This timeline shows the great spiritual and doctrinal dangers that exist everywhere at the end of the church age. It documents the progress of false Christianity and the one-world “church.”
It is a warning that every Bible-believing church must aggressively educate and protect the Lord’s people in these times.
It is a warning about the prominent bridges to heresy (e.g., ecumenical evangelism, Contemporary Christian Music, modern textual criticism, the modern Bible versions, C.S. Lewis, the Church Fathers, contemplative prayer, charismaticism, evangelicalism).
It is a warning to make salvation clear and well delineated from false gospels and to look for biblical evidence of those who profess Christ. A regenerate church membership is a fundamental protection in the midst of apostasy.
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Having looked at the 18th and the 19th centuries and observed the apostasy that swept into Christian churches in the same era that produced modern textual criticism, we will now provide a timeline of 20th century apostasy to document what has happened within Christianity at large as the modern critical texts and modern English versions have become dominant. We will begin at the dawn of the 20th century just after the publication of the English Revised Version and the Westcott-Hort Greek New Testament and progress through the 21st century to the present. We will see that the unbelief that began as a stream in the late 18th century and had become a river in the 19th century, became “a veritable ocean of unbelief” in the 20th. Like ivy, theological modernism slept in the late 18th century, crept in the 19th, and leapt in the 20th.
1900--As a predecessor of the Pentecostal movement, John Alexander Dowie proclaimed that he was “Elijah the Restorer” who was to precede the Lord’s coming and that he was the first apostle of the renewed end time church. Dowie established Zion City north of Chicago, “where doctors, drugs, and devils were not allowed.” His own daughter died of serious burns when he refused her medical assistance.
--------“Even before the turn of the twentieth century, the five Baptist seminaries in the North were showing signs of liberalism” (David Beale, In Pursuit of Purity, p. 175).
1901--The modern tongues movement was launched when on New Year’s day Agnes Ozman, a student at Charles Parham’s Bethel Bible School in Topeka, Kansas, allegedly began to speak in a language she had never learned.
--------Sigmund Freud, “the father of modern psychology” and “one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century,” published The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, which laid out many of his ideas of the “unconscious,” that there is a reservoir of thoughts, memories, and emotions that lie outside the awareness of the conscious mind and can be probed through psychoanalysis. Freud taught that there is ego, the conscious state, and id, the unconscious state. Freudianism shifts responsibility of action from the conscious individual to the “unconscious id” and to unremembered childhood experiences. Freud launched the movement of psychoanalysis that has brought untold moral, spiritual, and psychological injury to modern society and has permeated Christianity since the latter half of the century.
1902--J.W. Bailey of North Carolina wrote in the Biblical Recorder that there were a multitude of “theologies” in the Southern Baptist Convention. He said, “Theologies change every day. ... [Baptists do not stand for] formulated dogmas.”
1905--Swiss psychiatrist August Forel published The Sexual Question, in which he stated that “morality is relative” and there is “no absolute good or absolute bad.”
--------Sigmund Freud published Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality which delves into moral perversion and claims that it is natural, thus providing an excuse for such things as homosexuality, pedophilia, and bestiality, and laying groundwork for the total sexualization of society.
1906--The strange and unscriptural “Azusa Street Revival,” with its gibberish “tongues,” false promise of healing, and women preachers, began in Los Angeles, inaugurating the Pentecostal movement.
--------Albert Schweitzer published The Quest for the Historical Jesus, claiming that Jesus was not the supernatural Messiah, the eternal Son of God, but a mere man who, thinking that the destruction of the world was imminent, attempted to usher it in by his death. Schweitzer’s Jesus is “a failed apocalyptic prophet.”
--------George Foster, a Baptist professor at the University of Chicago, published The Finality of the Christian Religion in which he claimed that “a God outside the cosmos is dead.” He claimed that the divine inspiration of the Bible is “untrue historically and impossible psychologically.” He said the evidence does not support Christ’s bodily resurrection. His home church, Hyde Park Baptist, refused to retract his ordination or discipline him in any way.
1907--Walter Rauschenbusch published Christianity and the Social Crisis, popularizing the unscriptural Social Gospel. Other influential names in the Social Gospel movement were Washington Gladden and Charles Sheldon, author of In His Steps.
1908--The Federal Council of Churches in America was founded to promote ecumenical unity and liberal social and political causes.
1910--Adolf Harnack’s What Is Christianity appeared in an English translation, preaching the Fatherhood of God. The lectures were first delivered in German at the University of Berlin during the winter-term 1899-1900.
1913--Ferdinand de Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics was published posthumously, marking the birth of modern linguistics, denying God and the absolute nature of language. According to Saussure, the meaning of language is not something to be recovered in an absolute sense but something each person creates for himself. Fifty years later, in Toward a Science of Translating, Eugene Nida of the United Bible Societies acknowledged Saussure’s influence on his own theories of dynamic equivalency in the field of Bible translation.
1915--The newly formed Assemblies of God, the largest Pentecostal denomination, was rent asunder during its first two years of existence (1914-1916) by a Unitarian controversy. “Oneness” Pentecostals separated and formed various Unitarian groups that have remained a prominent and influential part of Pentecostalism. One of these is the United Pentecostal Church. Oneness theology alleges that there are not three Persons of the Godhead, only three manifestations of one Person, Jesus. Thus, it is also called “Jesus Only.”
1916--Madison Grant, president of the New York Zoological Society, wrote, “Mistaken regard for what are believed to be divine laws and a sentimental belief in the sanctity of human life tend to prevent both the elimination of defective infants and the sterilization of such adults as are themselves of no value of the community. The laws of nature require the obliteration of the unfit, and human life is valuable only when it is of use to the community or race” (The Passing of the Great Race).
1917--Francis Pieper, a conservative German Lutheran theologian, wrote: “During one period of the Arian controversy it was said that the world had become Arian. Today it can be said that the so-called Protestant world has become Unitarian” (Francis Pieper, Christian Dogmatics, I, p. 421, translated from the German of 1917). This is an interesting statement in light of the Unitarian influence within modern textual criticism and the wholesale modification of Trinitarian passages such as 1 Timothy 3:16 and 1 John 5:7 in modern texts and versions.
1918--Harry Emerson Fosdick (1868-1969), pastor of the influential Riverside Church in New York City, published The Manhood of the Master, denying that Jesus Christ is God.
--------James Frazer published Folk-lore in the Old Testament, presenting the Genesis flood as merely another of the more than 100 mythical accounts of a worldwide flood.
1919--Walter Rauschenbusch published A Theology for the Social Gospel, which sought to replace the Great Commission of world evangelism with the goal of transforming society and thus building the kingdom of God on earth.
--------Karl Barth (1886-1968) published the first part of his commentary on Romans. Barth, Emil Brunner (1889-1965), and Reinhold Niebuhr (1893-1971) were the fathers of neo-orthodoxy, which hides its unbelief beneath obscure language and orthodox theological terms that are given a heretical meaning (e.g., speaking of the “bodily resurrection” of Christ or the “second coming” or “the inspiration of Scripture” but not defining these doctrines in a traditional sense). According to neo-orthodoxy, the Bible is not itself the objective and infallible Word of God but merely becomes the word of God as it is experienced existentially by the individual reader.
1920--Margaret Sanger, founder of the birth control/abortion rights movement in America, published Woman and the New Race, in which she called large families “immoral” and stated, “The most merciful thing that the large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.” Sanger advocated a mass sterilization program for the “unfit” and the “extermination” of “human weeds” by abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia.
1921--Rudolf Bultmann (1884-1976) published The History of the Synoptic Tradition, a first step toward his attempt to “demythologize” the New Testament. In Jesus and the Word, Bultmann claimed, “We can now know almost nothing about the life and personality of Jesus.”
--------Z.T. Cody, editor of South Carolina’s Baptist Courier, wrote, “Our churches [Southern Baptist] have practically no discipline. As to worldliness and minor offences, many of our churches do nothing. But what is far worse, our churches often allow the most serious moral transgressions to go unnoticed. Even at times, to save a disturbance in the church, they will grant a minister a letter who, as they know, has grossly violated, not only the proprieties of life, but the moral law of God. ... What we dread today more than aught else is a disturbance in the ‘peace’ of a church. ... We do not know what is the remedy for this lapsed condition.”
