WHITE LIGHTLY DISMISSES POWERFUL ARGUMENTS WHICH HAVE LED HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF MEN TO CLEAVE TO THE RECEIVED TEXT AND THE

EXAMINING "THE KING JAMES ONLY CONTROVERSY"

PART 2 OF 4

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The following is Part 2 of 4 Parts of this critique --

WHITE LIGHTLY DISMISSES POWERFUL ARGUMENTS WHICH HAVE LED HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF MEN TO CLEAVE TO THE RECEIVED TEXT AND THE AUTHORIZED VERSION AS THE PRESERVED WORD OF GOD.

White raises some of the arguments supporting the Received Text and the KJV but, as a rule, he deals with them only in passing and in a shallow manner. Consider just two of these powerful reasons for believing the TR and the KJV is the preserved Word of God: preservation and apostasy.

(1) THE DOCTRINE OF BIBLICAL PRESERVATION REQUIRES THAT WE REJECT THE MODERN TEXTS AND VERSIONS. In the thinking of multitudes of godly men, God’s promise to preserve the Scriptures requires us to reject the text that was discarded and to receive the text that was used by Bible believing Christians and that was blessed by God. To say that a text that was hidden away, rejected for hundreds of years, and not used by God’s people (Sinaiticus and Vaticanus) is the preserved Word of God is beyond belief. White mentions the argument of preservation in passing, and he dismisses it, almost mocks it, in fact; but he does not answer it.

The Scriptures claim to be the infallible, inspired Word of God (2 Timothy 3:15-17; 2 Peter 1:19-21); it also promises that God would preserve His Word through the centuries (Ps. 12:6,7; 33:11; 100:5; 111:7-8; 117:2; 119:89,152,160; Is. 40:8; 59:21; Mt. 5:18; 24:35; 1 Pet. 1:23,25; Rev. 22:18,19). The only position in the issue of Bible versions today which leaves one with a Bible preserved in its words and details is that which stands in defense of the Received Text and the King James Bible. All other positions leave one, to various degrees, with uncertainty and doubt. They leave you dependent upon scholars rather than the testimony of the Word of God itself. Scoff at this if you please, but it is a serious matter. I have found that the defenders of the King James Bible exalt the doctrine of preservation, whereas modern version proponents rarely mention it. When they do mention it, they put forth the strange position that God "preserved" the purest Scriptures in an obscure monastery (Sinaiticus) and on an inaccessible shelf in the Pope’s library (Vaticanus). Edward F. Hills was a Presbyterian scholar who was trained in modern textual criticism at the doctorate level at Harvard. Hills fought a lonely battle for many decades at the scholarly level in defending the Traditional Text against its enemies, and he understood the necessity of faith when approaching the Bible. He called modern textual theories "the logic of unbelief—maximum uncertainty," and he called faith in the Traditional Text and the King James Bible "the logic of faith—maximum certainty." I want to quote Hills to demonstrate the "King James Only" view of Bible preservation:

If we ignore the providential preservation of the Scriptures and defend the New Testament text in the same way that we defend the texts of other ancient books, then we are following the logic of unbelief. For the special, providential preservation of the holy Scriptures is a fact and an important fact. Hence when we ignore this fact and deal with the text of the New Testament as we would with the text of other books, we are behaving as unbelievers behave. We are either denying that the providential preservation of the Scriptures is a fact, or else we are saying that it is not an important fact, not important enough to be considered when dealing with the New Testament text. But if the providential preservation of the Scriptures is not important, why is the infallible inspiration of the original Scriptures important? If God has not preserved the Scriptures by His special providence, why would He have infallibly inspired them in the first place? And if the Scriptures are not infallibly inspired, how do we know that the Gospel message is true? And if the Gospel message is not true, how do we know that Jesus is the Son of God?

Modernism has come in by degrees, beginning as early as the 17th century. ... And all during this long period conservative scholars have been combatting this monstrous growth of unbelief. Their effectiveness, however, has been greatly impaired by their inconsistency. They have opposed some forms of modernism and favored others. For example, they have fulminated against Old Testament naturalistic higher criticism as satanic, but they have adopted New Testament naturalistic textual criticism as scientific. In short, without at all intending to be such, they have been half-way modernists.

Conservative scholars, of course, have always denied this. Many of them still say that they believe in the special, providential preservation of the New Testament text. Most of them really don’t though, because, as soon as they say this, they immediately reduce this special, providential preservation to the vanishing point in order to make room for the naturalistic theories of Westcott and Hort. As we have seen, some say that the providential preservation of the New Testament means merely that the same ‘substance of doctrine’ is found in all the New Testament documents. Others say that it means that the true reading is always present in at least one of the thousands of extant New Testament manuscripts. And still other scholars say that to them the special, providential preservation of the Scriptures means that the true New Testament text was providentially discovered in the mid-nineteenth century by Tischendorf, Tregelles, and Westcott and Hort after having been lost for 1,500 years.

If you adopt one of these false views of the providential preservation of the Scriptures, then you are logically on your way toward the denial of the infallible inspiration of the Scriptures. For if God has preserved the Scriptures so carelessly, why would he have infallibly inspired them in the first place? It is not sufficient therefore merely to say that you believe in the doctrine of the special, providential preservation of the holy Scriptures. You must really believe this doctrine and allow it to guide your thinking. You must begin with Christ and the Gospel and proceed according to the logic of faith. This will lead you to the Traditional text, the Textus Receptus, and the King James Version, in other words, to the common faith (Hills, Believing Bible Study, Des Moines, Iowa: 1967, pp. 216-220).

Dr. Hills was a professionally trained textual scholar; but his simple, down-to-earth, Christ-honoring, Bible-believing logic is too high for many scholars today, including many who claim to be Evangelical and Fundamental, but it thrills the heart of many humble children of God. In this context the words which Jesus spoke in Luke 10:21 are appropriate: "...I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes: even so, Father; for so it seemed good in thy sight."

When modern version proponents look at the production of the Received Text in the 1500s or the production of the King James Bible in the 1600s, they see weak and error-prone men. When a King James Bible-proponent looks at the same era, he sees God. Though the modern version defender often claims that he believes in biblical preservation, he holds an unscriptural and inconsistent view of it.

(2) THE THEOLOGICAL APOSTASY WHICH HAS CHARACTERIZED MODERN TEXTUAL CRITICISM REQUIRES THAT WE REJECT THE MODERN TEXTS AND VERSIONS. The most influential textual scholars have been rationalists who rejected the inerrant inspiration of Holy Scripture. That is a documented fact. I have hundreds of books in my library by textual scholars dating from the 18th century, and I have documented the apostasy underlying the modern textual scholarship in our book Myths about Modern Versions (Way of Life Literature). There are exceptions, of course, but the exceptions do not overthrow the rule. Since James White pretends these ideas are the brainchildren of feverish fundamental Baptists, we will quote several men of former times and of other denominational persuasions to demonstrate our point.

Large numbers of King James Bible defenders in 19th-century Britain understood the theological apostasy associated with the critical Greek texts. I have quoted several of these men in our history entitled For Love of the Bible. Let me give just one example for our purposes here. In 1819, Henry John Todd, chaplain to the king of England and keeper of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s records, published A Vindication of Our Authorized Translation and Translators of the Bible. This work was occasioned by the clamor of some that wanted to correct the Received Greek New Testament and the King James Bible by modern textual criticism. This clamoring gradually increased among a relatively small segment of influential scholars as the 19th century progressed and resulted, ultimately, in the Westcott-Hort Greek New Testament and the English Revised Version of 1881. Todd understood that modern textual criticism was intimately associated with theological heresy. I searched for a copy of Todd’s treatise for five years and finally located it in the British Library. Consider the following important excerpt:

"For when we see men of the most latitudinarian principles uniformly pressing forward this dangerous proposal; when we see the most unbounded panegyrics bestowed on those, who have converted the Mosaic history into allegory, and the New Testament into Socinianism; when we see these attempts studiously fostered, and applauded, by the advocates for this projected [Bible] revision; we must conjecture, that something more is meant than a correction of mistakes, or an improvement of diction. Those doctrines, the demolition of which we know to be, in late instances, the grand object of such innovators when they propose alterations in articles of faith, or correction of liturgical forms, are surely in still greater danger when attempted, by the same men, under the distant approaches of a revision of our English Bible (Todd, A Vindication of Our Authorized Translation and Translators of the Bible, 1819, pp. 79,80).

Todd and a vast number of other 18th- and 19th-century Christian scholars and preachers understood that the field of textual criticism was dominated by and promoted by men who were infected with theological modernism. Twentieth-century textual criticism has merely built upon this skeptical foundation. James White claims this is the figment of a Ruckmanite’s imagination, but he can only say that by ignoring history. In the early part of the 19th century, the critical Greek text was successfully resisted precisely on the same basis upon which the King James Bible defender today resists the modern texts and versions, but by the end of that same century, it was accepted. Someone might ask, "Why did the Westcott-Hort text eventually prevail?" The answer is not hard to find. Theological rationalism spread like ivy. There is a saying about ivy that describes it growth stages: it sleeps; it creeps; it leaps. That is what happened with modernism. It was planted in the 18th century and slept for some time. It began to creep in the early 19th century; and from the middle to the end of the century, it was spreading like wildfire across the Christian landscape. By the end of the century, it was so well entrenched in high places of Christian scholarship in British Protestant and Baptist denominations that it was able to win the day. Not only were many scholars themselves afflicted with modernistic views of the Bible, but a vast number of others, not themselves modernistic in theology, were nonetheless too spiritually weak to resist modernism. Instead, they were willing to work hand-in-hand with the modernists, ignoring God’s warnings, "evil communications corrupt good manners" and "a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump." We see this in the Baptist Union of Spurgeon’s day. He took his stand and left the Union in 1887, but most of the men who claimed to hold the same view of the Bible that Spurgeon held refused to discipline the Modernists or to separate from them. In practice, they were forerunners of the New Evangelicals of our century. Spurgeon described the wretched situation in 1887 England with these powerful words:

"Believers in Christ’s atonement are now in declared union with those who make light of it; believers in Holy Scripture are in confederacy with those who deny plenary inspiration; those who hold evangelical doctrine are in open alliance with those who call the fall a fable, who deny the personality of the Holy Ghost, who call justification by faith immoral, and hold that there is another probation after death. … Yes, we have before us the wretched spectacle of professedly orthodox Christians publicly avowing their union with those who deny the faith, and scarcely concealing their contempt for those who cannot be guilty of such gross disloyalty to Christ. To be very plain, we are unable to call these things Christian Unions, they begin to look like Confederacies in Evil" (Sword and Trowel, November 1887).

