Series on the Modern Lukewarm Evangelical Church – No. 12

Many Protestant churches succumbed to the secularizing modernist culture during the first sixty years of the Laodicean period (1870 to the soon-coming Rapture of the faithful church). They became known as the liberal-modernist-progressive Protestant churches that have a strong history of following the episcopal form of church government (e.g., top down rule of the pope through church hierarchy to the local priest, and the laity at the bottom) or the presbyterian form (committee rule). During those sixty years, the Roman Catholic Church continued its 1,700 years of corrupt church government. Together, the Catholics and the liberal Protestant churches are false churches that claim to be Christian but are apostate.

Those faithful Protestant churches that came into the Laodicean period were generally described as conservative, fundamentalist, or evangelical and almost all kept their allegiance to the first century congregational model of church government. However, a disturbing trend began to emerge among evangelical churches in the 1950s and 1960s. Even though evangelical churches generally retained the congregational form of government in their constitutions and bylaws, many began adopting a CEO-corporatist style of church leadership which in many respects contains significant elements of the authoritarian episcopal and presbyterian forms of church government. This drift away from the first century model has significantly contributed to the emergence of a modern lukewarm evangelical church.

Congregational form of church government before its demise in the last half of the twentieth century

In the not too distant past, most evangelical churches had a preaching pastor leading the church, whether a seminarian, Bible school graduate, or self-taught. The first qualifications of pastors of that era were that they were God-called and had a leadership gifting as a preaching pastor. Seminary or Bible college degrees did not determine their gifting or call, but many sought training either before or thereafter. In Greek, the word “pastor” means to be a shepherd. The shepherd tends his flock by which is meant that he pastors the flock, gently rules them, associates with the flock as a friend and companion, keeps company with them, and feeds the flock.

Standing at the side of the preaching lead pastor in the pre-1960s were the elders of the church. Elders were men and women who had been given a leadership gift (sometimes more than one) as an evangelist, prophet, teacher, and possibly as an apostle being sent out and supported by the local congregation, i.e., missionary. As was the case in the first century church, most elders were not professionally trained or degreed in their gifting, but they functioned in their leadership gifts with equal status with the other elders of the local church. Their leadership gifts were just as important to the shepherding of the local church body as that of the lead preaching pastor. Otherwise, those churches could not have survived in the first century or the present day.

Growth of the CEO-corporatist leadership style in church government during the last half of the twentieth century

Just as the episcopal form of church government created an unbiblical division between the clergy and laity within the Roman Catholic Church, so does the CEO-corporatist style of leadership create an unbiblical division between the pulpit and the pew in Protestant churches. The CEO style of church leadership grew out of the mega-church phenomenon beginning after World War II and eventually became known as the Church Growth seeker-friendly method of doing church. This movement profoundly damaged a multitude of evangelical churches of all sizes. The pastors of smaller congregations soon began to imitate the teachings, methods, and mindset of the mega-church gurus who promised that their methods were the best way to build a church in the modern age. The mindset of these pastors changed from shepherds to managers.

To quickly give an overview of the outworking of the CEO-corporatist leadership style in church government in the modern evangelical church, I quote from a 2013 interview of Glen Newman, author of Pastors Move Over – Make Room for the Rest of Us. Although the author does not agree with many of his prescriptions for a return to the first century model of church government, he has correctly diagnosed the reasons for the departure of the evangelical church from that model and the consequences thereof.

Ephesians 4:11, 1 Corinthians 12-14 shows a clear system of all believers ministering to one another and worshipping house to house. The elders were the leadership of that day and servant leaders at that. But they also recognized each other’s personal gift of ministry. In the New Testament there were no “CEO” type leaders and in fact there were multiple pastors within the flock, ministering and nurturing those that needed it…[Newman] attributes the origins of the senior pastor model to the Constantinian era in the fourth century and notes that it was later adopted as a part of the Roman Catholic tradition.

The pastor in that church (mega church) isn’t really pastoring anybody. What the people are doing is they are watching a show on the stage. When there is no service, behind the scenes the pastor is running the church like a business and his assistant pastors are like middle managers. I [Newman] believe that the elders should be leading the church. Not people who sit on a church board but spiritual leaders, and we have forgotten that the elders are the spiritual leaders…For many centuries the church has been run either like a monarchy or in the modern Protestant churches like a business.

This (the CEO led churches) have created passive, uninvolved congregations that in many respects are spiritually immature due to this dependency on the professional clergy to do what they should be doing themselves…the CEO-type approach to church government was of particular concern in megachurches where church members can easily be forgotten.[1]

Much of what Newman has said is correct. However, I believe that evangelical churches that emerged at the beginning of the First Great Awakening mostly followed the first century model in the context of modern times up to the 1960s. But adaptations of the first century model due to the “context of modern times” do not mean that gifts of leadership in the local church are to be deconstructed and refashioned to fit the demands of the modern world. Rather, the essentials of the five-fold ministry elements and their application in the local church must be retained but adapted to reach and minister to people in current cultural life (e.g., use of itinerant evangelists to preach in the local church on a periodic basis). The rise of the CEO style of leadership is an example of the deconstruction of the five-fold ministry elements and the local church model of government. CEO style pastors have significantly contributed to the decline or loss of the leadership giftings of other elder-pastors in the local church and a loss of the operation of the gifts of the Spirit in all believers because congregation members are transformed into spectators.

In the mega-churches and smaller churches led by want-to-be pastors of a mega-church, the church body is no longer a flock but a mega-herd or mini-herd as the case may be. Flocks are not driven but follow the shepherd for they know the master’s voice. Herds must be driven by their masters or seduced into following the goodies on the master’s hay wagon. The CEO style of pastoring is a complete distortion of the meaning of the word “pastor” and separates the office of pastor from its first century New Testament meaning of “shepherd” of the flock.[2]

Power and Control – The motivation for a CEO-corporatist style of leadership

The term “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely” is generally attributed to nineteenth century British politician Lord Acton. As we have seen in our study, this proverbial saying seems to have been proven true by the behavior of a great majority of church leaders during the entirety of the history of the Church Age. The author would add an addendum to Lord Acton’s axiom: The greater distance there is between those ruled and those with power to rule, the greater the abuse and corruption of that power.

This is a picture of what is happening as the evangelical church transitions from an elder-led, congregational style (local control by local members of the body of Christ) to a CEO-corporatist leadership led by a single ruling pastor aided by a complicit staff of pastors and a docile board of deacons. Any threat to the leadership’s regime endangers their control and must be avoided at all cost. Things to be avoided include controversies, conflicts, voicing of inconvenient truths, and disruptions in the appearance of unity. Above all, they must control and control requires power.

Signs that signal a transition to a CEO-corporatist style of leadership

• Incorporation into the local church of Church Growth seeker-friendly methods and practices. As churches grow, the elders are replaced by paid professional staff members who receive job assignments and instructions from the CEO. The middle managers interact with the congregation and report back to the CEO. Thus, the CEO is effectively separated from his flock and is no longer a true shepherd. In elder led churches, there are multiple shepherds that interact with the entire church while fulfilling their leadership giftings.

