A Survey Of Post-Reformation Church History (part 2)

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All right, good morning everybody welcome to church history part depending on how you're counting It's two for me, but four if you count pretty pretty till act back in May Did a couple of lessons on church history and This will be bring us up to the current day
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Lord willing if I move fast Let me open us to the word of prayer dear
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Heavenly Father. We thank you this morning for this time together Lord. I thank you that For getting us all here
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Lord. I pray that you would Keep us mindful of your word this morning
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Lord. Keep us mindful of how you have acted Providentially in the history of your church and Lord you promise in your word that the gates of hell will not prevail against your church
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And Lord we trust in that and we know that we are to be faithful to your word in in Lord knowing you and preaching you and And in in all that we do and we pray this morning
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Lord that you would bless our time in Jesus name. Amen now Where we left off last week was in we covered the five major reformers if you remember
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Martin Luther Ulrich Zwingli from Switzerland John Calvin also
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Operated out of Switzerland the Anabaptist mainly out of Germany We called a radical
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Reformation everything from revolutionaries to People we would consider perfectly evangelical today
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And we kind of finished up with the English Reformation last week I Don't there any questions real quick questions we had on last week
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Last week's lesson that stuck with you and you couldn't get out of your head If you if you think of them as we go just bring them up If you'd go to the second handout part two
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The verse I've put up there is from Colossians 2 8 and 9 I think this pretty well summarizes the second half of church history this last part
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It says see to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception according to the tradition of men
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According to the elementary principles of the world rather than according to Christ for in him
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All the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form Well as we covered last time the verse in Romans 1 16 and 17 about God justifies people by faith.
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That was the the seminal verse that really got Martin Luther He converted him and led him to teach
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Counter to what the Roman Catholic Church at the time was teaching well you think Rome took this sitting down of course not they fought back and The first point in today's handout is the
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Catholic counter -reformation and At the time as we discussed last time the
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Catholic Church was in real rough shape their leadership was unspiritual carnal They they taught a lot of doctrines which are unbiblical
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Well the counter -reformation was an attempt to recover some of the losses that the
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Protestant Reformation dealt to the Catholic Church and The conciliar movement was a pre -reformation movement.
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It was an attempt to sort of get more of a Representative type setup to sort of cleanse the church and reform the church morally it failed
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But really they understood the clergy needed to live better when Martin Luther went to Rome before he had his awakening
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He he was shocked at the clergy he was shocked a lot of them had mistresses there were brothels right there in in Rome and And he just was was very disappointed.
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It was a real Shock to his system to see what was going on in Rome at the time he
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He the Roman Catholic attempts at reform however they were moral, but they were just band -aids
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They really did not address the basic doctrine That were at the heart of the
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Reformation The Council of Trent I didn't put a date there It was around 1545 so if you think of it
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Martin Luther's reform Martin Luther's 95 theses anybody remember the date October 31st, thank you 1517.
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That's right. So here we have about 28 years later the
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Council of Trent and It confirmed most of the unbiblical doctrines the only concession they really made was they translated the
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Bible into the vernacular they allowed a Translation of the Bible into vernacular for the first time But they still had kept the
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Mass the Mass is a sacrifice. It's a re -sacrifice of Christ they kept transubstantiation which the doctrine of the actual real presence of Christ in the in the communion elements
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You also had that you still had to do penance still a works righteousness So nothing really changed purgatory the opportunity to work off sins after death indulgences, which if you remember from last week was the real
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High issue that Luther was was responding to and was reacting to the abuse of these indulgences
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The people would buy their way out of purgatory Or they would buy their loved ones way out of purgatory
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The worship of Mary nothing to change that and also the authority of the Pope Now papal authority and infallibility wasn't clearly defined until about 1870 at Vatican one
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We won't cover that today, but it's something to keep in mind And they also pronounced a curse on all who would go against these doctrines.
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It's never been rescinded even to this day people talk about Vatican II and They talk about how
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Vatican to really reform the church in 1962 -63 But really even a
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Vatican to they still approved it indulgences and still of works righteousness So the basic center of Roman Catholic theology has not changed
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The Jesuits a very important group in this Around the time of the
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Council of Trent it was started by Ignatius Loyola Famous a lot of you've heard that name
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Loyola University is named after him and he was a Monk but he added something because in the
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Middle Ages you had the monastic movement, but you had they had three Basic Areas that they took vows in the first one was a vow of obedience
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The second was a vow of chastity. They couldn't marry and the third was a vow of poverty Well, the
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Jesuits added one more to this Basically total obedience to whatever the
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Pope told him to do. They were the Pope stormtroopers. That's why I put that there It's sort of a derogatory term, but that's a pretty apt description
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If the Pope told him to do something run the Inquisition they did it Pope told him to go here do this
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Run this school Even today here in here in Central Mass in Worcester We have
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Holy Cross College, which is a Jesuit school the Jesuits devoted themselves to two things first of all learning a lot of the
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Jesuit schools we have today Are the direct outgrowth of this movement to try and regain again?
