter instead. And everybody scoffed at him because he'd only trained for the 400 meter.

Yeah, yeah. And so he said, but I won't run it because it's on Sunday. And so he switched, ran the 800 meter race and which nobody said could be done. Yeah. And he blew everybody away. Right. Praise God.

That is Chariots of Fire. It is Chariots of Fire, okay. Yeah. Good, but I've had this conversation with other pastors and it just seems like we should have some sort of better understanding of the Lord's day and being set apart.

And almost every time I've had this conversation, you get slapped down with legalism. That's what the Pharisees did. Bad, that's bad. And I don't know. So another major change moving on. So that's one thing that whatever a person thinks about it, Christian tradition for 1950 years, totally different now.

We've kind of thrown it away. Or I say we as in, the majority of professing evangelicals. But another major change was the seeker sensitive approach to worship. Again, that started to come about in the 1970s, I believe it was.

So out went the suits and the ties, in came the casual dress. And listen, that's not really the main issue. I wouldn't wanna make a big issue about that, but the hymns were discarded. In came the rock and roll, which I think did water things down to a certain degree.

But the attitude was, and I can see where people bought into this. The attitude was we're just gonna get rid of all the kind of churchy stuff. And this is going to appeal to the younger generation. So we're gonna appeal to unbelievers to bring them into the church.

We're gonna appeal to young people. We're gonna get rid of all that stuff, but we're still gonna preach the Bible. We're still gonna preach the gospel. But what happened? Many of those churches, they got rid of the gospel too, and they replaced Bible preaching with self-help and motivational speaking.

So instead of a God-centered worship service, it became very man-centered, all an attempt to reach the lost and reach the next generation. Maybe they had good intentions, I don't know. But now that a generation or two has passed and they've tried it, the experiment, it's evident, it was a massive failure.

Some of the early leaders of that movement, men like Bill Hybels and Rick Warren, have even admitted that it failed, or at least Bill Hybels, I know, admitted that. Rick Warren, I don't know if he's admitted it, but Rick Warren's Saddleback Church is now borderline open and affirming of LGBT.

So it's just a total disaster doctrinally. So I'd said last week at the end of the modern era, and certainly the post-modern era, so much change has occurred, and I think a lot of harm. But it depends.

Like everything else with church history, there's somebody who's gonna listen to me, and they take the totally opposite view, and they look at it and they say, I think it's wonderful, right? So I'm saying it's not wonderful.

Someone else is gonna say it's great. It's like the Reformation. Some people think the Protestants thought the Reformation was terrific. It's a move of God. The Catholics thought it was horrible, right?

There's always gonna be two sides to every story. Now, is somebody right and the other person wrong? In this case, yeah. Yeah, yes, yes. Now, in theory, both could be wrong, but no, I think somebody is right.

But the post-modern way of looking at it, who's to say, because there's no such thing as absolute truth, okay. Any comments or questions up until now? All right. Let's go back and talk a little bit more about the charismatic movement, because, I mean, this is one of the biggest movements, and it still is probably the biggest movement within evangelical Christianity.

The charismatic movement is the one segment of evangelicalism or even Christianity that's still growing. Like, Catholicism, everything's in decline. All the numbers are in decline, but the charismatic movement is the one movement that's still growing.

So it's significant, and it's still fairly new, only since the 1960s. So let's go back. Remember the Jesus People movement? We talked about that. So it started, what, the late 60s, peaked, I think, in 1972, yes.

Is there one individual, like in Christian science or in a lot of these other cults, there is an individual that can be named that really started this movement? Is there one that started the Pentecostal movement?

Yeah.

Or the charismatic? I think Charles Parham was one, and there was another name that escapes me, but the charismatic movement doesn't really have one single figure. And in fairness, the charismatic movement has never been considered a cult.

So the cults always have one cult leader who started it. But the charismatic movement has been seen as within the realms of biblical Christianity. So there's not like one guy who started it all.

Well, it seems to me there's a difference between the charismatic movement, because they say in Roman Catholicism, there's charismatic Roman Catholics, but the Pentecostal movement, aren't charismatic and Pentecostal?

It's not the same.