• A gradual tightening of authority over the laity and leadership below the senior pastor. In effect, this is a gradual return to an episcopal, top down, style of church government which sharpens the distinction and widens the gulf between the pastor and the laity as happened with the Roman Catholic Church and most authoritarian and mainline churches of the Reformation era.

• Complete control over the message, the microphone, the platform, and the messengers allowed to speak to the local congregation.

• Complete control over the dissemination of financial and attendance information. Financial reports to the congregation often lack important details, consistent standards of reporting, transparency, and in some cases accuracy. Voting membership rolls and the church’s constitution and bylaws are rarely or never disseminated to the membership.

• Suppression of descent by the implementation of “leadership agreements” whereby volunteer applicants are required to give unwavering allegiance to the leadership team and their decisions, plans, and direction of the church. To be part of any facet of church ministry (the team) applicants are required to agree to every aspect of the agreement. This is a new phenomenon sweeping through the evangelical churches, and there are numerous websites that promote and supply these agreements to churches. Many leadership agreement templates contain two key phrases placed among other relatively innocuous statements which in many cases are not the business of the church but must be checked in order to be a member of the “team.” The two key phrases that assure leadership’s power and control appear to be the heart of these agreements and are similar to the following:

(1) “Support the lead pastor, pastoral staff, and the direction of our church.”
(2) “Speak positively of our church’s leadership in public and private conversation.”

After checking all the boxes, the applicant must certify the application is complete, accurate, and not misleading in any way, and then sign the agreement.

This move toward ultimate control of what one does, thinks, and says in the church suggestive of the heavy hand of “big brother” found in a totalitarian society described in George Orwell’s book 1984.

• Tight control over the dissemination of contact information of congregation members that would allow direct communication between members, e.g., addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses.

• Removal from the local congregation of the “bother” of having to make decisions even if they have a congregational form of government. These congregations are seldom asked for guidance other than to vote for the propositions presented by the leadership. However, in the correctly functioning congregational model, ultimate authority resides with the local members of the church. The elected leadership roles are considered representatives of the entire congregation and subject to the local church.

• Minimize, disregard, or discourage operation of the gifts of the Spirit within the local body. Some of the gifts of the Spirit are regarded as having become unnecessary or non-operational following the first century apostolic age, e.g., divers kinds of tongues, interpretation of tongues, prophecy, working of miracles, and divine healing to name five of the nine gifts of the Spirit described in 1 Corinthians 12:4-11. Can there be any doubt as to why many evangelical churches have become lukewarm and powerless while being ridiculed and shunned by a hostile culture?

• Complete departure of the office of evangelist in the local church. There are people with the gift of soul winning in the local congregation, some by preaching and others by working with sinners around an altar or independently in other settings. One of the great disasters in evangelical churches over the last three decades is the almost complete removal of the ministry of the itinerant evangelist that in former times periodically came to local churches to preach to both saints and sinners with regard to their spiritual condition. The preaching of these evangelists often generated the spark necessary for the Holy Spirit’s revival of a local congregation. Supporting apostles sent out from the church (missionaries) are not a substitute for the office of evangelist in the local church.

• The office of prophet is no longer evident in most evangelical churches to deliver direct revelations from God; to expose sin, warn of judgments to come, uphold the righteous standards of God’s Word; battle worldliness and spiritual lethargy and false teachers; and to warn, challenge, comfort, encourage and build up God’s people. Prophets often point to sin in the camp that other elders do not quickly see. CEO type leaders fear prophets because these pastors do not want anyone to make waves or bring criticism which may reflect badly on their leadership and interfere with their goals of keeping the congregants uninformed but happy and supportive of the leadership and their agenda.

• Teaching from the pulpit by anyone but the preaching pastor is rare if non-existent unless that teacher is thoroughly vetted by the pastor as someone in substantial agreement with the pastor on almost any issue. There are many gifted teachers in full-time ministry or resident in the local church who are not allowed to exercise their leadership gift of teaching from the pulpit.

Repent, restore, and encourage

It is time for leaders and the body of Christ in the lukewarm evangelical church to repent for the abuse and corruption of the design, organization, and operation of the church as practiced by the first century New Testament church, the evangelical churches of the Philadelphian period, and those faithful evangelical churches thereafter. The congregational model of church government must be restored in full including the leadership gifts of apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers. Also, the body of Christ must be encouraged to seek the gifts of the Spirit and to exercise those gifts in the local church and elsewhere under the direction of the Holy Spirit.
______

The lukewarm evangelical church is interested only in its comfortableness, prosperity, and satisfactions in this life. But this present age is the end-time spiritual battleground between God and His children vs. Satan and the dark forces of this world. The ultimate prize in this battle is the souls of mankind. We know who the victor is, but the final score won’t be announced until the end of the Church Age which will occur at the moment the church is raptured. When that moment occurs, there will be a single individual known only to God who will be the very last to person to make his or her peace with God before He calls His bride home. We must ask ourselves, what could we have done in this battle to bring just a few more souls into His kingdom before that last person is saved?

Friends, we must expend every ounce of our being in His noble cause. Hold nothing back and when our life is over we can stand before Jesus knowing that we have left everything on the battlefield.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] Leonardo Blair, “Megachurch Pastors Running Churches Like CEOs Unbiblical, says Former Pastor,” Christian Post, February 19, 2013. https://www.christianpost.com/news/megachurch-pastors-running-churches-like-ceos-unbiblical-says-former-pastor.html (accessed August 31, 2021).
[2] Glen Newman, Pastors Move Over-Make Room for the Rest of Us, (Acton, Texas: Glen Newman, 2010), p. 33.

Series on the Modern Lukewarm Evangelical Church – No. 11

In the Introduction to this series titled “Church, Inc.,” the author presented the following premises which are necessary to guide our understanding of the history of the organized church over two millennia to its present condition—the modern lukewarm church at the end of the Church Age just before the Rapture of the church.

1. Satan knows that separation of man’s relationship from God will occur if he can corrupt the truth of God’s Word and/or the Church.

2. Corruption of the truth of God’s Word comes through the infiltration of false teachers into the church to spread lies and false teachings. [See previous three-part series: “False Teachers in the Evangelical Church.”]

3. Corruption of the essentials and details of God’s design, organization, and operation of the church will damage or destroy God’s pattern for the church and its mission.

4. The essentials and details of this design, organization, and operation of the church are portrayed in the leadership gifts given to the elders of the church and the gifts of the Spirit given to all members in the body of Christ. To corrupt the operation of the leadership gifts and the gifts of the Spirit in the church is to damage or destroy God’s design, organization, and operation of the church.

The revelation of the seven periods of church history during the Church Age was given by Jesus to the apostle John on the Isle of Patmos and is recorded in Revelation chapters 2 and 3.

We have examined the seven periods of the Church Age, and it has become evident that the premises set forth in the Introduction of this series on Church, Inc. have confirmed the truth of those premises. The essence of the truth of these premises is that when the church adheres to the first century New Testament commands with regards to the New Testament doctrines and the design, organization, and operation of the local church, it will flourish. If it does not, the church will be compromised, then fully corrupted, and death follows.

With the brief exception of the faithful church in the Philadelphian period (1720-1870), the cycle of compromise, corruption, and death resumed at the beginning of the Laodicean period and continues to the present day (1870-to the soon-coming Rapture of the church). However, even during the darkest centuries of church history, the love and grace of God and the gifts of the Holy Spirit sustained generation after generation of that remnant of the organized church comprised of all born again believers (the universal church) even though many suffered and died for their King and His kingdom.