Spurgeon’s battles against modernism within the Baptist Union occurred at precisely the same time that the English Revised Version was being prepared, and the same battle was being fought (and lost) in other denominations, including Anglicanism, Congregationalism, Presbyterianism, and Methodism. (An excellent overview of this is found in The Forgotten Spurgeon by Iain Murray, Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 2nd edition 1973). In other words, apostasy had effectively prepared the way for the modern text and versions. The men we describe in our book For Love of the Bible, who fought earnestly against the Westcott-Hort Greek text and the English Revised Version, understood these facts and were on the side of truth on those days.

The Trinitarian Bible Society wisely warns: "We must not permit our judgment to be overawed by great names in the realm of biblical ‘scholarship’ when it is so clearly evident that the distinguished scholars of the present century are merely reproducing the case presented by rationalists during the last two hundred years" (If the Foundations Be Destroyed, T.B.S. Article No. 14, p. 13). We would ask James White if the Trinitarian Bible Society, which was founded in Britain in the 19th century as a reaction against modernism, is a fundamental Baptist Ruckmanite cult.

Let me summarize my findings about the history of the modern versions. First of all, most of the key textual critics of the 19th century rejected the doctrine of biblical inerrancy. This category includes J.L. Hug (1765-1846), Carl Lachmann (1793-1851), Johann Griesbach (1745-1812), Friedrich Tischendorf (1815-1874), B.F. Westcott (1825-1901) and F.J.A. Hort (1828-1892). Of the work of these men, Robert L. Dabney, 19th-century Presbyterian scholar, testified: "We shall find them continually varying, each one obnoxious to grave objections, and the question still unsettled. ... Their common traits may be said to be an almost contemptuous dismissal of the received text, as unworthy not only of confidence, but almost of notice" (Dabney, "The Doctrinal Various Readings of the New Testament Greek," Discussions Evangelical and Theological, pp. 350,52,54; this first appeared in the Southern Presbyterian Review, April 1871). Again, we would ask James White if Robert Lewis Dabney (1820-1898) was a member of a Ruckmanite cult?

Of Westcott and Hort, who produced the Greek text underlying the Revised Version of 1881, Dallas Seminary professor Zane Hodges warned in 1971: "The charge of rationalism is easily substantiated for Westcott and Hort and may be demonstrated from direct statements found in their introduction to The New Testament in the Original Greek. To begin with, Westcott and Hort are clearly unwilling to commit themselves to the inerrancy of the original Scriptures. … Modern textual criticism is psychologically ‘addicted’ to Westcott and Hort. Westcott and Hort, in turn, were rationalists in their approach to the textual problem in the New Testament and employed techniques within which rationalism and every other kind of bias are free to operate" (Hodges, "Rationalism and Contemporary New Testament Textual Criticism," Bibliotheca Sacra, Dallas Seminary, January 1971, pp. 27-35). We don’t agree with Hodges’ support of the Majority text which differs somewhat from the Received Text; but he has a keen understanding of the rationalism that underlies the modern texts and versions, and his writings have encouraged some men to take a closer look at this subject and to reject the critical Greek text and the modern versions based upon this text. One of these is James Qurollo, who formerly was Academic Dean and professor of Greek at Ambassador Baptist College (900 South Post Road, Shelby, NC 28150. 704-480-0500). Qurollo got his bachelor’s with a major in Greek from Wheaton College in 1964 and his master’s degree in New Testament from the same institution in 1966. He was taught the Westcott-Hort position, but God led him to reject it. His testimony is among those we have included in our book For Love of the Bible.

For a discerning overview of the theology of Westcott and Hort, see Dr. Donald Waite’s The Theological Heresies of Westcott and Hort: As Seen in Their Own Writings (available from The Bible for Today, 900 Park Ave., Collingswood, NJ 08108).

In continuing to summarize the stream of apostasy underlying the modern texts and versions, consider some of the other translators of the English Revised Version and the American Standard Version, the predecessors of the 20th-century English versions. At least three of the translators--GEORGE VANCE SMITH, EZRA ABBOT, and JOSEPH HENRY THAYER--were Christ-denying Unitarians. Abbot and Thayer held influential positions at Harvard Divinity School and taught several generations of students the principles of textual criticism (teaching them to despise the Received Text and the King James Bible). Several of their pupils went on to hold influential positions in this field. An example is Caspar RenŽ Gregory (1846-1917). This man, who wrote influential books on textual criticism (Canon and Text of the New Testament, Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1907), was a pupil of Ezra Abbot at Harvard. He also was the son-in-law to Thayer (Michael Maynard, A History of the Debate over 1 John 5:7,8, p. 216).

All three of these textual scholars boldly and unequivocally denied the Deity of Jesus Christ and the infallible inspiration of Holy Scripture. I have two of Smith’s books in my library, and it is very significant that he gloried in the various changes in the Westcott-Hort Greek text and the Revised Version (the same changes appear in the UBS Greek Text and the NIV) BECAUSE THESE TEXTUAL CHANGES MADE IT EASIER FOR HIM TO DISPUTE THE DEITY OF JESUS CHRIST. We believe this Unitarian understood something which James White, for some reason, cannot see.

When a public outcry ensued across Britain because of Unitarian George Smith’s presence on the English Revised Version committee, Westcott and Hort threatened to resign if Smith was not allowed to participate. All of this is carefully documented in our book For Love of the Bible.

Another of the ERV translators, WILLIAM ROBERTSON SMITH, was dismissed from his professorship of Old Testament at the Aberdeen College by the Free Church of Scotland in 1881 because of his modernistic views. By that time, the "new views" were so entrenched in Anglicanism and Presbyterianism in England that Smith was invited to a professorship at Cambridge and was given a seat on the Old Testament translation committee for the completion of the Revised Version. Some of Smith’s articles appeared in the Encyclopedia Britannica on the subject of the Bible. These were filled with wicked speculation and unbelief. He denied the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. He denied the accuracy of the Masoretic Hebrew Text. He threw "as much uncertainty as possible over the authorship of the Psalms."

ERV translator CONNOP THIRLWALL was known for his attempts to promote German rationalistic theology in Britain. He collaborated in the English publication of books by German heretics Niebuhr and Schleiermacher. During a visit to the British Library in 1997, I located Letters Literary and Theological of Connop Thirlwall (London: Richard Bentley & Sons, 1881). In this one book, English Revised Version committee member Thirlwall questioned the canon of Scripture; said the Bible was not accurate in its scientific statements; said it is not important whether or not we believe in the existence of God; questioned the divine inspiration of some of the Psalms; admitted uncertainty as to whether Christ operated on a divine supernatural level in His earthly ministry; claimed that Job 19:25-27 could not refer to Job’s resurrection; questioned the infallible inspiration of the Pentateuch; etc. This is the type of theologian and textual scholar who was warmly welcome within the fellowship of men which produced the English Revised Version and which first brought the Westcott-Hort Greek text to light. It is obvious that it was not the strong Bible-believing crowd in Britain who produced the Westcott-Hort text and the Revised Version.

It was also not the strong Bible-believing crowd that produced the revision on the American side. PHILIP SCHAFF, the head of the American Standard Version committee, was twice brought to trial for heresy while teaching at the Theological Seminary of the German Reformed Church of Mercersburg, Pennsylvania. His first public address in America in 1844 "was so Romish, that, when it was translated into English and published, it produced a storm of criticism, and brought forth accusations of Romanizing and Tractarian tendencies" (George Coy, The Inside Story of the Anglo American Revised New Testament, 1973, p. 89). Failing to obtain the dismissal of Schaff from the German Reformed seminary at Mercersburg, two Reformed groups (the Reformed Dutch Church and the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church) separated themselves from the German Reformed Church "on account of her countenance of these works and their authors" (New Brunswick Review, August 1854). Though Schaff was able to avoid outright dismissal, his liberal views eventually forced him to move. His "broad views" were more at home at Union Seminary. In our books Myths about Modern Bible Versions and For Love of the Bible we have given excerpts from The Life of Philip Schaff by his son, David, proving that Schaff was a theological heretic. In fact, he was an early forerunner of the ecumenists of our day who are seeking the unity of all denominations with the Roman Catholic Church.

Following the stream of modern version apostasy down toward our day, we come to the REVISED STANDARD VERSION of 1952. This thoroughly modernistic project was produced by the theologically heretical National Council of Churches in America. The translators included some of the most notorious Modernists of this century. In our books For Love of the Bible and Myths about Modern Bible Versions we have given excerpts from a number of books written by RSV translators. Consider one example, Clarence Craig, who is representative of the whole. Craig’s heretical position on biblical inspiration can be contrasted sharply with that of the men who produced the text and translations in the lineage of the King James Bible.

"Revelation has sometimes been understood to consist in a holy book. ... Even on Christian soil it has sometimes been held that the books of the Bible were practically dictated to the writers through the Holy Spirit. ... I DO NOT THINK THAT THIS IS THE DISTINCTIVELY CHRISTIAN POSITION. If God once wrote His revelation in an inerrant book, He certainly failed to provide any means by which this could be passed on without contamination through human fallibility. ... The true Christian position is the Bible CONTAINS the record of revelation" (Clarence T. Craig, The Beginning of Christianity).

By the way, it is inconsistent to reject the Revised Standard Version for its modernism while accepting the New International Version because of its supposed theological conservatism. The NIV is founded upon the same type of critical, eclectic Greek text that contains the same type of departures from the Traditional Text as the RSV. Personally, I would reject the NIV on the basis of either one of only two corrupted verses, one in the Old Testament (Micah 5:2) and one in the New (1 Timothy 3:16).

Continuing to follow the stream of apostasy underlying the modern texts and versions, we come to THE EDITORS OF THE UNITED BIBLE SOCIETIES GREEK NEW TESTAMENT, which is the predominant critical Greek text used in colleges and seminaries today. The editors include BRUCE METZGER, CARLO MARTINI, EUGENE NIDA, and KURT ALAND. Not one of these men believes the Bible is the infallible, inerrant Word of God. Martini is an Archbishop in the Catholic Church, the head of the largest Catholic diocese in the world. Metzger works for the National Council of Churches in America and promotes the modernistic historical-critical views of the Old Testament. Eugene Nida is one of the fathers of the destructive modern theories of dynamic equivalency. Kurt Aland, co-editor of the Nestle-Aland Greek text since the 1940s, claims the canon of Scripture is not settled and believes the settling of this "question" is a key to the ecumenical unity between churches, denominations, and schools which he desires to see (Aland, The Problem of the New Testament Canon, 1962, pp. 30-33). In our books For Love of the Bible and Myths of Modern Versions we have documented the heresies of these men from their own writings.

If we wanted to take the time, we could fill many volumes documenting these facts. We could consider the apostasy, for example, of the United Bible Societies and of the major Bible publishers today. These have worked hand-in-hand with the Roman Catholic Church in recent decades. Our book Myths about Modern Bible Versions (scheduled for publication in March 1999) reveals the theological modernism of the editors and translators who produced such influential Bible Society translations as the New English Version (British & Foreign Bible Society) and the Today’s English Version (American Bible Society). A look at the very influential Thomas Nelson Publishers would fill another volume. We could mention Thomas Nelson’s Roman Catholic publishing division, for instance.