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regain some of the losses to the Reformation if you have a If you get the young people if you can get them in school
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This is what we see today in modern -day America if you can educate them in Roman Catholic doctrine
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You pretty much have them for life, and that was the idea behind Jesuit education the other thing they did was was missions and if you think of the
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Explorers we talked about Columbus last time a lot of the Spanish and Portuguese Explorers with every one of those ships went a
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Jesuit or some kind of Roman Catholic official to start a church to start a school
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And so this is what the Roman Catholic Church attempted to do to counteract the
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Reformation and In a large degree they were successful in Spreading Roman Catholicism throughout the new world
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The next point there on the outline point number two early American Christianity What you had there the first ones were the pilgrims pilgrims and the
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Puritans and What you have in America really is a religious melting pot you had in Europe you had a lot of folks who?
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Were under religious persecution for their faith you had the Anabaptists who were running for their lives you had especially in areas where Either Roman Catholicism or you had a very strong state church you had the lesser -known groups or the splinter groups
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That were persecuted This is what happens when you have
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Church and state too closely aligned as we discussed last time the Anabaptists believed in a total separation of church and state and That idea carried through an early
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American Christianity because you had in the colonies you basically had 13 individual little states well
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The least tolerant of those states ironically ironically enough was, Massachusetts You had a congregational church, which was an offshoot of the
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Anglican Church They didn't necessarily want to break away the the pilgrims did the pilgrims were separatists
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They had moved to Holland And then when they thought they were becoming too much of the Society of Holland And they were losing their kids and language and culture
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They caught wind of the fact that there was a settlement in Jamestown, and they said Perfect we can get a brand new start
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We can get our kids and and run things the way we want and basically have a holy
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Commonwealth and the Puritans this was 1620 of course they landed at Plymouth Rock and 16
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In the 1630s and 40s it was great persecution in England again because of the Remember you had whoever was the monarch at the time would run the show and some were more tolerant to these other groups some were
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Less tolerant and King James was not so tolerant and Charles that came after him was even less tolerant his son
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They said that he had all of his bad points without any of his good points Charles the first and he was a bad dude and Archbishop laud persecuted a lot of these separatists so the
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Puritans I Forget the figures, but it was hundreds of thousands of Puritans immigrated to New England during the 1600s
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You also had Some Huguenots or you know however you want to say it from France there were
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French Calvinists There was the same Bartholomew's Day Massacre which basically Wiped out almost all
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Protestantism in France before this time but you had some of them emigrating you had
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Roman Catholics who wanted a place in the new world because They were persecuted in many of their countries of Europe as well
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And so you had original religious melting pot you had Anglicans a high
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Anglican Church in Virginia you had Maryland was founded as a Roman Catholic or a tolerant colony but basically it was
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Roman Catholic you had the Quakers in Pennsylvania the Baptists in Rhode Island and The Congregationalists here in here in Massachusetts was the least tolerant of all the of all the colonies
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We had So you can see the problem of Trying to have one religion or haven't getting people to conform to any one religion
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Within any one denomination we could call it the rationalists and the Unitarians These are products of the
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Enlightenment and the Enlightenment Was a movement alongside the Reformation you had the what we call the age of reason
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You had remember the Renaissance going back to the sources we talked about that last week Well you had those informed by a biblical worldview and many who were
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Christians They kind of ran with the with the Reformation in one direction Well parallel to that kind of two two railroad tracks if you will the other track was what we call the
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Enlightenment and they tried to Figure out life without God in a sense and so you have these competing
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Streams that came out of one stream of the Renaissance of the Middle Ages and The most prominent of these was
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Voltaire Voltaire was was French and even though he wasn't really an atheist.
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He was the kind of person who He just wanted to exclude The established church from all of life.
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He thought that life would work better if you had Religion as not a part of what of controlling or even influencing life
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He was a big Element of what caused the French Revolution his thought his philosophy
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Pretty much spawned the French Revolution a Very different revolution from ours.
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You know our revolution our American Revolution was was partly Enlightenment driven
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But really you had other factors like the Great Awakening at operation here in France You had a godless revolution really, you know the the stories of the guillotine and the
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Bastille and all these things that that took place that Any established authority religious or otherwise was to be not trusted in fact destroyed
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You had in the French Revolution. In fact what they did they In all the churches they installed these shrines of reason they called them and in fact in Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, they had this actress
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Dress up like you almost like the Statue of Liberty She was the goddess of reason and they actually worshipped reason.