In Part V we examined the Philadelphian and Laodicean periods of church history. These two back-to-back periods present a stunning miniature portrait of the entire Church Age over its two-thousand-year history of the once flourishing church and its dramatic decline.

In Part VI we continue our examination of the modern Laodicean period. However, the examination will transition from a historical perspective to a contemporary view of events, trends, and circumstances beginning in the mid-twentieth century and lasting to the present day that created the modern lukewarm evangelical church. The afflictions, failings, and weaknesses of the modern lukewarm evangelical church have caused its demise as a moral force necessary to stem the decline of American culture.

Modern evangelical church declines in the last half of the twentieth century

As the Laodicean period progressed into the second half of the twentieth century, major segments of evangelical Christianity began to mirror the lukewarm Laodicean church of the first century that Jesus described as being indifferent, subdued, apathetic, unconcerned, and half-hearted. Similar to the first century Laodicean church, many modern Protestant evangelical churches generally have become comfortable, prosperous, and well-satisfied. These churches pride themselves on their bank accounts, fine buildings, members of high standing, and being socially recognized and influential. But Jesus’ indictment of “wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked” continues to apply to these modern imitators of the first century church at Laodicea. As a result, the most important goal of the leaders of the lukewarm church is that they maintain their comfortableness, prosperity, and satisfactions in this life.

What are the ailments, failings, and circumstances that caused lukewarmness in the evangelical church over the last 60+ years?

The evangelical church is sick, a sickness unto death if rapid remedial action is not taken. Before action can be taken, we must know the causes of the sickness. Therefore, we must take a deep forensic dive into the pathologies of the evangelical church in America with regard to its doctrinal failures and its dysfunctional design, organization and operation of the church. It is important to remember that the essentials and details of this design, organization, and operation of the church are portrayed in the operation of the leadership gifts given to the elders of the church and the gifts of the Spirit given to all members in the body of Christ.

• Doctrinal failure

We begin with what is most important. Doctrinal failure is akin to heart failure in humans. Doctrine is the heart of the Christian faith. We may limp along because of faulty organization and operation issues, but doctrinal failure quickly brings death. God is truth, and God especially hates its opposite—lies. Thus, there is no greater lie than to lie about God’s truth. We have dealt with the subject of false teachers in the previous series titled “False teachers in the evangelical church.” Note that that truth is singular. There is one truth. Lies are plural. When one lie fails to defeat the truth, another lie replaces it. Truth remains unchangeable and irreplaceable.

Our main purpose in the “Church, Inc.” series is to examine the church’s failing to adhere to the first century model for its design, organization, and operation of the church. To this end it will be beneficial for the reader to review Part I of this series.

• The failure to follow the design, organization, and operation of the first century New Testament Church

In the remainder of Part VI we shall describe those gifts as established and modeled in the first century New Testament church. In Part VII, we shall compare and contrast the failure of the modern lukewarm evangelical church to follow the first century New Testament church’s design, organization, and operation. The failures are caused by a corruption or abandonment of the leadership gifts given to the elders of the church and the significant absence of the operation within the church of the gifts of the Spirit made available to all members in the body of Christ.

(1) Leadership gifts – the first century model

Apostles – The term “apostle” is applied in two ways. In the unique sense, apostle refers to those who were the Spirit-inspired witnesses to Christ and His ministry. They were personally commissioned by Christ to preach His original message and establish the church. Here we are referring to the original core group of disciples including Matthias who replaced Judas Iscariot and Paul following his Damascus Road encounter with Jesus.[1]

In the general sense, the term “apostle” was used for “a commissioned representative of a church, such as a messenger appointed and sent as a missionary (i.e., to take Christ’s message into another land or culture) or for some other special responsibility…and dedicated to establishing churches according to the true and original message of Christ.” Apostles in this general sense continue to be critical in accomplishing the mission of planting churches at home and throughout the world.[2]

Prophets – Prophets in the New Testament were spiritual leaders and uniquely gifted in receiving and communicating direct revelation from God by the prompting of the Holy Spirit. The role of the prophet continued throughout the Church Age following the establishment of the church in the first century. Having the calling of God upon them, prophets were Spirit-filled and called to warn, challenge, comfort, encourage, and build up God’s people. They expose sin, warn of judgment to come, uphold the righteous standards of God’s Word, battle worldliness and spiritual lethargy, and are alert to the danger of false teaching.[3]

However, the NT prophet’s message (if not specifically recorded in Scripture) is not to be considered infallible, and the message must be evaluated by the church and other prophets. Above all, the message must be consistent with the Bible and its principles and patterns. NT prophets, like their OT counterparts, can expect rejection in a church that is lukewarm or in a rebellious condition. Yet, the work of NT prophets continue to be vitally necessary to the spiritual health of churches, especially during the current end times Laodicean period of the Church Age.[4]

Evangelists – New Testament evangelists were godly ministers, gifted and commissioned by God, to present the gospel of spiritual salvation to those who did not know Christ. Their chief gifting is soul winning as they help establish new ministries and Christian works in cities and among people who need to be awakened to the faith in Christ. The work of the evangelist includes (1) preaching to the lost and those who are spiritually weak in the faith, (2) bringing lost souls to salvation through Christ and baptism in water, (3) bringing revival to the church, (4) miracles, healings, and rescue from the control of evil spirits, and (5) working with and encouraging believers to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Failure of the church to value and support the ministry of the evangelist will increase the number of souls lost for eternity.[5]

Pastors – Pastors are considered to be a part of the elders of the church and have the God-given gift of overseeing (overseers) and caring for the spiritual needs of a local congregation. The pastor’s task is to nurture individual believers and the local church body to fulfill their God-given roles of Christian service. Essentially, pastors function as shepherds, and they must care and protect their “flock,” the church. This care and protection includes communicating God’s Word through accurate preaching and teaching, and coming against false beliefs, ideas and teaching. In effect the elder with the leadership gift of pastor is the principal preaching elder. According to Donald Stamps, “The NT shows a number of pastors directing the spiritual life of the local church.”[6] [emphasis added]

This raises a question as to the duties of the pastors (elders). Did all of the other pastors (elders), apart from the overseeing preaching pastor, preach and exercise their leadership gifts in the local church (prophet, evangelist, and teacher)? The answer is yes. We may infer that the other elders took the lead in exercising their particular leadership gifts as well as the gifts of the Spirit made available to all believers. The point is that the “preaching” pastor, the shepherd charged with care and protection of the local flock, was not the only preaching/teaching pastor. The other elders in the local church presented an evangelical message, prophesied, or taught, and all supported the ministry of the apostle (missionary) to other regions and countries.

