The Modern Church (1789 - 1970)

The Modern Church, Great Awakenings, and the Rise of Liberal Theology

So, this next lesson, we're going to look at the modern church. This extends from 1798 to 1970. And the closer we get to modern times, the more information there is out there. So it's really hard to figure out what to cover and what not to cover.

But I'll just start with some of the most significant figures during this time period. So some of these names you know. Charles Haddon Spurgeon, D .L. Moody, John Nelson Darby, Charles Finney, C .I. Schofield, and Billy Graham.

So we'll just start with that. There's Billy Sunday and others we could talk about. But the most significant events of this time period would be the Second and Third Great Awakenings, as well as the rise of Dispensational Theology, the rise of Liberal Theology, and then the reaction to Liberal Theology, which is what?

The Fundamentalist Movement. And then there's the Charismatic Movement. And on and on it goes. So we're going to end with Billy Graham because Billy Graham was at the tail end of the modern church and he was still ministering past 1970 into the postmodern church.

But Billy Graham is probably like the figure that everyone knows, the most well-known. And another movement was the Ecumenical Movement. So we've gone through church history and there's the Lutherans and the Anglicans and every church was pretty much separate and they had their own doctrines and they stuck together.

But in the 20th century, there was the Ecumenical Movement where all the different denominations started working together. And even Catholics and Protestants started working together to some degree. And the person I think most responsible for that is Billy Graham.

So some people would think that's a good thing. Others would not see it as such a good thing. So let's just go back and we'll cover these movements, just cover them in passing. The Second and Third Great Awakenings.

I think I touched on the Second Great Awakening in the last session, but the Second Great Awakening was from 1790 to 1840. The Third Great Awakening was from 1855 to 1930. So depending on who you ask, these were either great movements of God or they were not so great.

Who remembers the Asbury Revival from, I guess it wasn't even six months ago, it seems like it, but there's that supposed revival and some people, again, thought it was a great move of God and other people looked at it and were like, what is this?

This is just a bunch of college kids getting excited. No matter what we talk about, there's always at least two different viewpoints. So during the Second Great Awakening, I think we can say that the Methodists were doing a lot of good work and spreading the gospel.

But during this time period, you saw the cults pop up, like the Mormons. And we said we're not going to cover those because we already covered those in the cult section we did a couple months ago. So really, the Second and Third Great Awakening, it was a mixed bag.

There were some good things happening during this period and some not so good things. One thing you can't question, it was a time of great religious fervor. And that's clearly something that we lack right now.

2023, there's not a lot of religious fervor out there throughout the country. But back then, there was. And the Third Great Awakening was similar, a lot of religious fervor. You had good men, like D .L. Moody.

And then you had some not so good men, like Charles Taze Russell, or at least the doctrine that he taught, because he is the founder of the Jehovah's Witnesses. So again, a mixture of good and bad. So we'll talk about D .L. Moody.

The Rise of Liberal Theology and the Social Gospel

But before we talk about him and some of these other people, I really want to spend a little time focusing on the rise of liberal theology. So when I say liberal theology, when you hear that term, what do you think of?

It's not like liberal, conservative, like Republican, Democrat. That's not what we're talking about. Liberal theology basically does not take the Bible literally. They view the Bible as a work of man.

Men wrote the Bible. It's not the Word of God. So a theological liberal doesn't believe Jesus walked on water. Maybe there are some divine ideas in there, but they basically view that the Bible is a book written by men.

So theological liberalism rose during this time period. It originated in the Enlightenment era, but it took hold in the modern era. So in liberal Christian teaching, which really is not Christian at all, it stressed man's reason and treated logic and human reasoning as the final authority.

So liberal theologians, they seek to reconcile Christianity with secular science and modern thinking. So one example is you have Darwin's theory of evolution, right? So there's all these people who believe that.

And when I see someone believing Darwin's theory of evolution, like they didn't get that from the Bible, that's more of an atheistic idea. But what the liberals would do is they would take the Bible or Christianity and they would take Darwinism and evolution and let's try to mix it together and make the two fit.