These, then, are the kind of men who have led the charge for the critical text. The Bible commands us to mark and avoid such heretics. It would be the greatest form of confusion for God to tell us to separate from false teachers and then to use false teachers to give us the pure Word of God.

In summarizing this issue, we quote again from Dr. Edward F. Hills. He recognized the rationalism and unbelief inherent in modern textual criticism. Every modern version is built upon this rationalistic foundation. In his books he exposed the modernistic influences which led to the development of textual criticism, and he contrasted unbelieving textual scholarship with a Christ-honoring, Bible-believing approach. By the way, Dr. Hills was bitterly persecuted by the scholarly world for rejecting the popular line. Consider the testimony of this brilliant, yet humble scholar:

"Has the text of the New Testament, like those of other ancient books, been damaged during its voyage over the seas of time? Ought the same methods of textual criticism to be applied to it that are applied to the texts of other ancient books? These are questions which the following pages will endeavor to answer. An earnest effort will be made to convince the Christian reader that this is a matter to which he must attend. For in the realm of New Testament textual criticism as well as in other fields the presuppositions of modern thought are hostile to the historic Christian faith and will destroy it if their fatal operation is not checked. If faithful Christians, therefore, would defend their sacred religion against this danger, they must forsake the foundations of unbelieving thought and build upon their faith, a faith that rests entirely on the solid rock of holy Scripture. And when they do this in the sphere of New Testament textual criticism, they will find themselves led back step by step (perhaps, at first, against their wills) to the text of the Protestant Reformation, namely, that form of New Testament text which underlies the King James Version and the other early Protestant translations" (Edward F. Hills, The King James Bible Defended, Introduction, 3rd ed., 1979, p. 1).

"... the Bible version which you use ... has already been decided for you by the workings of God’s special providence. If you ignore this providence and choose to adopt one of these modern versions, you will be taking the first step in the logic of unbelief. For the arguments which you must use to justify your choice are the same arguments which unbelievers use to justify theirs, the same method. If you adopt one of these modern versions, you must adopt the naturalistic New Testament textual criticism upon which it rests. This naturalistic textual criticism requires us to study the New Testament text in the same way in which we study the texts of secular books which have not been preserved by God’s special providence" (Hills, Believing Bible Study, Des Moines, Iowa: Christian Research Press, 1967, pp. 226,27).

It is sad that James White cannot understand these important matters, and it is even sadder that he presents the views of men like Dr. Hills in such a shoddy manner that his readers probably will not study Hills for themselves.

BUT MANY SCHOLARS ARE "EVANGELICALS"

Do I hear James White and others protest, perhaps, that the New International Version was produced by "evangelicals" and has produced a strong "evangelical" movement? I do not believe for a moment that modern Evangelicalism is a biblical movement. It can be demonstrated, in fact, that New Evangelical compromise has paved the way for today’s wholesale acceptance of the modern versions in the Evangelical world. Already in 1952 Billy Graham, New Evangelicalism’s foremost popularizer, accepted a copy of the RSV and told a crowd of 20,000 people: "These scholars have probably given us the most nearly perfect translation in English. While there may be room for disagreement in certain areas of the translation, yet this new version should supplement the King James Version and make Bible reading a habit throughout America" (Graham, cited by Perry Rockwood, God’s Inspired Preserved Bible, nd., p. 15).

Graham’s endorsement of the Revised Standard Version foreshadowed Evangelicalism’s capitulation to the endless stream of modern versions. Graham has endorsed practically every new version, no matter how flippant and unfaithful, including the Living Bible (which he almost single-handedly rescued from oblivion), J.B. Phillips’ New Testament (Phillips, The Price of Success: An Autobiography, p. 116), and the blasphemous Good News for Modern Man (Today’s English Version) which replaces the word "blood" with "death" in speaking of the atonement of Jesus Christ and which corrupts the passages presenting the Godhead of Jesus Christ.

As New Evangelicalism has gradually leavened the entire Evangelical world over the past fifty years, the modern versions have increased in popularity. Many seem confused by the fact that most Evangelical leaders today give wholehearted endorsement to the critical Greek text as well as to the versions based upon them. "How could all of these men be wrong?" they muse. The answer, which many find difficult to accept but which is based upon historical reality, lies in the fact that New Evangelicalism is a form of apostasy. It is founded upon a willful repudiation of many of the negative aspects of biblical Christianity.

The term "New Evangelicalism" was coined by the late Harold Ockenga (1905-1985) to define a new type of Evangelicalism and to distinguish it from those who had heretofore born that label. Ockenga has had a phenomenal influence upon today’s Evangelicalism. He was the pastor of Park Street Church (Presbyterian) in Boston, founder of the National Association of Evangelicals, co-founder and one-time president of Fuller Theological Seminary, first president of the World Evangelical Fellowship, president of Gordon College and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, a director of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, and chairman of the board and one-time editor of Christianity Today. In the foreword to Dr. Harold Lindsell’s book The Battle for the Bible, Ockenga stated the position of New Evangelicalism:

"Neo-evangelicalism was born in 1948 in connection with a convocation address which I gave in the Civic Auditorium in Pasadena. While reaffirming the theological view of Fundamentalism, this address repudiated its ecclesiology and its social theory. The ringing call for A REPUDIATION OF SEPARATISM and the summons to social involvement received a hearty response from many Evangelicals. It differed from Fundamentalism in its repudiation of separatism and its determination to engage itself in the theological dialogue of the day. It had a new emphasis upon the application of the gospel to the sociological, political, and economic areas of life."

Ockenga and the new generation of Evangelicals, Billy Graham figuring most prominently, determined to abandon a militant Bible stance. We don’t believe New Evangelicalism was born with Ockenga’s 1948 address. Ockenga merely verbalized a position of neutrality and pragmatism that already existed in the hearts of many Evangelicals of that generation.

Ockenga contended that Evangelicals should practice infiltration rather than separation, meaning they should stay in the apostate denominations and organizations and try to change them from within rather than separate from them and serve God in pure New Testament churches. He contended that Evangelicals should practice dialogue rather than exhortation, that they should not be negative in their message by rebuking error and warning of false teachers publicly and specifically, but should attempt to change the false teachers through dialogue. He taught that Evangelicals should reexamine their idea of worldliness and not be as strict about separating from worldly evils as Bible-believing Christians had been in earlier days.

Ockenga decided that Evangelicals should consider the possibility that modern science was right in some areas in which it disagreed with the Bible. The prime example of this was in the origin of the world. Ockenga did not think Christians should so easily ignore the teaching of evolution, as separatists were accustomed to do. He taught that there could be a synthesis between modern science and the Bible.

Ockenga also believed that Christians should aim to meet Modernists and the men of the world on their own scholastic level. The idea was that the Christian leader should seek to influence men through human wisdom and scholarship rather than purely though the power of the Holy Spirit and the preaching of the Word of God as we see in the ministries of the Apostles.

God says, "Walk ye in the old paths," but the New Evangelical reassesses the old paths. God says, "Remove not the ancient landmarks which thy fathers have set," but the New Evangelical has removed them one by one. God says, "Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness," but the New Evangelical reasons that such fellowship is necessary. God says, "A little leaven leaventh the whole lump," but the New Evangelical thinks he can reform the already leavened lump. God says, "Evil communications corrupt good manners," but the New Evangelical thinks good manners can uplift evil communications. God says, "I resist the proud but give grace to the humble," but the New Evangelical thinks the way to reach the world is by meeting them on their own proud territory, matching them scholarly degree with degree.

The Bible warns that a little leaven leavens the whole lump. This is why God requires that His people separate from error. If they do not, they will be devoured by the error. Since 1945, the fearful consequences of apostasy have become evident throughout the Evangelical world.

EVANGELICALISM’S APOSTASY IS SEEN IN ITS COZY RELATIONSHIP WITH ROMAN CATHOLICISM

Most popular Evangelical men and organizations have strong and growing sympathies toward the Roman Catholic Church. Our book Evangelicals and Rome (1999, Way of Life Literature) contains thorough documentation of this. Christianity Today, founded by Billy Graham and other New Evangelical leaders, now has three Roman Catholic editors. Evangelical publishers are busy putting out books sympathetic to Rome and calling for ecumenical relationships.

As early as 1971 Fleming H. Revell published A Prejudiced Protestant Takes a New Look at the Catholic Church by James Hefley. The author is a graduate of the Southern Baptist Seminary in New Orleans and pastored a Baptist church for eight years. He describes how his prejudice against the Roman Catholic Church has dissolved in recent years because of the alleged changes in Catholicism since Vatican II. He praises "the increasing willingness of Catholics to join together in evangelism, Bible study, solving community problems, and ecumenical relations" (p. 122). He thinks it is great that Catholics have begun to work with Evangelical organizations such as Campus Crusade for Christ, Youth for Christ, Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Wycliffe Bible Translators, and InterVarsity Christian Fellowship (pp. 118,122,123). In one chapter, Hefley describes in glowing terms his experience of visiting with Catholic leaders at the archdiocese headquarters in New Orleans. He calls the priests "father." He "felt a warmth" while attending a Catholic mass (p. 109).

Eerdman’s Handbook to the History of Christianity, which appeared in 1977, used two Roman Catholic historians as contributing editors. It is no wonder that Rome’s butchery of Bible believers receives small thrift in this Evangelical publication, while Pope John XXIII is praised as having "a deep but traditional piety"!

In 1979, Tyndale House Publishers came out with Three Sisters by Michael Harper. This book called for ecumenical unity between Evangelicals, Charismatics, and Roman Catholics. The author stated, "It is my own conviction that a growing unity between the three forces in the Christian world is both desirable and possible" (p. 41).

In 1984, Thomas Howard’s book Evangelical Is Not Enough (Thomas Nelson Publisher) called for a movement toward liturgical, Catholic-style worship among Evangelicals. Howard, who was a professor at Gordon College for 15 years, is from a family of prominent Evangelicals. His father, Philip, was editor of the Sunday School Times; his brother David Howard was head of the World Evangelical Fellowship; and his sister Elizabeth married the famous missionary Jim Elliot, who was martyred by the Auca Indians in Ecuador. The year after the publication of Evangelical Is Not Enough, Thomas Howard converted to the Roman Catholic Church and left Gordon College to teach at Catholic seminaries in Boston. Other converts to Rome in recent years have testified that Howard’s book assisted them in taking their journey. When asked about Howard’s conversion to Catholicism, J.I. Packer gave the following amazing reply, "I don’t think becoming a Catholic is anything like the tragedy of a person becoming a theological liberal and losing touch with objective authority altogether. Catholics are among the most loyal and viral brothers evangelicals can find these days" (J.I. Packer, Christianity Today, May 17, 1985).