Teachers – “Teachers are those who have a special, God-given gift to clarify, explain, and communicate God’s Word in order to build up the body of Christ.” The core of the teacher’s leadership gift is to guard, by the Holy Spirit’s help, the original message of truth embodied by God’s Word. The purpose of the presentation of truth is to produce holiness in all believers (i.e., moral purity, spiritual wholeness, separation from evil, and dedication to God). As the exercise of the leadership gift of teaching declines, Christians lose their concern for the truth and authority of the message.[7]

(2) The gifts of the Spirit

The gifts of the Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:4-11) in the lives of all believers in the local church are just as critical to the proper design, organization, and operation of the local church as are the leadership gifts. Without the gifts of the Spirit working in the lives of believers, the leadership gifts would have no substantive effect on the spiritual life of the church. We will mention but not expand on the gifts of the Spirit because the emphasis in this series is on the leadership gifts.

• Revelation gifts: word of wisdom, word of knowledge, and the discerning of spirits
• Power gifts: faith, healing, and the working of miracles
• Utterance gifts: prophecy, divers kinds of tongues, and interpretation of tongues

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The design, organization, and operation of the first century New Testament church was achieved through the proper operation of the leadership gifts and the operation of the gifts of the Spirit within the body. With the exception of the Philadelphian period, the church abandoned the first century model of the New Testament church beginning in the early to middle second century to the present day. In its place the church adopted an episcopal from which placed church government and its operation in the hands of a single individual beginning in the fourth and fifth centuries until the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century. But church reform in the Reformation period did not extend to a return to the first century model of church government. That return occurred at the end of the Reformation period with the Separatists and Puritans in America. The congregational model of the Separatists and Puritans laid the foundations for evangelicalism and the three Great Awakenings that brought about the faithful church and spanned the entirety of the Philadelphian period (1720-1870).

In Part VII we shall examine the ascending CEO-corporatist leadership style that has significantly caused many evangelical churches gradually over the last sixty years to become the face of the modern lukewarm evangelical church.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] Donald Stamps, “The Ministry Leadership Gifts for the Church,” Fire Bible-Global Study Edition, Ed. Donald Stamps, (Springfield, Missouri: Life Publishers International, 2009), pp. 2259-2260.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid., pp. 2260-2261.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid., pp. 2261-2262.
[6] Ibid., p. 2262.
[7] Ibid., pp. 2262-2263.

Series on the Modern Lukewarm Evangelical Church – No. 10

In Part V we shall examine the last two periods of the Church Age – Philadelphian (the faithful church) and Laodicean (the lukewarm church).

• Philadelphia – The faithful church (AD 1720-1870). 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. The Philadelphian period began about 1720 with the early stirrings of the First Great Awakening in America and the British Isles.

The sixth period is named after the church at Philadelphia (1720-1870). For the first time since the first half of the second century (the early-mid 100s) the universal church, comprised of all born again believers, created a society that made possible a substantial return to the doctrines and the design, organization, and operation of the first century New Testament church. This return came of age at the beginning of the Philadelphian period in 1720, almost exactly one hundred years after the Pilgrims landed on the shores of America. The faithful church of the Philadelphian period was made possible and was sustained by the Three Great Awakenings that occurred over the next one hundred and fifty years.

Prior to 1720, there were a number of isolated revival outpourings of the Holy Spirit in the late 1600s and early 1700s. Out of these early stirrings came a renewal movement called evangelicalism that fundamentally changed many churches and denominations and helped birth the First Great Awakening in the 1720s. The churches that embraced evangelicalism emphasized a revivalist style of preaching, personal conversion, personal devotion and holiness, individual access to God, and de-emphasized the importance and authority of church government.[1] [emphasis added]

Evangelicalism in its outworking essentially followed a congregational form of church government as described by B. K. Kuiper.

Each local church is self-governing. It chooses its own pastor, teacher, elders, and deacons. Churches have no authority over each other, but it is their privilege and duty to help each other. It is highly desirable that from time to time they hold assemblies in which all the churches are represented, and in which matters of concern to all are carefully considered and discussed. The churches, however, are not required to adopt the decision of the assemblies.[2]

The exact date of the beginning of the Great Awakening in America and its conclusion are a matter of supposition. If the long view is taken and correctly includes the revivals in the early 1720s and concludes with the waning of the Awakening’s long-term effects on society, then The Great Awakening can be said to span from about 1720 to the American Revolution in 1770s.[3] There were even some revivals that occurred during the years of the Revolutionary War.

Thomas Kidd points to an extraordinary series of revivals in towns along the Connecticut and Thames Rivers in 1720 and lasting until 1722. The Connecticut revival was “the first major event of the evangelical era in New England” and “…touched congregations in Windham, Preston, Franklin, Norwich, and Windsor.” One of the largest of the Connecticut revivals occurred in the Windham church during 1721 with eighty people joining the church in six months. Over the three-year course of the revivals, several hundred new members and possibly more conversions were reported. The significance of this revival has been generally forgotten because of its lack of publicity through print media which may also account for the revival not spreading beyond its regional borders.[4]

In A History of the American People, Paul Johnson again distills the essence of The Great Awakening and its importance in the founding of America.

…There was a spiritual event in the first half of the 18th century in America, and it proved to be of vast significance, both in religion and politics…The Great Awakening was the proto-revolutionary event, the formative moment in American history, preceding the political drive for independence and making it possible…The Revolution could not have taken place without this religious background. The essential difference between the American Revolution and the French Revolution is that the American Revolution, in its origins, was a religious event, whereas the French Revolution was an anti-religious event.”[5]

If one considers the one-hundred and fifty-year history of the faithful church during the Philadelphian period (1720-1870), the three Great Awakenings and their continuing influence on the nation covered the entire era with the exception of three brief periods of spiritual decline: The First Great Awakening (1720-1760s), the two phases of the Second Great Awakening (1794-1812 and 1822-1842), and the Third Great Awakening (1857-1858).

Each of the three Great Awakenings played a decisive role in the history of the nation. The Great Awakening was the formative moment in American history preceding the political drive for independence and making it possible. The Second Great Awakening was the stabilizing moment whose effects lasted until the 1840s and saved the new nation from political and moral destruction. The Third Great Awakening was the sustaining moment that prepared the nation to endure the national conflagration of the Civil War and made possible its reunification and survival in the war’s aftermath. The revival of the late 1850s caused men and women, in both the North and South, to be spiritually prepared for the coming struggle in which the nation would exorcize the demon of slavery and recover its national unity.

One of the most remarkable occurrences of the Philadelphian period was the significant rejection of the episcopal form of church government and a return to the practice of local control of the organization through a congregational form of church government. Part of the reason for the changes can be attributed to the Pilgrims and Puritans. Although the Puritans were wealthy, claimed far greater numbers in the Massachusetts colony, and came with a staunch Church of England episcopal form of government, they soon exchanged the episcopal form for the congregational model supplied by the radical, much despised Pilgrim Separatists. The Pilgrims set the standard of church government in the Bay Colony.[6] As previously mention, this de-emphasis of the importance and authority of church government was a strong characteristic of the evangelical renewal movement born at the beginning of the Great Awakening and which fundamentally changed the form of church government in many churches and denominations to the present day.