So the Pentecostal movement started in 1901, 1905, right around there. And that's one thing. And then that type of thing with speaking in tongues, prophecy, healing, that spread to Catholicism, the Methodists, the Episcopalians.

So the charismatic movement started around 1960. So Pentecostals are charismatic, but not all charismatics are Pentecostal, because you could be a Baptist or a Catholic and be charismatic, but you're not technically Pentecostal.

Can you be Bapticostal? Well, there are people who say, the joke was a Bapticostal is a Baptist who likes to put their hand up when they're singing praise music or whatever. Hey, that's fine. I think sticking your hand up in the air is great.

That's fine.

Lots of verses say, lift your hands.

Yeah, so that's not the problem. So anyways, the Jesus People movement is started, that really made the charismatic movement grow even faster. So it started in a church, we talked about this last week, Calvary Chapel.

In fairness, Calvary Chapel and Chuck Smith did stay pretty focused on the scripture to a large degree. So I have to give credit there. But the Jesus People movement went in many other directions as well.

Maybe you've heard of the term ladder reign. This was big in the 1970s, I think. The ladder reign, they were talking about another move of the Holy Ghost, or sometimes it's called third wave charismatic theology, third wave.

So charismatic movement started in 1960s. It expanded with the Jesus People movement, Calvary Chapel. Calvary Chapel's evangelist, Lonnie Frisbee, he then left and got involved with what is called the Vineyard Movement, founded by John Wimber.

He was also involved with Calvary Chapel for a while. So I bring all of that up to transition back to the charismatic movement and the major impact it had. So tongues, prophecy, healing. If you go to any sort of Christian festival, they're probably gonna have a tent where people are praying and laying on hands to try to miraculously heal people of their ailments.

So what does the term third wave refer to? This is the last movement within the Pentecostal movement. First wave was the original Pentecostals, 1900. The second wave was sort of like the name it and claim it, prosperity gospel types, Kenneth Copeland and those people.

Kenneth Hagen, I think was one of the names. Third wave though, is more recent. Came out of the Vineyard Church, men like John Wimber, Mike Bickel, Peter Wagner and others, and it morphed into what is called the Toronto Blessing.

Is anyone familiar with this, the Toronto Blessing? So this is part of third wave charismatics. This is where people started teaching, you need to be slain in the spirit. Now this is something that didn't exist in Christianity.

Certainly it's not in the Bible and it didn't exist up until just a generation or two ago. But to be slain in the spirit, people would basically fall down and it would be like they're dead. So they'd fall over and have this experience of the Holy Ghost.

People would roll around at the Toronto Blessing. They'd roll around on the ground. Some of them would bark like dogs. And critics of this movement accused it of being demonic. Charismatics, however, aggressively defended it.

Others took a more measured response and said, well, it's not demonic and it's not of God. It's just people that are in the flesh. Their emotions sort of got the best of them. I can't help but think of the Apostle Paul's words in 1 Corinthians 14, people rolling on the ground, barking like dogs and screeching and yelling and laughing uncontrollably.

What did Paul say? Let all things be done decently and in order. And I actually think Paul was probably dealing with that kind of excess in the Corinthian church in 1 Corinthians 14. Do you have the verse?

Yeah, it's the last verse of 1 Corinthians 14. So verse 41, 42, don't quote me on that. So this latest version of the charismatic movement, the more extreme elements morphed into something else. Who's heard of the NAR?

The New Apostolic Reformation and Modern Prophets

New Apostolic Reformation. This is very common today where there's plenty of people, people I know that believe that there are modern day prophets and apostles. So just like there was Peter, James, and John, there's, you know, see Peter Wagner.

He's just as much an apostle as the original Peter. I mean, there's people that believe this. They say that God has restored the offices of prophet and apostle. So if you ever hear someone talking about the five-fold ministry of the Holy Spirit, that's what they're referring to.

You know, pastor, teacher, evangelist, you know, apostle and prophet. So in fairness, there are, I wanna be fair, there are many grounded charismatics who truly love the Lord that do not go along with these things.

