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Continuing from the last lesson, we discuss the response to liberalism: fundamentalism. While the initial intentions of this movement were noble, the modern fundamentalist movement may have caused more harm than good.
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Details
Continuing from the last lesson, we discuss the response to liberalism: fundamentalism. While the initial intentions of this movement were noble, the modern fundamentalist movement may have caused more harm than good.
Comment
Continuing from the last lesson, we discuss the response to liberalism: fundamentalism. While the initial intentions of this movement were noble, the modern fundamentalist movement may have caused more harm than good.
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The speaker starts by discussing upcoming summer events and announces a change in the schedule due to a postponed campout. Instead, they will have a bonfire at their house. They then proceed to answer questions from the previous week's discussion on liberalism and cover topics such as modernism, the synoptic problem, Immanuel Kant's teachings, Unitarian Universalism, and the liberal version of the gospel. The speaker later transitions to discussing fundamentalism as a response to liberalism in the church, highlighting the five fundamentals and the fundamentalist-modernist split within the Presbyterian Church. Okay, I remember to start the recording earlier this time in case we get a gem like we did last week. I had a garden. He's trying something else. Okay, announcements. So the summer event schedule will be coming out soon. I have to change some dates, but Aslan and I have events picked out for the summer. It should be fun. The first event, so originally it was going to be incorporated into the campout that the church was going to have at the end of the month, but that has been indefinitely postponed since they didn't have enough people who were interested at the time. So instead, we're going to have a bonfire at my house like we did last year, which is nice because we couldn't figure out where to put that into the summer schedule with the campout there, but now that it's gone, we can have a campfire. What? Indefinitely. Yeah, I think the email that sent out yesterday said if you're interested in future campouts, respond to the email. I was a little bummed because it had been a while since we've done a church campout. I think the last time was when... What's going on here? Last time was when... It was before COVID. Yeah, because it was my first semester in college. But, you know, it works out. It works out. So that'll be June 1st. It's a Saturday. So June 1st. I'll get times to you soon, but it'll basically be the same thing that we had last year, which you guys seem to enjoy. Alright, that's all the announcements I have right now. So let's get on to questions from last week. Okay. Last week we talked about liberalism and it seemed to be semi-interesting, I think, at least. So let's get into some of these questions. Alright, first one. And I only have a couple lollipops left, so you're just going to get what you get if you don't want it. You can put it back or throw it away. I'll get a new one. First question, what were the three aspects of modernism? Bethany? Correct. Those are the three parts. The Industrial Revolution, which gave us a sense of, oh, technology's progressing. Then the theory of evolution said, oh, biology is progressing. And then philosophy said, truth itself is progressing, truth itself changes. And that's what kind of gave birth to modernism, which is this belief that everything just gets better and better through sheer human effort. Alright, next question. What is the synoptic problem? Michael? They were all written the same way you read them together. Well, you're describing the synoptic. Yeah, you know what they called that document? The Q document, right? It comes from the German word. What did Immanuel Kant teach? This is a pre-modern philosopher at the end of the Enlightenment. We cannot know objective truth, correct. He said objective truth exists, we just can't know it. We can only know our experience of things, which means that we can only know our experience of God, which means essentially he just becomes subjective. What is Unitarian Universalism? All religions, or God is in all religions. Right, yeah, essentially. You can legitimately be an atheist and be a Unitarian Universalist. I don't think we have them anymore. Okay, and last one. What is the liberal version of the gospel? Anyone who hasn't answered a question yet? Elliot? What? Okay, Bethel. What is the social gospel? When you make the gospel about just being free from all this oppression, one, that rids you of any personal responsibility for the things that are going wrong in your life, but then also it teaches moralism, which is where you're teaching the law as though it's the gospel. The gospel is about doing these things for the poor. We are almost done with this series on church history. That's crazy to think about. It feels like we kind of just started, but at the same time it also feels like we've been in it for a while. Tonight we're going to be going over fundamentalism. How many of you have ever heard the term fundamental or fundamentalist or fundamentalism? Okay, a couple of you. What do you think it means? If you're a fundamentalist, what does that mean? You're back to the basics? Okay. Yes? Okay, that's true as well. It only matters? Yeah. If someone calls you a Christian fundamentalist, what do you think they are implying about you? Actually, Jonah, what do you think? They say religion is the basics. That is what it means. Going back to what we talked about last week where that modernist viewpoint of the newer philosophies, the newer ways of looking at things must be better than the older ways of looking at things because truth evolves. Fundamentalism comes from the name fundamental, which just means the core element of something. The core elements that make something what it is. A fundamentalist, in its most basic form, is just a person who believes and defends the core belief of Christianity. Okay. Now, today, if someone uses the term fundamentalist, they're typically implying that that person is an extremist. Sometimes you'll hear this, like, they'll call Islamic terrorists Islamic fundamentalists. And I find that funny because what that usually implies is that the people who actually believe the core tenets of their religion are extremists. That reasonable people kind of water down what they believe with secularism. That's something I've always found funny. Fundamentalism started off one way, but in the decades since, in the now centuries since it started, it has taken on a more legalistic, extreme identity. And so we're going to discuss both the origin and where it's ended up. So, the fundamentalism was primarily a response to liberalism. We talked about liberalism last week. We talked about how it was taking over the seminaries, especially in Europe. It was taking over the mainline Protestant churches and even influencing the Catholic Church. And now that was coming to the U.S. And it was more so in the U.S. that there was an active resistance to liberalism, to the claims of liberals about the fact that the Bible is not inspired, that Jesus is just a man, all that, that miracles don't happen. Fundamentalists were responding to these claims of the liberals, or the modernists as they call them. And what was really kind of unique about fundamentalism is that it was kind of a coalition of conservative Protestants. So this was kind of a pan-Protestant movement. It wasn't just something that was stuck to one denomination, which both made it encouraging seeing all these different Christians come together and fight for the truth, but at the same time it also makes it a little harder to deal with because it's not like