One of the outstanding features of the Great Awakening in America was the beginning of a broad belief by evangelicals that the heart of the Christian faith was the “new birth” of an individual soul. Inspired by the preaching of the Word, the doctrine of the “new birth” invigorated even as it divided churches. The Evangelical supporters of the Great Awakening who championed the “new birth” were the Presbyterians, Baptists and Methodists, and they became the largest American Protestant denominations by the first decades of the nineteenth century. These denominations held a predominantly congregational form of church government. Opponents of the evangelical supporters of the Awakening and their call for a “new birth” were either wholly opposed or were split in their response. These were the Anglicans, Quakers, and Congregationalists that generally declined towards the end of the 1700s.[7]

It is important to understand that the congregational form of government did not mean that all churches embracing congregationalism were in favor of the revivalism of the Great Awakening. Congregationalism more readily makes possible revival but does not insure that it will occur. Other factors may play a role. For example, a church with a congregational form of government that allows false doctrine to remain within the church will not see a move of the Spirit that leads to revival. However, it is an obvious conclusion that churches who follow a congregational form of government and rigorously hold fast to and defend the inerrant truth of the Scriptures are most likely to seek and receive periodic outpourings of spiritual revival by the Holy Spirit.

The Philadelphian period in church history is a remarkable expression of the grace and goodness of God poured out upon a people who sought to establish His kingdom and a nation upon the inerrant and indestructible Word of God. The great blessings of God were the result of a return to the doctrines and patterns of organization and operation of the first century New Testament church.

By the end of the American Revolution and establishment of the American republic, the populist wing of evangelicalism had become the dominant branch of Christianity.[8] These denominations predominantly held to a congregational form of government most similar to the first century New Testament church.

• Laodicea – The lukewarm church (1870 to the Rapture of the Church). Laodicea was the worst of all of the seven Asian churches. There was nothing good 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.[9]

As it has been for two thousand years of church history, the central conflict within the church is the truth and authority of the Bible. Recall that the forces of the anti-religious Enlightenment exploited the two hundred years of strife within the church following the Catholic-Protestant split that began in 1517. Those same anti-religious forces dressed in the clothes of modern humanism and secularism also exploited the division between the liberals and fundamentalists between 1870 and 1930. During those six decades, the American church surrendered to secular humanists leaders and institutions a significant majority of its power and authority to direct and influence American culture.

To retain a modicum of social power, cultural authority, and institutional influence in the wake of the onslaught of humanism and secularism, the late nineteenth century, liberal Protestant leaders and their churches began embracing secular human sciences (psychology and sociology) to lend credibility and cultural relevance to their religious pretensions. Put another way, the focus changed from an eternal relationship with God to the health and well-being of one’s self in this life. The liberal Protestant leaders and their churches who sought survival through accommodation of the spirit of the world brought poisonous compromise to the few remaining vestiges of their long-abandoned doctrines and faith and produced a profane and powerless church that had lost its saltiness and was “…no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trodden under foot by men.” [Matthew 5:13b. RSV]

Some may suppose that the fundamentalist opponents of liberal Protestants were the original silent majority. But in reality, the conservative leaders of the once dominant populist evangelical churches (and the new holiness denominations that separated themselves from the liberal churches) were not silent but just didn’t have the cultural clout or platform from which to mount significant opposition to the liberal churches and their newly found secularist allies.

Nancy Pearcey described the mindsets of the fundamentalist conservatives’ loss of cultural dominance after their sixty-year battle with theological modernism and the emergence of their post-World War II offspring – the neo-evangelicals.

They (the fundamentalists) circled the wagons, developed a fortress mentality, and championed “separatism” as a positive strategy. Then in the 1940s and 50s, a movement began that aimed at breaking out of the fortress. Calling themselves neo-evangelicals, this group argued that we are called not to escape the surrounding culture but to engage it. They sought to construct a redemptive vision that would embrace not only individuals but also social structures and institutions.[10]

Just as the modernist churches had lost their saltiness, the fundamentalists hid their light as they abandoned the culture and its institutions, and the forces of secularizing humanism were freed to wreak havoc in American culture.

Following World War II, the evangelicals engaged the culture through church membership and evangelization. However, the beginning and rapidly accelerating dramatic cultural disorientation of the late 1960s eventually allowed secular humanists to capture the culture as faith was substantially driven from the public square. As a result, the muffled voices of the faithful were confined within the four walls of the local church. And as the fundamentalists did in the early twentieth century, a large portion of the evangelicals began to increasingly abandon the culture and its institutions beginning in the late 1960s to the present day.

With the demise of resistance from the evangelical church in a secularizing culture, Satan intensified his attack on American evangelical churches from within. Many evangelical churches, as did the liberal churches a hundred years earlier, accommodated the world as a means of survival.

Following the cultural turmoil that began in the mid-1960s, many modern evangelicals began centering their redemptive efforts on the individual rather than a powerful presentation of the truth and authority of the gospel. The truth of the gospel was replaced by a therapeutic gospel that accommodated the seeker and catered to his felt needs. These evangelicals had either forgotten or ignored Paul’s admonition to the Romans:

And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God. [Romans 12:2. KJV]

______

As we have examined the seven periods of Church Age history, it is evident that the premises set forth at the beginning of this Church, Inc. series have proven to be true. The essence of the lessons learned is this: To corrupt or abandon the operation of the leadership gifts and the gifts of the Spirit, as established in the first century New Testament church, is to damage or destroy God’s design, organization, and operation of the local church in every period of Church Age history.

In Part VI we shall continue to track the decline of the evangelical church during the Laodicean period since the 1960s which has to a great extent become the modern pattern of the first century church at Laodicea.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth, (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2004, 2005), pp. 253, 256-257.
[2] B. K. Kuiper, The Church in History, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1951, 1964), p. 261.
[3] Thomas S. Kidd, The Great Awakening-The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in colonial America, (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2007), pp. 9-10.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Paul Johnson, A History of the American People, (New York: HarperCollinsPublishers, 1997), pp. 110, 116-117.
[6] Kuiper, The Church in History, p. 328.
[7] “Religion and the Founding of the American Republic,” Library of Congress.
https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/rel02.html (accessed August 27, 2021).
[8] Gordon S. Wood, “Religion and the American Revolution,” New Directions in American Religious History, ed. Harry S. Stout and D. G. Hart, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp.185-188.
[9] Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible, ed. Rev. Leslie F. Church, Ph.D., (Grand Rapids, Michigan, Zondervan Publishing House, 1961), pp. 1970-1974.
[10] Pearcey, Total Truth, p. 18.

Series on the Modern Lukewarm Evangelical Church – No. 9

In Part IV we shall look at the fifth (Sardisean) period of the seven periods of history in the Church Age. The Reformation era (1517-1720) is described as similar to the church at Sardis (the dead church) in the first century. In this period the Bible’s doctrines, leadership gifts, and the gifts of the Spirit continued to be substantially ignored, compromised, corrupted, or abandoned altogether.

• Sardis – The dead church (AD 1517-1720). It was representative of the church that is dead or at the point of death even though it still had 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. This description of the dead church fits both the Roman Catholic Church and the warring factions of Lutheranism and Calvinism in the Protestant Reformation period between 1517 and the late 1600s.

It is interesting if not confusing to most Protestants that the Reformation period is called the dead church by Jesus. We may think this description best fits the Roman Catholic Church after a thousand years of corruption within, and it does fit. However, a close examination of the first two hundred years of Protestantism reveals that it also was not a holy, vibrant church. Although it moved away from many aspects of the corruption in the church, in many ways it was not much different from the Roman church from which it had broken away. Yes, the supreme authority of the Bible was reaffirmed and many man-made traditions of the church were cast off. However, the continued presence of many false doctrines and practices and the reliance on the sword of state to impose Christianity on whole regions and countries were major obstacles. These obstacles prevented an infusion of spiritual life into the partially reformed but dead churches and the cleansing of the cadaverous odor emanating from their forms of godliness.