--------Carl Jung (1875-1961) published Psychological Types: or the Psychology of Individuation. Jung delved deeply into Eastern religions, Gnosticism, mythology, astrology, and occultism and prepared the way for the New Age movement. He attended séances and acquired a spirit guide named Philemon. He had a vast influence on Christianity, philosophy, and the arts. “The moral relativism that released upon us the sexual revolution is rooted in an outlook of which [Jung] is the most brilliant contemporary expositor” (Merill Berger, The Wisdom of Dreams). “Jung’s direct and indirect impact on mainstream Christianity--and thus on Western culture--has been incalculable. It is no exaggeration to say that the theological positions of most mainstream denominations in their approach to pastoral care, as well as in their doctrines and liturgy--have become more or less identical with Jung’s psychological/symbolic theology” (Jeffrey Satinover, Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth, p. 240).
1922--Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Singer’s Pivot of Civilization condemned charitable action because it hinders the progress of evolutionary natural selection. She referred to “inferior” humans as “weeds,” complaining that “nature eliminates the weeds, but we turn them into parasites and allow them to reproduce” (Edwin Black, War Against the Weak, p. 133). Sanger called large families “immoral” and advocated not only birth control, but also abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia. She was on the cutting edge of the sexual revolution and the culture of death. In her book Woman and the New Race, she said, “The most merciful thing that the large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.”
1924--The Methodist Episcopal Church approved the ordination of female pastors.
--------Clarence Darrow defended wealthy teenagers Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb who admitted to brutally murdering 14-year-old Bobby Franks just for “a sort of pure love of excitement.” Leopold and Loeb were atheistic Darwinists, heavily influenced by the “God is dead” philosopher Frederick Nietzsche and by Darwin’s foremost German disciple, Ernst Haeckel. Leopold said, “There is no difference between the death of a man and the death of a dog” and “it is as easy to justify murder as an entomologist in impaling a beetle on a pin” (Hal Higdon, The Crime of the Century). Darrow, also a committed Darwinist, hosted the weekly meetings of the Evolution Club in his Chicago home. The portraits of his heroes decorating the walls of his office included Karl Marx. Darrow successfully argued against the death penalty on the basis of Darwinist determination and natural selection. In his closing speech, he denounced the “old theory” that man has a free will and is accountable for his actions and called for its replacement with a “new, enlightened view of modern science that human beings are machines determined wholly by their heredity and environment” (John West, Darwin Day in America, p. 46).
1925--The Scopes “Monkey” Trial was held in Dayton, Tennessee, and Bible-believing Christians were made a laughing stock by the mainstream news media. Creationists won that case but ultimately lost the war to keep evolution out of the public schools.
--------Alfred Whitehead (1861-1947) published Science and the Modern World. Whitehead was the prominent voice of “process theology,” which taught that God is not the omnipotent God of the Bible but is himself subject to the process of change “carried out by the agents of free will; God cannot force anything to happen, but rather only influence the exercise of this universal free will by offering possibilities; because God contains a changing universe, God is changeable (that is to say, God is affected by the actions that take place in the universe) over the course of time.” Other proponents of process theology are Charles Hartshorne (1897-2000), John B. Cobb, and David Ray Griffin.
1926--After a debate lasting almost five hours, the Northern Baptist Convention voted by a margin of about three to one not to evict Riverside Church of New York City from its membership for the rank modernism of its pastor, Harry Emerson Fosdick.
1927--In The Christlike God, Methodist Bishop Francis McConnell of New York, denied the deity of Jesus Christ. McConnell said, “Is not this tendency to deify Jesus more heathen than Christian?”
--------Henry Vedder, author of A Short History of the Baptists, said of Christ’s substitutionary atonement, “Of all the slanders men have perpetrated against our Most High, this is positively the grossest, the most impudent, the most insulting” (cited from Baptist Fundamentals: Addresses at the Pre-Convention Conference, 1927)
1928--In Christ and the Roundtable, Methodist missionary E. Stanley Jones wrote, “If verbal infallibility is insisted upon, then the certainty is very precarious.”
1929--Princeton Theological Seminary, which had been leavened with theological modernism, witnessed an exodus of conservative Presbyterians who formed Westminster Theological Seminary.
--------Charles Potter founded the Humanist Church and announced his new evolutionary faith with the construction of a statue called “The Chrysalis,” depicting a naked man emerging chrysalid-fashion from an ape-skin.
1930--The Presbyterian Church in America approved the ordination of women as elders.
--------John D. Rockefeller, Jr., spent $10 million to build the ultra-liberal Riverside Church in Manhattan for Harry Emerson Fosdick. Rockefeller’s conditions were that the church would “follow a policy of religious liberalism, remove the requirement for members to be baptized, and become nondenominational.”
1931--Henry Sloane Coffin, President-Emeritus of Union Seminary and former moderator of the Presbyterian Church, wrote, “Certain ... hymns still perpetuate the theory that God pardons sinners because Christ purchased that pardon by His obedience and suffering. ... There is no cleansing blood which can wipe out the record of what has been. ... The Cross of Christ is not a means of procuring forgiveness” (Coffin, The Meaning of the Cross, pp. 118-121).
1932--A small group of men departed from the Northern Baptist Convention because of its liberalism and formed the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches (GARBC).
1933--A Humanist Manifesto was published to promote an atheistic, evolutionary philosophy and to call for a socialistic new world order. “Religious humanists regard the universe as self-existing and not created. Humanism believes that man is a part of nature and that he has emerged as a result of a continuous process. Holding an organic view of life, humanists find that the traditional dualism of mind and body must be rejected. ... We are convinced that the time has passed for theism ... Man is at last becoming aware that he alone is responsible for the realization of the world of his dreams, that he has within himself the power for its achievement.” Signatories included John Dewey, who had a massive influence on American education.
1934--William Temple, who would become Archbishop of Canterbury, said, “... an atheist who lives by love is saved by his faith in the God whose existence (under that name) he denies” (Nature, Man and God, p. 416).
1935--George A. Buttrick, Presbyterian pastor who would become president of the Federal Council in 1940, wrote: “Literal infallibility of Scripture is a fortress impossible to defend. ... Probably few people who claim to ‘believe every word of the Bible’ really mean it. That avowal held to its last logic would risk a trip to the insane asylum” (Christian Fact and Modern Doubt, p. 162).
--------Emil Brunner published Unser Glaube (Our Faith), in which he likened the voice of God in the Bible to the voice of a speaker in a wax recording. As the speaker’s voice can be recognized even though the recording is scratchy and otherwise imperfect, God’s voice can be recognized though the Bible is (allegedly) filled with error and myth.
--------When fundamentalist leader J. Edwin Orr toured the South in 1935, he was dismayed to find that “quite a majority of believers go to the movies once a week, as well as other questionable amusements, and the unpainted face is more an exception than the rule. The converted Christians behave almost exactly the same as the non-Christians do--there is no separation” (Joel Carpenter, Revive Us Again, p. 59).
1936--A small group of conservatives departed from the Presbyterian Church in America because of its liberalism and founded the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.
--------The World Congress of Faiths was held at University College, London, organized by the famous British explorer-soldier Francis Younghusband, who believed there is a “divine spark” within man and called God “the Central Spirit of Things.” He believed in the Hindu concept that “every single man is bound up with every other man and with all living creatures, and with the entire physical universe in one mighty whole” (Marcus Braybrooke, A Wider Vision: A History of the World Congress of Faiths, 1936-96). Younghusband believed that Christ was an advanced man who was our example. Younghusband hoped that interfaith work such as the World Congress would “afford men a vision of a happier world” so that eventually “what had begun as human would flower as divine” (Braybrooke). The speakers included D.T. Suzuki, one of the first Zen Buddhist scholars to write in English, Confucian S.I. Hsiung, Muslim Yusuf Ali, Hindu Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, who later was President of India, Jewish professor J.L. Magnes, Sikh Sirdar Mohan Singh, and Baha’i leader Shoghi Effendi. G. Ranjee Shahani told the Congress: “Jesus and Buddha, Shakespeare and Ramakrishna--are in essence members one of another.” Alan Watts, who later moved to America and became the Zen Buddhist guru of the 1950s Beat Generation, also participated in the World Congress.