in the past where you disagree about something, you can go off and form a different Christian denomination. Now this is a pan-denominational thing. Everyone's dealing with this. This isn't where you can just run away to this denomination or this denomination. Everyone's getting affected by it. So it works both ways. So there were a lot of writings that were responding to the liberals, but the most influential were a series of five essays called the Five Fundamentals. This is where they get the name fundamentalists from. It's from these essays called the Five Fundamentals. According to these essays were these five. So the inspiration and inerrancy of scripture, the virgin birth, the atonement of Christ, dying for our sins, the resurrection of Jesus being physical, not just some allegory, and then Jesus's miracles. Meaning they happened in history, in space and time. They aren't just allegories. Now it's clear that these are not all the essential doctrines of Christianity. There's no Trinity here. There's no second coming of Christ, although I think they considered putting that in. So clearly these are not meant to be the end-all be-all. But they chose these five because these were the doctrines that were under attack the most. We talked about it last week. They denied that scripture could be inspired because they said the supernatural can't intervene in the natural world, if the supernatural exists at all. And the same thing goes with the virgin birth, or the atonement, or the resurrection, or miracles. Because the supernatural element of the Bible was being targeted, that is what fundamentalists wanted to defend. They were saying, no, the supernatural does exist, God wrote a book, he performed miracles in space and time, and God became man to save us from our sins. So that's their primary response, is to defend these very basic fundamental aspects of Christianity. Well, this obviously did not go without a fight. The liberals did not just lay down and say, oh, I guess we lost, or oh, you guys won. No, they put up a fight, and that led to the fundamentalist-modernist split. This is really the setup for where the church is today, in terms of which denominations are liberal, which are conservative. It all goes back to this. The split within Protestant denominations between liberals or modernists and fundamentalists or conservatives. This was mainly with the Presbyterian Church, what today is called the PCUSA, Presbyterian Church in the USA. The most prominent conservative leader in the PCUSA was this guy, he's named J. Gresham Machen. He was the conservative leader in the Presbyterian Church. Now, if you're asking, like, why are we talking about a Presbyterian Church, why does that matter to us? At this time, the Presbyterian Church, especially the PCUSA, was one of, if not the largest denomination, and it had a lot of influence in the universities on the East Coast, which were the best universities in America at the time. So the direction of this church really would spell where the rest of the church was going. Even if you were Baptist or Methodist or Lutheran, the direction that the PCUSA went would determine how your church would deal with a fundamentalist-modernist split. That's why it matters. That's why even today, like, we're a non-denominational church, but we still should somewhat be aware of what's going on in the denominations, because they run the seminaries where pastors are trained. They're going to be the ones that teach future congregations, perhaps even this one. So we should be aware of the influences that they have. But Machen was a seminary professor. He taught at Princeton Seminary. He's most well known for a book called Christianity and Liberalism, where he makes the case that liberalism is not only a different kind of Christianity, but it's not Christianity at all. It's a different religion. That's his main thesis. Like, liberal Christianity is not Christianity in any historical sense. It's a different religion entirely. The year before that, there was a preacher named Harry Fawcett who preached a sermon called Shall the Fundamentalists Win? And in this sermon, he proclaimed that fundamentalist Christianity, meaning basic, you know, Apostles' Creed-level Christianity, was harmful to the future witness of the church. He said they're going to keep us trapped in the past. We need to progress. We need to move forward. We need to adapt to the changing world. And these fundamentals, they're just going to keep us, you know, stuck back in the Stone Ages. And he said, inevitably, these fundamentalists are going to be driven out of the seminaries, and liberal theology is going to prevail. And this sermon was popularized because it was sponsored by John Rockefeller, who at the time was the richest man in America, right? John Rockefeller was a liberal Christian. So the two sides would kind of continue to battle it out through the 20s, and the liberals kept taking over seminaries. They took over Harvard, which used to—they still have a divinity school, but obviously it's no good. Yale, any other Ivy League school you can think of, they likely had or still have a divinity program, but it's radically liberal. It's basically unitary, universalist. So eventually, the only conservative seminary left was Princeton. And by the way, if you don't know, seminaries are where masters are trained, just in case you don't know. So the only conservative one left was Princeton, where Mason taught. And despite his efforts, liberalism continued to creep in. And eventually, the liberals took Princeton Seminary. The denomination got overwhelmed with them, and they essentially forced Mason and his fellow conservatives to leave Princeton and found another seminary called Westminster, which is in Philadelphia. And then, after all this, in the 1930s, Mason tried to form a new mission board, a conservative mission board, after the denomination said, we're not going to have any conservatives on our mission board. They said, fine, I'm going to form my own. And because of this, the denomination tried and excommunicated Mason in 1935. Now, Mason would go on to form what's now called the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, or the OPC. His excommunication, like I said, even though this is the Presbyterian Church, we're not affiliated with them, there's still many other denominations. His excommunication signaled a change in the landscape. This was the first big split in Protestant churches. Because before, like I said, split for a long denominational lines, right? You disagreed with the Lutherans, so you became Presbyterian. You disagreed with the Presbyterians, so you became Baptists. It was easy to do that. Now, it didn't matter. The guy who preached this sermon was a Baptist. The Baptists got influenced. Presbyterians got influenced. Lutherans, Methodists, all of them were succumbing to liberalism. Mason's excommunication was the first seal of that happening. In the decades following this split, the fundamentalist movement would diminish from being this kind of pan-Protestant alliance and would become more and more reactionary to the culture. This is what we're really going to look at for the rest of the lesson. At this time, one of the biggest cultural debates was over evolution. Evolution, even to this day, is still a big issue in terms of how does the church deal with it. However, the debate was not what you may think it was. The debate was not over the age of the earth or even the nature of the creation week, the six days in Genesis 1. That's what we're used to hearing today, but that really wasn't what they were arguing over at this time. Something that I found interesting while researching this is that up until this time period, around the early 20th century, conservatives actually did have various views of the creation week. Something that younger creationist literature often says is that before Darwin, every Christian held a literal six day view. The literal six day view has always been there, but there have always been Christians that had different views of that. You can talk about Charles Spurgeon, had a different view of that. Augustine, I believe Thomas Aquinas may have too. You can find these very influential guys throughout history that held different views, and the church kind of allowed for different views on this. Now, let me be clear, that doesn't mean younger creationism is wrong. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that there were various views, even before Darwin. So that wasn't the breaking point. It's not as though everyone had this one view and then Darwin comes along and now everyone's super liberal. That's not how it worked. The main problem that the fundamentalists had with evolution, though, and this is the biggest problem with evolution, is that evolution denied the unique creation of man. Now, why is it important that mankind be a unique, special creation of God? Yeah. Yeah, we're just another animal and we don't matter. But also, if man is not uniquely created, then you can't really trust if the fall actually happens. The basis of the gospel is that mankind fell in Adam. That Adam's choice to sin cursed us all. And that's why Christ comes, and is the better Adam. But if we deny that mankind is a unique creation, special creation made in the image of God, then yes, we are just animals, and we don't know what the basis of the gospel is. We don't know where sin comes from. Everything's clouded in mystery. And that was the main problem that fundamentalists had with evolution, is that it denied that. Because that's essential to the gospel. Human beings have to be a unique creation. Now, the concern over evolution kind of boiled up for a while, but it came to public light due to a court case called the Scopes Monkey Trial. That's not what it was officially called. They didn't name it the Scopes Monkey Trial in the actual court documents. It was originally called, I think, John Scopes versus the State of Tennessee, or the State of Tennessee versus John Scopes. But it became called the Scopes Monkey Trial. I forgot that picture. Because in 1925, this guy over here, John Scopes, was tried in court for teaching human evolution to his students, which was in violation of what was called the Butler Act, which made teaching evolution illegal in Tennessee public schools. Okay. The trial, there is some evidence that it may have kind of been, like this wasn't just something this guy decided to do, that he was told by other people to do this, because they wanted a big show trial to get the public eyes on this. But the trial became national news, and the defendants, which was like the UCLA, which is a very liberal law firm, they argued that Scopes' right to free speech was being trampled on, and that the Bible had no bearing on matters of public education. The Bible belongs over there in the churches. It can stay there, but it cannot touch the public square. Right? The trial ended with a guilty verdict. The court did find John Scopes guilty, but that didn't really make much of a difference. The Butler Act was later overturned, I think in the 60s. But the point of the trial was largely to show, and to paint fundamentalist Christians as science-denying rednecks who wanted to enforce Christian doctrine through the state. That was their point. The Scopes-Monkey trial is really where we get the popular notion that fundamentalists or conservative Christians are just ignorant, anti-intellectual fools. It's from this. This is what they wanted. In the years following this trial, the fundamentalist movement began to see younger creationism as the only acceptable view for Christians to hold at all. Now, I think it's the correct view, but I'm not going to say it's the only view you can hold, or else you're, like, anathematized from the church. No. Like I said, there were other views, and you can disagree with those other views, you can argue with those other views, but you have to acknowledge that the church has always held these other views, and so we shouldn't be so quick to just call people compromisers and doubt their faith because of this. I think it has the younger creationist movement, and while I'm grateful for a lot of it, I do think it is, in many ways, just a reaction to the culture. That it's just, oh, evolution is there, we've got to react to it. And you're going to kind of see this theme with fundamentalism, is that it is largely just reactionary to whatever the culture is doing. If the culture does this thing, we're going to do the opposite. And that's not a good mindset to have, as we're going to see. So, let's look at fundamentalism in the Bible. All right, so the reading of Genesis leads to how fundamentalists came to view the Bible at all. So, first off, we should make it clear, fundamentalists continue to believe the Bible is infallible and inerrant. Now, those two things are similar. I will sometimes use them interchangeably, though I shouldn't. Infallible means that the Bible is perfectly true in whatever it speaks on. Inerrant means that the Bible is without errors in terms of history or detail. So that's why, for most of church history, you won't hear people say the Bible is inerrant, because the history and detail stuff was never really in question. It was more so, is it infallible? Is it authoritative? The inerrancy came in response to liberalism, because they were saying, oh, look, it's got all these historical inaccuracies. And conservatives said, no, it doesn't. The Bible is inerrant. So this is good. We are good on this. Yes? So infallible is the Bible is true in whatever it speaks on. Inerrant is it has no detail or historical errors. So it's not like you can't say, you know, Jeremiah got things right, but he got the year wrong, or he got this detail about a city wrong. We're saying, no, even that is perfect. Even that he got right. So this is good. We all agree with this. But fundamentalists, and now I'm talking about more modern fundamentalists, they tend to take this truth and then run off the cliff with it. And they do this by the way they interpret the Bible. Fundamentalists tend to teach a very literal reading of the Bible. They say we've got to read the Bible literally. Now, what does it mean to read something literally? Take it as it is, right? Yeah, face value, word for word, right? Those are all good definitions. Even though in modern American culture, and I'm guilty of this too, we use the word literally in a very non-literal way. Like, oh, my gosh, that's so funny. I literally died. Like, no, you didn't. You actually didn't. Well then, put it on your gravestone then. I literally died. Yeah, you can put it in your will. I literally died. That is true. It is a statement of fact. So, they say read the Bible word for word in a literal sense, okay? Now, should we read the Bible literally? No? Okay, how do you determine what to read literally and not literally? Right, you're looking at context and you're looking at genre, right? Now, granted, the books of the Bible don't have the genre printed at the top of the page, obviously. But by reading it, you can tell what it is, right? You read Leviticus, and it's pretty clearly a law book, right? You read Psalms, and it's very clearly a collection of Psalms. Judges. Judges, very clearly history. So, yes, I prefer to say you should read the Bible naturally, which I get that doesn't sound super clarifying. But it's true, right? You should read it how you would naturally read a book of this kind. And so, if you're reading the historical books or the law books, then yeah, you should read it word for word, literally. Like, this happens. Now, even within history books and law books, there is some sections where there's some poetry. Yes? Well, what genre is Ezekiel? It's a prophecy, right? Now, there are historical records in the prophetic books. Like, I'm reading through