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Modern Degradation Of Christian Belief
(Abandonment Of Christian Faith In Modern Times)
1. Greek Philosophies Capturing Christianity
2. Enlightenment And Unbelief
3. Gospel Of Social Reform And Political Activism
4. The Curse Of Humanism As A Religious Force
5. Scientism And Humanism
6. Uniformitarianism And Evolutionism
7. Creeping Accommodation To The World’s Ways
8. Anti-Intellectual Backlash In Christianity
9. Feminism And Sanctity Of Life
10. Mysticism And Modern Science
Satan has always used religion to deceive Christians and non-Christians alike
throughout history. Most aspects of institutional Christianity today are actually
just modern forms of an ancient Satanic religious system referred to in the Old
Testament as Baal. Now Satan is using intellectual deceptions to complete his
destruction of Christian belief. In this lecture, and in the chart, we trace that
deception throughout history.
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There is a strong link between intellectual and religious deception. Satan's
intellectual deceptions of Christians are reflected in many of the religious
doctrines and theology within "Christianity".
Non-Christian philosophies
(primarily of ancient Greece) crept into Christian doctrines very early in the
Christian history. During the “Enlightenment”, science replaced the Bible as the
accepted “source” of truth. Today's "world-view" of atheistic secular humanism is
a form of unbelief which we call "Scientistic Humanism". Most of "Christianity"
has adopted that humanism through accommodation. Furthermore, mysticism, a
false form of spirituality, actually pervades modern "science".
1. Greek Philosophies Capturing Christianity
The tremendous role the ancient Greek philosophies and mystery religions played
in near-totally distorting Christian thinking is very important to recognize.
The initial set of Greek philosophical concepts prevalent during New Testament
times was that of Stoicism. That influenced much Christian theology as early as
the 2nd century AD. But it was St. Augustine (354-430AD) who later introduced
various aspects of Greek philosophy into what quickly became "official" Christian
theology. Yet many centuries later, Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274AD) "founded" a
theology known as "naturalism" which underlies much current "Christian"
theology. That in turn also underlies much of the modern atheistic theology of
humanism.
Being outside of the Judaistic traditional teachings, and hence being ignorant of
God as Creator, Law Giver, Speaker through Prophets, etc., and yet deep thinkers
on the nature of all they experienced, the early Greek philosophers did their best
to describe reality intellectually, indeed to lay down procedures for inductive
reasoning as a basis for their intellectual endeavors. Hence they gave us a basis
for both science and theology, for both psychology and ethics, for both economics
and politics, etc. It was Aristotle's early writings which formed the early
foundations for it all.
But it was Stoicism which was confused with Biblical doctrines early in the
Christian era. Stoic “religion” was a purely intellectual system of beliefs resulting
from a demythologizing of the ancient Pantheon forms of polytheism, without discarding the gods themselves. The Stoics were pantheists and evolutionists who
denied special creation.
The primary philosophical contribution of Stoicism is the concept of the Logos:
that which is intrinsically the ultimate heart of all "beingness". Stoicism was
almost pure fatalism: it believed in all events having principal causes which
determined the outcome in almost all cases; yet it allowed for exceptions due to
freedom of individuals.
The Scriptures make a clear distinction between the human spirit, soul and
carnality. However, Stoicism considerably blends these together. It is the
influence of this aspect of Stoicism which is behind the denial of the Scriptural
concept of the human spirit as is alas common in much of today's Christian
theology.
The Stoic approach to personal ethics and integrity was an idealistic humanistic
approach wherein by mental discipline one suppresses one's feelings to maintain
personal dignity.
Later, Plotinus (205-270AD) founded a philosophical and religious system known
as Neo-Platonism. This was a belief in creation by a Transcendent "One" or
"Good" Who we cannot grasp with our intellect, but with Whom we ever strive to
become "one", through self-discipline and intellectual pursuits. Neo-Platonism
accepted a God of Creation, whose laws maintain creation; but that God is remote
from human affairs today. Its concept of the natural world, however, was largely
that of Stoicism. Plotinus, typical of Greek philosophers, was never able to apprehend Spiritual truth (reality), and rather substituted for it intellectual mysticism
(human concepts, right or wrong, of that reality). That is a denial of divine
revelation and the moral teachings of Jesus.
God intervened sovereignly in a very significant way to "steer" that theology away
from pure Neo-Platonism: He raised up St. Jerome to give us a complete canon
of Scripture in the Latin as well as Greek and Hebrew languages. It was this
availability of actual Scripture to "Christian" scholars which enabled "Christian"
theology to arise.
