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Are Christianity and Islam morally equivalent? – Part I

Posted by :admin On : April 17, 2015
1

Category: Archives, Christianity, Islam

During his presidency, Barak Obama has been the chief American apologist for Islam in spite of a worldwide upsurge of terror conducted by its adherents. Open Doors ministry reported that of the fifty countries with the worst persecution, forty-one are Muslim.[1] Both the Vatican and the Center for Study of Global Christianity reported that 100,000 Christians died in 2012 because they were Christian—devout, nominal, or cultural. These statistics include Christians killed for their beliefs or ethnicity, killed while worshiping in a church, murdered because they were children of Christians, or killed because of their Christian witness.[2] Most of the deaths were at the hands of Muslims and committed in the name of Islam as dictated by the Qur’an. Given the substantial increase in Muslim violence against Christian minorities in the Middle East since 2012, the number of Christian deaths at the hands of Muslims most certainly will increase substantially.

The Obama administration refuses to accurately label the world’s battle against terrorism for what it is—a religious war with radical Islamists. He states that, “…I think we do ourselves a disservice in this fight if we are not taking into account the fact that the overwhelming majority of Muslims reject this ideology.”[3] That the “overwhelming majority” of Muslims in the United States reject the fundamental tenets of radical Islam is debatable. But, what is not debatable is that the forty-one governments of the top fifty countries in the world with the worst records of persecution are Muslim and represent an overwhelming majority of all the world’s Muslims. And most of those countries are enforcing a rigid adherence to the commands of the Qur’an. The President’s implied peacefulness of Islam is spurious when one sees the reality of the vast persecution of Christians in the Muslim world. Where statistics of persecution may seem minimal in some Muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia, it is only because Christianity is so suppressed as to be virtually eradicated and non-existent.

Because the President’s defense of Islam is so obviously groundless, he endeavors to minimize Muslim persecution of Christians by claims of moral equivalence between Christianity and Islam as to their respective historical abuses. A recent example of this was at, of all places, the National Prayer Breakfast where the President attempted to equate certain supposed evils in Christian history to that of modern Islamic terrorism.

But we also see faith being twisted and distorted, used as a wedge–or, worse, sometimes used as a weapon…We see ISIL, a brutal, vicious death cult that, in the name of religion, carries out unspeakable acts of barbarism—terrorizing religious minorities like the Yezidis, subjecting women to rape as a weapon of war, and claiming the mantle of religious authority for such actions.

And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.[4]

Those using the moral equivalence argument attempt to equate two distinct and dissimilar things that are not, in fact, equal. In such cases, whether used in a positive or negative sense, the argument is fallacious because the two are dissimilar. In his Prayer Breakfast speech, President Obama used moral equivalence in a negative sense by effectively labeling the supposed crimes committed in the name of Christianity as equivalent to the modern-day atrocities committed in the name of Islam. By doing so, the Apologist-in-Chief for Islam attempted to turn the focus of religious persecution on Christianity instead Islam.

President Obama’s comments at the National Prayer Breakfast were wrong on two counts. First, the President misreads the history of Islam and its conflict with Christianity and Western civilization. Second, the President, his administration, and most of the liberal establishment blatantly distort the true nature of Islam. In this series of articles we shall examine the origins and nature of Islam as compared to Christianity and Christendom’s past response to Muslim aggression.

Origins of Islam

Unlike the Christian Bible that was the product of the revelation of God to a host of writers over a 1600 year period, the Quran was a product of the verbal utterances of Muhammad born about AD 570 of poor parents who were members of a minor clan of an important Bedouin tribe living in the harsh desert conditions of the Arabian peninsula. As a young man he preached a monotheistic God. Most Arabs of the era were polytheistic, but monotheism was not a new message for there were Christian Arabs before there were Muslims. A descendant of Abraham, Muhammad saw himself as a messenger of God who will judge all men. Salvation was to be obtained by following his will in their personal and social behavior as well as religious observances. Over a period of twenty-two years, these revelations were written down by his followers but not collected together as the Quran until after his death. Even though there had been other prophets before him including the last who was Jesus of Nazareth, Muhammad believed all of their revelations had been falsified by Jews and Christians. Now Muslims were to believe that through Mahammad God had spoken his last message to mankind.[5]