Now do the two fit? Well if you believe the Bible is the Word of God, then no, the two do not fit, but that's the type of thing that they did. So several things happened with the rise of liberal theology.

They incorporated Darwin's theory of evolution. They also embraced the ideology of Karl Marx. So if you haven't heard of Karl Marx by now, you've been living under a rock, perhaps. So who is Karl Marx?

His writings inspired the communist revolution in Russia. So whatever a person thinks about him, and you've probably guessed I don't have a real high opinion of Karl Marx. He was an atheist. He hated Christianity.

I think he made comments that it was his desire to see the destruction of Christianity. So either way, Karl Marx is a major figure in modern history. And again, well known for his hatred of the Christian church.

But people who look to him and his writings, the church was still an institution that had a lot of power. So when people embraced Marxism, really they tried to blend Christianity and Marxism, bring it into the church and change the doctrine of the church.

And the result of this was what? Instead of the gospel of Jesus Christ, they taught the social gospel. Okay, the social gospel. So you can remember that you think of social gospel, you think of socialism, which is another ideology that came from Marx.

The current Pope, Pope Francis, he believes in what is called liberation theology. This is part of Marxism. So what they do is they take the people throughout history that have struggled and have been oppressed.

And there are people who have been oppressed. That's true. And a Christian probably would want to help somebody who's been oppressed. But Karl Marx, his whole thing was to pit one group against another.

So the rich have been oppressing the poor. So you pit the rich against the poor, create chaos, try to break down society. And then the Marxists come in to swoop up power. So that's all part of Marxism that was brought into the church.

So a lot of the liberal churches, they just focus on social issues, people that are being oppressed. So the gospel kind of goes out the window and it's about, it's about people and their needs and political ideas.

And that's something that really caused a lot of division because while there might have been some good things that happened, social work can be positive in people's lives. It's just not biblical Christianity.

So this really took over probably as New Englanders, I don't know, half of the churches, the mainline denominations, I would say half of the churches in New England have pretty much been taken over by Marxist ideology, the social gospel, all the rest.

Has anyone ever kind of bumped into this, noticed this? Any comments or questions? Okay. But this is liberal theology. The most disturbing thing is their view of the scripture. Instead of the Bible being the word of God, it's what?

It's a book written by men. So if you've ever heard that, and I've heard that many times, you know, you're talking to a theological liberal. Here's their hypothesis of the first five books of Moses. So Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

We would say that the Torah was written by Moses, and they would say the Torah was written by, yeah, they say it was written by at least four different authors who they've titled J, E, P, and D. Of course they have, this is a theory, they have no earthly idea.

The important thing is Moses didn't write it, and the important thing is Moses didn't part the Red Sea. The important thing is God really didn't say this, which sort of reminds you of the serpent in the garden.

You know, have God really said, is this really the word of God? No, it's the word of man. So unfortunately this led to the destruction of many of the mainline Protestant denominations. Now the reaction to theological liberalism, of course they denied the deity of Christ, they denied the virgin birth, denying the authority of scripture, they deny the miraculous, all of that.

The reaction was the rise of the fundamentalist movement. Now what is a fundamentalist? When you hear that word, what do you think of? Fundamentals. Yeah, well some people think of like Islamic fundamentalists, and I'm like, just get that out of your mind.

Yeah, I'm, what? Legalism. Legalism, yeah. If some, and I don't think that necessarily, but people react negatively to the word. Fundamentalism has become like a bad word. And there is a bad type of fundamentalism where, yeah, there's some people, they just want to fight about everything and they're very contentious.

So there is a bad form of fundamentalism. But when you think of the word fundamental, what is it saying? That the original fundamentalists just believed in the fundamentals of the faith, like God created the heavens and the earth, God created Adam and Eve, we all came from, that's a fundamental, it's basic.

So the original fundamentalists were really fighting for the truth of God's word, that the Bible is the word of God. But the main issue of the time was, again, evolution. How many of you have heard of the Scopes Monkey Trial?