Still later, when Constantine issued his edict in the early 300's AD for Christianity
to be the "official" religion of the Roman Empire, the learned scholars of the land
(steeped in ancient Greek philosophies, particularly of the Neo-Platonic form)
quickly became the leaders of the official "Christianity". It was St. Augustine
(354-430AD) who introduced a blending of those Greek philosophies with
scriptural truths to formulate a “Christian theology".
Eventually however these metaphysical and philosophical thinkings and emphases
were to enter into and captivate the Christianity of the West as well - through such
men as Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, etc. Specifically, St. Augustine is
responsible for most merging of that New Testament Christianity with the
Platonic Greek philosophical thinking. By the late Middle Ages, philosophical
and metaphysical speculations had all but replaced the Biblical concept of highly
personal, individual relationships directly with God through Christ.
As with Platonism and Neo-Platonism, the approach Augustine took was to
attempt to formulate in intellectual terms the revealed Spiritual truths of God in
Christ, an impossible task since real spiritual truths are nonsense to the natural
mind.
Hence the emphasis is on theological doctrines rather than personal relationship
with God through Christ. His concept of existence is monistic (i.e., all is
inherently "one" with God). God is remote, not the immediately accessible High
Priest of Christ Jesus. The route one must take for the highest form of existence is
through theological exercise - a far cry from the Biblical reality of salvation only
via Christ by grace through faith. Evil is simply an absence of good - a far cry
from the Biblical reality of the fall of mankind and the choice all men must make
between Satan and Christ being our slave-owner.
Many centuries later, Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274AD) "founded" a new
"Christian" theology known as naturalism, which underlies much current
"Christian" theology today. Thomism accepts God as omnipotent but remote:
having created all and its laws of operation, He now has His "hands off"; it is
now up to mankind to do what we will with it. Thomas' teachings are a totally
humanistic approach to social ethics. But that is intellectually arbitrary: who is to
say who is right without an absolute source of reference? Without the Word of
God to guide us, our society collapses into anarchy.
Naturalism was really a reinterpretation of the works of Aristotle; it was a bridge
between ancient metaphysics and modern "scientistic humanism". It was a totally
rational (i.e., philosophical) approach to Christian theology without appeal to nor
regard for Christian divine revelation.
God (Christ) views us relationally (i.e., all things have meaning in terms of our
relationship with Him), whereas we think propositionally (i.e., whether statements
or propositions are true or not). God is now delivering our doctrines and theology
from these totally secular, naturalistic and humanistic forms of Hellenism into true
personal relationship with God through our Lord Christ Jesus.
The world had never been totally void of real believers. Over the ages, pockets of
true believers have kept the faith alive. But these groups, largely "underground"
due to their persecution, had other unbalances in them. Furthermore, we know
about them today mainly through the writings of their enemies: the Roman
Inquisitors and early Reformation leaders. The Anabaptist movement has "kept
the faith" over the years independently of either Roman Catholicism or the
Protestant Reformers, and it is yet today a major witness of Christ's true teachings
in the world. Yet, in their own forms of legalism, they also have not yet fully
recovered the spiritual reality of our relationship with God through Christ.
2. Enlightenment And Unbelief
Today, a doctrine of evolutionary secular humanism has pervaded virtually all
non-evangelical Christiandom (and much of evangelicalism) in Europe and
America. It developed within the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) since the 1880s. It
was a radical religious change; unbelief in God became an acceptable option
within "Christian" as well as secular intellectual circles. It is an absence of a
conviction that any superhuman power such as God exists. This radical change
was directly due to the reaction of religious leaders themselves to the modern
"renaissance" of reason applied to everything, which they adopted.
This cult of unbelief replaced Christ with the social sciences as the "savior"
("healer") of mankind. It emphasizes the dignity of man (and a denial of the Fall
of mankind into sin), the privileged power of his reason, total trust in human
nature, our privilege of being human together in a purely material cosmos, and
unity of mankind. It strives to bring people together and oppose what separates
them (such as Christian doctrines).
Within French Jesuits, it remained "underground" for over 50 years until the early
1960s. There were three major contributions, each building on the preceding.
The first was Jesuit George Tyrrell (1861-1909), who argued that Roman
Catholic belief was founded on a mythical, not an accurate, reading of the Bible
(i.e., he introduced "higher criticism"). The second was Jesuit Father Pierre
Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955), who was most significant in fostering a new
form of evolutionism. The third was Liberation Theology, a Jesuit creation, and
its concrete applications to the world of poverty in Latin America.
This virtual denial of spiritual and supernatural realities of Christ and the many
Scriptural truths thereof was a development of what is called the Enlightenment.
The Enlightenment was a philosophy of intellectual pursuit which embraced at
least three major emphases: (1) scientism - epistemology is by intellectual and
logical pursuits alone and never by religious traditions; (2) disestablishmentarianism - a total denial of all teachings of Christianity, and hence a total
denial of all spiritual and other supernatural realities; and (3) humanism - men
and women are intrinsically good, and the goal of society is to maximize human
happiness and freedom.