Islam was a religion invented and built upon the sword, conquest, and forced conversion. Salvation came through works, and its primary work was war against the infidel by which is meant any who were not followers of Islam. Beginning with the Muslim prophet’s first successful caravan raid followed by twelve centuries of Muslim conquests, Islam was unequivocally linked with worldly success and power. In the first few decades of Islam’s existence, Muslims conquered half of the lands of historic Christianity including Syria and Egypt. According to one medieval Muslim historian, the Mediterranean was quickly turned into a “Muslim lake” in which “the Christians could no longer float a plank…”[6]

Just before his death, Muhammad told his followers, “I was ordered to fight all men until they say ‘There is no god but Allah.’” His words are confirmed by his previous instructions recorded in the Qur’an: “…then fight and slay the Pagans wherever ye find them. And seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war); but if they repent, and establish regular prayers and practice regular charity, then open the way for them…” [Qur’an 9:5] Faithful to the Qur’an and Muhammad’s final words, his followers set out to conquer the world, and that is the goal of faithful followers of Islam in the twenty first century.

Before he died in 632, Muhammad had unified the Bedouin tribes in Arabia. The first conquest by his followers was Syria in 635, then part of the Byzantine Empire (Eastern Roman Empire). Palestine, then a part of Syria, was conquered by 638. At the same time the Arabs attacked western Persia (Mesopotamia known as Iraq today) and it fell to the Muslim invaders. Soon, eastern Persia (known as Iran today) was invaded and conquered. The Muslim invaders turned north and subdued Armenia and then traveled east to occupy the Indus Valley (modern Pakistan) and over the centuries expanded into India. In 641 all of Egypt surrendered to the Muslim invaders. During the last half of the 600s, Muslims conquered the North African coast all the way to the Atlantic Ocean, crossed isthmus separating Africa and Europe, and captured Spain. Eventually the islands of the Mediterranean and southern Italy were defeated and brought into the Muslim empire.[7]

Because of Muslim dominance of the Mediterranean and the lands in between, the Latin West was effectively separated from the Greek East. Muslim conquests of Spain and dominance of the Mediterranean placed the entire European continent under threat of Muslim attack.[8] During the thousand years that followed, some of the conquered nations cast off their Muslim captors. But Muslim conquest and domination of much of the world continued for ten centuries until a shocking defeat in 1798 led to the demise of the Muslim empire for the next 150 years.

In Part II, the nature of Islam and its concepts, beliefs, and practices that are fundamental to the Muslim faith will be examined

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] “World Watch List Countries,” Open Doors. http://www.worldwatchlist.us/ (accessed September 15, 2014).
[2] Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra, “Counting the Cost (Accurately),” Christianity Today, August 21, 2013. http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2013/september/counting-cost-accurately.html (accessed September 16, 2013).
[3] Jeremy Diamond, “Why President Obama won’t call the fight on terror a war on radical Islam,” CNN, February 1, 2015. http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/01/politics/obama-radical-islam-terrorism-war/index.html (accessed March 30, 2015).
[4] President Barak Obama, “Remarks of the President at the National Prayer Breakfast,” The White House – Office of the Press Secretary, February 1, 2015. https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/02/05/remarks-president-national-prayer-breakfast (accessed March 30, 2015).
[5] J. M. Roberts, The New History of the World, (New York: Oxford University Press), 2003, pp. 324-327.
[6] Raymond Ibrahim, Crucified Again-Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians, (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2013), p. 9.
[7] Rodney Stark, God’s Battalions-The Case for the Crusades, (New York: Harper One, 2009), pp. 12, 15-23.
[8] Ibrahim, p. 9.

Criminalizing Christian beliefs and behavior

Posted by :admin On : April 10, 2015
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Category: Archives, Christianity, Constitution, Equality, Government

As Liberals see it, some people are just more equal than others.