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That's how Different it was from ours in our in our revolution a
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Lot of it was driven from the pulpits a lot of it was driven from conviction That God had chosen us to form this new new country
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It's way more complicated than that, but there were very very vast differences between the two movements
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Here I've been the next point of the outline. I put the Great Awakening Have Jonathan Edwards George Whitfield and that's how
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Whitfield spelled by the way that it's not Whitefield just so you know As I pronounce it
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Whitefield for a long time and you had Charles and John Wesley in England One thing
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I should also mention here is I didn't put on this outline as the pietist in Germany It was also an awakening
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Lutheranism had become very very head centered very Cerebral cerebral and so the pietist was sort of a reaction to that.
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They wanted the life of the heart They wanted true religion. They wanted, you know born -again people not just scholastics.
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And so the pietists Whitfield and Wesley really Were in England and Whitfield and Edwards were here in America Great Awakenings in England Great Awakenings in America.
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These occurred from about 1734 to 1750 and you look at these awakenings and You can understand how that would have an impact on not only the
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English but also the American society and The revolution that would take place because the people just didn't believe in In doing whatever you felt it wasn't anarchy like it was in France there was actually a
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Higher law that was meant to be obeyed and these people understood that And the Great Awakening was a right here in Northampton.
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In fact, it's not that way today, of course but Jonathan Edwards pastor to church there after after succeeding his grandfather
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Solomon Stoddard and Many of you who went to the conference appreciate Ian Murray's work on this subject
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The American founding again, I summarized it there by saying it was two great streams of the
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Reformation and Enlightenment and These things existed in competing for pride competed for primacy at the time of the
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Revolution, I mean any war will do a number on Religion and society and this was no different And as we'll see in the 1800s
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It took sort of other awakenings to sort of restore a lot of the spiritual vitality that it occurred during the
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Great Awakening Now at this point, I'll stop. Do we have any questions on that? I know it's a lot of ground and There's not much we can say in in a few minutes on each subject
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Yes, it did good great point Fred and we didn't talk about the deist But the deist were, you know
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Kind of the rationalists here in America and even though as Fred said even though they were not biblical
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Christians They did believe that God existed. They did believe that God's providence
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God's plan was over men and they also did believe that men were accountable to behave a certain way and That there were certain rules for good society, you know, you look at Jefferson you look at Franklin they were, you know deists basically, they were not biblical
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Christians, but they Agreed with a lot of what they still had a similar worldview
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We talked about worldview a lot today and the view as Fred said that God was approving of this there were a lot of also
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I'll mention this also there were a lot of Post millennialists who believed that society was increasingly getting better and better and that God had chosen them to settle this new land to make a perfect society or a society that was totally governed by biblical principles that was just a church in a society and this was going to bring out a new age and they were going to There's a lot of hope there was a lot of optimism at this time
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Daniel Yes, 20
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Daniel mentions 26 pastors who signed the Declaration of Independence I believe I've done a study that most of the almost all of the signers of the
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Declaration and framers of the Constitution were church members except for a handful maybe one or two they're not sure about and certainly
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Go ahead Right.
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Okay, the Magna Carta as well. Well Yeah, the other
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I mean the unbelievers we would look at unbelievers say well You know, I wish I could you know, live up to their standards because they were very very moral people
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And they did believe that again that God had a plan
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Whether they were plugged into it or not where they believe that Jesus had risen from the dead or that he was God they still believed that biblical teaching was important because the
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Bible really formed the basis for education back then as well and And there was another thought that I had off of what you just said that that escapes me at the moment, but oh
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John Witherspoon John Witherspoon was a pastor from Georgia and Witherspoon was a
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Presbyterian minister later became the president of Princeton and he was one of the main architects of Of the
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Constitution and one of the main Architects of our nation as it formed and the representative form of government course being a
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Presbyterian He would have brought that with him that sort of representative idea He's actually a great descendant of Reese Witherspoon.
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Believe it or not a little bit trivia there for you She's the great great great whatever of John Witherspoon, but a new book just came out by the way on John Witherspoon Apparently it's gotten really good reviews and it accurately represents his role, but it was you know,
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I did a paper on this For for my class, but it I think a lot of the original founders were
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Theists if not really Christians many of them were probably regenerate Some of them were not but certainly they had a lot of common ground
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And some of them just wanted to rebel against England. So that's a debate for another day. I guess we'll do another one on that All right point number three on the outline.
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Let's move along The 1800s what I call a century of change There were a lot of things going on at this time you had
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Natural science you had the rise of modern science prior to this you had Galileo Francis Bacon Isaac Newton and this is where the deists got their idea that The universe was just kind of wound up and ran by natural laws.