By the mid-nineteenth century, these emphases virtually dominated Catholic
theologians and other church leaders in central Europe. That was because the
institutes of higher learning where this Enlightenment movement ran rampant
were the traditional schools of theology, and science was considered a subset of
theology. The result was a development of "higher critical" methods of Biblical
exegesis, and an associated "liberal theology".
French Liberation Theology was a logical result of the teachings of Teilhard de
Chardin. The naturalism of Thomas Aquinas had become a barren and dead
theology to most Roman Catholics. Teilhard de Chardin still left everything
tantalizingly vague. Nevertheless, his speculations held great attractiveness. So,
armed with the teachings of Teilhard de Chardin, several followers quickly
developed a socio-economic-political emphasis called "Liberation Theology".
This liberal theology migrated to America and by the late nineteenth century
began to radically influence Christianity in America. In spite of the fact that the
vast majority of lay Christians were truly Bible-believing, those holding the liberal
ideas of the Enlightenment and the destructive methods of Biblical criticism came
in to power and control in the denominations, and the battle was all but lost.
Concomitant with this rise of modernistic theology was another major outcome of
the Enlightenment movement, in its dealings with the "hard" sciences of geology,
astronomy, biology and physics.
This was the"Weltanschauung"1 or
"overarching philosophical premise" of uniformitarianism.
Since the 1930s in America, the dominance of modernistic theology in
denominational seminaries and colleges has increasingly overwhelmed the
majority of Christians through pulpits and editorials of Christian journals. What
has been heard in terms of Christian ethics, social relationships, and church
structures, has been summarized by Yoder2 as a "sixfold claim of Jesus'
irrelevance" to modern Christianity. We here paraphrase these six very
unbiblical points as follows, to illustrate how far this modernistic theology
has departed from Jesus' real teachings.
Weltanschauung is a German word used widely the philosophical research
literature to refer to the basic philosophic view of reality held by the researcher. It
literally means "world-view".
1
Yoder, John Howard, The Politics of Jesus, (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B.
Eerdmans Pub Co., 1972), ISBN 0-8028-1485-9 , pages 15-19.
2
(1) "Jesus was speaking only for an 'interim' time period, believing the
apocalypse would occur very soon. Since He was obviously wrong on that,
His teachings on ethics do not apply to us today.
(2) "Jesus spoke only to a rural and village society. Hence His teachings on
ethics do not apply to today's complex non-rural world.
(3) "Jesus had no control over the world in which He lived, and spoke only
in simplest moral situations of one person in relationship to a second. Hence
His teachings on ethics do not apply to today where Christians do have
political and other influences in the social structures in which we live.
(4) "Jesus' message was only on spiritual and 'existential' issues, and not on
social and 'concrete' matters. Whatever He said or did of a social and/or
ethical nature must be understood only symbolically in terms of His spiritual
message. Hence He has nothing to say to today's social issues.
(5) "But since His 'spiritual message' (in terms of only One Sovereign God
Whose Will alone must be obeyed) cannot be verified, all that He did say on
human values must be re-evaluated in terms of modern psychology and
sociology (and hence all human values are autonomous).
(6) "Jesus came only to give His life for the sins of men. Justification and
salvation are sovereign acts of God, available to Catholics via sacraments and
to Protestants via one's understanding, but not dependent upon human ethics
nor behavior. Hence, the 'supernatural' of Jesus is ethically irrelevant."
All of this is "circular reasoning". Starting with a denial of "spiritual
realities", the teachings of Jesus are denied as irrelevant, and hence
"proven" to be irrelevant to modern social values and structures. The sum
total of this thinking is that the Scriptures have nothing whatever to say on
human ethics nor social structures. Therefore, the very nature of His
message on the Body of Christ (i.e., a very specific social structure), its
underlying ethical principle (love), and its required spiritual dynamicity, are
totally ignored if not fully denied. That in turn has lead church leaders to define
Christian ethics and church social structures according to the pseudo-intellectual
patterns of the world. Hence the very structures of our churches are diametric to
the specific teachings and examples of the Scriptures.
3. Gospel Of Social Reform And Political Activism
The liberation theologians argued a pure socialistic humanism. They promised a
longed-for participation in the "New Humanity". "The people" are the source of
spiritual revelation and religious authority. Their liberation was based on Karl
Marx's analysis of socio-economic and political situation of the "world
proletariat".
During the latter half of the twentieth century AD,"Christian" political activism
arose in many other forms. Perhaps the most significant forms of recent political
activism has been frequent cases of USA churches supporting military guerrilla
revolutions to overthrow local communist and Roman Catholic regimes with a
new form of socialism. It has also taken forms of working toward socialism here
in America.