Okay, so a few of you. I'm just going to read this article because this really was a big deal. The Scopes Trial, formerly the state of Tennessee versus John Thomas Scopes, and commonly referred to as the Scopes Monkey Trial, was an American legal case in 1925 in which a high school teacher, John T. Scopes, was accused of violating Tennessee's Butler Act, which made it illegal for teachers to teach human evolution in any state-funded school.

My, how things have changed. The trial was deliberately staged in order to attract publicity to the small town of Dayton, Tennessee, where it was held. And this type of thing is still going on. You know, the people in power who control the media, they will stage an event and they'll all cover it and make a big deal about it and everyone's reporting, and they're doing it on purpose, kind of creating a situation that really isn't even there to get their laws passed.

So I mean, it was all manufactured, really, but Scopes was found guilty and was fined $100, but the verdict was overturned on a technicality. The trial served its purpose of drawing intense national publicity as national reporters flocked to Dayton to cover the high-profile lawyers who had agreed to represent each side.

The trial publicized the fundamentalist modernist controversy, which set modernists who believed in evolution, and they were contrasted over and against the fundamentalists. So you have two groups, you have fundamentalists and liberals or fundamentalists and modernists.

So the fundamentalists believed that God created Adam and Eve, all human beings came from them. The modernists tried to blend Christianity with evolution. So this really led to major change in our country, in the school system, and of course, leading to today where evolution is just taught in every public school.

And if you try to teach the opposite, you know, you'll be the one, oh, separation of church and state. But if you actually look back, no, actually evolution was originally evil. So they just turned everything around.

And now people today think, well, that's always the way it's been, you know, separation of church and state. No, it's people have really had the wool pulled over their eyes. So Adam and Eve, God being the creator, this is all fundamental.

If you remove that, I would argue the whole biblical story collapses. If God isn't the creator, if Adam didn't sin and cast the human race into darkness, I mean, if the beginning of the Bible isn't true, how do you have any confidence in the rest of the Bible?

And that's really, that was really the point. Now, this whole debate between the fundamentalists and the liberals, obviously I would side, I don't necessarily use the term fundamentalists, but I say the theological liberals were denying the scripture.

So I would say they're wrong. But what about this idea of modern science? Does modern science fit with the Bible? Well, sometimes the scientists are correct, right? For example, Galileo was right and the Catholic church was wrong, right?

So the earth revolves around the sun. The sun does not revolve around the earth. The Catholic church said the sun revolved around the earth. So sometimes the scientists are correct. I would say Galileo didn't, or the Catholic church really didn't have any firm scripture to teach.

But the thing is, we're not against, we're not against science, but when it contradicts the Bible, what's your attitude going to be? Remember the, they weren't scientists, I don't think, but there was a TV special that said, we found the tomb of Jesus.

We found the remains of G, remember 10 years ago or something? Scientific evidence that we found the remains of Jesus. See, he didn't rise from the dead, the whole thing turned out to be a total fraud.

But what if somebody found evidence that proved the Bible wrong? Now I would just run on the assumption that it's a hoax, right? But a lot of people, they say, well, we have to side with science. Why?

Because they're modernists. Their faith is not really in the holy scriptures. They're just kind of tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine. But again, this is the divide among churches today, and it's very evident in New England.

Okay, so that's the rise of theological liberalism, and then the reaction to that was fundamentalism. All right, any reactions, questions, or comments? Larry.

Well, I guess I'm just thinking about how the theory of evolution, which Charles Darwin wrote, is now taught as facts. So how can they change a theory into evidential facts?

Well, I don't, I'm not sure about that. But that's the thing we just have to remind people. It is the theory of evolution. Nobody has ever observed it. It cannot be tested. Some would claim it shouldn't be called science because of that.

But yeah, obviously we're not going to change people's minds about this. People are pretty rigid. God needs to change their heart for them to believe his word. Otherwise, you're just going to argue until your face is blue.

But it's just about science. One last comment on that. You hear people today say, the science says, or the science is settled. Well, the science doesn't say anything. People say things. They take data and they make conclusions, and oftentimes they're right.