Isaiah right now, and there's a chunk of Isaiah that's literally just a copy of a section from 2 Kings, like word for word. So there's history embedded within a largely symbolic and prophetic book, right? So it's not super clean cut. But, again, you can understand it from the context. So, yeah, you should interpret historical books as history. Is that thunder, or are they moving something? I was like, that's thunder. It's like, they ain't moving something that big. Or, I mean, well, no, it's too slow to be artillery. So you should read history as history. But there are other books in the Bible, or other parts of the Bible, that are meant to be read in different ways. Whether it be symbolic, poetic, or even hyperbolic. There are parts of the Bible where hyperbole, meaning kind of speaking over the top, is used. Like when Paul says, you know, if I speak in the tongues of men and angels, right? He's kind of going over the top a bit to make his point. He's not literally saying someone can speak in the tongues of angels. Now, fundamentalists recognize this. They will say, oh yeah, the Bible's got different genres in it. But they strive to still try to interpret everything literally, unless it's clearly symbolic. Right? And this may sound good, but really this can be boiled down to literal unless ridiculous. That is their hermeneutic. We read it literally unless it's ridiculous, right? So, I mean, we're going through Revelation in Sunday school, and I've talked about this before. If they say, oh, we've got to read the Bible literally, say, okay, do you believe it's going to be a seven-headed dragon coming out of the Mediterranean Sea that's going to eat people? And if they say yes, which there may be some that would, I'd say go to Isaiah or any other book where Jesus is called the Lamb of God and say, did Jesus transform into a lamb when he was on the cross and he died? Obviously not. And they'll be like, no, that's ridiculous. It's like, look, if you're going to be, if you're going to say everything in the Bible has to be interpreted literally, then you've got to be consistent with that. But if you are, the Bible makes no sense. It's nonsense. So this is a terrible standard, the literal unless ridiculous, because it's totally arbitrary, right? I may find one thing ridiculous that you don't. Okay? Exactly. That's what the liberals said. They said, oh, we can't believe in Herodotus. That's ridiculous. Right? But they're fine saying, oh, yeah, well, Jesus, you know, maybe gave the Sermon on the Mount. That's fine. But the reason they cling to a literal reading, this hyper-literal reading, is because they believe that symbolism or poetry or hyperbole is nothing but an open door to liberalism. Right? That if it's not, like, desi, wooden, literal meaning, if it's got even a little bit of symbolism in there, then that's a crack in the door that the liberals can just wedge themselves into. And now you're allegorizing everything to death. Right? So they kind of have this all or nothing mindset of it. Like, it's either got to be all literal or it's liberalized. There's no middle ground. There's no room for reason and prudence and, you know, using your brain to figure this stuff out. So they would rather risk things being taken too literally than being allegorized into heresy. And I can respect the desire to not want heresy. But a literal reading does not stop you from being heretical. Right? A literal reading would say, God the Father has a physical body, which is a heresy that the Mormons believe. So they have a literal reading, but it doesn't save them. And lastly, many fundamentalists, not all, but many, also believe that the King James Bible is the only English translation that can be used. Some go as far as to say it's the only version that can be used full stop. Now, let me be clear. King James only is not the same thing as preferring to read the King James. I like the King James quite a bit. It's probably in my top three favorite translations. Yes? Yes. I like it. It sounds very majestic and epic. You know, I like that when I'm reading the Bible. I don't read from it often, but I do like to read from it occasionally. So that's not what this means. This isn't the same as saying, I like the King James the best. Or even, I think it's the best. You're totally free to think it's the best. King James only isn't just saying the King James is the best. It's the King James is the only version you can use. And if you don't, you are in horrible sin. Yes? What about people who aren't reading in English? It would depend. What about people who aren't reading in English? They should learn English. Like good Americans. No. We don't have that. Who would you assign as that? Well, I don't know who to assign that. This is purely from tradition. It's purely because they heard the King James growing up. And they think it's the oldest English translation. It's not. It's the Tyndale Bible being earlier. Yes? I have no idea how many Christians are truly that fundamentalist these days. I mean, it's dwindling, obviously. The number is dwindling. I think the biggest denominations that are fundamentalists are the Nazarene Holiness Movement and Independent Fundamentalist Baptist. Those are two biggest. I have no idea. Yeah, yeah. That's not much. It's really very hard to find. They are out there. They are out there. But yeah, their numbers are shrinking. And we're going to kind of get to why that is the case, if you haven't picked it up already. But the King James only-ism. So, some go even further. So, going back to your question, I think it was Esli that said, you know, what about people who lived before this? Most, I think, would probably say, well, obviously, you know, whatever translation they could use was fine. So, whether that be the Hebrew and the Greek or even the Latin Vulgate. Because all those were used in translating the King James. Some go further and say that the King James version itself is actually inspired directly by God. Right? So, not just that saying the Hebrew and the Greek are inspired and we translate them. No, like the King James is inspired. I think that is a minority view. But it does exist. Now, this view just requires someone to be ignorant of history. Especially of history of how the King James was made. Because, like I said, first, it wasn't the first English Bible. And two, the King James was translated by Calvinist Anglicans. Two groups that fundamentalists hate. Fundamentalists hate Calvinists and they hate Anglicans because they're too Catholic. And they also don't like Lutherans or Protestarians or really anyone that's not a fundamentalist, according to their definition. So, it's complete cognitive dissonance. Where they'll say, you know, we can't be associated in any way with these other Christian traditions because they have to be pure. But then they'll use the King James, which was translated on the order of a king by Calvinist Anglicans. And it used a Greek text that was translated by a Roman Catholic. But they're fine either ignoring that or they just don't know. So, this view of scripture was supplemented by a new school of theological thought. Which came about during the 19th century. But it was really gaining traction in this post-liberal world. And this new school of thought was called dispensationalism. That's a long word. You've probably not heard it before. You've probably never heard this term, but you have definitely heard what it teaches. Because it's very popular. No theological system, in my opinion, has had a more profound impact on modern Christianity than this. So, it was developed first by an evangelist named John Darby. Back during the second great awakening. I didn't talk about it then because that lesson was already super packed. I didn't have time to fit this in. But this guy in the second great awakening named John Darby, who I think was an Anglican evangelist. And he left the Anglican church. He was attempting