Barronelle Stutzman is a florist and owner of Arlene’s Flowers in the State of Washington who is in peril of losing her business, personal assets, and retirement. Because of her religious beliefs and her faithfulness to those beliefs, she was sued by the State of Washington and the ACLU in 2013. Her crime was telling Rob Ingersoll that she would not provide her services as a florist for his upcoming marriage to his same-sex partner because it was a violation of her belief that marriage was to be between a man and woman. In February 2015, a Washington judge ruled that Ms. Stutzman had broken the law by discriminating against Ingersoll. The court said that while recognizing her religious beliefs are protected by the Constitution, her discriminatory actions were not.[1]

On March 13, 2014 William Jack went to Denver’s Azucar Bakery and requested two Bible-shaped cakes that were to be decorated and inscribed with Bible verses. Marjorie Silva refused to accept his order but agreed to bake the cakes and supply Jack with the necessary icing and decorations so that he could decorate the cake as he pleased. Jack’s requested design offended Ms. Silva because one cake was to have the image of two groomsmen holding hands in front of a cross with a red “X” over them. The cake was to be inscribed with a Bible verse: “God hates sin. Psalm 45:7.” On the second cake, Jack requested the image of the same two groomsmen with the red “X” but inscribed with the verses: “God loves sinners” and “While we were yet sinners Christ died for us. Romans 5:8.” Following a complaint against Silva for discrimination, the Colorado Civil Rights Division ruled in March 2015 that Silva did not discriminate against Jack by refusing to make the cakes because the customer’s requests included “derogatory language and imagery.”[2]

Ms. Stutzman and Ms. Silva withheld their personal services because the provision of those services would have been in direct violation of their beliefs. Ms. Stutzman’s beliefs were based on her religious convictions protected by the First Amendment. Ms. Silva’s beliefs were based on her personal opinion as to what constituted “derogatory language and imagery.” The Colorado Civil Rights commission ignored Silva’s overt discrimination against Jack while the Washington State judge convicted Stutzman of exercising her First Amendment freedom of religion.

By judicial and bureaucratic edicts across the nation, the First Amendment protection of religious freedom is being dismantled by separating religious belief from actions in support of those beliefs in order to achieve humanistic definitions of equality and political correctness. Without the ability to exercise one’s religious beliefs, the First Amendment protections of religious freedom are rendered meaningless.

Religious Freedom Restoration Act

Because of legislative, judicial, and bureaucratic actions that compromised the First Amendment protection of religious freedom, the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 was unanimously passed by the House, and the Senate overwhelmingly approved the bill by a 97-3 vote. On November 16, 1993, President Clinton spoke to those gathered on the south lawn of the White House on the day of the signing of the bill. One particular statement from his speech is significantly applicable to today’s debate on the government’s efforts to curtail religious freedom.

The free exercise of religion has been called the first freedom, that which originally sparked the development of the full range of the Bill of Rights. Our Founders cared a lot about religion…They knew that religion helps to give our people the character without which a democracy cannot survive. They knew that there needed to be a space of freedom between Government and people of faith that otherwise Government might usurp.[3] [emphasis added]

In 1997, the Supreme Court struck down the federal RFRA not because of the “compelling interest test” but because it ruled that Congress could not require the test be used by states in cases involving religious freedom.[4] This was followed by new federal legislation that reinstated protections of religious freedom from governmental interference.

Subsequently, a number of states passed RFRA legislation that closely followed the original federal law and its successors. On March 26, 2015, Governor Mike Pence signed into law a Religious Freedom and Restoration Act passed by the Indiana legislature. The heart of Indiana’s protection of religious freedom act is found in Section 8.

Sec. 8. (a) Except as provided in subsection (b), a governmental entity may not substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion, even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability. (b) A governmental entity may substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion only if the governmental entity demonstrates that application of the burden to the person: (1) is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest; and (2) is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest.[5]

Irrespective of the approval the President and almost universal approval of Congress in 1993, as well as most Americans twenty-two years earlier. These eighty words have created a blistering firestorm of protests, threats, economic blackmail, and character assassination against states, legislators, and other RFRA supporters across America by the homosexual lobby and other supporters of the homosexual agenda. These supporters include the media and cultural elites, CEOs of major corporations, and liberal politicians and bureaucrats.

Is religious freedom decided by the First Amendment or the Chamber of Commerce?

Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, has called RFRA legislation in the various states as very dangerous and would allow people to discriminate against their neighbors. Cook lambasted the various RFRA supporters and linked them to segregation and discrimination in the south of the 1960s and 1970s.