Science has done amazing things, but when they say the science is settled, well, you know, when there's a large amount of money involved, when politics are involved, and you know, sometimes scientists lie.

They're human beings. Sometimes they have an agenda, so we just have to be careful. Exodus 20, verse 11 says, for in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day.

But the modernists today will be like, okay, yes, we believe that God created everything, but I still want to believe evolution, so theistic evolution, that God used evolution to bring mankind about. Two well-known names, Tim Keller and J .D. Greer, former president of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Tim Keller is a very famous theologian. Both men said it's acceptable for Christians to believe in evolution as long as it's theistic evolution. To me, that's just an obvious compromise. But again, this is the modernist fundamentalist debate.

If you just say the Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it, they're going to say you're just a fundamentalist, and they'll laugh at you, but atheists tend to do that anyways. But just preach the Bible.

This is what the Word of God says, and yes, I believe it, and if that makes me a fundamentalist, then so be it. I'm not afraid of their snide remarks. Okay, so some of the important men that lived during the modern church era, the men and the movements they started.

Dispensationalism, the Scofield Reference Bible, and Premillennial Hope

First, we'll discuss John Nelson Darby. Now, he's important because of why. He's known as the father of dispensationalism. So Darby lived from 1800 to 1882, again, known as the father of modern dispensationalism.

This is significant because among evangelicals, especially in the United States, from the end of the 1800s right up until recently, the majority of evangelicals have believed in what is known as dispensationalism.

Basically, that's the idea that the church and Israel are two different entities. So Darby is the first man. Darby did not come up with this. He might have came up with the term, but dispensationalists would say this is just what the Bible teaches.

Darby was the man who systematized the theology. And then this leads to the next man, C .I. Schofield. I think just about everybody's heard of Schofield. Schofield actually, according to our records, preached in this church in 1901 for our fifth anniversary service.

But Schofield is really the one who helped make dispensationalism kind of a major brand of theology, if I can, for lack of a better term. How did that belief system get in churches? Because of the Schofield reference Bible.

Back in the day, everybody had a Schofield reference Bible, or at least people in dispensational churches had one. But it was probably the most popular reference Bible of all time, at least up until then.

So dispensationalism, again, it's the belief that there's a difference between the church and Israel. We sort of take that for granted, like obviously. But yeah, that is what we believe the Bible teaches.

Also that the book of Revelation is future prophecy, that there's a rapture of the church and a coming seven-year tribulation followed by a 1 ,000-year kingdom here on the earth. So these are considered dispensational ideas because the other view is basically the view that was held over from the Catholic Church, that there is no kingdom, all this stuff is spiritual.

When Jesus came back, this is what a lot of Presbyterians believe, that Jesus already came back in 70 AD. He came back in judgment. So a lot of the passages we would view about the second coming have already happened in the past.

It's preterism. So, I mean, this is just a totally different way of looking at the Bible. So I would say at least in that regard, and I wouldn't agree certainly with everything that John Nelson, I've never read anything by John Nelson Darby, so I'm not saying I agree with him or Schofield on everything, but I think they did do a service by spreading the truth, at least about those certain ideas.

D.L. Moody, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, and Charles Finney

The next man, D .L. Moody. Okay, so this is one of the most famous preachers of recent history. Dwight Lyman Moody lived from 1837 to 1899. He was an American evangelist and publisher who founded the Moody Church, Northfield School and Northfield Mount Hermon School, which is in Northfield and Gill.

Moody Bible Institute and Moody Publishers in Chicago. He built one of the major evangelical centers in the nation, which is still active. And Moody and Schofield worked together at one point. Moody worked with singer Ira Sankey, and he toured the country in the British Isles, drawing large crowds with a dynamic speaking style.

Moody shunned divisive sectarian doctrines. He deplored higher criticism. So this was another thing of liberalism, higher criticism, which it is sort of what it sounds like. They looked at the Bible and they were very critical of what they saw.

I mean, that's not technically the definition, but they didn't believe the Bible was the word of God. So Moody hated that. So Moody was what? A modernist? Moody was a liberal. What was Moody considered?