to form a system that would make sense of the Bible in light of the current threat of liberalism. And after studying the Bible on his own, without looking at anyone else, what they've written on it, they came to the conviction that there are essentially two peoples of God. The Christians and the Jews. Now, I should probably explain why it's called dispensationalism. So, a dispensation is basically a period of time in which things operate a certain way. So, you could say that America before 1776 was under the dispensation of the British monarchy. And then after 1776, we're under the dispensation of the Republic. So, that's what it means. So, applying this to the Bible, simplifying it, because this system is kind of complicated. But basically, Darby said that the Jews lived under the dispensation of the law. Meaning that they achieved salvation by obeying the law. And Christians live under the dispensation of grace, which means we achieve salvation by faith in Christ. Okay. But he separated Jews and Christians, right? He denied that the church is the fulfillment of Israel. He said, no, Israel is a separate thing. The church is a separate thing. Which does mean God has two different peoples. The reason... I'm sorry, I said that part. And he went so far with this view that he believed that most of the Bible was not even for Christians. But it was for Jews. And the verse he used to back him up on this is where Paul says, you need to rightly divide the word of truth. He interpreted that to mean, figure out which parts are for Jews and which parts are for Christians. That's how he interpreted that. And so he said, okay, well, all the Old Testament's for Jews, so we don't have to read that. The Synoptic Gospels are for Jews, so we don't have to read them. Revelation is for Jews, so we don't have to read that. Yes? What was that first one? I'm not sure. I couldn't tell you. It's one of Paul's letters, which I know doesn't narrow it down. But basically... What verse? Rightly divide the word of truth. 1 Timothy? Yeah, I think you're probably right. Yeah, so that's how he interpreted it. Yes? Yeah. I don't feel like reading all this stuff. But no, he was... This is why in a lot of fundamentalist churches, they don't really preach a lot from the Old Testament. And if they do, they just use it as kind of like, let's learn about how to be more like Daniel or something like that. It's never about how to disconnect to Jesus. No. Right. They usually preach from Paul's letters, or maybe John, maybe Acts, and some of the other epistles. Because they think this is what applies to Christians. All that other stuff doesn't apply anymore. Now, dispensationalism's... Sorry, I should... Dispensationalism's largest effect has been on the church's view of the end times. Now, dispensationalists are famous for making very complicated charts. I don't even know what that says. I don't know what this is actually referring to. There are some churches where they will have a very... Now, we actually do have a timeline in one of the rooms over there. But it's not a dispensationalist timeline. It's a timeline of history. Dispensationalists will have a timeline that stretches out through all history and shows how this fulfills this prophecy and this fulfills this prophecy. So, this... I think this is only part of a chart, actually. There's more than this. But I wanted to find one that would fit on the screen. But anyway, I just wanted to point that out. So, the largest effect dispensationalism has had... I'm just going to call it dispy now, because dispensationalism is a mouthful. The largest effect that dispys have had is on the view of the end times. I don't know if I can say this seriously. The view of the end times, they teach that at some point, Christians are going to be sucked off the earth in the rapture. And they'll go into heaven. And then after that, there's going to be this seven-year great tribulation. And then at the end of the seven years, Jesus will come back with all the other saints. And then he's going to rule from a rebuilt Jewish temple for a thousand years. This is all very convoluted, as you can't figure that out already. And I'm summarizing it. So, I'm just going to be blunt. The rapture's not in the Bible. Not at all. It's a fantasy. You want to know where he got the rapture from. Where Darby got the rapture from. He got it from a pastor named... I think it's either Edward or Edmund Irving. Edmund Irving. One of the two. Edmund Irving got the idea of the rapture from a vision by a 16-year-old girl named Margaret MacDonald. That is all 100% true. Literally. This 16-year-old girl had this vision that the church was getting rapture out of the earth, apparently. Edmund Irving, or Edward Irving, took it and preached it. And Darby heard the sermon on it. He said, oh, that sounds good. I'm going to take that. And that's how he got it. It's not in the Bible anywhere. People would try to read it into the Bible, but every time they do, it doesn't make sense. If you actually look at it. But still, most American churches, I would venture to guess, still today believe this. They still believe that the rapture's going to happen. This belief is dying out, thankfully. Because it's just silly. I'm kidding. It's just silly. That's what caused me to leave this. Because I grew up learning this. And then at some point when I was a teenager, I just saw one too many End Times movies, and I just said, this is stupid. I refuse to believe this is true. I didn't do a Bible study on it. I didn't go through the scriptures and figure it out. I just refused to believe it was true. I said, there's no way that the Bible has something this goofy in it. And I was right. Now, my reasoning wasn't right. But I was right. I didn't show my work, but I got the answer right. I thought someone was raising their hand. Anyway, that's the rapture. Oh, you were? Before I looked into it more, my logic was, I feel like it would be more glorifying to God. I don't know if this is just my logic, but I feel like it would be more glorifying to God that people be honored. And I still thought there was going to be some sort of tribulation. I thought it was more glorifying to God that people would be able to do that. Well, there are different views among dissensationalists about when the rapture takes place. And some people will even say, if you don't agree with me on when the rapture takes place, you're a heretic. So they have, like, pre-trib where it happens before the seven years, mid-trib where it happens in the middle, and then post-trib where it happens afterwards. And there are churches who will split over that. And I'm like, you're all wrong. This doesn't happen. Now, when Jesus comes back, we will meet him in the air. But then we're all going to come back down to the earth. Because if Jesus is coming to the earth, why would we go up to heaven? So I was going to ask you to say, when we meet him in the air, that's the rapture. Yeah, so you can call that the rapture. That's in the Bible. Yeah, that is in the Bible. That's the apostle. The apostle. Yeah, but 1 Thessalonians 4. It's just the way they explain it. Yeah. And the thing about that passage is that people say, oh, it's the rapture. If it's this rapture, then why does the passage say the dead in Christ will rise first? If we're all going into heaven, the dead people are already there. Right? This is the resurrection. That's what's happening at that moment. Yeah, that. That. So, anyway, all this to say that the main effect that dispensationalism had on the church is that it's given the church a very pessimistic view of the future. Now, yes, Jesus will return, and he will win, right? And so in that sense, they are optimistic. In that sense, all Christians are and should be optimistic. But we're talking about the view of the future of humanity. Like, where is history going to go until Christ returns? And dispensationalism and many others