America’s business community recognized a long time ago that discrimination, in all forms, is bad for business…These bills rationalize injustice by pretending to defend something many of us hold dear. They go against the very principles our nation was founded on…This isn’t a political issue. It isn’t a religious issue. This is about how we treat each other as human beings.[6] [emphasis added]

In spite of Tim Cook’s assertions to the contrary, restrictions on the practice of one’s religious beliefs is a religious issue and protection of religious freedom is a political issue. Although Cook believes RFRA laws go against the very principles upon which the nation was founded, the real violation of those principles occurs when the full meaning and protections of the First Amendment are ignored and/or violated by a government that forces people to disobey their religious beliefs in order to achieve some arbitrary standard of equality.

Even pop star Miley Cyrus, not known as a paragon of moral virtue or for her intellectual gifts, vilified Indiana’s RFRA supporters while giving an interview to Time magazine about the future of music and youth culture.

They are dinosaurs, and they are dying off. We are the new generation, and with that will come so much…People are trying now to make the Indiana law look like something that it’s not. They’re trying to make it look like it’s not discriminatory. It’s confusing for my fans, so I’m happy to [speak up about it]. They won’t listen to Tim Cook, maybe. But they’ll listen to me, you know? And people are starting to listen, I think.[7]

To help alleviate the confusion of Ms. Cyrus and her fans, RFRA laws are not discriminatory because they apply to everyone.

Interdependence of the Constitution and moral virtue of the people

The primary reason for the loss of religious freedoms in America is not to be found in any supposed defects of the Constitution’s plain wording or the Founders’ clear meaning and intent. Rather, the reason for loss of religious freedom can be discovered in the words of two of America’s most illustrious Founders.

We have no government armed in power capable of contending in human passions unbridled by morality and religion…Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.[8] [John Adams, signer of the Constitution and second president of the United States] [emphasis added]

Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become more corrupt and vicious, they more need of masters.[9] [Benjamin Franklin, signer of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution] [emphasis added]

The assault on religious freedom is occurring because there is a shortage of virtuous, moral, and religious leadership at the helms of the institutions of American life. Like Esau, Tim Cook and many other Chamber of Commerce types have despised their heritage and sold their birthright of religious freedom for a pot of stew. [Genesis 25:29-34] Ignoring the wishes of the people and the safeguards designed by the Founders, the liberal bullies and their cultural lackeys are now the masters—the new experts at determining what constitutes religious liberty but who are not to be bothered with the First Amendment’s plain language.

Unlike the CEOs of mega-corporations and their humanistic colleagues, the Founders were far more concerned with religious liberty than their bank balances, the egalitarian notions of equality, the humanistic doctrines of French intellectuals, or the ridicule of cultural royalists. The Constitution continues to be unequivocal evidence of the Founders’ strong concern for religious freedom because “… they knew that there needed to be a space of freedom between Government and people of faith that otherwise Government might usurp.”

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] Courtney Coren, “Washington Florist: State, ACLU ‘Trying to bully me’,” Newsmax, February 24, 2015. http://www.newsmax.com/Newsmax-Tv/Washington-state-florist-gay-marriage-ACLU/2015/02/24/id/626583/ (accessed April 6, 2015).
[2] Alan Gathright and Eric Lupher, “Denver’s Azucar Bakery wins right to refuse to make anti-gay cakes,” 7NewsDenver, April 4, 2015. http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/local-news/denvers-azucar-bakery-wins-right-to-refuse-to-make-anti-gay-cake (accessed April 7, 2015).
[3] “William J. Clinton – Remarks on Signing the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993,” The American Presidency Project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=46124 (Accessed April 3, 2015).
[4] “State Religious Freedom Acts,” Home School Legal Defense Association, January 28, 2015.
http://www.hslda.org/docs/nche/000000/00000083.asp (accessed April 3, 2015).
[5] TEXT: Indiana Religious Freedom Restoration Act: SENATE ENROLLED ACT No. 101, Senate of the State of Indiana ^ | March 27, 2015 | Government of the State of Indiana. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3272850/posts (accessed April 6, 2015).
[6] Tim Cook, “Opposing ‘religious’ bills requires courage,” Tulsa World, April 3, 2015, A-17.
[7] Eliana Dockterman, “Miley Cyrus: Indiana Religious Freedom Law Supporters ‘Are dinosaurs, and they are dying off’,” Time, March 31, 2015. http://time.com/3766436/miley-cyrus-on-indiana-law/ (accessed April 6, 2015).
[8] William J. Federer, America’s God and Country, (Coppell, Texas: FAME Publishing, Inc., 1996), pp. 10-11.
[9] Ibid., p. 247.

