Eschatology and Ethics

Too often, the way evangelicals have talked about the end times has relegated the end times—to the end of time. But the Scripture asserts the end of the ages has come (1 Cor. 10:11, Heb. 9:26). It is sometimes suggested that evangelicals have been too focused on eschatology, the study of the end, but I think the opposite is true.

An earlier generation focused on prophecy charts and discussions of the rapture, antichrist, tribulation and the millennium; but younger evangelicals seem to talk very little at all about eschatology. It is not uncommon for me to hear a young seminarian assert, “Well, eschatology is not all that important.”

I think the problem with both groups is that they need to focus more on eschatology.   Continue at David E. Prince

Worldview - Predictions for Churches

A couple of articles highlighting expected trends in the church over the next year. First of all, some predictions from The Institute of Religion and Democracy:

• Polygamy will gain as an issue in religion and society.
• Church attendance will increase in major cities.
• …But Oldline Protestant denominations will lose at least another 300,000 members.
• Meanwhile, the National Council of Churches will come precariously close to collapse.
• Christians continue to increase in Israel while decreasing everywhere else in Mideast.
• Anti-Israel sentiments will surface in the evangelical world, especially on evangelical college campuses.
• Most evangelicals will remain against or ambivalent about mass legalization of illegal immigrants.   Continue at David Murray

The Long History of Billy Graham’s Ecumenism

The following was first published in the out-of-print book Evangelicals and Rome in 1999:

When Did Graham’s Compromise Begin?

Billy Graham’s compromise and disobedience began very early in his ministry. He was born in 1918 into a Presbyterian home and traces his conversion to the preaching of evangelist Mordecai Ham in 1934. He graduated from high school in May 1936 and attended Bob Jones College (which later became Bob Jones University) in the fall but switched to Florida Bible Institute after only one semester because he did not like the strict discipline at Bob Jones. 

He notes in his biography that “one thing that thrilled me [about Florida Bible Institute] was the diversity of viewpoints we were exposed to in the classroom, a wondrous blend of ecumenical and evangelical thought that was really ahead of its time” (Graham, Just As I Am , p. 46). 

It was during his time in Florida that Graham felt the call to preach. In late 1938, he was baptized by immersion in a Baptist church, and in early 1939, he was ordained to preach by a Southern Baptist congregation.   Continue at John Samson

Kingdom Come: The Amillennial Alternative

My new book on biblical eschatology, Kingdom Come, is now available, at least to those in the U.K.! The reason I know is that I am in the U.K. speaking at a conference called New Word Alive and the book is here at my side. I couldn’t be more pleased. Christian Focus Publishers has done a marvelous job in its production and I think you’ll enjoy it. It is only available in hardback and is a mere 589 pages in length! Sorry for that, but I had a lot to say. I’ve been told that copies are aboard a ship at this very moment and the book should be available in the U.S. around the first of May. You can place a pre-order with Amazon by clicking on the link below on the right hand side of the home page.

Here are some of the endorsements provided by some names you may recognize. I’m incredibly blessed by their kind and encouraging words.

“Evangelicals continue to be divided over eschatology, and such divisions will likely continue until the eschaton. For some, premillennialism is virtually equivalent to orthodoxy. Sam Storms challenges such a premise with a vigorous defense of amillennialism. Storms marshals exegetical and theological arguments in defense of his view in this wide-ranging work. Even those who remain unconvinced will need to reckon with the powerful case made for an amillennial reading. The author calls us afresh to be Bereans who are summoned to search the scriptures to see if these things are so.”

Thomas R. Schreiner, James Buchanan Harrison Professor of New Testament Interpretation The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary Louisville, Kentucky   Continue at Sam Storms

IMAGE

Why are Evangelicals Fudging on the Gospel to Promote Mitt Romney?

On Sunday in the Aquila Report Bill Evans made some interesting claims concerning Mormonism in his attempt to persuade readers that there is a Christian position in the upcoming presidential election – a position that requires voting for Mitt Romney.

Evans writes:

While Mormons are not Christians in the traditional creedal sense of the term, I also have little doubt that there are Mormons who are looking in faith to Christ for salvation. In addition, the argument can be made that Mormons are closer to biblical truth on some issues than many liberal Protestants.