But sometimes the spectacle gets the most attention. And a lot of the guys on TV like Benny Hinn, I mean, it is a spectacle. It's sort of like a circus sideshow, some of the things that he does. Sometimes that makes them all look bad, but there are still many charismatics who are very sound in the faith.

Although, you know, we would have our differences, but things are just evolving and there's a new movement, it seems, every few years. Okay, so in response to these abuses, because the charismatic movement is one of the most significant things that has happened in the past couple generations, many pastors have fought against the charismatic movement.

Name one. Take a guess of one pastor who has fought against the charismatic movement. Yeah. Yeah, John MacArthur would be the most notable. He's written several books on the charismatic movement. In his conference, a strange fire back in 2013 was the most clear statement, not just against third wave and prosperity gospel, but going all the way back to the beginning.

Okay, so that's all about the charismatic movement, but major part of modern church history without a question. And like everything else, it's a mixed bag. There's some good things. Many people have been led to Christ for all the church plants and everything, but there's a lot of not so good things as well.

Rapture Expectations and Failed Date-Setting

All right, let's briefly mention a few other things that happened. In the 1970s and 1980s, some of you definitely remember this, there was great anticipation about the rapture. The rapture was gonna happen any moment.

And I realize there's still people that are looking for it any moment, and that's good. We should look for the return of Christ. But some people set dates. They got a little too carried away. Chuck Smith of Calvary Chapel predicted the rapture would happen in 1980.

He said, by the end of 1980, Christ will return. Did Christ return? No. Who had or has a copy of Hal Lindsay's The Late Great Planet Earth? I mean, that book, a little before my time, but that book was all the rage back in the 70s.

Well, I haven't been able to confirm this, but Hal Lindsay made statements where, in a sense, I don't know that he actually set a date, but people interpreted his words that he said Jesus would return in the 1980s.

And there is one book, I think, 88 Reasons Why Jesus Would Return in 1988.

Yes. Salem Kirby is another one. I do remember him predicting that a loaf of bread would cost more than a dollar. Yeah. Whoa, he was right. He's a prophet. Wow. He was right. He was right. $6 or more, no.

But what was happening in the 1980s? That was the height of the what? The Cold War, right? Everybody thought they were gonna get nuked. And so Jesus had to be coming back because the world was gonna end and that was very big.

And of course, when it didn't happen, things shifted to the other end of the spectrum. And now there's so many evangelicals that don't even believe in the rapture. They don't think Jesus is coming back anytime soon.

And you gotta have a balanced view of these things. So you had conservative movements and liberal movements. One of the conservative movements that happened was the Independent Fundamental Baptists. A lot of their churches were going strong, still going strong.

And part of the Independent or IFB, Independent Fundamental Baptists, there was what was known as the King James Only Controversy. Who remembers that? Yeah. King James Only Controversy. Okay, so in the 1960s, 1970s, and again, I know I keep going back to that time period, but that's kind of where all this stuff intersects.

So in the 60s and 70s, there was a proliferation of new translations of the Bible. Before that, people, just about everybody used the King James Version, right? Back in the day. But after Billy Graham endorsed it, people started to adopt the New Living Translation, which is, it's not technically a translation.

It's a paraphrase. But Billy Graham endorsed it. So now, well, Billy Graham loves it. Then a bunch of people started using the NLT. And again, some people love it. Some people hate it. And you have both sides.

The NIV became very popular. I think the NIV is still the most popular. The King James is the bestseller all time. But the NIV is like the Bible that churches started to adopt. Well, there's a reaction to that.

All of a sudden, for hundreds of years, evangelicals and Baptists were all using the King James. And now within a period of five or 10 years, they're getting all these new Bible versions. People didn't like that very much.

So that led to what is called the King James Only Movement. So there were churches, still are many churches, that demand that their members only use the King James. So their attitude is, if you're gonna be a member of this church, you will use the King James version.

And some will use church discipline on you if you come in with the NIV. Some took it a step further and said, if you don't use the King James, you're not even saved. That's the bad type of fundamentalism that I referred to in the last session.

Now, before you say the King James Only people are all nuts and they're all, if you listen to them, they do have some valid points. Not the people who say it's a requirement for salvation. That's way too far.