Yeah, he would have been one of those fundamentalists. Moody also despised the social gospel movement. Now, Moody did a lot of social work, actually. He was very charitable, was involved in the community, and that's all great, but he didn't like the social gospel where they twisted the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And instead of saving sinners, it's about saving society. Okay, so Moody despised that as well. He intensely preached, as he put it, the old-fashioned gospel, emphasizing a literal interpretation of the Bible and looking toward the premillennial second coming.

Another preacher who lived around this time, Moody was the big man in the United States. Who was the big guy in England around this time? Spurgeon. Yeah, Spurgeon. Charles Haddon Spurgeon lived from 1834 to 1892.

He was an influential Baptist preacher in England. He was one of the most popular preachers of his time, and he is still known today as what? The Prince of Preachers. Here's the thing. Today, people love Spurgeon.

They love to quote him. They say all sorts of wonderful things about him, but back then, people hated the guy. If you read his books, the guy was pretty harsh towards the Church of England. I bet you, just for a moment, envision the harshest preacher you've ever heard.

Hopefully, you're not thinking of me. But just imagine that preacher you've heard one time, he was the harshest guy you've ever listened to. Nothing compared to Spurgeon. If you read some of Spurgeon's books, I mean, it was pretty rough.

Good, though.

I thought it was. But how big was his church? I don't know. It was massive. I mean, they just couldn't.

It was like a megachurch. 10 ,000, I think. Yeah, 10 ,000. Yeah. It was definitely a megachurch for his time. So Spurgeon was the son and grandson of congregational ministers. He came to faith in 1850 while listening to a primitive Methodist preacher.

Of course, the Methodist preachers were a lot different than the Methodist preachers today. Rejecting congregational teaching, Spurgeon was baptized as a believer. So he would have been baptized as an infant, probably.

But he was baptized as a believer and began to serve in a Baptist church in 1854. Before he was 20 years old, he became the pastor of New Park Street Chapel, a Baptist church in London. So can you imagine that?

A 20-year-old pastor. But the guy could preach better than anybody around. Spurgeon, one thing that some people don't know or maybe they don't like, Spurgeon was unashamedly a Calvinist and a Baptist.

He did not shrink from controversy and was outspoken against false teaching and hypocrisy during the downgrade controversy. Spurgeon accused fellow Baptists of teaching modernist theology, and he eventually withdrew from the Baptist union over this issue.

So I think I grew up in a time where, I don't know if anyone ever told me this, but just my perception just in the last 40 years is that one preacher should never criticize another preacher. You should never name names.

You should never be critical of another pastor. I don't know. Maybe you guys don't see it that way. But to me, that was sort of the environment. That's just something you didn't do. Well, did Spurgeon believe that?

No. He would just tell it like it was. If there is a guy preaching false doctrine in London, you'd call him out. And of course, the Apostle Paul did that, so he was on good footing there. So social justice was, here's the next guy, Charles Finney.

Charles Finney was from 1792 to 1875. Finney was a little more in line with social justice. So Charles Finney was a revivalist preacher in the early 1800s in America. He's credited for being the first preacher to employ the method of altar calls to encourage people to make a decision for Christ.

Social justice was important to Charles Finney. He wasn't, well, I don't know. I'm not going to say he was a theological liberal, because I don't think he was. But he helped to spark the second great awakening.

So when you think of an altar call, some people have the idea that the Apostle Paul gave altar calls. Do you ever, I want to ask you, because I can be wrong. Do you ever remember a time in the Bible where somebody gave an altar call?

Now, I would argue there's no such thing as an altar in the New Testament church. But some people have the idea that altar calls is just part of Christianity. Well, really, that's a modern invention. Not to say there's anything wrong with it, necessarily.

It just isn't something that I've ever read in the Bible. So Finney was involved in the second great awakening, which the first great awakening was more Calvinist. The second and third great awakening was more what?

Arminian, okay. So Charles Finney was Arminian. Who wants to give a definition of what that means? An Arminian is somebody who believes more in the sovereignty of God. No, they believe more in the free will of man.