Scott Clark has a thoughtful analysis of Evans’s claim at the Heidelblog so I won’t offer that here. What strikes me is how so many Christian conservatives, from Bill Evans to Billy Graham, feel the need to soften their criticism of Mormonism in order to justify voting for Romney.

Part of what puts Evans, at least, in this position, may be his off-handed dismissal of the two kingdoms perspective. Christians who do not conflate the kingdom of God with the kingdoms of this world have less trouble justifying voting for a candidate who approximates their understanding of justice regardless of his or her religion. To be sure, they do give up the right to claim their perspective on the election as the Christian one, a concession Evans is loath to make.

For a much better perspective on the upcoming election – one grounded in the two kingdoms perspective – see Richard Phillips’s article published by the Aquila Report yesterday. Phillips argues that the church should proclaim the political principles taught in Scripture but should avoid entanglements in politics itself. Why?  Continue at Matthew Tuininga

Halloween and Evangelical Identity

The words “evangelical” and “fundamentalist” have very little meaning. For some, a “fundamentalist” is anyone who believes in miracles. For others, it necessitates a King James only Bible or a pre-trib Rapture or even a certain sort of public posture. At an American Baptist Churches General Assembly, I’d be considered a hardcore fundamentalist. At a KJV-only independent Baptist Bible camp, I probably wouldn’t be counted.

 

And “evangelical” includes, for some people, everyone from J.I. Packer to T.D. Jakes to Brian McLaren. That can get confusing, especially to those on the outside of our circles.

A few years ago, a friend of mine, the inimitable John Mark Reynolds, attempted to explain, simply, some of the differences for our friends on the outside of conservative Protestantism. Picking up on the old definition, “An evangelical is a fundamentalist who likes Billy Graham,” Reynolds said, “An evangelical is a fundamentalist who watches The Office.”

I tried my hand at explaining the spectrum, with tongue in cheek, using Halloween as a Rorschach test. I posted it over at the First Things group blog. Here goes.  Continue at Russell D. Moore

Misunderstanding Vatican II

I think Evangelicals and Catholics Together (ECT) and similar efforts to make common cause with Roman Catholics are based on a fundamental misunderstanding of where the Roman Catholic Church is theologically and what it actually teaches. There is no question that the Roman Catholic Church has changed since the sixteenth century. But the changes have not closed the gap between Rome and Protestantism. Indeed, the differences are greater now. For instance, the formally defined proclamation of the infallibility of the pope and all of the Mariology statements have come since the Reformation. Neither has Rome backed down from any of the positions it took in the sixteenth-century debate. In the updated Catechism of the Catholic Church, released in the mid-1990s, the treasury of merit, purgatory, indulgences, justification through the sacraments, and other doctrines were reaffirmed.

I think this misunderstanding has been driven primarily by confusion over the significance of Vatican Council II (1962–65). It was only the second ecumenical council of the Roman Catholic Church since Trent, the other being Vatican Council I (1869–70). So, these councils are rare events, and the church and the world were surprised when Pope John XXIII convened Vatican II.

The statements produced by Vatican I referred to Protestants as schismatics and heretics. In marked contrast, the rhetoric of Vatican II was kind, warm, and appeasing. Protestants were called “separated brethren.” John’s passion, which he set forth in a pastoral letter, was that the Lord’s sheepfold would be one. There should be unity under one shepherd, he said, with all Christians returning to Holy Mother Church under the Roman pontiff. John was seen as kind, avuncular, and warm, so people jumped to the conclusion that Rome had changed its theology. However, many overlooked the fact that John ruled out any debate about justification at Vatican II.  Continue at R. C. Sproul

6 Reasons Why Mormons Are Beating Evangelicals in Church Growth

Our churches face a demographic crisis.

Young people are leaving, even the Southern Baptist Convention is losing members, and when you drill down deeper---comparing church attendance with population growth---the picture looks even more bleak. Simply put, when America's fastest-growing religious segment is "nonreligious," we have a problem. The Barna Group recently compiled the results of a number of national studies and published a list of six reasons why young evangelicals leave the church:

1. The church is overprotective.
2. Their experience of Christianity is shallow.
3. Churches seem antagonistic to science.
4. The church's approach to sexuality is judgmental and simplistic.
5. They wrestle with the exclusivity of Christianity.
6. The church feels unfriendly to those who doubt.

