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.