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So people began to get the idea that Okay, maybe God is not superintending they started to get this idea that God isn't doesn't have his hand in every single detail of life the answers people came up with started to be a little bit different and away from the biblical truth that we know
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World missions early missionary efforts. This was a direct outgrowth of Pietism the pietists in Germany.
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You've heard of the Moravians Hernhut the first real organized missionary movement was the
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Moravians in the this was about the time of around 16 1700s you had this movement they sent missionaries throughout different parts of the parts of the world where they never heard about Christianity before and so Even in in this country one of the this is little spoken about too
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But one of the main things the colonists objected to Was England's control over the church not only how they worshipped but also
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England wanted to dictate they wouldn't let them have for example missionary societies they wanted to have missionary societies to the
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Indians and England wanted to retain very tight control over that that was if in fact if you read the the declaration that's one of their points of of a problem they had with England and So you but you had the
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Moravians as I have there you had John Eliot who was a pastor in Roxbury There are monuments in various places.
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He preached from Holy Cross Hill to the settlers and the Indians There's a monument in Grafton Center.
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I think pastor Dave told me about this and I checked it out right in the center of Grafton There's this drove by it for 20 years
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There's this little um didn't know it was there but a little plaque and just says that the man who printed the New Testament For John Eliot for the
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Indians lived there and John Eliot spent some time there true. Sorry, go ahead
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Yeah, this is yes. I'm giving you the background here. Yeah. Sorry about that. I should have been clear on that John Eliot was a pastor
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He was in the 1617 hundreds as Bruce said and in fact a little bit of trivia What language was the first Bible printed in America Algonquin?
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Yes, it was Algonquin It wasn't in English. All the English Bibles were imported from England. You couldn't print a
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Bible here So Algonquin was the Indian language John Eliot Printed they didn't care if you print an
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Indian language, you know So they printed these ink these Algonquin Bibles and there was a first Bible printed in America But he had a heart to reach out and many of them became
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Christians His work inspired David Brainerd who was a missionary in New Jersey to the
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Indians basically also an Indian missionary and John Eliot came up to Northampton Just before his death and stayed with Jonathan Edwards and Edwards wrote the life of David Brainerd some of us have read it and That book in turn was read by William Carey.
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So you see this link of sort of missions interest growing Just kind of a line going through this era that went through Jonathan Edwards and you see there
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William Carey who is who is English? He became what's called the father of the modern missions movement
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He went to England and I believe 1795
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I believe the Mission Society was formed in 1792 was a Baptist English Baptist group and he went to India went there for over 40 years without a furlough without a break
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Translated the Bible into many difficult Eastern languages and dialects started a school there and The first American missionary who followed closely on his heels was
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I have in your outline there at an Iram Judson He left out of Salem, Massachusetts started as a congregationalist studied the
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Bible on the way to India to meet Kerry and became a Baptist Became convinced that the
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Baptist position was correct and when he arrived he was baptized in India and Which you say well, okay, it's not that big a deal
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When the congregationalists send you to be a missionary and you say guess what now I'm a Baptist There goes all your support
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So Luther Rice who had gone with him got sick. He returned to the United States and Became the fundraiser for the missions movement and that really began the voluntary society
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See previously what you'd have is either an institutional church and a government Sending missionaries if any were sent out at all
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Certainly in a Roman Catholic countries Queen Isabella of Spain and Ferdinand They sent out the missionaries they paid for Certainly in this case you had a self -supported missionary.
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So well Luther Luther Rice had to do he was also baptized He went to the Baptist churches and all around the
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United States and eventually settled in Northboro In fact who we have our school is at the
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Luther Rice Baptist Church And they have the Baptist Conference of New England in Northboro and they have the old
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Luther Rice house still sitting there It's a historical site But that was really they were the first Missionaries and an adeniram
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Judson great story. They went to Burma which is modern -day Myanmar Believe it's called
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Myanmar That's a difficulty a lot of these names have changed so trying to keep up with Asian geography is kind of tough sometimes
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David Livingstone the famous David Livingstone went to Africa John Patton went to the cannibals in South Africa We've listened to our missionary tape that we gave out six months ago
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That was of him great story told by John John Piper and Hudson Taylor later on went to China.
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He was a little bit later But what you see is you see this evangelical outreach to the ends of the earth
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There was a lot of different reasons for this But basically people took the Great Commission as it was and they believed it and they said we must
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Preach the gospel to the ends of the earth. And so this is what this is what inspired them and you see this movement in the 1800s really
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To to undertake this one of the other as an aside one of the other things if you go up to Williams College There's a monument up there to the haystack prayer meeting which took place in 1806
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Some some students there had gotten together regularly to pray twice a day for a modern mission to Missions to reach the ends of the earth and they were caught in a thunderstorm and William Williams College ended up Praying in a haystack and out of that prolonged prayer meeting
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Got it enlarged their vision and they committed themselves to serve in the foreign missions field and if you go up there even today it's kind of you know, it's just challenging to To see the little monument they have up there to the haystack prayer meeting up at Williams College You found her end up there.