These answers are just what you'd expect, because they correspond to many leading churches in modern evangelicalism that combine nominally traditional doctrine with shallow commitment and have been plagued by rampant divorce and extramarital sex---all against a backdrop of extreme cultural hostility. In other words, we're about 95 percent like the surrounding culture and hated for the 5 percent deviation.

But one religious group shows consistent growth year by year and decade by decade. Mormons, living in the same country and culture as evangelicals, keep growing their church. Why? I propose six reasons.

1. Mormons have bigger families.

This is the easiest and simplest explanation. But it's far from the entire story. In fact, if family size were determinative, then many churches in America would be growing at a rate that exceeded general population growth.  Continue at David French

Bounderies

We're often told by gurus of church-growth and guardians of postmodern values in the evangelical community that we mustn't erect "boundaries."

I gather from the way such comments are often bandied about that the word boundaries is supposed to have totally negative connotations. Honestly: I don't see why. I can understand how worldly people whose minds are enslaved to earthbound, man-centered, self-indulgent thoughts might wish for a world without any lines or borders. But candidly, it's an attitude that's hard to reconcile with the whole tenor of the New Testament.

Contemporary evangelicals' resistance to boundaries is especially hard to reconcile with the fact that pastors (the word means shepherds) are expressly charged with guarding the flock and keeping predators out of the fold. And there simply is no realistic way to keep sheep in the sheepfold and wolves out if you refuse to observe any boundaries. In John 10:7, Jesus famously said: "Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep." I cannot envision any useful purpose for having a "door [for] the sheep" if there is no sheep-pen or enclosure of some kind with well-defined, secure barricades, sturdy fences, or a protected perimeter of some kind.

But mainstream evangelicals have been indoctrinated along with the rest of postmodern society to think walls and borders are inherently sinister. We're conditioned to favor a whole different set of more stylish and more politically-correct values: tolerance, openness, diversity, mystery, indecision, broad-mindedness, and liberality. It's considered humble and generous to entertain perpetual qualms about what we believe. We're not supposed to think any single perspective can righteously claim to be true to the exclusion of all others.  Continue at Phil Johnson

Are Churches Secularizing America?

Several years ago, a mainline theologian told me of his experience at an evangelical megachurch. He was visiting his children and grandchildren during spring break and then Easter Sunday arrived. Nothing visibly suggested that it was a Christian service, but this distinguished theologian tried to reign in his judgments. There was no greeting from God or sense that this was God’s gathering. The songs were almost exclusively about us, our feelings, and our intentions to worship, obey, and love; but it was not clear whom they were talking about or why. He concluded, “Well, evangelicals don’t really have a liturgy. They put all of the content into the sermon, so I’ll wait.”

His patience, however, was not rewarded. Although it was Easter, the message (with no clear text) was on how Jesus gives us the strength to overcome our obstacles. Lacking even a benediction, this theologian left discouraged. He had come to an evangelical church at Easter and instead of meeting God and the announcement of a real victory over sin and death by Jesus Christ, he encountered other Christians who were being given fellowship and instructions for making their own “Easter” come true in their life.

Pressed with leading questions by his son-in-law as to his reaction to the service (like, “Did it touch your heart?”), the theologian broke his silence: “I assume you’re trying to ‘evangelize’ me right now,” he said. “But there was no ‘gospel’ anywhere in that service that might convert me if I were unconverted.” He concluded, “Not even in the most liberal churches I’ve been in was the service so devoid of Christ and the gospel. It’s like ‘God who?’”

Since then, a mainline Methodist theologian told me of an almost identical experience-curiously also at Easter-in a conservative Presbyterian church that was known around the university for its “Bible-believing” and “Christ-centered” ministry. He too left disappointed (the sermon was something about how Jesus overcame his setbacks and so can we), further substantiating his appraisal that evangelicals are as likely as mainliners today to talk pop-psychology, politics, or moralism instead of the gospel.