In 1985, InterVarsity Press stirred the ecumenical waters with A Tale of Two Churches by George Carey (who later became the Archbishop of Canterbury). Carey called for the "eventual reunion of the two streams [Protestantism and Roman Catholicism] of Western Christendom." The foreword to this book, subtitled Can Protestants & Catholics Get Together, was written by J.I. Packer.

Also in 1985 Wheaton College professor Robert Webber published Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail, describing his journey from a Baptist (his father was a fundamental Baptist preacher) and fundamentalist (he is a graduate of Bob Jones University) heritage to the ecumenical Episcopal-Catholic philosophy he holds today. Webber accepts the Roman Catholic Church as a true apostolic church, tracing his "family tree" from Jesus Christ "through the Apostles, the primitive Christian community, the Apostolic Fathers, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Catholic Church," to "the Church of the Reformation" (p. 66). He describes his experiences at graduate school, in which he first tasted of ecumenical relations with Roman Catholics (p. 62). He describes his love for sacramentalism (pp. 47-56). He says he has to "swallow hard" when he hears missionaries to Latin America describe Roman Catholics as unsaved (p. 68). He calls the "concept of the purity of the church" a "strait-jacket that made me increasingly uncomfortable," because it "stifled my experience of the whole church" (p. 71). He looks upon the Reformation as an evil thing because of the division it created from Rome, and he looks forward to the day when the division will be healed (p. 171).

In 1990, Thomas Nelson published Evangelical Catholics: A Call for Christian Cooperation to Penetrate the Darkness with the Light of the Gospel by Keith Fournier, a Roman Catholic apologist. The foreword was written by Charles Colson. "But at root, those who are called of God, whether Catholic or Protestant, are part of the same Body. … It’s high time that all of us who are Christians come together regardless of the difference of our confessions and our traditions and make common cause to bring Christian values to bear in our society. When the barbarians are scaling the walls, there is no time for petty quarreling in the camp. Keith Fournier stands in the breach—truly orthodox in his adherence to Catholic doctrine and fully evangelical in his relationship to Christ and His creation. Keith’s ministry is one of healing. … I pray that his book will be a bridge across many of the historic divisions in the church that have weakened our stand in today’s culture. … We have much to forgive, much to relearn. But Evangelical Catholics can help us do both so we can band together against the rising tides of secularism which threaten to engulf us" (Chuck Colson, foreword, Evangelical Catholics, p. vi).

In 1994, InterVarsity Press came out with the Handbook of Christian Apologetics by two Roman Catholic authors, Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli. Kreeft is a Catholic apologist who believes that Mary will ultimately conquer Satan and who believes that even Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists will probably go to Heaven. Tacelli is a Jesuit priest and a professor at Boston College. Why would InterVarsity choose Catholics to write such a book, or why would they publish such a book by Catholics? If asked about Catholic theology, InterVarsity leaders would doubtless reply that they do not agree with a large part of it. That being the case, why not have Bible-believing authors, or at least thorough-going Protestants, write a book on Christian apologetics? The answer is the ecumenical agenda of these "evangelical" organizations.

Moody Press joined its voice to this theme in 1994 by publishing Roman Catholicism: Evangelical Protestants Analyze What Divides and Unites Us. The editor is John Armstrong (Wheaton graduate, Reformed pastor), and twelve other Evangelical leaders are contributors. Though far more cautious than the other books we have mentioned, the Moody Press volume completely ignores the Bible’s command to mark and avoid doctrinal error. It ignores separation, which is the only sure hedge against the leaven of heresy. For example, Michael Horton concludes his chapter, "What Still Keeps Us Apart?" with these words: "I do not suggest that we should give up trying to seek visible unity, nor that we refuse to dialogue with Roman Catholic laypeople and theologians, many of whom may be our brothers and sisters" (p. 264). He should "suggest" that, though, because it is precisely what the Bible commands. The New Testament does not instruct Christians to seek "visible unity" with a blasphemous, unscriptural organization like Rome, nor does it instruct us to "dialogue" with those who hold a false gospel.

The Evangelicals who wrote Roman Catholicism: Evangelical Protestants Analyze What Divides and Unites Us have a false view of church history. They don’t look upon Rome of the early centuries as apostate. They look upon it as a true church and they look upon many of its fathers, saints, and Popes as true Christians. Horton praises such men as Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Bonaventure, Bernard, and Gregory the Great; yet all of these were unscriptural heretics. Rome would not exalt them as fathers and saints if they had stood unreservedly for the New Testament faith. All of these men were members of unscriptural churches that had rejected the apostolic faith once delivered to the saints.

Horton speaks of the early history of the Roman Catholic Church in glowing terms. He says, "It was Rome that stood up to the Montanists, Manicheans, Donatists, Pelagians, Cathari, Albigensians, Arians, and Monophysites…" (p. 245). This is only partly true. Many of the "heretics" that Rome stood against were actually Bible believing Christians who refused to be moved from the truth. In his diligently researched book (The History of the Donatists, 1875), respected nineteenth-century Baptist historian David Benedict, working directly from ancient Latin texts, revealed that the Donatists were not the heretics that Rome made them out to be. The same is true for the Albigensians, the Cathari, and others that Horton mentions. Though there might have been true heretics who were called Donatists and Albigensians, these people, in the main, were much closer to the Bible than Rome was. The term "Manichean" was also misused by Rome to slander many people. Though there were some who were known as Manicheans who held to strange and unscriptural doctrines, many who were labeled Manichean were not heretics but were falsely accused by Rome.

Also in 1994, the Navigators’ NavPress published A House United? Evangelicals and Catholics Together: A Winning Alliance for the 21st Century. The authors are Roman Catholic Keith Fournier and Evangelical William Watkins, a graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary. The foreword is written by Pat Robertson. In 1991, Robertson invited Fournier to become executive director of the American Center for Law and Justice at Regent University. In the foreword to Fournier’s book, Pat Robertson said that Catholics and Protestants "have a moral imperative to join together" to oppose cultural evils such as abortion, and he praised Fournier for his "deep dedication to helping to heal the divide" that "separated the Body of Christ." The back cover of A House United? has recommendations by seven men, including Terry Lindvall (President of Regent University), Ralph Reed (formerly Executive Director of the Christian Coalition), and Vinson Synan (Pentecostal chairman of the North American Renewal Service Committee). Synan sets the tone with his comments: "Keith Fournier is truly a twentieth-century apostle of unity for the Body of Christ. His background as an evangelical and charismatic Catholic has prepared him well to write A House United?—a book that adds light and grace to the current religious situation in America."

In 1995, Baker Books encouraged the Evangelical-Roman Catholic alliance with the publication of Roman Catholics and Evangelicals: Agreements and Differences by Norman Geisler and Ralph MacKenzie. Though the authors acknowledge vast differences between Evangelicals and Catholics, they conclude that these should not be a cause for separation. This statement from the book’s foreword sets the tone for the whole: "Nevertheless, when all is said and done, evangelical Protestants and traditionalists, believing Roman Catholics have so many convictions and commitments in common that it would be foolish as well as wrong in the sight of the One whom we all claim as our Lord Jesus Christ to wrangle with each other in the face of the common enemy" (Foreword by Harold O.J. Brown, Roman Catholics and Evangelicals: Agreements and Differences, p. 12).

Also in 1995, Word Publishing came out with Evangelicals & Catholics Toward a Common Mission Together, edited by Charles Colson and Richard John Neuhaus. Contributors to the book include J.I. Packer (Regent College), Mark Noll (Wheaton College), and Avery Dulles (Jesuit priest and professor at Catholic University). Chuck Colson is the well-known and popular Evangelical leader who founded Prison Fellowship, and Richard Neuhaus is a convert to the Roman Catholic Church from Lutheranism. These are the two men most responsible for the controversial Evangelicals and Catholics Together (ECT) statement that was released in 1994 and signed by 38 Evangelical and Catholic leaders. The back cover to Evangelicals & Catholics Together says: "This courageous book seeks a way to allow sectarian strife between the two groups to give way to a decision to work together to mend the fabric of values that has been relentlessly rent in the last thirty-five years. Here, both evangelical and Roman Catholic authors ask whether the time has come to present a united front against the onslaught of publicly sanctioned unbelief in the land."

In 1996, Catholic apologist Peter Kreeft’s book Ecumenical Jihad: Ecumenism and the Culture War was published by Ignatius Press. The book is absolutely packed with unscriptural heresies. Kreeft, who is very popular and influential in ecumenical circles, calls for all Christian denominations to join hands with Jews, Muslims, even with Hindus and Buddhists and other pagan religionists (including atheists and agnostics "if they are of good will and intellectual honesty"), to form a "jihad" against the forces of secularism. "Jihad," meaning "holy war," is a term used by Muslims to describe their willingness to fight unto death against the enemies of Allah. Kreeft’s "ecumenical jihad" sounds very much like the fulfillment of the end-times religious whore of Revelation 17. Kreeft thinks the "culture war" "is about the salvation of the soul," "the continued biological survival of our species," and "is certainly about eternal life or eternal death" (pp. 20,21). Kreeft thinks it is "very likely" that there is a "hidden Christ" in pagan religions, so that Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, etc., will be saved "through Christ and His grace" even though they do not consciously know or worship Jesus Christ (pp. 156,157). Kreeft urges his readers to dedicate themselves "to the Immaculate Heart of Mary," because Mary "is the one who will win this war" and is the one "who triumphs over Satan" (p. 169). Kreeft believes that in Heaven "we will all be Catholics" (p. 163). He worships the wafer of the Catholic Mass "because it is Christ" (p. 162) and because God "hides behind the appearances of a little Wafer of bread" (p. 157). He thinks that God prefers to work through intermediaries of Mary and the saints and that "He wants us to pray through Mary, and not only directly" (p. 154).

In 1997, InterVarsity Press published Reclaiming the Great Tradition: Evangelicals, Catholics and Orthodox in Dialogue. It was edited by James Cutsinger and contained articles by Harold O.J. Brown, Peter Kreeft, Richard Neuhaus, J.I. Packer, and others. The book is a collection of material from an ecumenical dialogue held at Rose Hill College, May 16-20, 1995. The objective of the dialogue was to answer the question: "How can Protestants, Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians talk to each other so as together to speak with Christ’s mind to the modern world?" (p. 8). The answer, of course, is that this is impossible among those who do not hold the same doctrines, nor even believe the same gospel. Paul did not seek to dialogue with those who corrupted the gospel; he rebuked them and announced God’s curse upon them (Galatians 1). In doing so, he was not expressing hatred or bigotry; he was demonstrating love toward those who were in danger of being deceived by false teachers.

Most of these books are published by major Evangelical publishers, and they illustrate the rapidly growing sympathy between Evangelicals and the Roman Catholic Church.