The Separated Church – Part IV

Posted by :admin On : April 3, 2015
2

Category: Archives, Christianity

In the first part of the twentieth century many liberal Protestant churches abandoned their biblical roots by acceptance and incorporation of humanistic tenets into their liberal social gospel. God became irrelevant as the liberal church focused on saving society as opposed to saving man. Social life, good deeds, and membership replaced sin, salvation, and death to self. In 1930, Dietrich Bonhoeffer described the face of the ascendant liberal, progressive Protestantism that he observed while completing a Sloane Fellowship at Union Theological Seminary in New York City.

Anyone who has seen the weekly program of one of the large New York churches, with their daily, indeed almost hourly events, teas, lectures, concerts, charity events, opportunities for sports, games, bowling, dancing for every age group, anyone who has heard how they try to persuade a new resident to join the church, insisting that you’ll get into society quite differently by doing so, anyone who has become acquainted with the embarrassing nervousness with which the pastor lobbies for membership—that person can well assess the character of such a church. All these things, of course, take place with varying degrees of tactfulness, taste, and seriousness; some churches are basically “charitable” churches, others have primarily a social identity. One cannot avoid the impression, however, that in both cases they have forgotten what the real point is.[1]

As progressive Protestantism took center stage in many of America’s mainline churches during the first three decades of the twentieth century, those dissenting churches (fundamentalists, evangelicals, charismatics, and Pentecostals) effectively went underground with their creedal doctrines. They developed a fortress mentality and substantially abandoned their biblical role to influence and inform society of truth and morality including government, education, economics and business, the arts and media, and popular culture in general.

Although the life-changing message of Christ is always relevant to fallen man in a lost and dying world, by mid-century the faithful church had comparatively few voices carrying an unadulterated gospel message to a hostile culture that no longer deemed itself fallen. As the Boomers gained prominence in the late 1960s, the humanistic influence began to seep into what we have loosely labeled as fundamentalists, evangelicals, charismatics, and Pentecostals.

As the once humble conservative Christian churches attained a measure of social acceptance during the last half of the twentieth century, many began to replace the power of the gospel message with man’s market-driven ideas as a means of accomplishing Christ’s charge to make disciples. As a result, many in the faithful church gradually substituted man’s ideas and methods in place of unchangeable biblical truths and authority. When the church moved into the last decades of the century, the biblical message of these churches was increasingly compromised and/or softened, the churches began finding common ground with the unbeliever (mixing the light with the dark), and nonjudgmental love was substituted for repentance and turning from sin.

In 1998, the late David Wilkerson described the cultural seduction of the modern church in the United States by what he called the gospel of accommodation.

Accommodate means to adapt, to make suitable and acceptable, to make convenient. A gospel of accommodation is creeping into the United States…sweeping the nation, influencing ministers of every denomination, and giving birth to megachurches with thousands who come to hear a non-confronting message. It’s an adaptable gospel that is spoon-fed through humorous skits, drama, and short, nonabrasive sermonettes on how to cope—called a seeker-friendly or sinner-friendly gospel…The gospel of Jesus Christ has always been confronting—there is no such thing as a friendly gospel but a friendly grace.[2] [emphasis added]

An accommodating gospel is the way of cheap grace. Wilkerson spoke to the leadership of churches and warned of the consequences of their deception.

It’s cruel, pastor, to lead sinners to the Cross, tell them they are forgiven by faith, and then allow them to go back to their habits and lusts of the flesh, unchanged and still in the devil’s shackles.[3]

In The Market Driven Church, Udo Middelmann wrote of the worldly influence of modern culture on the church. He captures well the sad state of many American churches.

In the course of a very few decades much of the church has embraced the way of mass culture in its drive to reduce everything to play and attractive entertainment. It has bowed to the demands of a consumer society and offers a message that more often detracts for the moment than comforts for the long run. Adjustments in content and form to match the perceived needs of future possible converts eat away at the content necessary to understand God, the fall of man, and redemption. Marketing priorities preside. The product is matched to the customer’s expectations. There is little room for…God to set forth judgment and conditions for redemption.[4]

The market driven church has adapted its methods and message to appeal to modern man, whose whole perception has been altered by a culture that allows him to expect entertainment, fun, and easy success.