So the idea in his preaching, he would try to move the human emotion and with the altar call, say things to try to get people to make a decision because it's really all about man and free will. So Charles Finney denied, here's some interesting things about him.

He denied that mankind had a sinful nature. Rather, Finney said, our sinfulness is the result of our moral choices made by each individual. He said Christ's death on the cross was not a payment for sin as much as it was a demonstration that God was serious about keeping the law.

To me, I don't even, that doesn't even make sense. I don't even know how you could come to that conclusion. The point is Finney was not, I don't know, some people would not even consider him Orthodox in his theology.

Now here's the thing about Finney. It's argued that Billy Graham's ministry with the method of altar calls was based largely on Finney's approach. So that kind of gets us into the next figure, Billy Graham.

Billy Graham came to be known as the father of modern evangelicalism. So his approach was largely based on Finney's approach to get a person to make a decision for Christ. And you've seen the Billy Graham crusades when the people would come forward, they were coming forward, they were coming down to what?

To the altar. And that was the whole idea. So Billy Graham, Billy Graham did a lot. Billy Graham was probably the most loved preacher of his time, but he was also quite controversial as well. So Billy Graham did a lot to bring the Catholic church and the Protestants closer together.

Billy Graham worked with Catholic priests at his crusades. Billy Graham invited theological liberals to join him on the platform at his crusades. Billy Graham also endorsed the Pentecostal or the charismatic movement.

So how many of you saw the film, The Jesus Revolution? So that was Calvary Chapel. It was a charismatic movement. Billy Graham endorsed that, one of his crusades. So again, some people think it's one of the greatest things that ever happened, that Billy Graham just brought all the Christian traditions together.

But as you know, with church history, there's always two sides. Other people don't think that's very good. Why don't they think that's very good? They would see that as what? Compromise, right? If you're bringing liberals and Catholics and Protestants and evangelicals and bringing them all together, there must be compromise.

But again, other people saw it as a great move of the Holy Spirit. So we'll probably talk about Billy Graham again. But next, only have so much time. I'm trying to get as much as I can here. The Pentecostal movement.

This is another huge movement that happened during the modern church era. So I just got this article from gotquestions .org. It says Pentecostalism is a fairly modern movement within Christianity that can be traced back to the holiness movement in the Methodist church.

A major focus of Pentecostal churches is Holy Spirit baptism as evidenced by speaking in tongues. So there are approximately 170 different denominations that identify themselves as Pentecostals, which is the biggest, who knows?

A-O-G, what does it stand for? Assemblies of God. So that would be the largest Pentecostal denomination. So toward the end of the 19th century, so 1800s, there was a dramatic rise in religious fervor as various groups anticipated the end of history and the return of Christ in 1900.

Remember, the Jehovah's Witnesses were making all these predictions about the end of the world, the return of Christ. And there were others doing that. And the Pentecostals, or what became known as Pentecostals, they thought we were right at the end.

So much of the fervor was driven by the revival meetings held by those in the holiness movement. And there were occasional reports of people speaking in tongues. The original idea was God was restoring the gift of tongues because now we were in the end times.

Or the end times were like right there. So God was restoring the miraculous gifts of the spirit for maybe what we would call the tribulation period, which I think that might actually happen. But they thought they were right at the end.

Were they at the end? No, obviously not. So the first widespread use of tongues was at a revival meeting in Topeka, Kansas, in January 1900, led by Charles Parham. Agnes Osman, a Methodist, began to speak in tongues.

And others in the meeting eventually followed suit. And you realize that when I say speaking in tongues, it's not a language. It's what we would call gibberish or babbling. In 1906, a series of revival meetings on Azusa Street in Los Angeles, California, led to a widespread experience of tongue speaking, which spread to many parts of the country.

The meetings were led by William Seymour, one of Charles Parham's students. Parham and Seymour eventually parted ways because Parham believed many of the manifestations of Azusa Street were, quote, of the flesh, or perhaps even demonic.