Christians, by failing to fully obey Christ, have done much to propagate if not
originate many social and economic ills in the world today. Three great failures of
Christians, especially in America, are:
(1) Racial abuse: slavery based on race, and racial prejudice.
(2) Our non-compassionate use of wealth: not making it with justice, nor
using it with real compassion.
(3) Confusing Christianity with patriotism: America is not the Kingdom of
God, nor are our wars examples of Christian love.
4. The Curse Of Humanism As A Religious Force
Let us now examine the impact of secular (or scientistic) humanism on modern
Christianity. Humanism, and much of the political action derived from it, is a
major way of Satan to destroy the Body of Christ, first and foremost by diverting
the time and efforts of Bible-believing Christians into anti-Christian activities, but
also by distorting the national and local governments and political influences to
actually persecute Bible-believing Christians.
Further, secular (or scientistic) Humanism, by having been taught in the public
educational systems of the Western nations for the past 30 years, has de facto
become a major religious force, and it has become dominant via "Christian"
ecumenical movements toward New Ageism.
Schaeffer explains humanism in his book A Christian Manifesto3:
"Humanitarianism is being kind and helpful to people, treating
people humanly. The humanities are the studies of literature, art,
music, etc. - those things which are the products of human
creativity. Humanism is the placing of man at the center of all
things and making him the measure of all things. Thus, Christians
should be the most humanitarian of all people. And Christians
certainly should be interested in the humanities as the product of
human creativity, made possible because people are uniquely made
in the image of the great Creator. ... But in contrast to being
humanitarian, and being interested in the humanities, Christians
should be unalterably opposed to the false and destructive
humanism, which is false to the Bible and equally false to what
man is.
Schaeffer further discusses humanism, in his book The Great Evangelical
Disaster4:
"The word humanism is not to be confused with
humanitarianism, nor with the word humanities. ... humanism is
the defiant denial of the God Who is there, with man defiantly set
up in the place of God as the measure of all things. For if the final
reality is only material or energy which has existed forever and has
its present form only by chance, then there is no one but finite man
to set purely relative values and a purely relativistic base for law
and government. ... It stands totally against all that the original
fundamentalists stood for, and ... what the original meaning of
evangelical stood for, and ... all that the Bible stands for. ... (It
actually) guarantees destruction to the individual in the life to
come, and in the present life as well.”
Francis A. Schaeffer, A Christian Manifesto, (Westchester, Ill.: Crossway
Books, 19081), ISBN , pages 23-26.
3
Francis A. Schaeffer, The Great Evangelical Disaster, (Westchester, Ill.:
Crossway Books, 1984, 6th printing 1986), ISBN 0-89107-308-6 , page 105.
4
Humanism is both a philosophy and a religion. As a philosophy, it underlies the
political movements of socialism and communism. Its key foundational doctrine
is evolutionism. It underlies much of the philosophy of modern scientific
thinking. It underlies the ecumenical movement of uniting the traditional
institutions of christiandom. And it has been an integral part of the public
educational systems of America and Europe for the past several generations.
Although it has not yet become a single global religious system, it has a now neartotal acceptance throughout the world through these areas of influence, and its full
structural establishment.
The effects of this thinking on Western society since 1932 have been staggering.
Our entire public educational system has been redirected along its objectives;
textbooks have been written and are in use according to its tenets. Modern liberal
theology in traditional Christian institutions directly follows from it; it permeates
modern ecumenical movements. It was largely the cause of the nihilism of the
1950's. It set the stage for the drug culture of the 1960's, and that nihilism in turn
has opened America to Eastern mysticism.
Humanism actually is of two forms, with separate origins. We might call these
two forms "intellectual humanism" and "mystical humanism". The first form
originated in the West (Europe and America), and is now making great inroads in
the East (Africa and Asia); the second originated in the East, and is now becoming
widely accepted in the West. We currently are seeing a global merging of the
two. Both are totally atheistic, and both have uniformitarian evolutionism as the
chief doctrine.
5. Scientism And Humanism
We need to briefly review the root of the disparage between "science" and the
Bible, and the role of philosophy in the "Scientific Method".
For well over 100 years now, investigators and theoreticians in the various "hard"
and "soft" fields of scientific disciplines (primarily Physics, Astronomy, Geology,
Molecular Biology, General Biology, and Psychology) have been accumulating an
increasing body of "data" and "discoveries" which directly conflict with and
contradict many statements of fact in the Hebrew and Christian canonical
Scriptures.
The conflict between these two approaches to knowledge and truth is very real,
and rather than abating, it is intensifying. A large majority of Christians, churched
but not yet taught to mature in their personal relationship with Christ Jesus, have
been and are being diverted from a Bible faith to scientistic atheism in some form.