Martin Luther and John Calvin were the two men most responsible for planting Protestantism in the West and from which its two great branches grew. The writings of these Protestant Reformers and others addressed many of the failings of the Roman church up to that point in history. Luther may have struck the match, but it was Calvin and many other reformers such as Ulrich Zwingli who provided much of the kindling that aided in spreading the flames of Protestantism.

The Reformers readily affirmed their allegiance to “the scriptures alone” as the authority of the church and guide for living the Christian life. However, it was a far more difficult matter to shed centuries of corrupt church doctrines and practices that conflicted with or undermined faithful adherence to the Scriptures. Therefore, the implementation of the reforms in the new Protestant churches often carried with it many of the old Roman Catholic ways of doing the business of church.

Even though there was a general consensus among Protestants that the church’s authority came under the authority of the Bible alone, the various reformers had different ideas on charting the way forward with regard to the finer points of interpreting scriptures as they related to doctrinal matters and the organization and operation of the church. It must be remembered that the Reformers had been deeply immersed in Catholicism, and those doctrines and practices were not quickly, easily, or entirely cast off. It must also be remembered that most priests and the people were exceptionally ignorant of the Bible. The Reform leaders faced the daunting task of both organizing the church and educating the Protestant faithful in their respective countries.

By 1550, the church in the west had divided into three distinct branches: Roman Catholicism, Lutheranism (Christianity allied with the state), and Calvinism (theocracy). The branches were similar in that each was a compulsory religion, had strong ties with the state in one way or another, and attempted to use the state to impose a religious monopoly in those states where each had prevailed.[1]

The most distinguishing feature of the Lutheran church was the power given to the state. Luther supported the principle that the state should be above the church. However, Calvinists took the opposite view and denied that the state had any power over the church. To the contrary, Calvin believed the church had power over the state. Both responses were nonbiblical as to God’s design of the roles of church and state in society and the relationship between church and state. The church must let the state bear the sword of state but at the same time admonish the state when it overreaches its proper biblical mandate and role in society.[2]

Luther and Calvin’s continuing affinity for many aspects of Roman Catholic Church’s doctrines and practices is evident in their admiration of Augustine (354-430), considered by many as the greatest teacher in Roman Catholic Church history. One of the Roman church’s false teachings, strongly promoted by Augustine, was the persecution of both the heathen and heretics. The doctrine of persecution was an important practice the Roman Catholic Church used a thousand years after Augustine to severely persecute Protestants during the time of the Reformation.[3] On the one hand, it seems ironic that Martin Luther and John Calvin, the two most important figures of the Reformation era, continued to revere Augustine and his teachings. On the other hand, Augustine’s appeal to both Luther and Calvin may not be surprising given their own extreme persecutions of other Christians and non-Christians.

The years between 1520 and 1562 were a time of bloody martyrdom for the Protestants. But the worst was to come between 1562 and 1648 when Protestants fought for their very survival. In a belated and half-hearted effort to reunite the Roman Catholic Church and the Protestants, Pope Paul III called for a council to meet in the little town of Trent in the mountains of northern Italy to consider reforms within the Catholic Church. The efforts of the Catholics at Trent were an attempt to revitalize the church following the shock of the Reformation and spurred the Roman church’s efforts to stamp out Protestantism. Between 1562 and 1618, the Calvinistic Protestants suffered the greatest martyrdom. In 1618, the Lutherans were also dragged into the conflict with the Catholics. The Catholic-Protestant wars eventually ended in 1648 with the Peace of Westphalia which fixed many of the boundaries of Catholicism, Lutheranism, and Calvinism in Europe to the present day.[4]

By the end of the 1600s, the church, beginning at its birth on the day of Pentecost, had traveled on a seemingly incomprehensible and tortuous path through persecution, compromise, corruption, triumphs, defeats, and tragedies. Along the way the Roman Catholic Church had accumulated an enormous amount of wealth, excess doctrinal baggage and false teachings, and a large measure of worldliness. But in spite of the faults and corruption within the corrupt church, the true church’s sustaining life preserver to which it clung, however tenuously, for a millennium and a half was (1) the power of the inerrant truth of the divinely inspired New Testament and its doctrines, (2) the Holy Spirit dwelling within each believer, and (3) the gifts of the Spirit made available to all true believers.

The Church of England did not consider itself Protestant but not fully Catholic because Henry VIII placed himself at the head of the Church of England, not the pope. Therefore, the changes in the church were more political and organizational than religious and doctrinal. As a result, the dissenters’ unrest and desire for freedom from the attacks of the Church of England continued for a long time after the Reformation had run its course and had become settled in other countries. This unrest manifested itself in two ways: complete separation from the Church of England and reform of the Church of England from within.

• Separatists, including the Pilgrims, were those who believed the process of reforming the hopelessly Church of England was not possible. They chose to separate from the church altogether. The Separatists were called Congregationalists or Independents.
• Those members of the Church of England who pushed for a more thoroughly purified church were called Puritans. They objected to the rites, ceremonies, and episcopal form of government of the Church of England; however, they wanted to remain in the church and work for reform from within. Eventually, the Puritan segment of the Church of England believed that it was not possible to reform the mother church in their homeland. Nine years after the Separatist Pilgrims had sailed for America, the Puritans followed and establish a reform-minded outpost of the Church of England at the Massachusetts Bay Colony.[5]

In 1620, one hundred and three years after the beginning of the Protestant Reformation, (midway through the Sardisean period of church history 1517-1720), a singular event produced a document that was perhaps as important in the revival of New Testament Christianity as Luther’s 95 theses nailed to the door of the church in Wittenberg, Germany in 1517.

It all began as a tiny ship approached the shores of a primitive continent called America. Historian Paul Johnson in his massive A History of the American People called the arrival on December 11, 1620 of an old wine ship at New Plymouth as “…the single most important formative event in early American history.” The Mayflower contained a mixture of thirty-five English Calvinist Christians including some who had lived in exile in Holland to escape religious persecution in England. All were going to America for religious freedom. They were Separatist Puritans who had despaired of reforming the Church of England and its episcopal form of government and heavy influence of Catholic teaching. They were accompanied by sixty-six non-Puritans. The two groups contained forty-one families. Having endured two months of a winter voyage in the turbulent North Atlantic amid the discomforts of a tiny and crowded ship, forty-one heads of households gathered in the main cabin of the ship and signed the Mayflower Compact which pledged them to unity and the provision of a future government.[6]

In the Name of God, Amen…Having undertaken for the Glory of God, and Advancement of the Christian Faith, and the Honour of our King and Country…Do by these Presents, solemnly and mutually in the Presence of God and one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil Body Politic, for our better Ordering and Preservation, and Furtherance of the Ends aforesaid….[7] [emphasis added]

This event was not the beginning of the Philadelphian period of church history. However, the monumental influence of the Pilgrims in shaping future generations of Americans made possible the faithful church that ushered in the Philadelphian revival of New Testament Christianity one hundred years later.