While most of these books acknowledge that there is doctrinal error in the Roman Catholic Church, they claim that Rome has changed for the better, that Roman Catholicism is not a cult, is not total apostasy. They speak of Rome’s heresies in gentle, "understanding," scholarly tones rather than labeling them the blasphemies they really are. Let me give an example. In Roman Catholicism: Evangelical Protestants Analyze What Divides and Unites Us, John Armstrong says, "For centuries the magisterium had insisted that there was no salvation outside the church ... which meant, of course, the Roman Catholic Church. This sometimes caused a decidedly uncharitable response to Protestant evangelicals, who were considered lost outside of Rome and her sacramental system" (emphasis added). To describe Rome’s fearful, bloody, centuries old persecution of Bible-believing Christians as "decidedly uncharitable" is insanity.

Many of today’s Evangelicals want to believe that Rome’s official doctrinal position is not the real position of the so-called Evangelical Catholic today. These books (the one by Moody Press being the exception) call upon Evangelicals to lay aside the age-old divisions and to work hand-in-hand with Roman Catholicism in social, religious, and political causes.

The cover jacket for A House United? quotes Pentecostal Vinson Synan’s recommendation of the book: "Keith Fournier [a Catholic apologist] is truly a twentieth-century apostle of unity for the Body of Christ." This unscriptural unity in the so-called Body of Christ is one of the apostate keynotes of late twentieth-century Evangelicalism. It is obvious that NavPress, publisher of this book, and the Navigators organization that owns NavPress, have succumbed to the Evangelical-Roman Catholic juggernaut.

EVANGELICALISM’S APOSTASY IS ALSO SEEN IN ITS QUESTIONING OF BIBLICAL INFALLIBILITY

The downgrade of the doctrine of biblical inspiration has been documented even by Evangelicalism’s own leaders.

In 1976, Carl F.H. Henry, first editor of Christianity Today, lifted his voice to warn of this frightful problem:

"A GROWING VANGUARD OF YOUNG GRADUATES OF EVANGELICAL COLLEGES WHO HOLD DOCTORATES FROM NON-EVANGELICAL DIVINITY CENTERS NOW QUESTION OR DISOWN INERRANCY and the doctrine is held less consistently by evangelical faculties. ... Some retain the term and reassure supportive constituencies but nonetheless stretch the term’s meaning" (Carl F.H. Henry, chairman for the 1966 World Congress on Evangelism, "Conflict Over Biblical Inerrancy," Christianity Today, May 7, 1976)

Almost 25 years ago this leader warned of Evangelical scholars who disowned or questioned biblical inerrancy. Henry even warned that some Evangelical scholars are deceitful in their use of biblical and traditional Christian terms. They use terms like "infallible" and "inerrant," but they do not mean by this that they believe the Bible is without error.

The same year that Dr. Henry warned of Evangelical graduates disowning inerrancy, Richard Quebedeaux, author of The Young Evangelicals and The Worldly Evangelicals, added the following details:

"Most people outside the evangelical community itself are totally unaware of the profound changes that have occurred within evangelicalism during the last several years—in the movement’s understanding of the inspiration and authority of Scripture, in its social concerns, cultural attitudes and ecumenical posture, and in the nature of its emerging leadership. ... evangelical theologians have begun looking at the Bible with a scrutiny reflecting THEIR WIDESPREAD ACCEPTANCE OF THE PRINCIPLES OF HISTORICAL AND LITERARY CRITICISM ... The position—affirming that Scripture is inerrant or infallible in its teaching on matters of faith and conduct but not necessarily in all its assertions concerning history and the cosmos—IS GRADUALLY BECOMING ASCENDANT AMONG THE MOST HIGHLY RESPECTED EVANGELICAL THEOLOGIANS. ... these new trends ... indicate that evangelical theology is becoming more centrist, more open to biblical criticism and more accepting of science and broad cultural analysis. ONE MIGHT EVEN SUGGEST THAT THE NEW GENERATION OF EVANGELICALS IS CLOSER TO BONHOEFFER, BARTH AND BRUNNER THAN TO HODGE AND WARFIELD ON THE INSPIRATION AND AUTHORITY OF SCRIPTURE" (Richard Quebedeaux, "The Evangelicals: New Trends and Tensions," Christianity and Crisis, Sept. 20, 1976, pp. 197-202).

Another warning appeared a year later:

"A SURPRISING ARRAY OF EQUALLY DEDICATED EVANGELICALS IS FORMING TO INSIST THAT ACCEPTANCE OF HISTORIC CHRISTIAN DOCTRINES DOES NOT REQUIRE BELIEF IN AN INERRANT BOOK. ... What has made it a new ball game today is the emergence of A NEW TYPE OF EVANGELICAL. These persons accept the cardinal doctrines of Christianity in their full and literal meaning but AGREE THAT THE HIGHER CRITICS HAVE A POINT: THERE ARE ERRORS IN SCRIPTURE, and some of its precepts must be recognized as being culturally and historically conditioned" (G. Aiken Taylor, "Is God as Good as His Word?" Christianity Today, Feb. 4, 1977).

That same year Pastor Mark Buch of Vancouver, British Columbia, who was involved in the Fundamentalist movement from the 1930s, gave this testimony to Evangelicalism’s corruption:

"[Evangelicalism] today has fallen away from the old faith and this is not the case of an exception among them, it is common and general. They no longer believe in the veracity, the verbal inspiration of the Holy Bible and they have gone a whoring after all sorts of innovations and foolishness in order to fill their churches..." (Buch, In Defence of the Authorized Version, 1977, p. 33).

In his 1978 book, The Worldly Evangelicals, Richard Quebedeaux warned that many Evangelical scholars are deceitful about their doctrinal heresies:

"Prior to the 60s, virtually all the seminaries and colleges associated with the neo-evangelicals and their descendants adhered to the total inerrancy understanding of biblical authority (at least they did not vocally express opposition to it). … But it is a well-known fact that A LARGE NUMBER, IF NOT MOST, OF THE COLLEGES AND SEMINARIES IN QUESTION NOW HAVE FACULTY WHO NO LONGER BELIEVE IN TOTAL INERRANCY, even in situations where their employers still require them to sign the traditional declaration that the Bible is ‘verbally inspired,’ ‘inerrant,’ or ‘infallible in the whole and in the part,’ or to affirm in other clearly defined words the doctrine of inerrancy that was formulated by the Old Princeton school of theology and passed on to fundamentalism. SOME OF THESE FACULTY INTERPRET THE CRUCIAL CREEDAL CLAUSES IN A MANNER THE ORIGINAL FRAMERS WOULD NEVER HAVE ALLOWED, OTHERS SIMPLY SIGN THE AFFIRMATION WITH TONGUE IN CHEEK" (Quebedeaux, The Worldly Evangelicals, p. 30).

We must not forget that these statements describe conditions 20 YEARS AGO and things are much worse now!

The aforementioned Harold Lindsell published two volumes on the downgrade of the Bible in Evangelicalism, with particular focus on Fuller Seminary, the Southern Baptist Convention, and the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. Lindsell’s The Battle for the Bible was first published in 1976. The sequel, The Bible in the Balance, came out in 1979. This careful documentation by a man who was in the inner circle of Evangelicalism’s leadership for decades leaves no doubt that the Evangelical world of the last half of the twentieth century is leavened with apostasy.

"MORE AND MORE ORGANIZATIONS AND INDIVIDUALS HISTORICALLY COMMITTED TO AN INFALLIBLE SCRIPTURE HAVE BEEN EMBRACING AND PROPAGATING THE VIEW THAT THE BIBLE HAS ERRORS IN IT. This movement away from the historic standpoint has been most noticeable among those often labeled neo-evangelicals. This change of position with respect to the infallibility of the Bible is widespread and has occurred in evangelical denominations, Christian colleges, theological seminaries, publishing houses, and learned societies" (Harold Lindsell, former vice-president and professor Fuller Theological Seminary and Editor Emeritus of Christianity Today, The Battle for the Bible, 1976, p. 20).

In 1984, well-known Evangelical leader Francis Schaeffer published The Great Evangelical Disaster. The book’s title describes the thesis. The cover jacket says, "In this explosive new book Dr. Francis Schaeffer exposes the rise of compromise and accommodation, and the tragic consequences of this, within the evangelical church." The issue that Schaeffer called "the watershed of Evangelicalism" is the inspiration and authority of the Bible. He testified, "Within evangelicalism there are a growing number who are modifying their views on the inerrancy of the Bible so that the full authority of Scripture is completely undercut" (The Great Evangelical Disaster, p. 44).

A more recent exposure of the corruption of doctrine in the Evangelical world is found in No Place for Truth: or Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology? (1993) by David F. Wells, at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. Time magazine described Well’s book as "a stinging indictment of evangelicalism’s theological corruption." Though Wells is himself a committed New Evangelical he properly identifies Evangelicalism’s chief problem as its repudiation of biblical separation and its accommodation with the world:

"Fundamentalism always had an air of embattlement about it, of being an island in a sea of unremitting hostility. Evangelicalism has reacted against this sense of psychological isolation. IT HAS LOWERED THE BARRICADES. IT IS OPEN TO THE WORLD. The great sin of Fundamentalism is to compromise; the great sin in evangelicalism is to be narrow" (emphasis added) (David Wells, No Place for Truth, p. 129).

Wells also made a telling statement that acknowledges precisely where the New Evangelical world is today:

"But in between these far shores [Anglo-Catholicism and Fundamentalism] lie the choppy waters that most evangelicals now ply with their boats, and HERE THE WINDS OF MODERNITY BLOW WITH DISCONCERTING FORCE, FRAGMENTING WHAT IT MEANS TO BE EVANGELICAL. This is because evangelicals have allowed their confessional center to dissipate" (p. 128).

In 1995, Dr. Carl Henry was continuing to warn about unbelief within Evangelical circles: "Much of the same revolt against truth emerged during the recent theology conference of postliberal speakers sponsored jointly with Inter-Varsity at Wheaton College. NOT A SINGLE REPRESENTATIVE OF HISTORIC EVANGELICAL ORTHODOXY COMMITTED TO THE UNBROKEN AUTHORITY OF THE BIBLE WAS FEATURED..." (Calvary Contender, July 1, 1995).

Consider the following summary of the downgrade of the doctrine of inspiration by today’s Evangelical leaders:

My main concern is with those who profess to believe that the Bible is the Word of God and yet by, what I can only call surreptitious and devious means, deny it. This is, surprisingly enough, a position that is taken widely in the evangelical world. Almost all of the literature which is produced in the evangelical world today falls into this category. In the October 1985 issue of Christianity Today, (the very popular and probably most influential voice of evangelicals in America), a symposium on Bible criticism was featured. The articles were written by scholars from several evangelical seminaries. Not one of the participants in that symposium in Christianity Today was prepared to reject higher criticism. All came to its defense. IT BECAME EVIDENT THAT ALL THE SCHOLARS FROM THE LEADING SEMINARIES IN THIS COUNTRY HELD TO A FORM OF HIGHER CRITICISM.