1937--The New York Times for March 19 featured Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) as the Jesuit priest who believed that man descended from monkeys. Teilhard attempted to integrate religion with science and applied evolution to human history, envisioning humanity heading toward an “Omega point” of peace and unity. He believed that humanity would evolve the “noosphere” or planetary communication network.
1943--Pope Pius XII, in his Divino Afflante Spiritu, became the first pope to endorse the use of the “scientific criticism” of Scripture.
1944--Youth for Christ evangelist Billy Graham met the influential Roman Catholic leader Fulton Sheen on a train, and recalled later: “We talked about our ministries and our common commitment to evangelism, and I told him how grateful I was for his ministry and his focus on Christ. … We talked further and we prayed; and by the time he left, I felt as if I had known him all my life” (Graham, Just As I Am, p. 692). By his own testimony, Sheen’s hope for heaven was Mary.
--------Pentecostal evangelist Smith Wigglesworth paved the way for the Word-Faith movement when he stated: “What you say will come to pass. Speak the word and the bound shall be free, the sick shall be healed” (Wigglesworth, “Power from on High,” Pentecostal Evangel, May 27, 1944).
--------G. Bromley Oxnam, Methodist bishop and one of the first presidents of the World Council of Churches, endorsed calling the God of the Old Testament a “Dirty Bully” in his 1944 book Preaching in a Revolutionary Age. Oxnam wrote: “Hugh Walpole, in Wintersmoon, tells of a father and son at Church. The aged rector read from the Old Testament, and the boy learned of the terrible God who sent plagues upon the people and created fiery serpents to assault them. That night, when the father passed the boy’s bedroom, the boy called him, put his arms around his father’s neck, and, drawing him close, said, ‘Father, you hate Jehovah. So do I. I loathe Him, dirty bully!’ We have long since rejected a conception of reconciliation associated historically with an ideal of Deity that is loathsome. God, for us, cannot be thought of an angry, awful, avenging Being who because of Adam’s sin must have his Shylockian pound of flesh. No wonder the honest boy in justifiable repugnance could say, ‘Dirty Bully’” (p. 79).
1945--Baptist pastor Harry Emerson Fosdick, in a letter written in January 1945 to an inquiring individual from Peru, Indiana, said, “Of course I do not believe in the virgin birth or in that old-fashioned substitutionary doctrine of the atonement, and I know of no intelligent person who does” (The Christian Beacon, January 3, 1957). Fosdick became the featured radio speaker for the Federal Council of Churches in America (forerunner to the National Council of Churches) after its formation in 1950.
1946--The Northern Baptist Convention held its annual meeting at Fountain Street Baptist Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The host pastor, Duncan Littlefair, had made the following statements: “God may be identified as a piece of this world’s stuff ... God is a part of a great whole and as such is constantly being broken and destroyed and frustrated. ... I must say that God is not eternal. ... There is no reason whatever from the nature of God to assume that God is the strongest or the biggest in the universe or that he can exercise his ‘will’ at will. ... On the basis of our study and approach we must say that God is not omniscient and cannot ‘know’ in any normal sense of the term for he is not a person. ... Jesus is not and cannot be God.”
--------In the founding document of UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization), which was used internally for 30 years before publication in 1976, Darwinist Julian Huxley wrote, “The general philosophy of UNESCO should be a scientific world humanism, global in extent and evolutionary in background.” Huxley called for the unity of religions and a one-world government.
1948--The newly established World Council of Churches adopted a confession of faith weak enough to provide practically any heresy a comfortable home and was soon preaching universalism and participating in syncretistic worship activities with pagan religions.
--------Harold Ockenga coined the term “Neo-evangelicalism” and announced that his generation had “repudiated separatism” and intended to put a more positive, intellectual face on Christianity. Looking back on this 38 years later, Ockenga said, “The ringing call for a repudiation of separatism and the summons to social involvement received a hearty response from many evangelicals” (Ockenga’s foreword to Harold Lindsell’s The Battle for the Bible, 1986).
--------In Mahatma Gandhi: An Interpretation, Methodist missionary E. Stanley Jones testified that he went to India to convert the heathen, but in the end the heathen conquered him; he became an idolizer of Gandhi and a promoter of pacifism.
1949--Oral Roberts’ magazine Healing Waters described the visit of William Branham to a Roberts’ healing crusade in Tampa, Florida, noting: “Both felt the healing power in their hands. Brother Branham in his left through vibrations, Brother Roberts in his right with power to detect the presence, names and numbers of demons.”
--------The Cursillo movement, which began this year in Spain, would become instrumental in bringing Roman Catholics and other sacramentalists (such as Anglicans) into the charismatic movement. Cursillo consists of religious retreats that seek to “deepen the faith” of those who have been baptized as infants; there is no renunciation of baptismal regeneration and other heretical doctrines and practices and no scriptural preaching of the new birth. The movement spread to Latin America in the 1950s and from there to the United States.
1950--The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) was founded, and Harold Ockenga would become one of the directors. Roman Catholic Cardinal Cushing promoted Graham with the words “BRAVO BILLY” splashed on the cover of his magazine, making news all across the country, and leading the evangelist to say, “That was my first real coming to grips with the whole Protestant/Catholic situation. I began to realize that there were Christians everywhere. They might be called modernists, Catholics, or whatever, but they were Christians” (Bookstore Journal, Nov. 1991).
--------The theologically liberal, Communist-infiltrated Federal Council of Churches in America (later renamed the National Council of Churches) was founded.
--------The Vatican approved Mother Teresa’s Order of the Missionaries of Charity, and two years later she opened Nirmal Hriday, her now-famous home for dying destitutes in Calcutta. In spite of her commitment to Rome’s false sacramental gospel, her firm belief that the consecrated wafer of the Mass is the very Christ Himself, and her universalism, Mother Teresa became an icon of the ecumenical movement and was praised by practically every influential evangelical leader.
1951--Paul Tillich (1886-1965) began the publication of his Systematic Theology, teaching a philosophical Christianity by means of obscure language: theology is a never-settled process and God, the “Ground of Being,” can be known only through myths. “At best Tillich was a pantheist, but his thought borders on atheism.”
--------Influential Baptist theologian Nels Ferré wrote, “Mary, we remember, was found pregnant before her engagement to mild Joseph. Nazareth was hard by a Roman garrison where the soldiers were German mercenaries. Jesus is also reported throughout a continuous part of the history of art, it is claimed, to have been blond. This is supposedly unnatural for the Mediterranean countries where this same tradition started and was continued. Hence Jesus must have been the child of a German soldier!” (Ferré, The Christian Understanding of God, 1951, p. 191).
--------The Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship International was founded by Demos Shakarian. It would become a major catalyst for the charismatic-ecumenical movement by de-emphasizing doctrine and stressing shared religious experiences. Eventually a large percentage of its members would be Roman Catholic.
1952--Billy Graham told reporter William McElwain of the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph (Sept. 6, 1952), “Many of the people who have reached a decision for Christ at our meetings have joined the Catholic church and we have received commendations from Catholic publications for the revived interest in their church following one of our campaigns. After all, one of our prime purposes is to help the churches in a community.”
1953--Billy Graham “locked himself into a room in New York City for an entire day” with theological modernists Jesse Bader and John Sutherland Bonnell, in order to ask questions and receive counsel. In an article in Look magazine the next year (March 23, 1954), Bonnell testified that he and most other Presbyterian ministers did not believe in the virgin birth and the bodily resurrection of Christ, the divine inspiration of Scripture, a literal heaven and hell, and other Bible doctrines.