The literature of much even Christian education gives credence to the
"discoveries" of science and mutes the Biblical concepts contradicted thereby.
Very fortunately, a small but growing body of Christian education literature,
which is arising from the Bible-faith segment of Christianity, recognizes many of
the logical incongruities of the "discoveries" of science, and clings dogmatically
to the Biblical concepts. But even such literature and teaching sources de facto
"beg the issue", and young people from such schools, sooner or later having to
face the world in its depraved reality, remain powerless to settle this conflict not
only in their preaching and witnessing to the world but also within their own
thought lives as well.
Is this conflict inevitable? If the Bible is indeed true, then why does science
increasingly "disprove" it? How can the Biblical statements still be true when
"disproved" by science? Obviously the problem could not lie with science?
But it does!
How?
In three subtle ways. First, the underlying philosophy of the scientific method, so
deeply ingrained in the thinking of the "Western" nations, is not an unbiased or
"absolute" route to truth, as is so commonly assumed. The results of no scientific
investigation can ever transcend the basic assumptions of the "Weltanschauung"
or "world-view" of the investigator; and whatever corroborating evidence which is
acquired through a scientific investigation can at most prove those basic
assumptions only tautologically, never epistemologically.
Second, for well-identified historical reasons, the basic assumptions of all
established fields of scientific discipline today involve a tacit a priori rejection of
the Bible as anything other than myth and nonsense, and instead substitute a
passive and uniformitarian concept of nature which has no objective basis
whatsoever.
And third, the Biblical statements themselves which modern science contradict
are little known and grossly misunderstood, even within evangelical Christianity.
On this first point, although scientistic humanism appears to arise from modern
scientific discoveries, the opposite is actually the case. All modern scientific
"truths" are actually based not on ontologicale facts or data or phenomena per se
but on arbitrary interpretations based on this a priori world view.
Scientism is not scientific. Science is Weltanschauung-driven, not fact driven.
Hence scientism is arbitrary! Since the vast majority of scientists today, in all
fields of research, have anti-Biblical humanistic Weltanschauungs, the result is an
overwhelming philosophical rejection of the Bible, "in the name of science". But
this is not science: just an alternate religion. Furthermore, it hinders true
knowledge advancement. To exalt "science" as the only route to knowledge and
understanding of meaning, is a philosophical and metaphysical and religious
principle, and at that, not a principle which has been validated by experience.
6. Uniformitarianism And Evolutionism
But Scientism is the principle that the methods of the natural sciences are actually
used in all areas of investigation. This principle is indeed valid insofar as are
concerned investigations into the present structure of things and into the present
character of processes. Indeed, in that context this principle has resulted in an
explosion of practical technology never before experienced by mankind. Science
can only deal with present processes, without reference to the past or future.
But the deeper goals and desires of most scientists, beyond mere advancements of
technology, are to gain insights into meanings. The tendency is widespread to use
science as a route to meanings without regard to the epistemological vacuity of
natural science. But as soon as intrinsic meanings or origins or destinies are
brought into the research, the capabilities of science are exceeded and
transcended. Meanings are intrinsically the domain of religion, not science: the
only source of meaning is through religious, i.e., "divine", revelations! And since
meaning is inextricably inter-related with origin and destiny, scientism is the
result, not science.
As a major example, the scientistic dogmas of uniformitarianism and
evolutionism overwhelmingly prevail today. Scientistic uniformitarianism is a
quite recent development in history. For historical reasons, this overextension of
science into origins and meaning which we observe to be scientism, first arose
significantly in the fields of historical geology and historical biology. And, again
e
Study of the nature of existence of things.
for historical reasons, the underlying Weltanschauung of this particular form of
scientism was, and still is, evolutionary uniformitarianism.
Uniformitarianism is the philosophy, first popularized by the Scottish geologist
James Hutton in 1785, that present geological structures are a key to the past, and
that given significant time, presently observed geological processes, operating at
the same rate, are sufficient to account for all presently observed structures and
features. Historical geology and historical biology are by their very nature areas
of scientism, not science: they are deliberate attempts toward historical inferences
(i.e., origins, and hence meanings) from studies of present structures and processes.
Therefore the widespread dogmatic insistence that one follow
uniformitarian interpretations is nothing other than the religious force of
scientism.
7. Creeping Accommodation To The World's Ways
A surprising fraction of those in America today who are serving Satan through
scientistic humanism, liberation theology, feminism, the "sexual revolution", the
drug culture, rock music and/or other occult involvements, originally came from
"Bible-believing" Christian backgrounds. But they turned away primarily because
the true love, righteousness and power of Christ Jesus were missing in the lives of
their parents and church "role models". "Bible-believing" Christians today are still
failing, for one reason or another, to manifest these. We have replaced the Person
of Christ Jesus with "comfortable religion" based on a creedal or doctrinal
platform, and we are now reaping the inevitable consequential whirlwind!