Over a century ago, Princeton theologians Charles Hodge and B. B. Warfield observed that according to the system of revivalism associated especially with Charles Finney, God was not even necessary. If conversion and revival are “simply the philosophical result of the right use of means” rather than a miracle of God’s grace, all you have to do is find the right techniques, procedures, and methods that work across the board: in business, politics, and religion.  Continue at Michael Horton

Go Beyond the Sex Questions

Evangelicals appear to be preoccupied with sex. One megachurch pastor and his wife have written a book challenging married couples to a “sexperiment” of making love for seven days straight. Mark Driscoll’s controversial new book on marriage contains a chapter titled “Can We?” in which he and his wife answer questions they are typically asked in counseling situations, questions related to different sex acts.

This post is not meant to be a critique of Driscoll’s book (I haven’t read it and don’t plan to). Nor do I want the comments section to degenerate into a fiery back-and-forth about what activities are appropriate for married couples.

Instead, I want to offer a pastoral look at the underlying issues that prompt these questions and encourage pastors to go for the heart, not merely the surface, when approached with questions of this kind.

1. Recognize the legitimacy of the questions.

First, we should not be surprised that new converts are asking pointed questions about what activities are appropriate for a married couple. We live in a pornified culture.  Continue at Trevin Wax

Know Your Evangelicals: Francis Schaeffer

Name: Francis A. Schaeffer (1912-1984)

Why you should know him: Schaeffer was one of the most influential figures in American evangelicalism in the period between World War II and the mid-1980s.

Previous roles: Founder of L'Abri Fellowship International; Lecturer and author of eighteen books.

Education:
B.A., Hampden-Sydney College
B.Div. Faith Theological Seminary
Honorary D.Div., Highland College

Area of expertise/interest: Apologetics, philosophy, Western culture, abortion, neo-Calvinism

Books: The God Who is There (1968); Escape from Reason (1968); Death in the City (1969); The Church at the End of the Twentieth Century (1970); The Mark of a Christian (1970); Pollution and the Death of Man (1970); The Church Before the Watching World (1971); True Spirituality (1971); Back to Freedom and Dignity (1972); Basic Bible Studies (1972); Genesis in Space and Time (1972); He is There and He is Not Silent (1972); The New Super-Spirituality (1972); Art and the Bible (1973); Everybody Can Know (1973); No Little People (1974); Two Contents, Two Realities (1974); Joshua and the Biblical Flow of History (1975); No Final Conflict (1975); How Should We Then Live? (1976); Whatever Happened to the Human Race? (with C. Everett Koop) (1979); A Christian Manifesto (1981); The Great Evangelical Disaster (1983)

Online essays and articles: Continue at Joe Carter

Premarital Sex and Our Love Affair with Bad Stats

Evangelicals love to believe bad things about themselves. And often what they believe about themselves is not true. That’s the thesis of Bradley Wright’s excellent book Christians Are Hate-Filled Hypocrites…and Other Lies You’ve Been Told (Bethany House 2010). It’s an important thesis to keep in mind when considering a new and frequently cited article from Relevant magazine.

In the September/October issue you can find Tyler Charles provocative piece entitled “(Almost) Everyone Is Doing It: A Surprising New Study Shows Christians Are Having Premarital Sex and Abortions As Much (or More) Than Non-Christians.” The article has been referenced in numerous places on the web (and in pulpits no doubt), especially the opening paragraph:

Eighty percent of young unmarried Christians have had sex. Two-thirds have been sexually active in the last year. Even though, according to a recent Gallup Poll, 76 percent of evangelicals believe sex outside of marriage is morally wrong.  Keep Reading >>>

Does Hebrews Tell Us to Move On from the Gospel?

The other day a friend and I were discussing the rising tide of “gospel-centrality” among evangelicals. More and more voices are telling us that the gospel is not something we move on from in order to grow as Christians; instead, it should always remain the throbbing center of our lives and churches.

But, my friend asked me, what about Hebrews 6:1-2? “Therefore let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, and of instruction about washings, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment.”

Doesn’t it sound like the author of Hebrews is urging us to move on from the gospel? Doesn’t he tell us specifically to “leave the elementary doctrine of Christ” and go on to bigger and better things?

Well, let’s find out. What does the author of Hebrews himself “move on” to after giving this exhortation?

First, he warns his hearers not to fall away from the faith (Heb. 6:4-8), assures them that their faith is indeed bearing fruit (Heb. 6:9-12), and reminds them to hope in the steadfast promises of God which are an anchor for the soul (Heb. 6:13-20).