And that's what the early Pentecostal leader said. He said, some of this stuff is demonic. Though the Azusa Street mission had a brief life, its impact on the Pentecostal movement has been a long-lasting one.

Many new churches and missions were founded across America, which carried the new emphasis on seeking the baptism of the Spirit as evidenced by speaking in tongues. So how do you know if you've been baptized in the Spirit?

You speak in tongues. Many of the early Pentecostals said that you need to speak in tongues to be saved. And if you've never spoken in tongues, you're not a Christian. That was the early belief. Most of them have backed off on that, but that was the early belief.

Many of them also denied the doctrine of the Trinity, or what we would call modalists, or they think the Father and the Son are the same person, that there's not three persons in the Godhead. Today, there are over 200 million denominational Pentecostals, and another 200 million who identify themselves as Pentecostal or charismatic within mainline churches.

So this is probably the one brand of Christianity, again, for lack of a better term, that's still growing at a large rate. As a matter of fact, they're really sort of taking over. They're taking over Baptist churches.

They're taking over the mainline churches. They are literally everywhere. So it is a fast-growing movement, 400 million. I mean, that's a lot of people. The tongue speaking that the Pentecostals were doing, again, it wasn't like the tongue speaking in Acts 2, because as I like to point out in Acts 2, it clearly says when the apostles spoke in tongues, what?

Language. Yeah, that the people heard them speak each in his own language. You can read Acts 2, 4 through 8, and it says that twice. So the Pentecostal movement came first, and then it kind of morphed or jumped into the charismatic movement.

Who knows what the term, well, you know what Pentecostal, it's named after the day of Pentecost because they spoke in tongues. Charismatic, what does that mean? The Greek word charis means grace, and grace is a gift.

So basically charis or charismatic refers to the spiritual gifts. So the Pentecostal movement began around 1900, 1905, and that speaking in tongues, all of a sudden, now the Methodists and the Anglicans and Catholics were doing it.

So it jumped into the mainline denomination. So in 1960, that is the beginning of the so-called charismatic movement where now Lutherans and Presbyterians and Baptists and everyone was speaking in tongues.

Today, charismatics can be found in nearly every denomination, and nearly all Christian television is operated by charismatics. And they are also the dominant theology with the Christian books, and most of the modern praise music is written by charismatics.

So they just dominate everything. There's a lot of Baptists today who are charismatic and they don't even know it. So, and again, going back to Billy Graham, Billy Graham did maybe the most to help this movement by endorsing it.

The Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements

The Jesus People movement, this is, I guess, the last thing we'll cover. The Jesus People movement, this is at the tail end of the modern church getting into the post-modern church. This is where I mentioned the film Jesus Revolution which just came out.

Who remembers the Jesus People movement? Yeah, it was like the hippies living in San Francisco in Southern California. All of a sudden, several of them claimed to be converted to Christ and it kind of caught on.

So there was just a whole generation of young hippies, that's what they were called. And they came into churches and they really took over churches. Because, you know, a hundred of them would show up and now they kind of decided what was going to happen in that church.

So that was called the Jesus People movement. It became known as the Jesus Revolution. So Billy Graham, in one of his crusades, he said that this was a movement of God the Holy Spirit, therefore putting his stamp of approval on the charismatic movement and I would argue the rest is history.

But the Jesus People movement is started in a small church pastored by Chuck Smith. And that church, some people say it was a struggling church, small, you know, 30 people, it was dying. Chuck Smith was pastoring, what was it called?

Calvary Chapel. Costa Mesa, yep. But then, you know, 150 young people show up. All of a sudden the church is thriving and it just grew and grew and grew. And they made the cover of Time Magazine. Again, that was known as the Jesus People movement.

So Billy Graham affirmed that and that kind of marks the end of the modern church era. And I would just say this, my personal opinion, you can disagree with this if you would like. Again, there's people who view things one way, people who view it the other way.

I think this was the most detrimental thing to happen to American Christianity in the 20th century. I know that might make people upset, but it was the first time that the culture dictated what the church, instead of the church following the Bible, the church embraced the culture.