say the world has to get worse and worse and worse until Jesus comes back. That is the view that this system promoted. Right? And that paired well with what many Christians were feeling at the time. Think about it. Liberals had taken over the seminaries. The mainline denominations had split. Evolution was being taught in public schools. And Christians have had this feeling that the world's going downhill. Right? We're being shut out from the public square. We're losing our churches. We're losing our kids. But if this downward trend was a sign that Jesus was coming back soon, then Christians could take some level of comfort in that. They'd say, oh, OK, this is supposed to happen. Right? It's not that we've abandoned the public square because we thought it would just kind of stay the way we wanted it to. No, no, no, no. This is prophecy being fulfilled. And because the fundamentalists believed this, they actively retreated from cultural engagement outside of, like, maybe some street evangelism, which is good. But no interacting in the schools, no interacting in the universities, no interacting in politics or business. No, let's just retreat. Let's run away. Let's flee. Which, that only makes the culture more and more liberal. If there's less, you know, voices of opposition in the public square, it's just going to get worse. And so fundamentalism was really the final nail in the coffin of Christendom. I think after this, it's dead. There is no Christendom anymore. There could be one in the future. I'd be hopeful for that. But it's not, it doesn't exist anymore. All right, let's look at fundamentalism and salvation. This is getting into... I've got a question. Yes. You said that it actually, like, would be the last nail in the coffin of Christendom. Christendom, yes. Yeah, I mean, Christendom, you said, is that even in the Bible? What do you think about it? By word, by name? No. But the Bible does say that kings will bring their glory and worship Christ. I guess the way... I'm trying to think about it. I guess the way people view it, we know that the kingdom of God, the presence of the body, kingdom of God, is, you know, influencing our life. Yeah, so the reason that I came from that is that there are also some fundamentalists from... Can you talk about that? Thank you. Fundamentalism, I think they have to take over. Right. There are definitely some that do that. And view, you know, and, like, view for Christ. Right, right, right. There is definitely a way you can go too far with it. But I... Like, we've been going over church history, and we've seen that when Christendom was kind of a thing, you know, like the Middle Ages and so on, there were problems, but there was also a lot of good that came out of it. I don't think you should just brush it away and say it's not good at all. But that's a very good question. So, how do they view salvation? This is where there can be some difference among groups. I'm mostly going to focus on how fundamentalist Baptists view salvation. So, starting out, they do have a solid understanding believing salvation is by grace through faith in Christ alone. They are adamant about that, and good for them for being adamant about that. That's great. They will defend that to their grace. They believe this is, you know, you cannot budge on this. And I would agree. But some of them go too far, and again, this goes back to a very hyper-literal reading of the text, where they say that because we're saved by grace through faith in Christ alone, then that means repentance is a work, and therefore it is not necessary for salvation. I listened to a podcast where a more Reformed Baptist preacher was interviewing fundamentalist Baptists, and they were adamant. They say the Bible never says to repent of your sins, which is not true. It never says it in that order, but it does say to repent of your sins. And they were adamant. They said no, repentance is not necessary for salvation, only faith. Right. Right. But some would not even say that, because they'd say, no, only faith. That is the only thing that is necessary for salvation. To which I would say repentance is just a description, one of the ways you can describe what faith is. If faith is trusting Christ, well then that means not trusting yourself and the things of the world. That's what repentance is. So I think they go too far there. And again, I think this comes back to a very hyper-literal reading, and because the Bible never says repentance equals faith, they say, well, then repentance must be a work. It must be a work, and we're not work-based salvation, so we can't have that. Now, this description may sound surprising, because fundamentalists are known for supposedly being very legalistic. They're very, like, gotta do this to be saved, gotta do this. And again, I'm only looking at fundamentalist Baptists here. There's other traditions that could do things differently. And that is true. Fundamentalist churches are very strict in terms of things you can do and can't do. Like, here's a list. Fundamentalists most forbid alcohol. So they forbid women wearing pants in church. They forbid women wearing makeup. They forbid facial hair. And they forbid listening to secular music. Some go further and forbid people from going to movie theaters. Like, not, like just stepping foot in one. Right? Not even depending on the movie that you're seeing. So they have all these laws. And again, you also have to read from the King James Version. Okay? So where does this attitude come from? If they're so adamant about salvation by faith alone, faith and no works at all, then where does this come from? Right? It sounds like they should be super antinomian, like super liberal almost. But then here they're very legalistic. I think the reason for this is because, like we've noticed, fundamentalism is reactionary. Whatever the culture does, they're going to do the opposite. And so what this shows is that fundamentalists are actually kind of under the control of the culture. They let the culture tell them what they, what to do by just doing the opposite of what they do. Yes, Tim? Do you know if it's salvation or is that just another state? It depends. Some are very adamant about one state to always say. And by that they don't mean perseverance, like you will keep, they mean that once you say that, walk that aisle, say that prayer, get baptized, your ticket's punched, you're good. There are some that can't, right? This is somewhat broad. Like I said, I was picking one lane just to have something to describe. But again, this is inconsistent because, well, that's correct, this isn't. But this sounds very antinomian, right? There's nothing you have to do to be saved. But then down here they say, but you've got to do all this stuff. You've got to do all this stuff. Right? Or they're going to judge you very harshly and get you out of the church. Yes? Do you think women should wear makeup? You know, I almost put facial hair for men, but then I was like, well, I don't think you'd find the other way around. I was like, maybe I don't have to do that. It's true. I guess not. But, so, going back to, going back to what I was saying, they are reactionary, right? They say, oh, but the culture is all about drinking alcohol. We've got to be separate from the culture. We're not going to drink alcohol here. Right? This is where you get grape juice used in communities, which I know we do that here. And I, you know, I both funded it. But I understand. I'm not a huge purist on that. I think some of them, like you said, they are reactionary. Right. Some of them, in the attempt of trying to, I mean, I guess they think they have to do so much work to take care of it. Right. And in the attempt of trying to keep themselves from being pained by it all, they go straight to the x-ray. Exactly. Exactly. I grew up in a church where women are not allowed to wear earrings. They weren't allowed to wear earrings? Yeah. That's what the church is here in the United States. It's called the Apostolic Faith. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So the African Episcopal Church in Lagos, Nigeria. My parents gave their life to Christ in that church. Yeah. And then they are, they have, they have defeated some of these traits. And as I grew up, as I studied the Bible, I started seeing some of the things I'm like, this is not really right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That's the funny thing is that fundamentalists will tell their people to read the Bible, but not really to study the Bible. Because you study it, you're going to start questioning this stuff. So, but I think this, this kind of reactionary impulse. I think this is why a lot of kids who grow up in fundamentalist churches leave the faith. Yeah. I think this is why. It's, it's not because, and it's not because they were told they can't do stuff. All kids are told they can't do stuff. It's because they felt that Christianity was defined by the word no. Christianity is defined by what you don't do, what you're not like, what you can't do or drink or eat or whatever. Right. Because then that is what defines Christianity, even though they knew Jesus had something to do with it. That's what they felt. And so fundamentalism is, in practice, is a negative worldview, by which I mean it is primarily based on what you can't and shouldn't and aren't allowed to do. They don't, these kids don't have a positive worldview. And by that, I don't mean a worldview that just says, oh, you're, you're good and happy and everything's great. Positive worldview being like, Christian is defined by what you believe. What are you for? What do you stand for? What is good? Right. That's a positive worldview. And that's what, what people need. That's what kids need. That's what, what everyone needs. We need something to fight for, not just things to run away from. Moving on. So fundamentalism in the church. So this is the last main point and then we'll finish up. So how do fundamentalists view the church, both local and universal? Most fundamentalist churches tend to be very critical of denominations. And this is largely due to what happened in the modernist split. That split caused a lot of Christians to fear any idea of a formal denomination. So every church should be kind of this isolated, completely independent church. Right. These islands of Christianity almost. Because they fear, you know, what happens when a big denomination shoves liberalism down your throat. And that is a big problem. That is a problem. I understand that. But at the same time, denominations do have resources that allow missionaries to be sent, seminaries to be built. So there's give and take here. Another reason they reject denominations is because they desire a pure church. Pure church. Only pure church. Now, this is not new with fundamentalism. By the way, by pure church, what I mean is a church where no one is, where everyone is regenerated. Everyone is born again. And obviously that should be our desire. But Christ tells us in his parables that the weak and the tares will grow together and that he will sort them out on the last day. There are always going to be nominal Christians. There are always going to be false professions. And you can do your best to, you know, sort that out with church discipline. But at the end of the day, you're not going to root it out entirely. You're never going to have a pure church until the resurrection. I agree. Yes. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Yes, it's very true. But like I said, this is actually not new with fundamentalism. This type of perfectionist mindset has been around, I mean, you could argue it goes back to the New Testament, but it goes all the way back to the Donatists at least. The Donatists wanted a pure church by saying anyone who was baptized by a bishop that later denied the faith, you're baptized as a legitimate, you're not a Christian. Right. That's that desire. Like, we need a pure church. Right. And naturally this leads to endless schism because there is no room for disagreement. Right. You can't disagree on things like spiritual gifts or predestination or whatever. Right. Everything is this dogmatic, no, we need a pure church. And if you're not part of the pure church, you need to get out. Right. So this just leads to endless splits. This is why, I mean, there's a county here near where we are. I remember when I worked as a window installer, I was driving with a guy through it. He said, you know, there's more churches in this county. And I don't think this guy was a Christian. He said there's more churches in this county than any other county, either in North Carolina or maybe he said the U.S. And he said there's like 80 plus churches in this small county in North Carolina. He said it's because all these churches had splits. Because this guy just used this guy, he went and started a new church. That's why. And most of these churches can't keep their lights on because they don't have the people, they don't have the population. And that, but this is where that comes from, this desire to have, I mean, also it comes from pride, of course, but also a desire to be like, no, we need to be a pure church. We need to be holy. And usually that's also accompanied by a belief that we're in the end times and Jesus is coming soon. Right. Because you can't maintain this for centuries. So you have to have this mindset of Jesus is coming soon, we need to purify ourselves all the way right now and kick out everyone who's a compromiser. But that just leads to more disagreement, more schism, and the, your pool of brothers and sisters in Christ shrinks and shrinks and shrinks and shrinks. So it's good of them helping those that are weak. Yeah. Yeah. Because we only want serious Christians. We want the Navy SEALs of Christians. Right. But this is a local church, right? How do fundamentalists view the church throughout history? Well, fundamentalism is largely to blame for the disinterest in church history that many Christians today have. Right. The reason fundamentalists ignore church history is because they think 95% of Christians throughout history were likely heretics. Right. Especially fundamentalist Baptists. They reject the idea that they came out of the Reformation. They reject the idea that they are Protestant. Right. They don't believe they're Protestant because Protestants came out of the Catholic Church. They said, no, no, no. We go back to the very beginning. They believe that fundamentalist Baptists have essentially existed throughout the past 2,000 years of history. Actually, this is a very complicated timeline, too. Basically, what this says is that here's the nominal church, right? There's the Catholics and Orthodox and the Presbyterians. And here's the Baptists that have been here the whole time. Yeah. And they call it the trail of blood because they're always getting persecuted. I mean, do you realize there's astronauts? Always have. It's like, oh, it was always Baptists. It was always Baptists. A friend of mine sent me a meme one time where it says how we view church history. And it was like the Apostles and then in parentheses it was Baptists. And then it says other Baptists, persecuted Baptists, where we are today. That's the whole thing. But this is how they view church history. It's that most of the church throughout church history have all been apostate heretics. And that the real church has been this tiny little secret, you know, number. And that they popped up every now and then as the Donatists or the Waldensians or the Hussites or this or that. And that every time they were smushed by the Catholics or the Orthodox or the Lutherans or whatever. And they'll even say, they'll even go as far as to say that whatever doctrines the Catholic church got right, they just stole it from the Baptists they persecuted. So they say, you know, you could