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You might want to check it out You also had in the 1800s a lot of philosophical speculations as I mentioned earlier deism
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Had has sort of risen and fallen because people realized that that really wasn't going to cut it there was you couldn't deism couldn't answer the questions of evil and And there were other philosophical problems with it so kind of died a slow death, but it's really the roots of liberalism you had rationalism and What is rationalism you think about it rationalism is different than being rational?
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I mean, we're all rational beings. We can all think we're told to love God with our mind, right? but Rationalism said let's instead of saying here's the
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Bible and let's use our mind to work out theology and things like that It said here's our mind. It's going to be over the
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Bible the rationalists believe all that you could really know Was what you could reason?
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And observe these are called the empiricists that was a different sort of idea but put together sort of under the umbrella of rationalism and what what they basically taught was if I can't if it doesn't make rational sense to me
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Or if I can't experience it. I'm not going to believe it they dealt in probability And so I've never seen a miracle has anybody seen a miracle anybody seen anybody rise from the dead well
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No, so therefore it couldn't have happened, and that's what they sort of use They said I'm gonna take the Bible witness, and I'm gonna put my mind above it and judge the
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Bible Which is just a ridiculous thing to do But this is where a lot of people in fact are today, and this was the root.
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These were the roots of liberalism There's also the roots of modern science although people believed that God had created an orderly universe that you could study
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Initially a lot of people took and ran with that into a direction that was away from God And so again with modern science people believe they could solve their problems with science a lot of the inventors sprung up during this era of history
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You also had Some philosophers Locke and Descartes I put two of them down there for you
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John Locke was one of the architects one of the philosophers who supported the
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American Revolution But but he and Descartes basically started from the point where Locke's big thing was natural theology.
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He believed that nothing in the Bible is nothing is anything that we couldn't have figured out ourselves So he was a big believer in natural theology and philosophy and Descartes He has the famous.
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I think therefore I am Which what's that? I think therefore
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I am I think Well and basically what Descartes tried to do and Believe me you start getting
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I took a course in Christian philosophy, and you can just you just go around You know like Bill Cosby said you know any any phys ed major knows why there's air
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You know to fill up volleyballs and basketballs, and you know, but they would ask questions that would just be you know beyond the pale Who cares you know the chair is really there.
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Thank you. Well. How do you know they just keep asking question after question? Well Descartes big thing was
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I think therefore I am he wanted to know what can I know for sure Basically came up with nothing. I can know for sure except that I'm thinking right now about what can
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I know for sure and So what he did was all philosophy and theology turned into self
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So if you start with yourself, I think therefore I am Then everything comes after that it's a very self -centered man -centered
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You know the Enlightenment's idea of man is the measure of all things just took on a whole new level the
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Descartes before divorce in case you didn't hear that That's pretty much. It's a good point.
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That's well said well said and Yes, Fred, that's right
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Is it really yeah
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Yeah Unitarian Universalists were mentioned and they did arise out of New England became congregationalist who pretty much
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Decided okay, I'm gonna again put my rational mind above the Bible and use reason to try and figure these things out and put revelation to the side professor down at Southern who spent a lot of time up here and and Basically said that everything bad comes out of New England theologically
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You have to half -joking, but you know he's been up here, and he knows and we'll see some of these cults and so forth
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Again, we have the rise of denominations on the next point there. That's enough said about philosophical speculations
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You had voluntary societies for missions and social outreach you had Problems of the Industrial Revolution you had child labor you had other things
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That needed a response and what you found is that churches instead of one church sort of championing it you had almost like parachurch groups not only for missions, but also for social needs in America and also in Britain you think of the
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Salvation Army which was started in Great Britain And other movements
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We don't really have time to go into Revivalism you had again.
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I mentioned after the revolution American Revolution you had You had a lot of People who you know maybe the churches were were splitting and then just society was tumultuous at that time and what you had was a need for revival a lot of churches fell into sort of lethargy and You know revivals are from God.
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You know we can't make them happen and you had people preaching things
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Directly from the Bible again you had people preaching the doctrines of grace A Tenant who started the log college down in New Jersey which eventually became
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Princeton University Asahel Nettleton in New York a great man great revivalist who you know basically they sort of recovered a lot of the losses of the
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Great Awakening after the American Revolution and You also had Charles Finney very controversial figure.