We call this the sin of denominationalism. We define "denominationalism" as a
paradigm or mentality of Christian religions wherein: (1) the person of Christ
indwelling has been replaced by philosophy and theology based on doctrines
about Him; (2) the social structure of the Body of Christ has been replaced by a
religious organization; and (3) the social dynamics of Body members ministering
to one another has been replaced by a priesthood-vs-laity order in which one or a
few elite "priests" or "ministers" do all the ministering, and the people provide the
context and logistics for him/her. This error began to encrust Christianity before
the end of the first century AD, and by the mid-300's fully characterized the
"visible" Christian church. The Protestant reformation over the past 450 years has
not yet completely weaned us from it.
Denominationalism is so wrong, so harmful, because it fosters contentment
among the faithful church attendees.
It breeds a mentality of false
comfortableness in one’s state as a Christian. To apprehend the dynamic Spiritual
reality of Christ is not easy! To embrace (“seize” - Matthew 11:12) it requires a
desperate seeking (“with violence”) on our part - urgent determined seeking with
our whole heart (Jeremiah 29:13). Yet the comfortableness breeds the very
opposite, yea it actively discourages any member who thus otherwise would be
willing to pay the high price (Matthew 13:44-46).
What is that consequential whirlwind? Once the Person and power of Christ
Jesus is "out of the way", the doctrinal foundations of the religious structure of
"Christianity" is open to disintegration, and Satan's subtleties take over and
captivate Christianity and "convert" it into a modern form of the ancient
Babylonian religious system known in the Bible as "Baal”. That is exactly what
has happened and is happening. The doctrinal foundations have crumbled largely
under the false but powerful philosophy of humanism. And the world's largest
Christian religious system is indeed that modern Babylonian structure in most
details. Behind both forms of deception (doctrinal and religious) is the departure
of God's people from complete acceptance of God's revelation to us given in
Genesis.
By far the most destructive forces against Biblical Christianity during all of
church history, has not been the persecutions during the ages. It has been
Christians accommodating to the modern religion of scientistic humanism, with
its underlying doctrine being the philosophy of evolutionism and which has
capitulated institutional Christianity thereto during the past century. "Christians"
who believe (albeit tacitly) in evolution, do not really believe in the Bible;
evolutionism and Genesis are incompatible. Actually, that works both ways:
evolutionism has captured much of "Christianity" because of tacit unbelief in the
Bible (in favor of "science"); and unbelief in the Bible has resulted in many
Christians accepting the tenets of evolutionism.
One most grievous impact of this accommodation by Christians to the world view
has been in the development of "higher criticism" of the Scriptures and the shifts
in denominational doctrinal positions as a result. Young intellectuals, reared in
Gospel preaching churches yet eager for the plaudits of a worldly-recognized
intelligentsia, are faced with the stigma that inexorably stamps the true preacher of
Jesus Christ (i.e., to be called a "fundamentalist"; horrors!) Many hence have
consciously or otherwise yielded to the alluring beckonings of a 'neutral' ground.
And they become totally vulnerable to negation by teachings of modern
psychology as "emotionalism". So, even that feeble foundation, known as
"existentialism", is intrinsically vacuous! Its ultimate logical result, therefore, is
nihilism, which in turn leads to total hedonistic materialism as the only thing life
has to offer.
How will the world see Christ in us? How will we truly be witnesses of Christ?
By our political confrontations against abortion? By our social confrontations on
issues of liberal theology? By our intellectual challenges of scientistic humanism?
Through our apolitical pacifism?
No! But by the very words of our Lord Christ Jesus, it will be by only through
living as love-motivated and Spirit-empowered servants of a new social order: the
Body of Christ! And that means accepting, supporting and helping one another in
love, and ever forgiving - these as an intrinsic part of our life-styles. In short, ever
seeking to build up both the spiritual well-being (in Christ) and dignity of one
another.
We must never lose sight of the fact that as love-motivated and Spirit-empowered
servants in the Body of Christ, our witness is not first and foremost by confronting
the world on political issues, but by giving the world practical demonstrations by
our lives, of the superiority of the Love of Christ as a deeply fulfilling, satisfying,
enriching, empowering life-style than anything the world-spirit has to offer.
John 13:34-35 says "A new commandment I give to you, that you love (AGAPE)
one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all
men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another."
8. Anti-Intellectual Backlash In Christianity
One of the most effective tools of propagandists (i.e. those who seek not to
propagate truth per se but to persuade the public of their tenets) has always been
the tool of categorization (also called the tool of connotations). By this we mean
associating one's enemies, on the basis of one or a few attributes, to some
"category" by applying the label of that category to those enemies, and then
attacking those enemies according to (other) attributes of that category which are
generally held to be undesirable or at least unworthy of serious consideration.