Then he spends an entire chapter explaining Jesus’ high priesthood by comparing him to Melchizedek (Heb. 7:1-28). This teaching on Melchizedek is, in fact, what the author wanted to get to earlier (Heb. 5:11-14), but had to rebuke his hearers first.  Keep Reading >>>

Supersessionism Rising: Dispensationalism...? Part 2

Just a brief note from me (George R. Krahn) regarding Eschatology. I became disillusioned with Pre-Trib Dispensational Eschatology in the late 80's. Since then I have done a lot of study and reading about other End Times views and have come to the conclusion that the Amil view best describes what I believe presently about the consummation of all things in the end.     

With that in mind read the following two blog posts written by someone who obviously still strongly believes in the Pre-Mil Pre-Trib Dispensational view.

Part 1 concluded with the observation that many young evangelicals in colleges and universities have decided eschatology is not very important and that many lay people share that opinion.

Scholarly embarrassment?

Furthermore, and perhaps this is in part the cause of the point just made, it is my impression that Christian scholars, even the biblical scholars and evangelical theologians, are not all that interested in pursuing issues related to eschatology or even in advocating a particular position on eschatology. This is becoming more pervasive among premillennial dispensationalists. This may be (and I think it is) caused by the embarrassment that many of them feel when rubbing elbows with the wider scholarly evangelical community. It is something of a long-standing fact of scholarly life (nearly a “tradition”) that when one enters the “serious academy,” matters of eschatology are relegated to relative insignificance.¹

 One could recount dozens of testimonies of scholars who grew up in or were saved in churches that regarded the New Scofield Reference Bible with the highest esteem, churches that held Prophecy Conferences regularly if not annually, churches whose libraries were well stocked with the books of Chafer, Walvoord, Ryrie, Pentecost, McClain, Feinberg and the other luminaries of classic dispensationalism. But when those young scholars went off to graduate school or seminary (even evangelical seminaries) they were disabused of those resources and enlightened to the profundities of Ladd, Dodd, Bruce, Barr, and Barth (!)…and these days James Dunn and N. T. Wright among others.

As an illustration I would offer the example of the book 20th Century Theology by Stanley J. Grenz and Roger E. Olsen.² In many ways this is a fine piece of historical theology. And while no survey can cover everything, yet in that book none of the “old Dallas Seminary” authors are even mentioned and the subject of eschatology appears in only one index reference and that’s under the theology of Rudolph Bultmann! The message is clear: “scholarly theology” is simply not interested in the timing of the Rapture or the future of ethnic Israel.  Keep Reading >>>
 

Are We Too Healthy?

I love to read biographies. I find history and particularly the lives of those who have walked before us fascinating. One of the things I cherish most about a good biography is learning valuable lessons from another’s experience. It’s important to learn from the past and to recognize that most problems have a way of coming full circle. This seems to be the case when it comes to the health of the church and of individual believers.

Dr. David Martyn Lloyd-Jones was a Welsh preacher who lived and preached in London England during the twentieth century. He was a fascinating man who was on the verge of becoming a world-renowned physician before abandoning medicine to pursue his divine calling to proclaim the Word of God and the gospel of Jesus Christ. Throughout his life he proved to be a stalwart for the faith, defending it against the liberal thinking of the day. His uncanny ability to carefully diagnose problems and to remedy them with sound biblical logic and principles was unrivalled. When the “evangelical” church was caving to the currents of the culture, Lloyd-Jones stood boldly to “preach the Word… in season and out of season (2 Tim. 4:2).

His concern for the superficiality that seemed to characterize the evangelical church caused him to reflect upon the reasons and solution for such a plight. He believed that the hallmark of a true experience of God was a sense of awe, and accompanying it, a sense of unworthiness. While he strongly warned against the dangers of morbid introspection, self condemnation and professions of constant failure, he did not shy away from stating that the weakened state of the church was a result of a defective sense of sin and a defective doctrine of sin. Consider the following quote:   Keep Reading >>>

The Bible’s Burden for Church Revitalization

Throughout much of the United States (and a few other parts of the world) evangelical churches quite literally litter the landscape.