It appears that many modern accommodating church leaders must believe Christ’s ministry could never be successful in the twenty first century. They assume the way of Christ is too hard, too narrow, and too dull for the modern generation. It offers little to maintain their congregants’ interest or capture the attention of a post-modern generation. Therefore, the Bible’s old-fashioned, austere message is judged to be out-of-tune with the times and must be modernized to win friends and make converts. Christ would have to revamp his message by softening the rhetoric to make it seeker-friendly. His ministry must be overhauled and reorganized around sound business principles. It should identify its purposes and be driven by specific goals whose achievement in numbers and dollars can be properly measured and success gauged. He must also replace that scruffy band of disciples and hire a first-rate public relations firm to survey the market and construct a ministry theme to best attract and connect with the community’s wants and needs. Next He must hire a hall, employ a well-educated and socially acceptable ministry team, and mount a multi-faceted media campaign to enlist members into His new church—The Church of the What’s Happening Now. In time the spiritual side would take care of itself if we can just get them in the doors and make them better adjusted. Then the Holy Spirit will be free to do His thing as long as He doesn’t lay any guilt trips on them.

But as Bonhoeffer wrote, “…they have forgotten what the real point is.” The point is that the church must declare the eternal truth of God and His relation to man. This was done in every generation from the first century church to the present in cultures that were uniformly hostile to the message of the church. Instead of evangelizing the world, the world is evangelizing the church. To a large degree the value systems of the church and the world have become indistinguishable. The church has abandoned its role as “…a holy, powerful remnant that is consecrated and available to God…”[5]

With church attendance in decline and agnosticism and atheism on the increase, the modern church must do something other than market their services in competition with what the world has to offer. “The Christian community has to return to absolute dependence on the Holy Spirit. It is the Spirit who made the early believers such a powerful witness for Christ in the pagan Roman Empire.” Through unequivocal dependence on the Holy Spirit and the powerful proclamation of the Word of God to a hurting, lost, and dying generation, people will be transformed which is the prerequisite for transforming society.[6]

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer-Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy, (Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, 2010), pp. 106-107.
[2] David Wilkerson, “The Dangers of the Gospel of Accommodation,” Assemblies of God Enrichment Journal. http://enrichmentjournal.ag.org/199901/078_accommodation.cfm (accessed September 2, 2014).
[3] Ibid.
[4] Udo W. Middelmann, The Market Driven Church, (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2004), p. 124.
[5] Jim Cymbala, Fresh Power, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2001), p. 22.
[6] Jim Cymbala, Storm, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2014), p. 76.

The Separated Church – Part III

Posted by :admin On : March 27, 2015
0

Category: Archives, Christianity

Paul in his second letter to the Thessalonians describes the great apostasy that will occur in the last days.

Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our assembling to meet him, we beg you brethren, not to be quickly shaken in mind or excited, either by spirit or by word, or by letter purporting to be from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come. Let no one deceive you in any way; for that day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God. [2 Thessalonians 2:1-4, RSV]

Paul is telling the Christians that the coming of the Lord will not occur unless the rebellion comes first. This is called the great apostasy which occurs just before the coming of the Lord. Apostasy refers to the faithful who renounce, desert, or become traitors to their faith.

In Part II, we noted that the Laodicean church was the worst of the seven Asian churches. It believed itself rich and in need of nothing but in reality was wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. Its great sin was that it was lukewarm—neither hot nor cold. Its indifference arose from self-conceitedness and self-delusion. In spite of humanism being the “…most severe enemy that Christianity ever had,”[1] many American churches have begun to mirror the exaltation of self which is the central theme of this man-made philosophy. They do not deny God as do the humanists but treat God as if he were distant and uninvolved in their daily lives. As a result, many modern churches have become like the Laodicean church. They are lukewarm and indifferent to His presence and power. In accord with the central tenet of humanism, their focus is on the self and its well-being in this life rather than being concerned with the soul and its eternal destination.