1954--The rock & roll era was born when Sun Records in Memphis recorded Elvis Presley’s single “That’s All Right, Mama.” From its inception, rock music has promoted rebellion against the morality of the Bible. Fifties rock literally changed the character of Western society and laid the groundwork for the dramatic spiritual and moral revolution that has followed. It paved the way for “rock & roll Christianity” at the end of the 20th century. Rock & roll is the soundtrack of end-time apostasy.
1955--Bishop James Pike of the Episcopal Church in America said, “I have abandoned ship on the doctrine of the Trinity. I have jettisoned the doctrine of the virgin birth of Jesus Christ” (Christian Beacon, March 17, 1955).
1956--Christianity Today magazine was formed by Billy Graham, with Carl Henry as its first editor-in-chief. This would be the premier voice of positive-emphasis, non-judgmental, non-separatist, intellectually respectable, New Evangelical Christianity.
1957--Billy Graham’s evangelistic crusade in New York City was sponsored by the ultra liberal Protestant Council and featured prominent theological modernists. Graham began his life-long practice of praising rank modernists, when he spent about 10 minutes eulogizing Jesse Baird, a well-known liberal and apostate, calling him a great servant of Christ. This crusade brought about Graham’s break with fundamentalists such as Bob Jones, Sr. and John R. Rice of the Sword of the Lord.
--------Methodist Leslie Weatherhead, who denied the blood atonement of Christ, said, “Graham is helping to fill our churches. We can teach people theology when we have got someone to teach” (Leslie Weatherhead: A Personal Portrait, 1975, p. 199).
--------At his San Francisco Crusade, Billy Graham honored Christ-denying Episcopal Bishop James Pike by having him sit on the platform and lead in prayer and by speaking at Pike’s Grace Cathedral. Graham honored Pike again at his 1960 Detroit Crusade.
1958--An official follow-up of Graham’s San Francisco Crusade reported that of the roughly 1,300 Catholics who came forward, “practically all remained Catholic, continued to pray to Mary, go to mass, and confess to a priest” (Oakland Tribune, Wed., Dec. 17, 1958). The chairman of this crusade was Methodist Bishop Gerald Kennedy, who denied practically every fundamental doctrine of the Christian faith and had endorsed Nels Ferre’s blasphemous 1953 book The Sun and the Umbrella.
--------When the United Church of Christ was formed in America by a merger of Congregationalists with the Evangelical and Reformed Church, it adopted a Unitarian statement of faith.
1959--At the Centennial Celebration of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species at the University of Chicago, Julian Huxley, grandson of Thomas (“Darwin’s bulldog”), said, “Man’s destiny is to be the sole agent for the future evolution of this planet. ... In the evolutionary pattern of thought there is no longer either need or room for the supernatural. The earth was not created, it evolved. So did all the animals and plants that inhabit it, including our human selves, mind and soul as well as brain and body. So did religion. Evolutionary man can no longer take refuge from his loneliness in the arms of a divinized father figure whom he has himself created, nor escape from the responsibility of making decisions by sheltering under the umbrella of Divine Authority ... the evolutionary envision is enabling us to discern, however incompletely, the lineaments of the new religion that we can be sure will arise to serve the needs of the coming era” (“The Evolutionary Vision,” S. Tax and C. Callender, Evolution after Darwin, vol. 3, pp. 252-253, 260). Sri Gavin de Beer, director of the British Museum of Natural History, said that to impugn Darwinism could only come from “ignorance or effrontery,” while Garrett Hardin of the California Institute of Technology warned that anyone who fails to honor Darwin “inevitably attracts the psychiatric eye to himself” (Arthur Koestler, The Ghost in the Machine, p. 204).
1960--The Temple of Understanding (TOU) was established by Juliet Hollister (1916-2000). Its mission is to “create a more just and peaceful world” by achieving “peaceful coexistence among individuals, communities, and societies.” The tools for reaching this objective are interfaith education, interfaith dialogue, New Age mysticism, fostering mutual appreciation and tolerance, forbidding “criticism,” and promoting the contempt of global citizenship. Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of the U.S. president, was a strong supporter of the cause and wrote introductions to religious and political leaders urging them to meet with Hollister. Mrs. Roosevelt called the vision a “Spiritual United Nations.” Many world leaders got behind it, including Indian President Nehru, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, Pope John XXIII, United Nations General Secretary U Thant, the Dalai Lama, and liberal Protestant missionary Albert Schweitzer. The TOU was given impetus when it was featured in the December 1962 issue of Life magazine.
--------In a report in Newsweek magazine in October 1960, Billy Graham stated that he would not lead Catholics out of their denomination: “Despite their probable Roman Catholic background, some 50 percent of Spanish-speaking New Yorkers have no current church affiliation of any kind, according to Protestant churchmen. Dr. Graham made it clear that he and his fellow crusaders have no intention of doing any proselyting. He emphasized: ‘The important thing to us is that these people are unchurched. We want them to accept Christ and they can do that whether they think of themselves as Catholics or Protestants’” (Newsweek, October 17, 1960).
1961--Michael Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury, said, “Heaven is not a place for Christians only ... I expect to see some present-day atheists there” (The Daily Mail, Oct. 2, 1961).
--------The Unitarians in America merged with the Universalists to become the Unitarian Universalism Association, uniting in one conglomerate of unbelief and atheism, rejecting the Bible and the God of the Bible while accepting practically any religious philosophy or deity apart from the Bible.
--------Carl Rogers, a member of the American Humanist Association and later recipient of its Humanist of the Year Award, described the heart of humanistic psychology in his book Becoming a Person: “... the only question which matters is: ‘Am I living in a way that is deeply satisfying to me, and which truly expresses me?’”
--------In Torcaso v. Watkins, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that it is unconstitutional for a state to require belief in God for holding public office, thus sanctioning and empowering atheism.
--------From 1961 to 1967, Spurgeon’s College in London, England, was led by George Beasley-Murray who claimed that Jesus was wrong about the timing of His Second Coming, that John’s Gospel was not written by John, and that salvation is not complete without baptism. (The Pastors’ College founded by Charles Spurgeon was renamed Spurgeon’s College in 1923, by which time it was no longer associated with the Metropolitan Tabernacle.)
1962--In October, the Second Vatican Council, opened by Pope John XXIII, began its three-year process, which would bring sweeping changes to the Roman Catholic Church and launch it into the forefront of the ecumenical movement. Vatican II restated ancient heresies, such as the supremacy of the pope as the head of all churches, salvation sacraments, baptismal regeneration, transubstantiation, Mariolatry, auricular confession, and intercession of the saints. It stated that its objective in ecumenism is to bring all Christians into the Roman fold.
--------David du Plessis was the only Pentecostal invited to attend the Roman Catholic Second Vatican Council as an official observer. Du Plessis, who spoke personally with the pope, would become a prime mover and shaker to break down walls between Roman Catholicism and Pentecostalism. Dubbed “Mr. Pentecost,” he promoted ecumenical unity through shared experiences.
--------Kenneth Taylor published The Living Bible, which had the prophet Elijah saying to the prophets of Baal in 1 Kings 18:27, “Perhaps he is talking to someone or else is out sitting on the toilet.” The Living Bible was launched into popularity by Billy Graham.
--------“In or about 1962 it became apparent that there were some at Fuller Theological Seminary who no longer believed in the inerrancy of the Bible, among both the faculty and the board members” (Harold Lindsell, The Battle for the Bible, p. 106). David Hubbard, who was appointed president of the seminary in 1963, mockingly referred to the doctrine of the inerrant inspiration of Scripture as “the gas-balloon theory of theology; one leak and the whole Bible comes down.”
--------In Engel v. Vitale, issued on June 25, the U.S. Supreme Court pompously and blasphemously removed prayer from the nation’s public schools, blatantly overturning the freedom of religion and freedom of speech provisions of the First Amendment.