These men claim to believe that the Bible is the Word of God. At the same time, they adopt higher critical methods in the explanation of the Scriptures. This has become so common in evangelical circles that IT IS ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE TO FIND AN EVANGELICAL PROFESSOR IN THE THEOLOGICAL SCHOOLS OF OUR LAND AND ABROAD WHO STILL HOLDS UNCOMPROMISINGLY TO THE DOCTRINE OF THE INFALLIBLE INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. The insidious danger is that higher criticism is promoted by those who claim to believe in infallible inspiration (Herman Hanko, The Battle for the Bible, pp. 2,3). [Hanko’s book should not be confused with Harold Lindsell’s book by that same name.]

The author of the above critique is a professor at the Protestant Reformed Seminary, Grandville, Michigan.

LET ME GIVE AN EXAMPLE OF THIS OF THE HUNDREDS THAT I COULD GIVE FROM MY FILES.

CHARLES SCALISE is affiliated with Fuller Seminary. He is associate professor of church history and academic director of Fuller Theological Seminary in Seattle’s M.Div. program. In his book From Scripture to Theology: A Canonical Journey into Hermeneutics (InterVarsity Press, 1996), Scalise argues for accepting the conclusions of biblical criticism while at the same time accepting the Bible as the "canonical Word of God." He proposes the "canonical approach" of Yale Professor Brevard Childs who follows Karl Barth. Scalise uncritically describes how "the ‘postcritical’ hermeneutics of Karl Barth assists Childs in charting his way across ‘the desert of criticism’" (p. 44). It is true that modern biblical criticism is a desert, but instead of rejecting biblical criticism as the unbelieving heresy that it is, the modern Evangelical scholar tries to reconcile it with a way to allow the Bible to remain authoritative in some sense. In the first chapter of his book, Scalise plainly and unhesitatingly rejects the "facts-of-revelation" approach to Scripture that accepts the Bible as the historically accurate record of God’s infallible revelation (pp. 28-31). Scalise does not believe Moses wrote the Pentateuch under divine inspiration or that the Old Testament record of miracles is accurate. He believes the Pentateuch was written by unknown editors centuries later (p. 56). He believes the Bible’s accounts of miraculous events are exaggerated. For example, he believes that the Egyptian chariots pursuing Israel got "stuck in the mud" (p. 39) rather than being overwhelmed by God’s miraculous dividing and undividing of the waters. He agrees with Karl Barth that the book of Numbers contains both "history" and "storylike saga" (p. 49). He believes portions of Amos were added by an unknown editor (p. 56). He believes that to view the Bible as historical is dangerous (p. 79). He does not believe the Psalms are historical writings (p. 78). He does not believe that the Apostle Paul wrote the book of Ephesians nor that it was originally addressed to the church at Ephesus, and he doesn’t believe it matters (p. 58). Scalise wants to allow the Catholic apocryphal books to be accepted as canonical (pp. 60,61). He commends an approach to biblical canon which has "a firm center and blurred edges" (p. 60). Scalise says, "The Bible is the Word of God because God speaks through it" (p. 22). That is a false, subjective Barthian view of Scripture. In fact, the Bible is the Word of God because it is the Word of God, regardless of whether man feels that God is speaking through it. Scalise claims that comparisons of the Trinity to the self by theologians like Karl Rahner and comparisons of the Trinity to community by theologians like Leonard Hodgson and Jurgen Moltmann "are within the channel of orthodoxy" (p. 103). He does not like the "negative view of tradition" that comes from the Protestant Reformation, and he believes the Protestants and Catholics simply misunderstood one another (p. 73). He believes it is possible to reconcile the differences by requiring that the Bible be interpreted within the context of church tradition (p. 74). In fact, if the Bible must be interpreted by tradition, the tradition becomes the superior authority. In the preface to his book, Scalise notes that he was guided into his critical views of the Bible during studies at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and Tubingen in Germany.

Be careful about labels in this confused hour. The term "evangelical" is meaningless. It can refer to a Modernist or a Roman Catholic or a drunk-in-the-spirit Charismatic or a Psychobabbler who believes the key to mental health is the recovery of hidden memories. I don’t care what label a man bears, if he denies the perfect inspiration of Scripture he is a heretic and an apostate (both of these are biblical terms) and God’s people should treat him as the dangerous false teacher that he is. The Bible is the foundation for everything in the Christian life and faith, and if the Bible is not infallible, Jesus Christ and the Apostles were either deceived or were liars and we are foolish people to follow them.

I repeat that Charles Scalise is only one of hundreds of examples we could give of Evangelical scholars who deny the infallibility of Holy Scripture. Today’s Evangelicals are polluted with the Modernism from which they have refused to separate. A little leaven has indeed leavened the whole lump. (Remember these sad facts the next time you hear about how "thoroughly Evangelical" certain modern Bible translators are. Being "thorough Evangelical" today does not indicate that an individual accepts the Bible as the infallible Word of God.)

EVANGELICALISM’S APOSTASY IS SEEN IN ITS REPUDIATION OF BIBLICAL HOLINESS

Evangelicalism’s apostasy is not only seen in its relationship with Rome and its downgrade of biblical inspiration, it is also seen in its repudiation of biblical holiness. The old Fundamentalism was staunchly and boldly opposed to worldliness. The New Evangelical crowd has rejected and redefined this. The result has been incredible to behold. R-rated and PG-13 movies are given positive reviews in Evangelical publications. Evangelical music groups look and sound exactly like the world. Many Evangelical Bible College campuses have the look and feel of secular colleges. The students wear the same clothes (or lack of clothes) as the world; they drink the same liquor; they dance to the same music; they celebrate the same worldly events; they care about the same worldly concerns. Richard Quebedeaux documented this more than 20 years ago in his book, The Worldly Evangelicals.

"The Gallup Poll is correct in asserting that born-again Christians ‘believe in a strict moral code.’ But that strictness has been considerably modified during the last few years … the monthly question and answer column (patterned after ‘Dear Abby’) in Campus Life, Youth for Christ’s magazine, gives the impression that more born-again high school age couples are having INTERCOURSE than is generally supposed. Among evangelical young people, MASTERBATION is now often seen as a gift from God. DIVORCE AND REMARRIAGE are becoming more frequent and acceptable among evangelicals of all ages, even in some of their more conservative churches. This new tolerant attitude toward divorce has been greatly facilitated both by the publication of positive articles and books on the problem by evangelical authors and by the growth of ministry to singles in evangelical churches. … Some evangelical women are taking advantage of ABORTION on demand. Many younger evangelicals occasionally use PROFANITY in their speech and writing (though they are generally careful to avoid traditional profanity against the deity). Some of the recent evangelical sex-technique books assume that their readers peruse and view PORNOGRAPHY on occasion, and they do. Finally, in 1976 there emerged a fellowship and information organization for practicing evangelical LESBIANS AND GAY MEN and their sympathizers. There is probably just as high a percentage of gays in the evangelical movement as in the wider society. Some of them are now coming out of the closet, distributing well-articulated literature, and demanding to be recognized and affirmed by the evangelical community at large" (Quebedeaux, The Worldly Evangelicals, 1978, pp. 16,17).

Describing this moral apostasy in The Great Evangelical Disaster, Francis Schaeffer said:

"How the mindset of accommodation grows and expands. The last sixty years have given birth to a moral disaster, and what have we done? Sadly we must say that the evangelical world has been part of the disaster. ... WITH TEARS WE MUST SAY THAT ... A LARGE SEGMENT OF THE EVANGELICAL WORLD HAS BECOME SEDUCED BY THE WORLD SPIRIT OF THIS PRESENT AGE" (Schaeffer, p. 141).

The rejection of biblical holiness is particularly evident on the campuses of Evangelical colleges and seminaries. This was observed by James Hunter in his book Evangelicalism The Coming Generation (1987). He documents "the evolution of behavioral standards for students at these colleges" –

"What has happened at Wheaton College, Gordon College, and Westmont College is typical of most of the colleges in this subculture. From the time of their founding to the mid-1960s, the college rules unapologetically prohibited ‘profaning the Sabbath,’ ‘profane or obscene language or behavior,’ playing billiards, playing cards and gambling, using intoxicating liquors or tobacco, theater and movie attendance, and any form of dancing—both on- and off-campus" (Hunter, p. 169).

Hunter goes on to observe that these rules have largely been dropped, and the worldliness on Evangelical college campuses has increased significantly in the twelve years since his book was published.

In 1996, the moral apostasy of today’s Evangelicalism was affirmed by the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals in the Cambridge Declaration. The declaration, signed by 80 theologians and church leaders, was released on April 20, 1996, at the end of a four-day conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The signers included James Montgomery Boice, J.A.O. Preus III, David Wells, Albert Mohler, and Michael Horton, and represented Lutheran, Reformed, Baptist, Congregational, and Independent denominations.

"Today the light of Reformation has been significantly dimmed. The consequence is that THE WORD ‘EVANGELICAL’ HAS BECOME SO INCLUSIVE AS TO HAVE LOST ITS MEANING. … As Biblical authority has been abandoned in practice, as its truths have faded from Christian consciousness, and its doctrines have lost their saliency, THE CHURCH HAS BEEN INCREASINGLY EMPTIED OF ITS INTEGRITY, MORAL AUTHORITY AND DIRECTION. … As evangelical faith becomes secularized, its interests have been blurred with those of the culture. THE RESULT IS A LOSS OF ABSOLUTE VALUES, PERMISSIVE INDIVIDUALISM, AND A SUBSTITUTION OF WHOLENESS FOR HOLINESS, recovery for repentance, intuition for truth, feeling for belief, chance for providence, and immediate gratification for enduring hope" (The Cambridge Declaration, 1996).

Warnings such as these have been largely ignored by the Evangelical world.

EVANGELICALISM’S APOSTASY IS SEEN IN ITS ACCEPTANCE OF HERETICS

Evangelicalism’s apostasy is also seen in its acceptance of heretics. We could give dozens of examples, but I will mention three to illustrate the point: C.S. Lewis, Bruce Metzger, and Robert Schuller.

Evangelicalism’s acceptance of C.S. (CLIVE STAPLES) LEWIS (1898-1963) is well known. According to a Christianity Today reader’s poll in 1998, Lewis was rated the most influential writer. Though Lewis died in 1963, sales of his books have risen to two million a year. In an article commemorating the 100th anniversary of Lewis’s birth, J.I. Packer called him "our patron saint." Christianity Today said Lewis "has come to be the Aquinas, the Augustine, and the Aesop of contemporary Evangelicalism" ("Still Surprised by Lewis," Christianity Today, Sept. 7, 1998). Wheaton College sponsored a lecture series on C.S. Lewis, and Eerdmans published "The Pilgrim’s Guide" to C.S. Lewis.