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I personally am NOT a fan of Finney. He is a sort of patron saint of modern
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Revival and evangelistic efforts. I don't even know if the guy was a believer. I kind of doubt it if you read what he taught
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He when he was getting Steve recently went through his ordination when he was going through his he basically didn't
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Believe any of the Orthodox doctrines or many of them. He didn't didn't really go for them, but they adorned him ordained him anyway and So a
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Finney Finney's idea was that revival could be brought about by human effort if you apply a
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B C and D. You'll get a revival Really really bypass the
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Spirit of God. So in other words, you can get a revival whether God shows up or not Which was the idea so started a very again man -centered evangelism
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The last point there under revivalism camp meetings in the American West you had the West was expanding country was expanding fast
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You had a lot of unorganized Just kind of crazy things going on out west and People didn't necessarily carry their faith with them when they went they weren't churches established.
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It was rough it was wilderness and there was a need so a lot of a lot of itinerant preachers went out west and They had these camp meetings and one of the most famous of them was in Kentucky and and started
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Movement movement of the Spirit of God and and revival and a lot of churches were planted a lot of these were started by the by the
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Methodists and what I didn't really go into was John Wesley was the father of Methodism and He it was an offshoot of the
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Anglican Church, but what Wesley basically did he? Got a lot into ordaining or commissioning lay people to preach and so a lot of these preachers
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Methodist preachers a lot of them some Baptist would go out into the Into the frontier and start churches and preach and hold these camp meetings
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And that was really the genesis of what they did and this was before they they it became mostly a liberal denomination
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Methodists were were biblical although they held to a more Arminian view of salvation that men could choose whether they would believe or not
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Whereas a more Calvinistic view would hold that God holds that in his hand of who will believe and who won't and he sends the
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Spirit and revives hearts and So you had a little difference there you know an important difference, but still they were preaching
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God's Word and they're preaching Christ crucified in the resurrection and a very important movement that Came from John Wesley as we'll see a little bit later
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There were there was an outgrowth out of the Methodist movement that we'll see in a minute Down there the cults the
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Mormons Jehovah's Witnesses Christian science don't have time to go into them But the Mormons were started by Brigham Young and Joseph Smith Moved from upstate,
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New York again Finney. I mentioned didn't mention by the way was Operated mainly in upstate,
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New York a lot of these Movements came from where Finney had been with the church as he rev people up But the revival soon died in many places not many became church members.
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I'm not blaming the cults on Finney I'm just saying that He had
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Didn't really have a lot of spiritual vitality in some of those areas In fact, they were later called the burnt over district a lot of the areas
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Finney had gone from which is a very sad commentary on one's ministry You had the Mormons eventually ended up in Utah in order to become a state in the late 1800s had to renounce polygamy
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They said well the Prophet has revealed to us that polygamy is no longer necessary. So Thanks.
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We're now a state and So you had those are the Mormons you had the Jehovah's Witnesses Started by Charles Taze Russell.
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This was sort of in New York City. They weren't called the Jehovah's Witnesses until the early 1900s a man named
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Rutherford I believe was really led to the you really promote a lot of the door -to -door methods they use and The third group there the the
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Christian Science Mary Baker Eddie right here in Boston You still have the science Church of Christian Science.
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I almost said Scientology, but that's not it Christian Science there right in there Symphony Hall.
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I believe it is right downtown, Boston They have the Christian Science Monitor all of these three cults.
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The reason they're cults is They don't believe in in the Orthodox Christian doctrine of who
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Christ was in salvation And they hold a lot of unbiblical views and so we consider them them cults
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Another movement in the 1800s century of change is Darwinism and naturalism Again, we don't have time to go into it, but 1859
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Charles Darwin published his origin of species 1871 he published the descent of man again, which applied principles of evolution to society very influential and Very destructive to biblical faith and was actually a direct threat and still is today to biblical faith
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Another lesson we'll have to cover. Oh, you know Darwinism evolution creation and things like this
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But basically it was whether people believed it or not. It's very destructive philosophy to to faith
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But then you also had faithful preachers at the end of the 1800s you had Charles Spurgeon in England and Many others you had
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DL Moody who was a revivalist here and started in Massachusetts Northfield Mount Hermann school was founded by him started in Chicago.
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You also had the Princeton Seminary Divines Going backwards again a little bit
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Harvard Yale Were both founded as ministerial training schools.