1963--Anglican Bishop John A.T. Robinson wrote in his popular book Honest to God that “the whole schema of a supernatural being coming down from Heaven to ‘save’ mankind from sin ... is frankly incredible to man ‘come of age’” (p. 78). Robinson expressed an atheistic point of view, saying, “Perhaps after all the Freudians are right, that such a God--the God of traditional popular theology--is a projection, and perhaps we are being called to live without that projection in any form” (pp. 17, 18). Upon publication of this book, Hugh Montefiore, Bishop of Birmingham, said to Robert Runcie, who would become Archbishop of Canterbury in 1980, “John Robinson’s written a book which is going to cause mayhem--he’s going to tell the world the sort of things we really believe” (Humphrey Carpenter, Robert Runcie: The Reluctant Archbishop, p. 159). Of course the mayhem never resulted, for the simple reason that the average Anglican no longer cared anything about doctrine.
--------Upon the death of Pope John XXIII, Billy Graham said, “I admire Pope John tremendously. I felt he brought a new era to the world. It is my hope that the Cardinals elect a new Pope who will follow the same line as John. It would be a great tragedy if they chose a man who reacted against John, who re-erected the walls” (Michigan City News-Dispatch, June 2, 1963).
--------In Abington v. Schempp and Murray v. Curlett, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that school-sponsored Bible reading in public schools is unconstitutional, opening the floodgates of atheism, moral degradation, and violence.
1964--A religious survey extrapolated that perhaps 60,000 church members in three mainline denominations in America (United Church of Christ, United Methodist, and Episcopal) were atheists or agnostics (Christianity Today, Nov. 20, 1964). The same survey found that 43% of Protestants did not believe in the Virgin Birth.
--------When asked, “Do Congregational Christians believe in the Virgin Birth?” a spokesman for the United Church of Christ (a merger of Congregationalists with the Evangelical and Reformed Church) answered, “Probably the majority do not” (Douglas Horton, “What Is A Congregationalist?” St. Louis Globe Democrat, Aug. 5, 1964).
--------S.S. Chawla wrote in the September/October edition of The Humanist magazine, “Darwin’s discovery of the principle of evolution sounded the death knell of religious and moral values.”
1965--Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras I formally lifted the excommunications of 1054 that had separated the Roman Catholic and the Greek Orthodox churches.
--------Harvey Cox, an American Baptist professor at Harvard Divinity School, published Secular City, “celebrating the advent of secular urban civilization and the retreat of traditional Christianity.” Cox jumped on the “God is Dead” bandwagon, saying, “It is too early to say for sure, but it may well be that our English word God will have to die, corroborating in the same measure Nietzsche’s apocalyptic judgment that ‘God is Dead.’”
--------1960s rock & roll took its licentious, law-breaking philosophy to new heights. In 1965 the Rolling Stones sang, “I’m free to do what I want any old time”; the Animals sang, “It’s my life and I’ll do what I want”; and the Mamas and Papas sang, “You got to go where you want to go/ do what you want to do.”
1966--Time magazine ran a cover story on April 8 entitled “Is God Dead?” to review William Hamilton’s book Radical Theology and the Death of God. Hamilton reasoned that the existence of suffering in the world proves that a God of almighty power and compassion does not exist.
--------Michael Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury, visited the pope and left wearing his “episcopal ring with its emeralds and diamonds.” Ramsey said the pope “has a primacy among all the bishops of Christendom; so that without communion with him, there is no prospect of a reunited Christendom” (Ramsey, The Gospel and the Catholic Church, p. 228) and testified he was willing to “recognize the Pope as chief of a united Church” (Owen Chadwick, Michael Ramsey: A Life, p. 325).
--------The first edition of the United Bible Societies Greek New Testament was published this year. New editions appeared in 1968, 1975, 1983, and 1993. Beginning with the third edition, the text was merged with that of the Nestle-Aland; thus the 26th edition of the Nestle-Aland text and the 3rd UBS are the same. The editors are theological modernists and Roman Catholics, not one of whom believes the Bible is the infallible Word of God. They were Kurt Aland, Barbara Aland, Bruce Metzger, Matthew Black, Allen Wikgren, Johannes Karavidopoulos, and Carlo Martini. The latter was a Catholic cardinal.
--------Langdom Gilkey of the University of Chicago Divinity School reported, “The younger men don’t even raise the issue of the Virgin Birth or Original Sin. They’re discussing the existence of God. And if there’s no God, you don’t have to argue about any of the other doctrines” (“Theology,” Time magazine, Nov. 11, 1966, p. 57).
1967--For the first time, Roman Catholics began speaking in “tongues” and joined the charismatic movement. In March, some Catholics associated with Notre Dame University approached Ray Bullard, president of a local chapter of the Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship International and a member of an Assemblies of God congregation, desiring that he and his Pentecostal friends lay hands on them. Though they did not renounce their false doctrines and practices, including the heresy of baptismal regeneration, they had “Pentecostal-type” experiences. Two of them, Steve Clark and Ralph Martin, were staff members in the national Cursillo movement, and others had attended Cursillo retreats. The charismatic movement grew rapidly within the Roman Catholic Church, and by 1974 the “renewal’s” annual conference at Notre Dame attracted 30,000 participants.
--------The National Evangelical Anglican Congress of England invited rank modernist and ultra-ecumenist Michael Ramsey to deliver the opening address. Referring to past separatist practices by evangelicals, John R.W. Stott said, “We need to repent and change.”
--------In response to Bishop James Pike’s public denial of the Trinity and other cardinal doctrines of the Christian faith, the Episcopal Church U.S.A. adopted a resolution declaring that the concept of heresy is an anachronism. Pike had “abandoned ship on the doctrine of the Trinity” and called the virgin birth “a primitive myth.”
1968--A religious survey by Jeffrey Hadden showed that about 60% of the Methodist clergy in America did not believe in the virgin birth of Jesus Christ and at least 50% did not believe in Christ’s bodily resurrection.
--------In his book Identification, E.W. Kenyon helped pave the way for the Pentecostal Word-Faith and “Manifest Sons of God” movements when he stated: “When these truths really gain the ascendancy in us, they will make us spiritual supermen, masters of demons and disease. ... It will be the end of weakness and failure. … We go out and live as supermen indwelt by God” (Kenyon, Identification, Seattle: Kenyon’s Gospel Publishing Society, 1968, p. 68).
--------Troy Perry founded the Metropolitan Community Church in Los Angeles, which became the mother church of the first predominantly homosexual Christian denomination. By 1988, it claimed 38,000 members in 200 congregations worldwide.
--------The World Council of Churches’ Uppsala Report sanctioned violence as a necessary part of the pursuit of social justice. “Radical change in power structures as the bearer of social justice and not violence, is the essence of the revolution. Yet violence is always potentially present and where established order dictates the decision regarding strategy, violence may appear the only way.”
--------In his spiritual autobiography, Song of Accounts, Methodist missionary E. Stanley Jones said, “We do not believe that the New Testament is the revelation of God--that would be the Word become printer’s ink” (p. 377).
--------In Epperson v. Arkansas, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a public school cannot ban the teaching of evolution. It was yet another blatant assault of the constitutional right of freedom of speech.
1969--James H. Cone published Black Theology and Black Power, preaching a liberation theology for Blacks that focuses more on freedom from oppression than salvation from sin.
--------Before putting his weight behind the Anglican-Methodist reunion plan, Michael Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury, held secret talks with the Vatican “to ensure that the form of the reunion plan was not contrary to ‘apostolic succession’ and would not therefore prevent a future reunion with the Papacy” (Iain Murray, Evangelicalism Divided, p. 92).
1970--The contemporary worship music phenomenon exploded on the scene with Christian folk rock groups associated with Chuck Smith and Calvary Chapel. One of the first popular contemporary worship songs was “For Those Tears I Died (Come to the Water)” recorded by Children of the Day. Written by Marsha Stevens, the song describes a vision she allegedly had of Jesus standing beside calm water, which is the “water” to which the song refers. Stevens claimed that she was converted through this vision, but there is no clear gospel content either in the vision or in the song, nothing about sin, Christ’s atonement, repentance, or saving faith.
1971--Fleming H. Revell published A Prejudiced Protestant Takes a New Look at the Catholic Church by James Hefley, a Southern Baptist pastor who described how his “prejudice” against the Roman Catholic Church had dissolved since the Second Vatican Council.