The Reformation era was a time of casting off much of the church’s excesses, failures, and worldliness, but it would be a painful and imperfect parting for both Catholic and Protestant churches. Satan used the church’s distractions and disruptions to further his efforts to destroy the church of Jesus Christ during their contentious and painful separation. Satan thrust into the church’s fractures the humanistic dregs of the waning Renaissance of the sixteenth century and the ascending humanism of the era of Enlightenment in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (the late 1600s and all of the 1700s).[8] Those poisons would loom large in the church’s descent from the Philadelphian period to the Laodicean period beginning in the 1870s.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] Paul Johnson, A History of Christianity, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1976), p. 288. (paragraph from Evangelical Winter – Restoring New Testament Christianity, p. 45.)
[2] B. K. Kuiper, The Church in History, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1951, 1964), pp. 184, 200.
[3] Ibid., pp. 45-46.
[4] Ibid., pp. 244-245.
[5] Ibid., pp. 240-252.
[6] Paul Johnson, A History of the American People, (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1997), pp. 28-29.
[7] Henry Steele Commager, ed., “Mayflower Compact,” Documents of American History, Vol. 1 to 1865, (New York, F.S. Crofts & Co., 1934), p. 15-16.
[8] Larry G. Johnson, Evangelical Winter – Restoring New Testament Christianity, (Owasso, Oklahoma: Anvil House Publishers, 2016), pp. 43-44.

Series on the Modern Lukewarm Evangelical Church – No. 8

In Part III we shall examine the third and fourth periods (Pergamum and Thyatira) of the seven periods of history in the Church Age and how the Bible doctrines, leadership gifts, and the gifts of the Spirit were substantially compromised, corrupted, or abandoned altogether. These periods encompass the rise of the Roman Catholic Church in the fourth century (300s) to the Reformation era beginning in 1517.

The Church enters the era of compromise

• Pergamum – Church of compromise (AD 312-590). It was labeled as the “throne of Satan” and 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. This period saw the beginnings of the Catholic Church (both Roman and Eastern Orthodox) in the late 4th century and 5th centuries.

Here we must return in our walk through church history back to the beginning of the fourth century (the 300s). Given that the first century was the most momentous century in church history, the fourth and sixteenth centuries would be runners-up. The fourth century may be characterized as: (1) the beginning of the Pergamum age in church history (church of compromise), (2) the world invades the church, and (3) the emergence of the Roman Catholic Church, all occurring in the context of the accelerating fall of the Roman Empire. All of these events began with the Roman Emperor Constantine’s 313 Edict of Milan that legalized Christianity throughout the Roman Empire.

Christianity’s legalization in 313 (fourth century) had ended much of the persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire. Christianity became the professed religion of the Emperor and was now seen as the avenue to material, military, political, and social success. Thousands joined the church, but many were Christians in name only as the narrow gate was made wide which allowed a flood of corruptions to flow into the church.[1] The legalization of Christianity and the end of persecution followed by recognition as the official religion of the state laid the foundations for the rise of the Roman Catholic Church in the fourth century.

By 381, Christianity was officially deemed to be the state religion of the Roman Empire. Not only did the church suffer much corruption from within, it quickly learned that Constantine and his successors would extract a most severe price for their newfound liberty. Separation of the church from the Roman state soon disappeared as the state demanded a say in church affairs.

The corruption in the church was disturbing to many church leaders in the fourth century, but their remedies appear to have only worsened the decline. Augustine (354-430) is considered the greatest of the fathers and doctors of the Roman Catholic Church. Augustine’s teachings dominated the Middle Ages.[2] Augustine’s life straddled the formative years of the Roman Catholic Church. Many of his teachings became the foundation of much of the Catholic Church’s false dogma and traditions. Just two of the false teachings advocated by Augustine were his great promotion of monasticism (one of the outstanding aspects of life in the Middle Ages) and his advocacy of persecution of both the heathen and heretics. The Roman Catholic doctrine of persecution became an important practice a thousand years later when Protestants were persecuted during the time of the Reformation.[3]

As the Empire drew to a close, Rome was sacked in 410 and eventually all provinces of the western part of the Empire were conquered (Italy, North Africa, Spain, Gaul including the Netherlands, and Britain). The Empire officially fell with the conquest of Rome in 476, but the church survived because many barbarian tribes had become Christians and, as a consequence, respected the bishop of Rome.[4]

False doctrines introduced by the Roman Catholic Church

The Christian church that survived at the end of the fifth century bore little resemblance to the church that entered the fourth century. Over the course of 150 years, the bishop of Rome gradually became recognized as superior to all other bishops in the Western half of the Roman Empire. By 461 the papacy was fully established, and in this march to papal supremacy, many of the doctrines and the first century organization and operation of the church’s leadership and laity had been completely turned upside down. The episcopal form of church organization grew rapidly into a centralized power structure. The leaders of the episcopate took the plain meaning of the words of the Bible and allegorized them to mean what they wanted. To the corrupted Word were added traditions of men. By the end of the fifth century, the Roman Catholic Church became the fount of unscriptural doctrines, practices, and the traditions of men and their organizations.[5] The following list is not meant to be all-encompassing:

• Prayers for the dead
• A belief in purgatory (place in which souls are purified after death before they can enter heaven)
• The forty-day Lenten season
• The view that the Lord’s Supper is a sacrifice and that its administrators are the priests
• A sharp division of the members of the church into clergy (officers of the church) and laity (ordinary church members)
• The veneration (adoration) of martyrs and saints, and above all the veneration of Mary
• The burning of tapers or candles in honor of the saints, martyrs, and Mary
• Veneration of relics of martyrs and saints
• The ascription of magical powers to these relics
• Pictures, images, and altars in the churches
• Gorgeous vestments for the clergy
• More and more elaborate and splendid ritual (form of worship)
• Less and less preaching
• Pilgrimages to holy places
• Monasticism
• Worldliness
• Persecution of heathen and heretics[6]

To mortal eyes, the future of the church of the Living God at the end of the fifth century appeared to be headed for oblivion, just another Jewish sect that rose to prominence and then faded into history. The church had been compromised and weakened with false teaching and practices, the Roman Empire lay in ruins, and the barbarians ruled much of the former Empire. The outlook for the true church of Jesus was bleak.

The Church enters a thousand years of corruption

• Thyatira – The corrupt church (590-1517). Although commended for their charity, service, faith, and patience, evil grew and idolatry was practiced in the church at Thyatira. The church contained unrepentant and wicked seducers who drew God’s servants into fornication and the offering of sacrifices to idols. In the West, the Roman Catholic Church consolidated its power under the papacy beginning with Pope Gregory I which lasted for almost a thousand years.

With the installation of Pope Gregory the Great in 590, the papacy had reached the pinnacle of its secular and religious power and closed the door on the Pergamum period of church history (the church of compromise 312-590). The church then entered the opened door of the Thyatiran period (the corrupt church 590-1517).