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Okay in the early part of the 16 and 1700s Princeton was founded later as I said by tenant started the log college and Princeton was the only
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Ivy League school Brown was founded as Baptist but basically liberalism this idea that we can put our mind over the scripture and Determine what we want to buy and what we don't
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It's not necessarily authoritative or all true especially about the life of Christ what you had is
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Princeton was the only school Prince was actually founded to counteract Harvard and Yale and their
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Downgrade into liberalism and Unitarianism, but you also So Princeton kind of held the torch for many many years for about a hundred years until about 1929 when they went liberal as well and That leads us into the 20th century the last point on our outline there
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Fundamentalists and modernists Fundamentalism has become a bit of a dirty word It has a lot of negative connotations and stereotypes some for good reason but in 1915
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RA Torrey was commissioned by a Southern California businessman to Write a series of essays on the fundamentals of the
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Christian faith, and it wasn't just RA Torrey, but many Contributed to it as well Machen Who I mentioned there?
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Jay Gresham Machen who was a Princeton seminary He had EY Mullins was a
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Southern Baptist many many established Theologians Contributed to this in Princeton seminary divines.
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I'll give you a lot of names, but we don't have time they had six fundamentals that they included in this book called the fundamentals and They became sort of the test of orthodoxy of where people were
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One of the things was the virgin birth. They said that's a fundamental of the faith. They said the bodily resurrection of Christ I don't have them in front of me now
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I could give them to you after if you'd like but basically the inerrancy of scripture was another one and they also held to a pre -millennial view of the of the end times and so Possibly What a lot of people think actually is that this led to sort of withdrawal from society?
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because if you hold to a pre -millennial view of Of the rapture then what you tend to say is well, it's all gonna burn anyway
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What's the use you know and getting involved in improving society if it's just fit for the fire? So this sort of led to a lot of folks a lot of folks withdrawing the other contributing factor was
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Liberal theology held to basically a social gospel view that our role is the church is to make society better and make people's lives better And so the fundamentalists decided we're gonna withdraw from we're gonna separate ourselves and make ourselves total spiritual
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Total Bible focused as opposed to these worldly focused people And we don't think it's gonna last anyway, so why improve it that was the sort of the main ideas for withdrawal their
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Pentecostal ism It's actually a denomination. It's came from the holiness Methodist movement when
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Methodism went liberal you had a holiness group that wanted to again to Focus on piety and personal faith and things of this nature and Regeneration which which is a positive movement, but out of this growth grew the
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Pentecostal movement They started studying the book of Acts and in 1906 in Los Angeles. They had the
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Azusa Street William Seymour and Azusa Street had this Outpouring as they called the second blessing a new
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Pentecost. That's why they called Pentecostal churches They believed that the signs they were seeing of what they considered to be miracles
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Healing speaking in tongues were all signs that God was pouring out his spirit, and they actually became their own denomination
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They believed in a second blessing one of the distinctives they held to a pre -millennial ism generally But they believe that there was a second blessing available to Christians a baptism in the
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Holy Spirit Which is evidenced by the speaking in tongues and that really is a distinctive of Pentecostal ism now
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Pentecostal ism is Generally fundamentalist in its orientation, okay? They generally hold to the fundamentals of the faith plus this other this other doctrine the charismatic movement
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I have there is another development in the 20th century the 1950s Dennis Bennett was an Episcopal priest who?
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who experienced much of this same thing this speaking in tongues phenomenon and He announced it to his congregation what was going on and they promptly fired him
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But he was rehired by he was in I forget where he was but he ended up in Seattle Church in Seattle said hey come be our pastor went up to Seattle and a lot of people went there to see what was going on and Charismatic movements spread to many mainline denominations.
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You know you have charismatic That's a whole lot of charismatic Presbyterians, but Methodists Congregationalists Roman Catholics even you have charismatic
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Catholics and so I Won't pretend to delve into it right now but this is just something that a way that the church has changed from from The way it has been for a number of years
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And so I'll let one of the pastors delve into the theology of it of the phenomenon you also have the vineyard movement
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You should probably hear to John Wimber He was one of the famous people who
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Who promoted this this charismatic movement the idea of power evangelism signs being necessary words of knowledge that I?
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Can speak into this person's life. I've never met before and God will give me knowledge about them, and I can I Can help them out
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Finally evangelicalism will finish here roots of the movement evangelicalism was sort of a kind of gender gentler fundamentalism and what they tried to do is they tried to They wanted to hold to the fundamentals of the faith yet still be involved at some level of society
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And some key figures in the evangelical movement Harold ocking gay. That's how that's pronounced ocking gay
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It's like a Kenga, but that's not it CF. Henry Carl F. Henry Southern Baptist Billy Graham started his crusades in the late 40s and Christianity Today was a magazine that was started by Henry and Graham I Don't think they've they've held true to their distinctives are not as high level as they were at the beginning
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Francis Schaeffer also a great evangelical thinker and scholar who believed that Christians of biblical faith should be involved with the culture
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Influencing the culture for good and not withdrawing that was one of his big big pushes and one of his big advocacies
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And as I said they committed the basic tenets of Protestant Reformation in faith and practice More engaged in the culture than the fundamentalist
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Sadly that's not as true today. They're not as committed as they used to be the broad It's hard even to define what evangelicalism now is now
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Because it's so broad and encompasses everything from what I have down here the emerging church movement
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Which pretty much is Christian faith as a postmodern?