Was C.S. Lewis a strong Bible believer? By no means. Christianity Today noted that he was "a man whose theology had decidedly unevangelical elements" (Ibid.). Lewis was turning to the Catholic Church before his death. He believed in prayers for the dead and purgatory and confessed his sins regularly to a priest. He received the Catholic sacrament of last rites on July 16, 1963. Lewis also rejected the doctrine of bodily resurrection (Biblical Discernment Ministries Letter, Sept.-Oct. 1996) and believed there is salvation in pagan religions. Lewis denied the total depravity of man and the substitutionary atonement of Christ. He believed in theistic evolution and rejected the Bible as the infallible Word of God. C.S. Lewis used profanities, told bawdy stories, and frequently got drunk with his students (World magazine, May 19, 1990). He denied the biblical doctrine of an eternal fiery hell, claiming, instead, that hell is a state of mind: "And every state of mind, left to itself, every shutting up of the creature within the dungeon of its own mind—is, in the end, Hell" (Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 65).

In 1993, Christianity Today explained why C.S. Lewis is so popular among Evangelicals. Among the reasons given for his popularity was the following "Lewis’s … concentration on the main doctrines of the church coincided with evangelicals’ concern to avoid ecclesiastical separatism" (Christianity Today, Oct. 25, 1993). CT admits that C.S. Lewis is popular to Evangelicals today because, like them, he despised biblical separation.

Another unscriptural heretic who is popular with Evangelicals is BRUCE METZGER. The February 8, 1999, issue of Christianity Today contains an editorial by Michael Maudlin, Managing Editor, entitled "Inside CT." Maudlin’s editorial boasts that "never before in the twentieth century has the church amassed so many highly skilled, believing scholars to illumine our Scriptures, our theology, our traditions, our church work." Who are these "believing scholars"? He mentions five of them: Craig Blomberg, Bruce Metzger, Edwin Yamauchi, Ben Witherington III, and D.A. Carson.

Maudlin’s definition of "believing" is strange. Take Metzger, for example. He is a Princeton Theological Seminary professor, an editor of the United Bible Societies’ Greek New Testament, and the head of the continuing RSV translation committee of the apostate National Council of Churches in the U.S.A. The Revised Standard Version was soundly condemned for its modernism when it first appeared in 1952. Today its chief editor sometimes is invited to speak at Evangelical forums. The RSV hasn’t changed, but Evangelicalism certainly has! Metzger was the chairman for the Reader’s Digest Condensed Bible and wrote the introductions to each book in this butchered version of the Scriptures. In these, Metzger questions the authorship, traditional date, and supernatural inspiration of books penned by Moses, Daniel, and Peter, and in many other ways reveals his liberal, unbelieving heart. Consider three examples:

Genesis: "Nearly all modern scholars agree that, like the other books of the Pentateuch, [Genesis] is a composite of several sources, embodying traditions that go back in some cases to Moses." (Metzger’s introduction to Exodus).

Exodus: "As with Genesis, several strands of literary tradition, some very ancient, some as late as the sixth century B.C., were combined in the makeup of the books" (Metzger’s introduction to Exodus).

Deuteronomy: "It’s compilation is generally assigned to the seventh century B.C., though it rests upon much older tradition, some of it from Moses’ time" (Metzger’s introduction to Deuteronomy).

These statements are not "believing" statements. They are outright lies and heresy. Bruce Metzger is an unbelieving heretic. The Lord Jesus Christ and the Apostles told us that the Pentateuch was written by the historical Moses (who is mentioned 843 times in the Bible). It is not a compilation that gradually took shape over many centuries.

We know that Moses wrote the Pentateuch for the following simple reasons:

1. The books themselves claim to have been written by Moses (Ex. 24:4,7; 34:27-28; Nu. 33:2; De. 1:1-5; 4:4-5; 31:9-12,24-26). If Moses did not write the Pentateuch, the Bible is an absolute lie from its beginning.

2. Other O.T. books claim Moses wrote the Pentateuch (Jos. 1:7; 8:30-35; Jud. 3:4; 1 Ki. 2:3; 2 Ki. 14:6; 22:8-11; 23:21-25; Ezra 3:2; Neh. 8:1; 9:14; Dan. 9:11; Mal. 4:4). If Moses did not write the Pentateuch, all of these writers were either deluded or were lying. Either way, we are left with a hopelessly undependable book which is not the blessed Word of God.

3. The New Testament claims Moses wrote the Pentateuch. Moses is mentioned 80 times in the New Testament (Mk. 12:26; Lk. 16:29-31; 24:27 [Moses’ writings are called Scripture]; 24:44; Jn. 1:17; 5:45-47; 8:5; Ac. 15:21; 2 Co. 3:15).

The Lord Jesus Christ quoted from every part of the Pentateuch: Genesis (Mt. 19:4-6; 24:37-39); Exodus (Mk. 12:26 citing Ex. 3:6); Leviticus (Mt. 8:4 citing Lev. 14:1-32); Numbers (Jn. 3:14-15 citing Num. 21:8,9 and Jn. 6:31-32 citing Num. 11:6-9); Deuteronomy (Mk. 10:4-5 citing Deut. 24:1).

Metzger‘s heresy is further evident in the notes to the New Oxford Annotated Bible RSV (1973). Metzger co-edited this volume with Herbert May. It first appeared in 1962 as the Oxford Annotated Bible and was the first Protestant annotated edition of the Bible to be approved by a Roman Catholic authority. It was given an imprimatur in 1966 by Cardinal Cushing, Archbishop of Boston, Massachusetts. Metzger wrote many of the rationalistic notes in this volume and put his editorial stamp of approval on the rest. The notes claim that the Pentateuch is "a matrix of myth, legend, and history" that "took shape over a long period of time" and is "not to be read as history." The worldwide flood of Noah’s day is said to be a mere "tradition" based on "heightened versions of local inundations." The book of Job is called an "ancient folktale." The book of Isaiah is said to have been written by at least three men. The stories of Elijah and Elisha contain "legendary elements." Jonah is called a "popular legend." The Gospels gradually took shape after the deaths of the Apostles. Peter probably did not write the book of 2 Peter.

These statements are unbelieving lies. The Pentateuch was written by the hand of God and Moses and completed during the 40 years of wilderness wandering hundreds of years before Samuel and the kings. The Old Testament did not arise gradually from a matrix of myth and history, but is inspired revelation delivered to holy men of old by Almighty God. The Jews were a "people of the book" from the beginning. The Jewish nation did not form the Bible; the Bible formed the Jewish nation! Jesus Christ affirmed the historicity of Jonah. The historicity of Job is affirmed by Ezekiel (14:14,20) and James (5:11).

In his "Introduction to the New Testament" in the New Oxford Annotated Bible, Metzger completely ignores the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and claims that the Gospels are composed of material gathered from oral tradition. The Bible says nothing about this, but Jesus Christ plainly tells us that the Holy Spirit would guide the Apostles into all truth (John 16:7-15). The Gospels are divine revelation, not some happenstance editing of oral tradition.

Christianity Today calls Bruce Metzger a "believing scholar." In reality, he is an unbelieving heretic, and the fact that so many Evangelical leaders recommend his writings is a testimony to the apostasy of Evangelicalism today.

The relationship of Evangelical leaders with false teacher ROBERT SCHULLER is another example of how Evangelicalism today accepts heretics. Schuller reinterprets the doctrines of the Word of God to conform to his self-esteem philosophy. His Christ is a Jesus who provides men with self-esteem. His gospel is the replacement of negative self-concepts with positive ones. To Schuller, sin is merely the lack of self-esteem. To Schuller, the greatest evil is to call men sinners in a biblical fashion and thereby injure their self-esteem. Schuller is a universalist who believes that all people are the children of God. His goal is to help each person understand and enjoy this "fact."

Schuller’s false teaching is an extremely serious matter in light of his wide influence. His was the most popular religion television broadcast in America for many years (and it might still be). His books sell by the millions. He appears with presidents. His self-esteem Christianity has been adopted by multitudes. His followers believe they are Christians; they attend churches; but in reality they worship a false christ and follow a false gospel. Robert Schuller and his mentor, the late Norman Vincent Peale, are two of the chief culprits in promoting the self-esteem heresy.

In spite of Schuller’s rejection of the Word of God and his vast unscriptural influence in our society, large numbers of Evangelical leaders promote him and work hand-in-hand with him.

Some will query, "Is Schuller really a heretic?" Consider some excerpts from Schuller’s book Self-Esteem: The New Reformation, published by Word Books in 1982:

"THE CORE OF ORIGINAL SIN, THEN IS LOT—LACK OF TRUST. OR, IT COULD BE CONSIDERED AN INNATE INABILITY TO ADEQUATELY VALUE OURSELVES. LABEL IT A ‘NEGATIVE SELF-IMAGE,’ BUT DO NOT SAY THAT THE CENTRAL CORE OF THE HUMAN SOUL IS WICKEDNESS. ... POSITIVE CHRISTIANITY DOES NOT HOLD TO HUMAN DEPRAVITY, BUT TO HUMAN INABILITY. I am humanly unable to correct my negative self-image until I encounter a life-changing experience with non-judgmental love bestowed upon me by a Person whom I admire so much that to be unconditionally accepted by him is to be born again" (Schuller, Self-Esteem, p. 67).

______________________

"TO BE BORN AGAIN MEANS THAT WE MUST BE CHANGED FROM A NEGATIVE TO A POSITIVE SELF-IMAGE—from inferiority to self-esteem, from fear to love, from doubt to trust" (Schuller, Self-Esteem, p. 68).

______________________

"We are born to soar. We are children of God. ... THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD OFFERS A DEEP SPIRITUAL CURE FOR THE INFERIORITY COMPLEX AND LAYS THE FIRM FOUNDATION FOR A SOLID SPIRITUAL SELF-ESTEEM" (Schuller, Self-Esteem, p. 60).

______________________

"Essentially, if Christianity is to succeed in the next millennium, it must cease to be a negative religion and must become positive" (Schuller, Self-Esteem, p. 104).

______________________

"What do I mean by sin? Answer: Any human condition or act that robs God of glory by stripping one of his children of their right to divine dignity. ... I can offer still another answer: ‘SIN IS ANY ACT OR THOUGHT THAT ROBS MYSELF OR ANOTHER HUMAN BEING OF HIS OR HER SELF-ESTEEM’" (Schuller, Self-Esteem, p. 14).