Many of these churches are like trash left on a street corner—they cause people to cross to the other side to avoid them. The people who belong to them profess to believe in the gospel, and their historic statements of faith confess the gospel. And some true Christians do belong to such churches. But on the whole the life of the church broadcasts anything but a gospel message. These churches instead churn out toxic waste rather than the nourishing food that people need.

Some churches in this state may be unrecoverable. But the sad thing is, many evangelicals seem content to ignore such churches and simply start new ones.

Church planting is important and strategic, and I am glad to see more and more people taking up that work.

But if you saw a garden overrun with weeds, would you simply plant some nice new irises right in the middle? If you couldn’t hear the news on TV because your radio was blaring, would you simply turn up the TV?

I would suggest that church revitalization—bringing life to dying churches by dealing with the causes of decline and building toward faithfulness—is a biblical burden. That is, when we see these churches acting as anti-witnesses to Christ, we should, according to Scripture, have a burden to do something about it. The burden of this article is to prove that point.    Keep Reading  >>>

IMAGE

My Take: Are evangelicals dangerous?

Are evangelicals dangerous? Well, certainly not in the sense that more secular voices warn. The vast majority of evangelicals are not attempting to create a theocracy, or to oppose democracy.

To the contrary, evangelicals are dangerous to the secularist vision of this nation and its future precisely because we are committed to participatory democracy.

As Christians committed to the Bible, evangelicals have learned to advocate on behalf of the unborn, believing that every single human being, at every stage of development, is made in God’s image.

Evangelicals worry about the fate of marriage and the family, believing that the pattern for human relatedness set out in Scripture will lead to the greatest human flourishing.

We are deeply concerned about a host of moral and cultural issues, from how to address poverty to how to be good stewards of the earth, and on some of these there is a fairly high degree of disagreement even among us.

Above all, evangelicals are those who believe that Jesus Christ is Lord and are most concerned about telling others about Jesus. 

Most of America’s evangelical Christians are busy raising their children, working to support their families and investing energy in their local churches.   Read it all HERE

Courageous Christianity?

Last weekend saw the release of Courageous, the fourth film produced by the media ministry of Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, Georgia. Opening fourth at the box office with a call to responsible fatherhood, the movie is being trumpeted as the latest culture-transforming hope for some evangelicals. As with Facing the Giants and Fireproof, endorsements are marching out from various churches and para-church organizations across the country.

I’m less concerned with how individual Christians personally choose to interact with the film and more with the troubling trends of American evangelicalism it illustrates. Is Courageous really something to be whole-heartedly embraced? Art being reduced as a vehicle for sermonizing is problematic enough, but even more so is the type of sermon being preached. The emphasis on personal morality and simplistic transformation turn this film into a superficial lecture rather than a robust exploration of life as a Christian father. Our personal piety, our self-improvement, and our “courage” forms the fabric of the story. Christ and his gospel, along with church life and God’s established means of grace, are marginalized.

The story follows a group of four law enforcement officers who seek to become better fathers and live up to God’s calling of leadership in their homes. When tragedy strikes his family, Adam (played by writer/director Alex Kendrick) looks for renewed identity by telling his pastor “I want to know what God expects of me as a father.” Six weeks later he’s typed up a list of resolutions and is on a mission to live up to each and every one of them. “I don’t want to be a good enough father.” His other friends soon join in and they all agree to hold each other accountable. Resolutions are framed and vows are given in a backyard ceremony. They are warned to now be “doubly accountable” and when challenges arise will need “courage, courage, courage.”   Keep Reading>>>

Gospel or Justice, Which?

Some evangelicals talk as though personal evangelism and public justice are contradictory concerns, or, at least, that one is part of the mission of the church and the other isn’t. I think otherwise, and I think the issue is one of the most important facing the church these days.

First of all, the mission of the church is the mission of Jesus. This mission doesn’t start with the giving of the Great Commission or at Pentecost. The Great Commission is when Jesus sends the church to the world with the authority he already has (Matt. 28:18), and Pentecost is when he bestows the power to carry this commission out (Acts 1:8).

The content of this mission is not just personal regeneration but disciple-making (Matt. 28:19). It is not just teaching, but teaching “them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matt. 28:20).     Keep Reading....

See also: Mercy Ministry is not Kingdom Work