This focus on self stands in direct contradiction to the admonition that Christians must die to self. [See: Galatians 2:20; 1 Corinthians 15:31] The church has succumbed to the humanist lie through the abandonment of sound doctrine. In his second letter to Timothy, Paul warned, “For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate to themselves teachers to suit their own likings, and turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths.” [2 Timothy 4:3-4. RSV]

During the colonial era and for 150 years after the founding America, the Christian church was infused with a sound doctrinal foundation which anchored the republic. But as the humanistic spirit arose in the institutions of American life at the beginning of the twentieth century, the church’s role in society was diminished due to a loss of cultural authority and acceptance. To counter humanism’s onslaught, mainline Protestant leaders began embracing secular human sciences to lend credibility and cultural relevance to the tenets of their religion.[2] But such acceptance brought compromise of its creedal doctrines which resulted in a profane and powerless church that had lost its saltness, “…no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trodden under foot by men.” [Matthew 5:13b. RSV]

An eyewitness account of the decimation of doctrinal standards by mainline liberal churches in America was given by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer had passed his doctoral examination in theology at the University of Berlin in late 1927. After a year in Barcelona, Spain, as the vicar for a German congregation, he returned to Germany in 1929. However, in 1930, with a Sloane Fellowship in hand, the brilliant twenty-four year old theologian traveled to Union Theological Seminary in New York City. There he was to experience firsthand the massive battle raging in the 1920s and 1930s between the liberals and fundamentalists.[3]

Theological liberalism was led by the most famous liberal preacher in America, Harry Emerson Fosdick, pastor of the prestigious Riverside Church of New York which was built for Fosdick by John D. Rockefeller to further Fosdick’s “progressive” modernist views. While still at First Presbyterian Church of New York City in 1922, Fosdick loosed an initial blast with his sermon “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” in which he denigrated the “…historic assertions of the Christian faith, including the virgin birth, the resurrection, the divinity of Christ, the atonement, miracles, and the Bible as the Word of God.” In defense of the historic faith, as described by the fundamentalists, was Dr. Walter Duncan Buchanan, pastor of the Broadway Presbyterian Church, six blocks south of First Presbyterian. Fosdick and Rockefeller’s lieutenants such at Time magazine’s Henry Luce mounted a massive assault to once and for all time rid the church of any fundamentalist tendencies.[4]

To Bonhoeffer, it was obvious that the professors and students at Union heavily favored the liberal views of Fosdick. Bonhoeffer was appalled at their lack of serious scholarship with respect to truth and academic inquiry. He wrote,

There is no theology here… They [Union students] talk a blue streak without the slightest substantive foundation and with no evidence of any criteria…They are unfamiliar with even the most basic questions. They become intoxicated with liberal and humanistic phrases, laugh at the fundamentalists, and yet basically are not even up to their level.[5] [emphasis in original]

Bonhoeffer described the theological atmosphere at the seminary as hastening the process of secularization of Christianity in America. He found no better in the liberal churches of New York.[6]

Things are not much different in the church. The sermon has been reduced to parenthetical church remarks about newspaper events. As long as I’ve been here, I have heard only one sermon in which you could hear something like a genuine proclamation [of the gospel]…The fundamentalist sermon that occupies such a prominent place in the southern states has only one prominent Baptist representative in New York, one who preaches the resurrection of the flesh and the virgin birth before believers and the curious alike.

In New York they preach about virtually everything, only one thing is not addressed, or is addressed so rarely that I have as yet been unable to hear it, namely, the gospel of Jesus Christ, the cross, sin and forgiveness, death and life.[7]

The liberal churches of the early twentieth century were no longer separate from the world but had become completely infused with the spirit the Laodicean church. Its hard-hearted indifference was nourished by its own self-conceit and self-delusion. It believed itself rich and in need of nothing but in reality was wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. It was neither hot nor cold. Jesus Christ, the cross, sin, forgiveness, and death and life were irrelevant to its existence.

Larry G. Johnson

[1] Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer-Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy, (Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, 2010), p. 85.
[2] Larry G. Johnson, Ye shall be as gods – Humanism and Christianity – The Battle for Supremacy in the American Cultural Vision, (Owasso, Oklahoma: Anvil House Publishers, 2011), p. 252.
[3] Metaxas, pp. 94, 101.
[4] Ibid., pp. 101-103.
[5] Ibid., p. 101.
[6] Ibid., p. 105.
[7] Ibid., p. 106.