--------Seven thousand people jammed into New York City’s Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine for a Hair Mass, a service commemorating the third anniversary of the Broadway opening of the hippy musical. The event featured braless women, hot pants, a rock band, and balloons (“Troubadours for God,” Time, May 24, 1971).
--------The play Godspell opened off Broadway and became a long-term success. Jesus dies a bloodless death on an electric fence and there is no resurrection.
--------Maranatha Music, the first contemporary Christian music publisher, was founded by Chuck Smith of Calvary Chapel, Costa Mesa, California, to publish the music of the early Jesus hippies.
--------The blasphemous rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar premiered on Broadway and was hugely influential in preaching a false christ globally. The music is by Andrew Lloyd Webber with lyrics by Tim Rice. The music album had grossed more than $237 million by 1980. The 1973 movie was one of the highest grossing of the year. The opera has played in more than 30 countries and was still touring the US and the UK in 2019 and 2020. The Superstar’s christ is a confused, doubting, frustrated, fearful man who dies for his own sin and doesn’t rise from the dead. Judas is the opera’s cool hero who tries to steer “Jesus” in the right direction. When Jesus enters Jerusalem, the crowd flippantly sings the meaningless, “Hey sanna sanna sanna ho/ Sanna hey sanna.” Webber said, “We don’t see Christ as God.” Tim Minchin, who played Judas in the UK version of the opera, called it “a radical atheist musical.”
--------At New York City’s Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church a minister baptized a baby “in the name of the Father, the Holy Ghost, and Jesus Christ Superstar,” a reference to the blasphemous musical that depicted the Lord Jesus as a common sinner (“The New Rebel Cry: Jesus Is Coming!” Time, June 21, 1971).
--------In The Gospel Sound, Anthony Heilbut testified that the field of contemporary Christian music is permeated with homosexuality. “The gospel church has long been a refuge for gays and lesbians, some of whom grew up to be among the greatest singers and musicians.”
1972--Cecil Williams, pastor of the Glide Memorial Methodist Church in San Francisco, said, “I don’t want to go to no heaven ... I don’t believe in that stuff. I think it’s a lot of - - - -.” (We have deleted his expletive.)
--------William Johnson of the Northern California Golden Gate Association of the United Church of Christ became the first openly homosexual to be ordained by a mainline denomination. When asked if he could be a good minister without a wife, Johnson replied, “I don’t really feel I need a wife. I hope some day to share a deep love relationship with another man” (New York Times, May 2, 1972).
--------Fuller Theological Seminary formally changed its doctrinal statement to reflect the heresy that had been taught there since the early 1960s. The original statement said the Bible is “plenarily inspired and free from all error in the whole and in the part.” The new statement eliminated “free from all error in the whole and in the part,” leaving room for the heretical view held by Fuller President David Hubbard and many Fuller professors that the Bible contains errors.
--------At St. Clement’s Episcopal Church in Manhattan, “an environmental theater baptism service featured photos of the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King Jr., a man shaving in an open bathroom singing ‘We Shall Overcome,’ three nude young people playing kazoos and splashing in a plastic wading pool, an actor performing a bathtub scene from a play, and incense” (Thomas Reeves, The Empty Church: The Suicide of Liberal Christianity, 1996, p. 154).
--------At its 1972 Quadrennial Conference, the United Methodist Church formally approved a policy of doctrinal pluralism founded upon the four-fold authority of Scripture, Tradition, Experience, and Reason.
--------Charles Dullea, Superior of the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome, explained why Romanists and Modernists accept Billy Graham: “Because he is preaching basic Christianity; he does not enter into matters which today divide Christians. He does not touch on Sacraments or Church in any detail. ... The Catholic will hear no slighting of his Church’s teaching authority, nor of Papal or Episcopal Prerogatives, no word against the mass or sacraments or Catholic practices. Graham HAS NO TIME FOR THAT; he is preaching only Christ and a personal commitment to Him. The Catholic, in my opinion will hear little, if anything, he cannot agree with” (Dullea, “A Catholic Looks at Billy Graham,” Homiletic & Pastoral Review, Jan. 1972).
--------Harvard scientist Ernst Mayr called “the Darwinian revolution of 1859, perhaps the most fundamental of all intellectual revolutions in the history of mankind,” because “it affected every metaphysical and ethical concept” (“The Nature of the Darwinian Revolution,” Science, June 2, 1972).
1973--Gustavo Gutierrez published A Theology of Liberation, becoming a prominent voice for Liberation Theology, which sees salvation in terms of the liberation of society from social and economic injustice. It is a Marxist approach to Christianity.
--------In Milwaukee on October 21, Billy Graham said, “This past week I preached in a great Catholic Cathedral a funeral sermon for a close friend of mine who was a Catholic [publisher James Strohn Copley], and they had several bishops and archbishops to participate, and as I sat there going through THE FUNERAL MASS THAT WAS A VERY BEAUTIFUL THING AND CERTAINLY STRAIGHT AND CLEAR IN THE GOSPEL, I believe...” (Billy Graham, Church League of America, p. 84). The Catholic Mass is a re-sacrifice of Christ; the consecrated wafer (the host) is worshipped as Christ Himself.
--------- J. Kincaid Smith testified that when he graduated this year from Hamma School of Theology, a Lutheran Church in America seminary, the following conditions prevailed: “To the best of my knowledge, none of my classmates, nor I, believed in any of the miraculous elements in the Bible, in anything supernatural, no six day creation, that Adam and Eve were real historical people, that God really spoke to people, the flood with Noah and the Ark, the Red Sea parting. We believed that no Old Testament Scriptures foretold of Jesus of Nazareth, that Jesus was not anticipated in the Old Testament. No virgin birth. One of my New Testament profs. was moved to write a poem for the occasion of his receiving tenure. It was read at the service at Wittenberg University Chapel. In it he speculated that Jesus’ father was an itinerant Roman soldier. He flatly denied the real deity of Christ” (reported in Christian News, April 29, 1985).
--------- Margaret Mead became the darling of the sexual revolution with the publication of Coming of Age in Samoa, a supposed scientific study proving that the people of Samoa had no code of ethics, participated in casual sex, and suffered no guilt or stress, which were alleged to be the result of Christianity’s restrictive morality. It turned out that Mead’s work was based on a lie and the Samoans have a strict moral code and commitment to monogamy and fidelity in marriage. After three failed marriages, Mead died in 1978 in the arms of a psychic faith healer.
--------The Second Humanist Manifesto was signed by 120 influential men and women, including Isaac Asimov, Francis Crick, and B.F. Skinner. The Second Humanist Manifesto (1973) claimed that “faith in a prayer-hearing God is an unproved and outmoded faith,” and called the religious teaching of salvation “harmful, diverting people with false hopes of heaven hereafter.” It called for the right to birth control, divorce, abortion, and suicide and the establishment of global law and courts.
--------In Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion in America, opening the floodgates for the murder of millions upon millions of unborn babies.
1974--The March issue of Eternity magazine contained an article by Bernard Ramm entitled “Welcome, Green-Grass Evangelicals.” After listing five characteristics (they are not interested in doctrinal questions or the controversy over evolution or the details of Bible prophecy or in debates over biblical infallibility and they put more premium on psychological wholeness than doctrinal correctness), Ramm said he welcomed these “evangelicals.”
1975--In May, 10,000 Catholic charismatics gathered in St. Peter’s in Rome for the feast of Pentecost and received the blessing of Pope Paul VI.
--------In his biography of prominent names in the field of psychology, Leonard Zusne praised Charles Darwin and said that his books “spell out the basic assumption underlying psychology, namely that man is on a continuum with the rest of the animal world ... The evolutionary method ... is now the accepted and pervasive point of view in psychology” (Names in the History of Psychology, p. 112).
1976--In The Battle for the Bible, Harold Lindsell documented the downgrade in the doctrine of divine inspiration of Scripture among evangelicals. He wrote, “It is not unfair to allege that among denominations like Episcopal, United Methodist, United Presbyterian, United Church of Christ, the Lutheran Church in America, and the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. there is not a single theological seminary that takes a stand in favor of biblical infallibility. And there is not a single seminary where there are not faculty members who disavow one or more of the major teachings of the Christian faith” (The Battle for the Bible).