This avoids directly attributing those other undesirable attributes to those enemies
(which in most cases would be unfactual). And it renders those enemies impotent
to defend themselves by the factual truths of their position.
Those of the "world spirit" who are unbiblical are using this tactic widely today
against Bible-believing Christians by using labels which once in history were
appropriate, but which by now have in the generally-held public thinking have
become associated with the non-intelligent and ludicrous. Two examples of such
labels are fundamentalist and The New Right.
But this onslaught of higher criticism and widespread accommodation by
Christian denominational leaders to the intellectual aspects of the Enlightenment,
has had a backlash effect within evangelical Christianity: (1) to concentrate
almost exclusively on the salvation teachings of the Bible; and (2) in all other
areas (such as pertains to science) treat the Bible as non-intellectually as possible.
Most Bible scholars, being overwhelmed by the world's intellectual scholarship in
both areas of science and theology, tend to shy away from all such intellectual
pursuits and believe the Bible on a simple, legalistic basis. This in turn has deprived much of evangelical Christianity of proper in-depth understandings of the
Scriptures. It has also driven much of evangelical Christianity into social
xenophobia, further considerably rendering them impotent as an influence on our
culture.
Intellectual xenophobia leads to our young people losing their faith, because when
they face the teachings of modern science without a real foundation in truth, and
do not know how false are the foundations of science are, they will quickly lose
what faith they have in the Bible and in the Christianity of their parents.
This theological ignorance and possessiveness of denominationalism leads to
persecution of Christians by Christians within the church! That has indeed been
my personal experience, consistently all though my Christian walk. But because
the denominational traditionalists must "at all costs and at all times 'earnestly
contend for the faith once delivered unto the saints' (i.e., defend the theology and
doctrines and creeds of those who founded the specific denomination, which is
not what Jude 3 really means)", I would sooner or later get the "left foot of
fellowship".
The basic reason for this is the doctrinal conflict between Biblical truths and the
"simplistic gospel" doctrine of much of evangelical Christianity. The Gospel is
simple and readily grasped by even the least intelligent of us: it is a person,
Christ Jesus, who draws each of us unto ever deeper personal relationship with
Him. But the Gospel is not simplistic, that is, reducible to a simple formula or
statement. For He is infinite, the relationships with each of us are manifold, and
He tailors
Yet much of evangelical Christianity has reduced their Gospel doctrine to such a
simple formula, such as:
"Accept Jesus as your personal saviour 'by faith', be baptized,
repent of your sins, tell others of your faith, learn as many Biblical
truths as you can, and 'by faith' hang in as best you can until He
returns for us."
"By faith" here means "convince yourself of the Biblical statements being true."
But "faith" in the Scriptures is not a verbal action of one's mind; it is a verbal
action of one's will: to choose to depend upon Him, and to obey Him, and to
receive from Him, He as a Spiritual Reality. That is a matter beyond our natural
minds to grasp, except by divine revelation by the indwelling Holy Spirit of Christ
Jesus.
There are three reasons in our day for holding to a strong uncompromising view of
Scripture. First and foremost, this is the only way to be faithful to what the Bible
teaches about itself, to what Christ teaches about Scripture, and to what the church
has consistently held through the ages (and should hold in today's 'modern' world).
Second reason: without a strong view of Scripture as a foundation, we will not be
ready for the hard days to come. And third, and perhaps even most important
reason: it is actually true and inerrant, even scientifically, historically, literally. It
is science which is epistemologically and foundationally in error, not the Bible.
With much atheistic theology now so widespread even among evangelical
Christianity, how should the individual Bible-believing Christian react? How
should Christians in current churches or fellowships react when their leaders
consistently and clearly demonstrate personal lack of belief in and/or respect for
Biblical truth and morality? Should they simply leave those fellowships and find
one which still holds to Biblical truths?
We should first of all do all we can on a personal, loving level to help the liberal;
but if he persists in his liberalism he should be brought under discipline, because
the visible church should remain the faithful bride of Christ.
9. Feminism And Sanctity Of Life
The world spirit of our age espouses an extremely strong and subversive feminine
view which teaches that the home and family are ways of oppressing women; that
personal fulfillment and career must come before one's marriage and the needs of
children; that housework and child care are demeaning; that it is a waste of one's
talents to be a full-time homemaker. All of this, of course, has had a devastating
effect upon the family, but just as much upon the whole of society as those who
have grown up with deprived family relationships live their shattered lives in the
world.