The Separated Church – Part II

Posted by :admin On : March 20, 2015
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Category: Archives, Christianity

Near the beginning of His Sermon on the Mount, Christ admonished His disciples about their mission in a dark and desolate world.

You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trodden under foot by men. You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hid. Nor do men light a lamp and put it under a bushel, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. [Matthew 5:13-16. RSV]

When considering Christ’s instruction that the church should be salt and light to the world, it appears to conflict with His instruction at the end of His Sermon on the Mount in which the church is commanded to walk a separate path from that of the world. Throughout its history, the church often has had difficulty with balancing these seemingly contradictory commands. The early church was no exception.

In the first chapter of the Revelation of Jesus Christ, while in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, John was instructed by Christ to record what he saw in the book and send it to seven churches in Asia. One by one, John revealed each of their works (good and bad) and their heart.

Ephesus (Revelation 2:1-7) A typical first century church, they had many great works and had labored and endured without growing weary. Their sin was that they had left their first love. It was not a matter of rejection but neglect. Fervency and zeal for Christ were no longer present and without which they were in jeopardy. There only hope was repentance and doing their first works again.

Smyrna (Revelation 2:8-11) Best described as the persecuted church. They suffered tribulation, poverty, and slander. They were encouraged to not fear the coming suffering, imprisonment, and for some even death because a crown of life awaited the faithful.

Pergamos (Revelation 2:12-17) It was labeled as the church where Satan dwelled. This church mixed with the world. They were faithful in spirit but filthy in flesh. They communed with persons of corrupt principles and practices which brought guilt and blemish upon the whole body. When those corrupt members of a church are punished, so too will the whole church be punished if they allow such corruption to continue.

Thyatira (Revelation 2:18-29) Although commended for their charity, service, faith, and patience, evil progresses and idolatry was practiced in the church. The church contained unrepentant and wicked seducers who drew God’s servants into fornication and offering sacrifices to idols.

Sardis (Revelation 3:1-6) It was representative of the church that is dead or at the point of death even though it still has a minority of godly men and women. The great charge against this church was hypocrisy. It was not what it appeared to be. The ministry was languishing. There was a form of Godliness but not the power.

Philadelphia (Revelation 3:7-13) It was a church of revival and spiritual progress. The church had proved itself faithful and obedient to the Word. As its name implies, it was a church of love and kindness to each other. Because of their excellent spirit, they were an excellent church. They kept the word and did not deny His name. No fault was attributed to the church, only mild reproof for having only a little strength or power.

Laodicea (Revelation 3:14-19) The worst of all of the seven Asian churches, Laodicea had nothing to commend it. Its great sin was that it was lukewarm—neither hot nor cold. Its indifference arose from self-conceitedness and self-delusion. It believed itself rich and in need of nothing but in reality was wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. Christ reminded them of where true riches may be found, without which severe punishment would follow.[1]

The seven Asian churches found in Revelation were not the only first century Christian churches. However, they were selected by God to give timeless instruction for His people throughout the centuries to the end of the age. We must not make the mistake of assigning the sins of the Asian churches to any one age or to a particular church. Although the Laodicean church is a description of the final state of apostasy which the visible church will experience, one need only need to review the sins of the other churches to know that those sins are prevalent in every age.

Two thousand years after the assorted sins of the early Asian churches were exposed by God through John, the church is still having difficulty with Paul’s charge to be separate from the world. On the one hand we have some modern day religious legalists like the prideful Pharisee, about whom Luke wrote, who boasted of his separateness. The Pharisee trusted in himself that he was righteous. With smugness, a haughty spirit, and perhaps a condescending eye turned to the man that stood nearby, he prayed his prayer of thanksgiving. “God, I thank thee that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week, I give tithes of all that I get.” [Luke 18:11b-12. RSV] On the other hand, it is apparent that in all of church history the church far more often errs on the side of worldliness than legalism.

In reality, it is not a contest between the church’s separateness from a wicked world or spreading salt and light to a lost and dying world. Sin is sin in whichever camp it resides—failure to be separate or failure to be salt and light. The absence of one shall surely sound the eventual death knell of the other.

In Part III, we shall examine the beginning of the great apostasy in the modern American church of the early twentieth century.

Larry G. Johnson

[1] Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1961), pp. 1970-1974.