Although the Roman Catholic Church claims that the first Pope was Peter, most scholars state that the first Pope was Gregory the Great because the power of the papacy (papal supremacy) did not fully develop until around the time of Gregory the Great. Born in 540, Gregory the Great was the first monk to become pope and ruled from 590 until his death in 604. It had been over a hundred years since the new barbarian kingdoms began to be built on the ruins of the Roman Empire in 476.[7]

Gregory the Great represented the most distinctive traits of the Roman Catholic Church in the Middle Ages and beyond: (1) He was the first pope to assume broad political powers, and (2) he assumed the role of a secular ruler by appointing the leaders of cities, raising armies, and making peace treaties. In exercising these tasks, he undertook many of the political and administrative duties and powers the failed Roman Empire had relinquished such as the work of education, care of the poor, and maintaining a semblance of justice and civil order. Had he and the church not done so, the valley of darkness in Europe would have been much deeper.[8]

Yet, to achieve the power necessary for civil order, the church made a bargain with the Devil. When the church began adopting the episcopal form of government to defend against doctrinal heresy, the church also began to undermine the organizational pattern prescribed for the church. This eventually led to great compromise within the church. Likewise, the assumption of the secular role of government in the sixth century to achieve civil order coupled with the heresies and false teachings of Roman Catholicism led to a thousand years of corruption within the church and continues within the Roman Catholic Church to the present day.

During the thousand-year Thyatiran period of church history, the New Testament doctrines of the Bible and the organization and operation of the church were for all practical purposes obliterated. This is summed up by the following quotation from Don Stewart which describes the Roman Catholic view that the Bible is not the final authority for the church. By “church” is meant the Roman Catholic Church for they believe that if one is not a member of the Roman Catholic Church, that person is lost and will go to Hell.

The result is this: the Bible is not the final standard of truth—rather it is the Roman Catholic Church and their infallible interpretation of it. They believe that the Scriptures are authoritative, but they are incomplete. This is important to understand. The Roman Church believes that God has more to say to humanity than that which is contained in the Bible. Oral tradition supplies what is lacking in written tradition, the Scriptures, and thus is an authority alongside of the Bible. Only the Roman Church can correctly interpret both Scripture and sacred tradition. And because sacred tradition is ongoing, Roman Catholic theology is constantly evolving. Thus, if we want to hear God’s voice today, we must listen to the Roman Church.[9]

Beginning at the fall of the Roman Empire, the Roman Catholic Church spread their brand of Christianity for a thousand years throughout the West to the extent that it became known as Christendom (which generally includes much of Western Europe, the British Isles, and Ireland). Countries became Christian in name only, usually through various political and religious alliances or at the point of the sword. But the apparent complete apostasy of the church poses a huge question. How did the true heart of the Christian church survive and later revive first century New Testament Christianity?

We must remember that even though the New Testament doctrines of the Bible and the leadership of the church established in the first century had been thoroughly corrupted, there remained a remnant of true believers who had the Holy Spirit within and therefore access to the gifts of the Spirit that gave guidance and fostered hope. The existence of this remnant became evident beginning with the stirrings of church reform in the twelfth century. But first we must mention final separation of the two great wings of the Christian faith.

The Great Schism – 1054

The Medieval church (Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox) was a powerful monolithic structure throughout the Middle Ages. But after the first millennium the unity within the church ended with the Great Schism in 1054 when the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox branches of the church were irretrievably separated following six centuries of smoldering conflict. The foundations of the western Roman church soon began to be challenged by other influences outside of the church. The Crusades encouraged by the Roman Catholic Church did much to break down the feudal system that opened the door to new economic and intellectual advances in the West.[10] The Crusades began as a noble concept but was misguided by a perverted religious purpose, ineffective leadership, and faulty execution of mission.

Stirrings of church reform – twelfth through the fifthteenth centuries (1100s-1400s)

In addition to political and cultural changes faced by the powerful Roman Catholic Church from without, the life of the church was being stirred from within. Beginning in the twelfth century various remnants of the church began to appear and challenge Roman Catholic orthodoxy.

• Peter Waldo and the Waldenses

Peter Waldo believed that the Bible and particularly the New Testament should be the only basis for faith and living the Christian life. Around the year 1176 he sold his merchandise and gave his money to the poor. He and his followers became known as the Waldenses. They memorized large portions of the New Testament, dressed simply, fasted three days each week, used only the Lord’s Prayer, and did not believe in purgatory, masses, and prayers for the dead. Men as well as women were allowed to be lay preachers. The pope enlisted some of the nobles to help in eradicating the Waldenses and other groups, and as a consequence it was said that “blood flowed like water” for twenty years in southern France. But a remnant of the Waldenses survived and found refuge in the Alps of western Switzerland and three hundred years later accepted the teachings of Protestantism.[11]

• John Wycliffe and the Lollards

Englishman and Oxford professor John Wycliffe began to criticize the clergy in 1376 because of the corruption within the church and its quest for wealth and political power. He called for a return to the poverty and simplicity of the apostles and declared that the Bible and not the church should be the only determinant of faith. Since the people could not read the Bible written in Latin, he translated it into the English language. Wycliffe died in 1384. His followers were called the Lollards and continued to preach that the only standard for doctrine was the Bible. Throughout England many Lollards were martyred at the stake and only a small remnant survived in secret until the time of the Reformation.[12]

• John Huss and the Hussite movement

The teachings of Wycliffe did not die with the Lollards but spread to Europe and eventually to Bohemia. John Hus was only fifteen when Wycliffe died. Hus eventually became the head of the University of Prague and enthusiastically welcomed Wycliffe’s teaching. He began to preach boldly about the corruption of the clergy, and many of his ideas became the central teachings of the future Reformation. Hus claimed that only Christ was the head of the church and popes and cardinals were not required for its governance. He challenged the sale of indulgences which was a monstrous practice that contradicted the doctrines of the Bible. For his brashness, Hus was excommunicated, imprisoned, and subsequently burned at the stake on July 6, 1415. For the next twenty-two years the church battled the Hussite movement which resulted in a great slaughter.[13]

These are only three of the dissenting groups that challenged the corruption within the Roman Catholic Church during the twelfth through fifteenth centuries (1100s-1400s). During this period the church grew weaker as the corruption within increased along with increased repression of dissenters. The flashpoint came with the Roman Church’s sale of indulgences in which the penitent sinner was able to substitute the payment of a sum of money in lieu of other forms of penalty or satisfaction for his or her sins. In 1517, this abuse was the seemingly tiny spark that led to the great inferno within the church called the Reformation. It is here we end the corrupt thousand-year Thyatiran period of church history. After 1517, the Roman Catholic continued its corruptions to the present day, but the dissenting remnant would have to wait another two hundred years before they could establish “the pure and stainless church” during the Philadelphian period.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] B. K. Kuiper, The Church in History, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1951, 1964), p. 27.
[2] Ibid., p. 39.
[3] Ibid., pp. 45-46.
[4] Ibid., pp. 49-51.
[5] Ibid., p. 44.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid., pp. 57-58.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Don Stewart, “What is the Roman Catholic Claim as to Where Ultimate Authority Resides?” Blue Letter Bible,
https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/stewart_don/faq/bible-ultimate-authority/question4-roman-catholic-claim-ultimate-authority.cfm (accessed August 23, 2021).
[10] Kuiper, The Church in History, pp. 140-141.
[11] Ibid., pp. 141-143.
[12] Ibid., pp. 143-144.
[13] Ibid., pp. 144-147.