But when there's a new translation coming out every year, why do you need that? Well, publishing houses are putting them out. For what reason? You know, and you need 10 of the material different from all the others.

So they have to change things to get their copyright. And I mean, there are problems.

Yes. What does IFB stand for again?

Independent Fundamental Baptists. Yep. So these are some of the conservative movements going on. There was a conservative resurgence in the Southern Baptist Convention led by men such as Adrian Rogers, Charles Stanley.

Adrian Rogers is one of the greatest preachers of the past 50 years. If you listen to the guy preach. Yeah. And then there was Jerry Falwell. He was one of the big names in the 1980s, 1990s. Jerry Falwell had what?

The moral majority. This is when evangelicalism got very political. Okay. And this was a new approach. So Jerry Falwell and this, you know, this whole movement, this was new because in the past, leaders like Billy Graham would try to appeal to Republicans and Democrats.

But now you had Jerry Falwell. He was just him and people that were on board with him, which was a lot of people. They were now openly preaching against the Democratic Party because of their endorsement of abortion and gay rights.

So now things were very political. And let's face it, those two issues, abortion and LGBT and all that, that's still a dividing line in many churches today. So new things that come along in the culture bring new challenges.

The Emergent Church and the Loss of Biblical Certainty

So there were conservative movements. There were also liberal movements, such as the Emergent Church. This is a big one, the Emergent Church. Who's familiar with it? Or at least maybe you've heard the term.

Emergent Church has touched many different churches and denominations. I would say they're probably on the fringe. I don't even know that you can really consider them evangelical, but many good churches have been affected by this.

The Emergent Church is perfect for the postmodern era because their whole idea is we really can't, no, there's so many things in the Bible and Christians disagree. Let's not fight over that. We're just gonna hold onto the gospel.

We believe the gospel, but everything else is up for debate. That was their approach. We'll preach the gospel, but everything else, let's have a conversation about everything else. There was one Emergent-style church, a church plant in this area, and I heard about it.

I went on their website and they said, when you come and visit our church, you'll find people in the lobby discussing subjects such as the existence of God and this. And I thought, wait, what? People in the church are discussing whether or not God exists?

Like, this seems strange. But everything was open for debate. Everything was open for conversation. So the Emergent Church focused on experience over reason, spirituality over religion, and feelings over truth.

So that's what they said. Hold onto the gospel. Everything else is up for grabs. Of course, you could probably guess what happened. If that's your attitude that you can't really know, guess what? You can't really know about the gospel either.

So that eventually went out the window as well. So what's the one thing, starting to wrap all this up, what's the one thing that all, well, not all, but many of these movements we've talked about, one thing they all have in common?

The Catholic Church putting tradition over scripture, radical charismatics who get new, fresh revelation from God, they're getting new words from God. The Emergent Church saying we can't really know what's true.

Postmodernism, it's all an attack on what? The centrality of scripture. It's really an attack on the authority and sufficiency of the word of God. The Apostle Paul said in 2 Corinthians 2 .11, we are not ignorant of Satan's devices.

This was Satan's very first line of attack. In the garden, what did he do? He cast doubt on the word of God. As soon as we lose the Bible as our final authority, anything goes. And that's sort of where many people are in the postmodern era.

So whatever happens, whatever the next big thing is, church history is still being written, but what's the next, biblically, what's the next thing that we're looking for? There might be new social movements and new denominations, but prophetically speaking or biblically, what's the next event we know will happen?

Rapture. Yeah, the return of Christ in the clouds. And when Jesus returns at the rapture, church history will really be that. It'll be history because one age will end and another will begin. So let's turn to Titus 2.

That's where we're gonna close. Until then, until Christ returns, there's more church history to be written. What will people say about, because the postmodern era has just started, right? We're starting 1970 up until now.

We're still pretty early on into this. And I don't know about you, but things don't seem to be getting better. They seem to be getting worse at an alarming rate, but we shouldn't despair. We need to look to who?

Look to Christ. How do we do that? Look to his word. Jesus said in Matthew 4, for man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. And that's not just the New Testament, 27 books of the New Testament, it's also the 39 books of the Old Testament.