--------Carl Henry warned, “A growing vanguard of young graduates of evangelical colleges who hold doctorates from non-evangelical divinity centers now question or disown inerrancy” (“Conflict Over Biblical Inerrancy,” Christianity Today, May 7, 1976).
--------Cardinal Manning of Los Angeles said, “Anyone who has become a genuine Charismatic, to my knowledge, has become a better Catholic” (Charismatic Renewal for Catholics, 1976, p. 48).
--------Bishop James Thomas, of the United Methodist Church, told the UMC Quadrennial General Conference, “We do not believe ... in rigid doctrinal concepts to hold us steady in a wavering world” (F.E.A. News & Views, May-June 1976).
1977--Anne Holmes of the United Church of Christ became the first openly lesbian woman ordained by a mainline Protestant denomination. Later in the year, Ellen Barrett became the first openly homosexual priest to be ordained in the Episcopal Church. She said that her relationship with her lesbian lover “is what feeds the strength and compassion I bring to the ministry” (“The Lesbian Priest,” Time magazine, January 24, 1977).
--------John Wimber began pastoring a church in Anaheim, California, that would grew to 6,000 members and become the mother church of the Vineyard Association, comprised in 2022 of more than 2,400 churches worldwide. The Vineyard churches are prominent in the contemporary worship movement.
--------A massive ecumenical conference was held in Kansas City in July, with the 50,000 participants (45% Roman Catholic) gathering under the banner of “Unity in the Lordship of Jesus.” Catholic Kevin Ranaghan declared that the streams of Christianity are coming together, “God has dug some canals between the streams. Tonight they are coming together and will flow forth from this stadium and this conference and will burst upon the nation as we go forth a newly-united people.” Jamie Buckingham said, “We cannot have unity based on doctrine. Doctrine will always separate the body of Christ.”
--------The second National Evangelical Anglican Congress, meeting in Nottingham, England, stated: “Seeing ourselves and Roman Catholics as fellow-Christians, we repent of attitudes that have seemed to deny it ... We believe that the visible unity of all professing Christians should be our goal.”
1978--In The Worldly Evangelicals, Richard Quebedeaux stated, “[I]t 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...”
--------In August, Michael Ramsey, former Archbishop of Canterbury, spoke of his hope for reunion with Rome: “Only a few more divine miracles will bring us to that day of unity in truth and holiness, total unity in the Mass given to us by Jesus” (quoted by Adrian Hastings, English Christianity, p. 629).
--------Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline sparked an explosion of Roman Catholic contemplative prayer among evangelicals. Foster recommended Catholic saints and mystics such as Ignatius of Loyola, Francis of Assisi, Teresa of Avila, Dominic, Catherine of Siena, John of the Cross, Hildegard of Bingen, Bernard of Clairvaux, Teilhard de Chardin, Henri Nouwen, Mother Teresa, and Thomas Merton, all of whom held to a sacramental works gospel that is cursed by God according to Galatians 1.
--------In October, Billy Graham held a crusade in Poland, sponsored by the Roman Catholic Church. Graham said that this adventure represented a new spirit of cooperation that was a constructive example for Christians in other nations (John Pollock, Billy Graham, p. 308). Four of the rallies were held in Catholic churches, with priests participating on the platform with Graham. Cardinal Karol Wojtyla had offered the 700-year-old St. Anne’s Church in Cracow to Graham, but just before the evangelist’s arrival in Poland, Wojtyla was unexpectedly called away to the conclave in Rome to meet with the College of Cardinals and a few days later was elected Pope John Paul II. Graham visited the Marian shrine of Jasna Gora (which features an icon of the Black Madonna) in Czestochowa. A picture in Decision magazine for February 1979 showed Graham welcoming pilgrims to the shrine. In the minds of his Catholic observers, this visit doubtless put Graham’s stamp of approval upon the idolatrous Mary veneration that is featured at this influential shrine. In his book Crossing the Threshold of Hope, Pope John Paul II testified that his personal devotion to Mary was developed at Marian sites such as “at Jasna Gora” (p. 220).
--------Desmond Tutu, Anglican bishop, said, “The Holy Spirit is not limited to the Christian Church. For example, Mahatma Gandhi, who is a Hindu ... The Holy Spirit shines through him” (St. Alban's Cathedral, Pretoria, South Africa, November 23, 1978).
1979--Two books appeared this year to promote ecumenical unity between Protestants, Charismatics, and the Roman Catholic Church. The Three Sisters (Tyndale House Publishers) by Michael Harper proclaimed that Roma, Charisma, and Evangeline were sisters in the same family. In That They May Be One (Logos Press) Thomas Twitchell expressed his hope that Charismatic-Roman Catholic unity would soon be realized.
--------The National Capitol Union Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) voted by a margin of 165-59 to ordain Mansfield Kaseman as a pastor even though he openly denied the deity, virgin birth, sinlessness, vicarious atonement, and bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ. When asked, “Is Jesus God,” Kaseman replied, “No, God is God.” Upon appeal, the denomination’s highest court vindicated Kaseman.
--------In The Bible in the Balance, Harold Lindsell gave more evidence of a severe, widespread downgrade in the doctrine of the divine inspiration of Scripture among evangelicals.
--------When Cardinal Fulton Sheen died on December 9, Billy Graham praised him for breaking down the walls between Catholics and Protestants and said, “I count it a privilege to have known him as a friend for over 35 years. I mourn his death and look forward to our reunion in Heaven” (Religious News Service, Dec. 11, 1979). Yet Sheen’s hope for heaven was Mary. He devoted an entire chapter of his autobiography to Mary, “The Woman I Love,” saying: “When I was ordained, I took a resolution to offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Eucharist every Saturday to the Blessed Mother ... All this makes me very certain that when I go before the Judgment Seat of Christ, He will say to me in His Mercy: ‘I heard My Mother speak of you’” (Fulton J. Sheen, Treasure in Clay, p. 317).
--------Marsha Stevens, who has been called “the mother of contemporary Christian Music,” broke her sacred marriage vows and divorced her husband of seven years, because she had “fallen in love with a woman.” In the 1980s she joined the Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches and founded Born Again Lesbian Music (BALM). Her first song was “Free to Be,” which proclaims the heresy that God doesn’t condemn homosexuality as sin and that you are free to be whatever you want in Christ.
1980--The ordination of Robert Runcie as Archbishop of Canterbury was another step toward unification with Rome. Prior to Runcie’s selection, Cardinal Basil Hume, leader of the Roman Catholic Church in England, was consulted as to the Vatican’s will in the matter. This paved the way for the appointment of the pro-Romanist Runcie. At the ordination, several Catholic cardinals were given prominent seats near Runcie, a hymn was sung in praise to Mary, and Cardinal Hume read a Scripture lesson. Billy Graham was a guest at this ecumenical mess and gave a warm greeting to the new archbishop.
--------The Assemblies of God reinstated the ministerial credentials that it had revoked from David du Plessis 18 years earlier for his ecumenical relationships with the Roman Catholic Church and the World Council of Churches. Du Plessis had advised Catholics to remain in the Catholic Church after they experienced “Spirit baptism.” The Assemblies of God had capitulated to the most radical view of ecumenism.
--------In Stone v. Graham, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the posting of the Ten Commandments in public schools is unconstitutional.
--------Anglican bishop Desmond Tutu said, “Some people thought there was something odd about Jesus’ birth. ... It may be that Jesus was an illegitimate son” (Cape Times, October 24, 1980).
1981--Robert Bratcher, translator of the Today’s English Version and Southern Baptist missionary to Brazil, said, “Only willful ignorance or intellectual dishonesty can account for the claim that the Bible is inerrant and infallible. ... No truth-loving, God-respecting, Christ-honoring believer should be guilty of such heresy. To invest the Bible with the qualities of inerrancy and infallibility is to idolatrize it, to transform it into a false god” (The Baptist Courier, Greenville, SC, April 2, 1981). Bratcher made this statement at a national seminar sponsored by the Christian Life Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention in Dallas, Texas.