The New Testament makes it clear that men and women are equal (though
different in nature and function)(Galatians 3:28). The Bible does not teach the
inequality of men and women. Each person, man or woman, stands equally before
God as a person created in His image, and at the same time as a sinner in need of
salvation. And because of this, each person, whether male or female, has at the
same time both an infinite equality of worth before God and one another, and a
total equality of need for Christ as Savior. But at the same time, this equality is
not an equality of monolithic uniformity or 'sameness' between men and women.
It is an equality which preserves the fundamental differences between the sexes
and which allows for the realization and fulfillment of these differences; but at
the same time, it affirms everything that men and women have in common - as
both being of His image. Thus we must affirm two things simultaneously: there
is a common equality which has enormous implications for all for life; and
because men and women are both created with distinctions as complementary
expressions of the image of God, this had enormous implications for all of life in the family, in the church, and in the society as a whole. And in this wonderful
complementarity there is an enormous range of diversity.
However, the modern feminist movement is not Christian; in fact it is antiChristian in many ways. It not only argues equality between the sexes; it also
tries to minimize the differences between the sexes. Extreme feminism centers
around the idea of total equality, or more properly the idea of equality without
distinction. As a consequence, it is not only demeaning to men, but it is also
significantly dehumanizing to women. As such it is destructive to family
relationships.
Feminism is not primarily a reaction to Biblical but to unbiblical practices! The
liberal feminist movement has largely been in reaction to the unbiblical male
chauvinism that has resulted, not from the clear roles set forth by God for man and
woman, but from a gross distortion of that doctrine based on Darwinian
evolutionary ideas. Long before Darwin, earlier 'evolutionists' had likewise
relegated women to a role of subjugation and inferiority in both atheistic and
pantheistic cultures.
The most horrible result of this thinking is abortion! The idea of the embryo not
being really a human being, is the recapitulation theory of Ernst Haeckel (18341919), an ardent socialist Darwinian racist. Haeckel's "recapitulation theory"
states Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. This is a fundamental tenet of modern
biology that derives from evolutionary theory, and is thus anathema to creationism
as well as to those opposed to freedom of choice. Ontogeny is the name for the
process of development of a fertilized egg into a fully formed and mature living
organism. Phylogeny, on the other hand is the history of the evolution of a species
(according to the theory of evolution), in this case the human being. During
development, the fertilized egg progresses over 38 weeks through what is, in fact
(so the theory erroneously claims), a rapid passage through evolutionary history:
From a single primordial cell, the conceptus progresses through being something
of a protozoan, a fish, a reptile, a bird, a primate and ultimately a human being.
Modern medical technology has totally proven that theory to be utterly false. We
know today from modern molecular biology that the fully-human genetic code of
the embryo exists in the initial fertilized egg's DNA-RNA sequence and does not
change (i.e., "evolve") during the ontogenic process. Yet, that fact is blatantly
denied, and this absurd theory is used to rationalize abortion today.
10. Mysticism And Modern Science
The logical end result of secular humanism is a spiritual vacuum. But each of us
have been created with a human spirit and hence spiritual hunger. And so, men
long for some source of spiritual reality.
The impact of Eastern Religions, introduced into America on a large scale in the
aftermaths of the Korean and Viet Nam wars, provided just that: a modern form of
paganism called “monism”. It claims that everything is part of God, including you
and I. Hence that source of spiritual reality and “truth” is to be found within each
of us, and is what each of us will find when we search within.
The 1997 book Spirit Wars by Peter Jones delineates how all of this new
spiritualism within Christianity is really a modern variant of ancient Gnosticism,
now known as “New Ageism”.
Jones5 notes the main result of this spiritual vacuum, its main emphasis and how
destructive it is:
5
g
Jones, Peter, SPIRIT WARS - Pagan Revival in Christian America, (Mukilteo,
WA: WinePress Publishing, 1997), ISBN 1-883893-74-7, page 38.
“The collapse of secular humanism has forced a repeal of its four spiritual
laws: biological evolutionism ..., existentialism ..., Freudianism ..., and
Marxism .....”
“... he said, ‘The spiritual experience of the divine within.’ On this the
world will be reconstructed. [But this] Eastern monistic spirituality attacks
the foundations of our Western culture and in particular, rational discourse.
If the source of meaning lies within the divine self, choice and opinion are
the hightest values [, not the Word of God].”
This modern variant of ancient Gnosticism is now known as “New Ageism”. The
currently rising New Age Movement is Satan's "ultimate" religious deception of
modern mankind. Some of the New Age phenomena involve a false form of
science.
Scientistic humanism, based on anti-Biblical and non-scientific
doctrines, is but a religious foothold by Satan over the world's educated leaders.
The stage having been set, his next step is but to introduce mysticism and the
occult into the modern philosophy of science. This he is indeed doing.