______________________

"And what is ‘hell’? It is the loss of pride that naturally follows separation from God—the ultimate and unfailing source of our soul’s sense of self-respect. ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ was Christ’s encounter with hell. In that ‘hellish’ death our Lord experienced the ultimate horror—humiliation, shame, and loss of pride as a human being. A PERSON IS IN HELL WHEN HE HAS LOST HIS SELF-ESTEEM. Can you imagine any condition more tragic than to live life and eternity in shame?" (Schuller, Self-Esteem, pp. 14-15,93).

______________________

"The Cross sanctifies the ego trip. For the Cross protected our Lord’s perfect self-esteem from turning into sinful pride" (Schuller, Self-Esteem, p. 75).

______________________

"CHRIST is the Ideal One, for he WAS SELF-ESTEEM INCARNATE" (Schuller, Self-Esteem, p. 135).

______________________

"Jesus never called a person a sinner. ... Rather he reserved his righteous rebuke for those who used their religious authority to generate guilt and caused people to lose their ability to taste and enjoy their right to dignity..." (Schuller, Self-Esteem, pp. 100,126).

______________________

"I FOUND MYSELF IMMEDIATELY ATTRACTED TO POPE JOHN PAUL II when, upon his election to the Papacy, his published speeches invariably called attention to the need for recognizing the dignity of THE HUMAN BEING AS A CHILD OF GOD" (Schuller, Self-Esteem, p. 17).

______________________

"In a theology that starts with an uncompromising respect for each person’s pride and dignity, I HAVE NO RIGHT TO EVER PREACH A SERMON OR WRITE AN ARTICLE THAT WOULD OFFEND THE SELF-RESPECT AND VIOLATE THE SELF-DIGNITY OF A LISTENER OR READER. Any minister, religious leader, writer, or reporter who stoops to a style, a strategy, a substance, or a spirit that fails to show respect for his or her audience is committing an insulting sin. Every human being must be treated with respect; self-esteem is his sacred right."

"The tragedy of Christendom today is the existence of entire congregations of church members who are dominated by emotionally deprived or emotionally under-developed persons. These congregations have been accurately labeled ‘God’s Frozen People.’ ... And they do this by exercising narrow authoritarianism in doctrines and practices and by sowing seeds of suspicion and dissension in the religious community. ... By contrast, strong persons—self-assured personalities, whose egos find their nourishment in a self-esteem-generating personal relationship with Jesus Christ—dare to face contrary opinions, diverse interpretations, and deviations of theology without becoming disrespectful, judgmental, or accusatory" (Schuller, Self Esteem, pp. 153-154).

Schuller contends that the most destructive thing that can be done to a person is to call him a sinner. In an article in Christianity Today, October 5, 1984, Schuller said, "I don’t think anything has been done in the name of Christ and under the banner of Christianity that has proven more destructive to human personality and, hence, counterproductive to the evangelism enterprise than the often crude, uncouth, and unchristian strategy of attempting to make people aware of their lost and sinful condition."

In light of Schuller’s blatant denial of the Word of God, his false gospel, and his radical ecumenism, it is amazing to see evangelical leaders fellowshipping with him, but the record is clear. Schuller’s book Self-Esteem was endorsed by men such as Clark Pinnock of McMaster Divinity College, David Hubbard, president of Fuller Theological Seminary, and Kenneth Chafin of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Two years after Schuller published Self-Esteem: The New Reformation, the editors of Christianity Today examined his theology and, amazingly, concluded that he is not a heretic. Consider an excerpt from an August 10, 1984, Christianity Today article by Kenneth Kantzer and Paul Fromer:

"He believes all the ‘fundamental’ doctrines of traditional fundamentalism. He adheres to every line of the Apostles’ Creed with a tenacity born of deep conviction. ... he avowed belief in a literal hell. He was not sure about its location, and the fire is to be understood figuratively..."

This is remarkable. It is no surprise that when Robert Schuller is questioned about his theology, he says he believes the fundamental doctrines of the Faith. Most heretics do. What Schuller will not admit is that he redefines the terminology of the Faith to produce an entirely different, and false, theology. We do not need a personal interview to clarify the man’s blatant apostasy! He has plainly stated it in his books. Note that the Christianity Today interviewers said Schuller affirmed that Hell is literal, but they turn right around and admit that he believes the fire of Hell is figurative. That means Schuller DOES NOT believe Hell is literal! With spiritual watchmen like Christianity Today editors, churches have no protection.

Schuller says he believes in salvation by grace, but he actually believes that salvation means being rescued from poor self-esteem. He says he believes in Hell; but his hell is the loss of self-esteem, not a place of fiery eternal torment. He says he believes in sin; but he defines sin not as willful rebellion against God and His law, but the loss of self-esteem. He says he believes in Jesus Christ; but his positive-only, "Self-Esteem Incarnate" Jesus is not the Jesus of the Bible. He says he believes in the cross of Christ, but he believes the cross merely "sanctified the ego trip" rather than provided blood atonement for man’s sin. Schuller says he believes everything in the Bible. That is not true. What he believes is actually a redefined, twisted view of the Bible. His repentance is not Bible repentance; his new birth is not Bible regeneration; his Hell, his Heaven, his Jesus, his cross, his salvation is not that of the Bible. The man is an arch-heretic, a blasphemer. He has never retracted or repented of the views promoted in his book Self-Esteem.

The watchdogs at Christianity Today are blind and dumb, and this exemplifies the condition of Evangelical theologians in general. The fact that so many "evangelical" leaders treat Schuller as a brother in Christ is evidence of the spiritual blindness and apostasy of Evangelicalism today. Examples could be given of many other heretics who are beloved of the Evangelical world today. Christ warns us not to follow blind leaders. "And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch" (Matthew 15:14).

I believe a clear case can be established connecting Evangelicalism’s apostasy with its acceptance of the critical text and its versions. The Fundamentalist who defends the modern versions joins hands with Modernists and New Evangelicals, because this has long been their position and they are the ones doing the vast majority of the "scholarly" writing on this subject.

Pastor Mark Buch (1910-1995) of Vancouver, British Columbia, who was in the Fundamentalist movement since the 1930s, gave this testimony to the fact that Evangelicalism has become corrupted:

"[Evangelicalism] today has fallen away from the old faith and this is not the case of an exception among them, it is common and general. They no longer believe in the veracity, the verbal inspiration of the Holy Bible and they have gone a whoring after all sorts of innovations and foolishness in order to fill their churches..." (Buch, In Defence of the Authorized Version, 1977, p. 33).

Remember these sad facts the next time you hear something about how "thoroughly evangelical" certain modern Bible translators are. Today’s Evangelicals are polluted with the Modernism from which they have refused to separate. A little leaven has indeed leavened the whole lump.

The pure Gospel and the pure Bible have always been held by a minority, a remnant. In light of New Testament prophecies that foresee the almost total apostasy of the visible "church" in the last hours of this age, I do not find it strange that the pure Bible is rejected by the majority of those who profess to be evangelical Christians today.

In concluding our thoughts about the connection between apostasy and the modern versions, we quote from Alfred Martin, former vice president of Moody Bible Institute. In his 1951 doctoral thesis before the Dallas Theological Seminary graduate school faculty, he made this observation:

THE CONNECTION BETWEEN THEOLOGY AND TEXTUAL CRITICISM HAS NOT BEEN PERCEIVED CLEARLY ENOUGH BY MOST. AT PRECISELY THE TIME WHEN LIBERALISM WAS CARRYING THE FIELD IN THE ENGLISH CHURCHES THE THEORY OF WESTCOTT AND HORT RECEIVED WIDE ACCLAIM. THESE ARE NOT ISOLATED FACTS. Recent contributions on the subject--that is, in the present century--following mainly the Westcott-Hort principles and method, have been made largely by men who deny the inspiration of the Bible. ... Textual criticism cannot be divorced entirely from theology. No matter how great a Greek scholar a man may be, or no matter how great an authority on the textual evidence, his conclusions must always be open to suspicion if he does not accept the Bible as the very Word of God (pp. 69,70).

The Westcott-Hort theory has been examined and found wanting. The whole arrogant scheme of putting this study on a purely literary basis, without any acknowledgment of the corruption brought into the text in early days by willful and wicked men, and without any perception of God’s providential preservation of His Word down through the centuries, collapses when subjected to close scrutiny. Men would have seen this in the years immediately after 1881 if they had not been so committed to the liberal trends which were then gathering momentum. ...

IT WILL NOT DO TO MODIFY WESTCOTT AND HORT AND TO PROCEED FROM THERE. THE ONLY ROAD TO PROGRESS IN NEW TESTAMENT TEXTUAL CRITICISM IS REPUDIATION OF THEIR THEORY AND ALL ITS FRUITS. Most contemporary criticism is bankrupt and confused, the result of its liaison with liberal theology. A Bible-believing Christian can never be content to follow the leadership of those who do not recognize the Bible as the verbally inspired Word of God (emphasis added) (pp. 193,196,197).

Christian students who accept the Bible as the verbally inspired Word of God need to interest themselves in the questions of textual criticism. This is not merely an academic matter which is only of passing interest to a few scholarly recluses (p. 204).

(Alfred Martin, A Critical Examination of the Westcott-Hort Textual Theory, Th.D. Thesis, Dallas Theological Seminary, May 1951).

Would James White tell us that Alfred Martin is a Ruckmanite fundamental Baptist? Did Martin get his view that the modern versions are founded upon apostasy from Gail Riplinger?

Many other powerful lines of argument are offered by King James Bible defenders, but these are sufficient for me. Any one of the above points, in fact, would be sufficient for me to reject the modern texts and versions and to hold fast to the Received Text and the King James Bible. Multitudes of men who tremble at God’s Word and who have sought the face of God about the Bible, have concluded that the Received Text and accurate translations thereof are the preserved Word of God. I earnestly sought the face of God about this issue more than 20 years ago. I tried to examine the question from every side. If I was biased at that time, I was biased against the King James Bible position, having been taught in Greek class at Tennessee Temple in the mid 1970s that the various texts and versions are equally the Word of God and that the text-version debate was almost a non-issue. I prayerfully read all sorts of books, pro and con, about the KJV, and corresponded with men whom I respected spiritually and scholarly. I am convinced that God guided me to place my confidence in the Authorized English Version. Multitudes of other men can give the same testimony. I know hundreds of them personally. There are exceptions, of course, but I have observed that English-speaking men who are the most zealous for the jots and tittles of God’s Word are Received Text/King James Bible defenders. Men can mistake the guidance of God, of course, but men who have earnestly sought God’s face about an issue and who subsequently believe God has guided them to a certain position cannot lightly give it up.

In conclusion, James White pretends that the great lines of argument which underlie the King James Bible defense are views newly risen and are the property of a contemporary "King James Only" club. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Each of these arguments was used widely in the 19th century to defend the King James Bible and its Received Text against the onslaught of critical Greek texts. We have documented this in For Love of the Bible and in Myths about Modern Bible Versions.

Click here for Part 3 of this critique.