Billy Graham & The Pentecostal / Charismatic Movement (Unity with Rome)

Billy Graham and the Postmodern Turn in Evangelicalism

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?

The altar.

To the altar, and that was the whole idea.

Yeah.

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.

The Origins of Pentecostalism and Speaking in Tongues

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 Osmond, 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, yeah, 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 they were what we would call modalists, so 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 chapter 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, four through eight, 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 and 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 Jesus People Movement and the Cultural Shift in the Church

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 and 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 a hundred of them would show up and now they kind of decided what was gonna 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, this is 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. Yeah, just come on in.

And, you know, people often will focus on kind of the more superficial things like the suit and ties out the door, the hymns out the door, preaching verse by verse through the scripture, a lot of times out the door.

And they embraced the guitar, the rock band, you know, the casual approach. And they really catered. I don't think you can deny this. They really catered to the hippie generation. And the hippie generation didn't exactly have a biblical worldview.

So I think that whole ideology, even of Marxism, crept into a lot of evangelical churches through the Jesus people. If someone wants to disagree with that, that's fine. Just pray for me. But I think that did a lot of harm long-term.

Many people did come to Christ during that time though.

We have to say that.

A lot of people were saved. I don't doubt that God can work in and through anything. So many people did come to know Christ during that time. For that, I'm thankful.

Amen.

Billy Graham, Vatican II, and Evangelicals and Catholics Together

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

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

Not that Billy Graham's ever said that.

It's not what I'm saying.

But here's a man who preached the gospel his whole life. And at his crusades, he was very solid about biblical truth and the gospel, very clear. And yet at the same time, he could also say things like this.

So watch.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There is, there definitely is.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

With one another.

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

This is totally new. It's postmodern. This is why you see Catholics and Protestants holding joint prayer services with Muslims and Hindus and Jewish rabbis and just anybody and everybody.