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Philosophy and and pattern in other words you don't even have to hold to biblical doctrines
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You just sort of flow with the culture kind of thing you know and it it So that's considered quote -unquote evangelical
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Yes Right very good point
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Charlie Charlie mentions that that any religious conservative is pretty much considered an evangelical Regardless of what they believe so it's more an issue of I guess
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Yeah religion fueled conservatives, and that's a good way to put it so evangelical doesn't necessarily mean
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What it used to mean and so we have sort of today? You know where are we you know sort of tie things together?
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You know we would probably be somewhere in the evangelical conservative evangelical towards a fundamentalist camp
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I Guess I mean correct me if I'm wrong Good yeah, yeah, and then
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I you know the thing about it is you know you have different guys like MacArthur Sproul Moller Southern Baptist who have these different backgrounds and traditions
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But they agree on the center see here's the problem if you this whole Ecumenical movement
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I have here in the outline we don't have times to cover But the ecumenical movement is basically we can agree to cooperate on these things regardless of our theology
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So you mix in liberals Roman Catholics? conservative Christians Jews anybody you want
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Muslims into this let's work together and People look at that, and they say that's really what unity is but unity is not that at all unity is agreeing on the fundamentals of the faith of personal faith in Christ regeneration an inerrant view of the
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Bible and Orthodox Christian biblical doctrine and then your forms can take a different form if you want to be a postmillennialist or an
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Amillennialist I guess Moller Sproul and MacArthur are all three different millennial positions, okay? It's not the center of the faith, but we got to keep the center solid
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Otherwise we really use our true basis for unity that is our basis for unity so It's not that we can't cooperate with people, but let's understand.
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What is important, and what is what we're going to commit ourselves to A conclusion my conclusion the history is linear history moves in a straight line
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Postmodernism says history is circular and it just keeps recycling and who knows when the end is going to be But we have the creation and this is helpful actually if you're evangelizing someone to get them to think of history in time
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Is that there's creation there's a beginning of the time there was a fall This is why we're in the mess we're in there's redemption
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God sent Christ to redeem the world through faith in him and then finally there will be a consummation so We have this linear view of history that Christ will come again
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But there's nothing new under the Sun so as we look at Church history we say see the same mistakes repeated over and over again
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Who believe was Santiano who said those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it Somebody else a little more cynical said if we learn anything from church from history
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It's that we don't learn anything from history Is that people don't really take the time to think about and apply the things that church history or history in general will teach us?
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about us and about the tendency of The Church of Christ to downgrade and to fall away, and we have to be always reforming
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That's why I said last week this idea of semper reform anda always reforming always going back and each generation has to own it
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That's the thing you know my kids. I can't believe for my kids They've got to go through a very similar process that I don't we learn from church history is if we get complacent or The next generation doesn't pick it up.
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It will be lost so the question is you know will we will we be reforming?
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Will we continue the trend will we work towards that desired end or will we not and? Obviously I believe we have to any questions as we close
54:26
Yeah, Charlie just talking about denominations, and why they exist It's not necessarily a proof of it doesn't invalidate the message at all.
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I would also say that that denominations denominational ism is really a phenomenon of the
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America we really started denominational ism because of religious freedom when you have religious freedom you can't enforce conformity
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Either due to a church leadership position or as happened in the middle ages in the
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Reformation even By the civil magistrate and so when you don't have an
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When you when you're the Bible is you conformity there can be some variances in opinion, and you have it allows
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People to follow their own conscience and how they wish to worship and but even within that you know you pretty much know who your
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Orthodox you have a range of Orthodox and Unorthodox outside of that so we have to Take all that into account all right, let's let's close in prayer.
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Thanks for your patience Dear God. Thank you for this morning. Lord. Thank you for this this time together and Lord I pray that we would never lose our roots
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Lord. I pray that we would always look to you for For personal regeneration, and I pray that we would all always look to your word
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For the truth that you would guide us into and I pray Lord that we would not be led astray
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By unbiblical doctrines by the traditions of men by empty human philosophy But Lord that we would focus on Christ and him alone who in whom?
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You dwell as God in bodily form Lord. You are God You are our Savior, and we pray this morning that you would enlighten our minds to understand the scriptures preached
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By our pastor And you would you would give us? Spiritual hearts to hear it and eyes to see how you would have us change to be conformed more to be more like Christ we