bring up, what about Athanasius and the Trinity? They say, oh yeah, he probably just stole that from Baptists. It's a mess. The podcast I listened to, I kid you not, the pastor that I was being interviewed, and he was fairly cordial or fundamentalist Baptist, but he was very kind. But he said, I am ignorant of church history. But I truly believe that Baptists don't come out of the Protestant Reformation. They don't come out of the Catholic Church. You said you're ignorant of history, and yet you make this very bold claim that is clearly wrong. And this is one of the reasons I wanted to do this series. I wanted you guys to see if the church has always been there. And not in this tiny little secret seed form. No, it's been there. Has it been imperfect? Absolutely. I hope you've realized that by now. But it's been there. It was there in the medieval church. In the medieval Catholic church, the true church was there. And then it was reformed in the Reformation. And lastly, there is a sense of the anti-intellectual, meaning that they are against higher learning, really thinking deeply about these things. And this may be due to the fact that, like I said, universities and seminaries, they were all taken over by liberals. And so there's a skepticism towards those institutions. Like if you say, oh, I have a PhD in this and that, and I went to this school, they'll be like, I don't know if we can trust you. You may have gotten the liberal cooties all over you. Right. Exactly. There's a negative attitude towards the intellectual side of Christianity. Fundamentalists, as far as I could find, they don't go write systematic theology textbooks. They're not going and reading what the church fathers wrote on something. Right. They view all of that as adding to the Bible, which it's not. We are solo scriptura, not solo scriptura. Fundamentalists tend to lean upon a just have childlike faith mantra. If you have deep questions, you just need to have more childlike faith. Which is pretty dumb, because if you've been around kids, they ask a lot of questions. So a childlike faith seems like it's pretty inquisitive to me. But that's their mantra, is just have more faith. God will figure it out. Sure, you don't need to know the answers to everything. You're not going to know the answers to everything. But you should always be looking to learn more. All right. We'll finish out with this last, I think the main point that fundamentalists should teach us. And that's that we cannot be ruled by fear of the world. I've tried to emphasize that fundamentalism is reactionary. It is all based on what is the culture doing so we can do the opposite. Yes? That's what I was thinking about. I was like, could the culture just pull a big sigh up on them? Apparently they don't care enough. But it's like, what if all of them just started dressing very nice and going to church? Would they have a hardwired short circuit? They would all just turn to hippie churches all of a sudden. This is the deception of Satan. We need to get away from it. And this is a sign that they're ruled by their fears. Like you pointed out, Lazaro, it's that they're afraid of the coming to sin. And so they go overboard in distancing themselves and their children and their families from that. It's almost like the monks in the Middle Ages. They were so terrified of committing sins. And that the good things in this life, the good pleasures in this life would lead them into sin. They said, you know, no good food, no marriage, no comfortable clothing, no nice house. We're just going to suffer as much physically here. So that way we're not tempted to sin and we get better rewards. Yeah. Yeah, because the problem is internal. Right. But fundamentalism is really just Protestant asceticism in a certain way. Where it's, you know, denied, like, get away from the world or you don't get the sin on you. And we're just going to kind of hold up here until Jesus fractures us out. Right. They kind of remind me in some ways of some of the Puritans that were always afraid of demons and witches. They were very superstitious people in a lot of ways. Not all of them, but some of them were. These people claimed to serve the God who conquered sin, death, and the devil. And yet they live as though Christ failed his mission after this. They live as though all Jesus did was basically get a helicopter that's going to come in and get us out. While the world just, like, burns into oblivion. Right. And not that Christ came in to actually bring the kingdom of God to the world through the spread of the gospel. Fundamentalism is a philosophy of defeat. It's about running away from the world and hiding under arbitrary rules. And when people are afraid, they are easily controlled. And this is why many fundamentalist churches can end up functioning like cults. And are rife with physical and spiritual abuse. Right. And I know that that can happen anywhere. But it is right in these kind of churches because these churches are cut off from not only other churches, but from Christian history and Christian theology. And so their pastors essentially become infallible. Right. They are essentially the pope of their little church. So you can't question me. I'm the pastor. And that's how you get an abusive church. So whatever they say is law because they know the Bible better than you. That's what this leads to. Now, Christians should have a healthy fear of sinful influences. Right. You should be wise in what you think is going to tempt you. But to be so afraid that the world will re-corrupt you is to doubt the work of the Holy Spirit. If you are in Christ, the spirit of Christ dwells within you, changing you into an image of Christ. Right. And that work cannot be undone because you see a movie or listen to music made by an unbeliever. I don't see you as an image of Christ. Changing into an image of Christ. I know. I wish. I'm less sanctified than you are. That's why. I know. You are very fundamentalist. I know. I know. The church I grew up in actually, like, I thought it was fundamentalist for a while. It was actually kind of liberal, if I'm being honest. But anyway, Jesus told us not to fear men because they can only destroy the body. They can't cast us into hell. But fundamentalists treat men like they can destroy the body and cast our souls into hell by corrupting us to the point where God says, never mind. You know, away with you. I never knew you because you watched this R-rated movie at one point. Right. Christ's promise is better assurance than that. And I'll leave you with this passage. Ephesians 1, verses 11 through 14. It says, The point of that passage is to say, your entire salvation from the moment you believe throughout your whole life to the moment you die and go into eternity, all of it is within the plan of God. It's within his control. It's within his care. He does care about you. And especially in that first verse, works all things according to the counsel of his will. That includes the liberal takeover of churches. Right? That sucks. I don't like that that happened. It's bad. Right? I wish it didn't happen. But it's what happened. We can't change it. God has a plan for it. Absolutely. Absolutely. He has a reason for allowing it to exist. So we have to trust his plan. We have to live boldly, but also joyfully in a world that's... The world hates itself right now. I don't know if you noticed. The world is trying to kill itself. Especially the western countries. We are suicidal. We hate ourselves. We hate our heritage. We hate our culture. We hate our language. We hate ourselves. Christians should be the opposite of that, not by being prideful, but by living joyfully, saying there are good things to live for in this life, and ultimately that's all because Christ has redeemed us. Right? That's the greatest witness we have. Not running away. Not hiding. But living joyfully. We'll leave it there. And then the last lesson is next week.