--------Popular author Malcolm Muggeridge wrote, “The story of Jesus as recounted in the Gospels is true to the degree that it can be, and is believed; its truth must be looked for in the hearts of believers rather than in history” (Muggeridge, Jesus: The Man Who Lives).
1982--Robert Runcie, Archbishop of Canterbury, when asked by a newspaper reporter as to the meaning of the cross, replied, “As to that, I am an agnostic” (Sunday Times Weekly Review, April 11, 1982). The interview was published in the Easter Sunday edition of the Times. Six years later, Runcie said, “The Church must give a firm lead against rigid thinking.”
--------For the first time in history, a Catholic pope visited England and held a joint service with the Archbishop of Canterbury.
--------Robert Schuller published Self-Esteem: The New Reformation, redefining Christianity in terms of his self-esteem theology, stating, for example, that sin is the lack of self-esteem and “to be born again means that we must be changed from a negative to a positive self-image” (Self-Esteem, p. 68).
--------By this year, only about 15 percent of the student body at Fuller Theological Seminary held to the conviction of the seminary’s founders that the Scripture is inerrant (George Marsden, Reforming Fundamentalism, p. 268).
--------- A Gallup survey in 1982 revealed that 34% of Methodists believed that community service is more important than proclaiming the gospel.
1983--The World Council of Churches’ General Assembly, meeting in Harare, Zimbabwe, featured a pagan dance by a Hindu woman from South India. It was a “classical Bharathanatyam dance” that is performed for the Hindu “earth mother goddess.”
--------The new National Council of Churches’ lectionary featured prayers to God as “Father and Mother.” The strongly pro-feminist lectionary committee, headed by a Lutheran, complained that the old Bible language about God the Father “has been used to support the excessive authority of earthly fathers” (Richard Ostling, “O God Our Mother and Father,” Time magazine, October 24, 1983).
1984--The editors of Christianity Today examined Robert Schuller’s theology and exposed their own apostasy by concluding that he is not a heretic.
--------The United Methodist Church approved a report which called upon all its churches to refer to God and Jesus Christ only in terms of inclusive language--in other words, not to address God as “He” or as “Father.”
--------Charles Keysor testified that a pastor who supports the United Methodist Church system “can be anything from quietly conservative to universalist, agnostic, or even farther Left” and that “the United Methodist climate is alien and inhospitable to forthright evangelical faith” (Christianity Today, Nov. 9, 1984).
--------Just before his death, evangelical leader Francis Schaeffer published The Great Evangelical Disaster, warning, “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.” He also warned about the worldliness that had permeated evangelicalism.
--------The World Council of Churches published No Longer Strangers, which instructed women to pray to God by the following names: Lady of peace, Lady of wisdom, Lady of love, Lady of birth, Lord of stars, Lord of planets, Mother, Bakerwoman, Presence, Power, Essence, and Simplicity.
--------Former fundamentalist Jack Van Impe made an 180-degree turn to ecumenism with the publication of Heart Disease in the Body of Christ, in which he called for the unity of all professing Christians. Soon thereafter he mis-defined biblical love in a typically ecumenical fashion by saying, “Let’s forget our labels and come together in love, and the pope has called for that. ... Till I die I will proclaim nothing but love for all my brothers and sisters in Christ, my Catholic brothers and sisters, Protestant brothers and sisters, Christian Reformed, Lutherans, I don’t care what label you are.” What about love for the truth of God’s Word?
--------Sister Ann, with Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity in Kathmandu, Nepal, was asked what the nuns do to prepare Hindus to die. In the tape-recorded interview with David and Linda Cloud she replied that they taught them to pray to their gods. When asked, “Do you believe if they die believing in the [Hindu gods] Shiva or in Ram they will go to Heaven?” she replied, “[I]f they have believed in their god very strongly, if they have faith, surely they will be saved” (O Timothy, volume 2, issue 5, 1985).
--------David Cline, vice-chairman of the Billy Graham Crusade in Vancouver, British Columbia, said, “If Catholics step forward there will be no attempt to convert them and their names will be given to the Catholic church nearest their homes” (Vancouver Sun, Oct. 5, 1984).
--------The Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City displayed a four-foot bronze statue of the crucifixion featuring a naked female Christ (“Vexing Christa,” Time magazine, May 7, 1984).
--------David Jenkins, consecrated Bishop of Durham in July, described the doctrine of the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ as a “conjuring trick with bones” (BBC’s religious affairs radio program “Poles Apart”). Jenkins said Christ’s body might have been stolen by the disciples or it might still be in the tomb. In typical liberal doublespeak, he claimed that though biblical miracles such as the resurrection are not literal events, they are “real.”
--------Lutheran theologian Dorothee Soelle wrote, “In my own theological reflection, my affirmation of God as female seems appropriate, especially when I want to emphatically differentiate my language from that of patriarchal God-talk. ... It makes no sense to postulate God’s absoluteness ... who needs such a God?” (To Work and to Love: A Theology of Creation, Fortress Press, pp. 6, 14).
--------M. Scott Peck established the Foundation for Community Encouragement to “forge a new planetary culture.” Peck claims to be a Christian and his books are popular both in Christian and New Age bookstores. In The Road Less Traveled (1978) he said, “God wants us to become Himself (or Herself or Itself). We are growing toward godhood. God is the goal of evolution.” A New York Times book reviewer said, “The book’s main audience is in the vast Bible Belt.”
1985--St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Minneapolis ran an advertising campaign with the slogan, “The Episcopal Church welcomes you, regardless of race, creed, color or the number of times you’ve been born.”
--------Thomas Howard, a professor at Gordon College and a member of an influential evangelical family (his father, Philip, was editor of the Sunday School Times; his brother, David, was head of the World Evangelical Fellowship; and his sister, Elizabeth, was married to missionary Jim Elliott, who was martyred by Auca Indians), converted to the Roman Catholic Church. Thomas’ friend and co-author, J.I. Packer, observed: “I don’t think becoming a Catholic is anything like the tragedy of a person becoming a liberal ... Catholics are among the most loyal and virile brothers evangelicals can find these days” (Christianity Today, May 17, 1985). Elizabeth Elliott agreed, saying, “We can have unity in diversity; my brother is a Catholic and a Christian” (spoken Sept. 6, 1997, at the Wisconsin Expo Center during a conference sponsored by WVCY of Milwaukee, Wisconsin).
--------Some 200,000 people attended the first 21 Healing Explosion meetings conducted by Charles and Francis Hunter. The Hunters claim that “every Spirit-filled Christian can and should heal the sick on a daily basis.” At least twice, Mrs. Hunter had to leave a healing crusade because she was sick.
--------Nick Cavnar, editor of New Covenant magazine, said, “Catholic Charismatics are rediscovering the meaning of traditional catholic beliefs and practices, including the sacraments, the Rosary, the Virgin Mary and the saints” (“Why Are Catholic Charismatics Getting So Catholic?” Charisma, April 1985).
--------Herman Hanko, professor at the Protestant Reformed Seminary in Grandville, Michigan, observed, “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” (Hanko, The Battle for the Bible, pp. 2, 3).
--------On May 13, a televised interfaith service in the Church of England’s Newcastle Cathedral featured Hindus chanting, dancing, and offering flowers to an idol, Muslims reading the Koran, and a Sikh guru honoring his deity. The Hindu god Rama was proclaimed as lord and king. The service featured only one specific reference to Jesus Christ, being a Trinitarian line in the final hymn (“Conservative Evangelicals claim there are serious errors in the Church of England,” The Christian News, April 15, 1985).
--------Twenty Episcopalian churches in Memphis, Tennessee, ran an advertisement stating, “In an atmosphere of absolute right and wrong, here’s a little room to breathe. ... the Episcopal Church is totally committed to the preservation of open dialogue and undogmatic faith. We exist to tell the world about a God who loves us regardless of what we’ve done or what we believe. Even if we do not believe in Him, He believes in us. We do not suffocate with absolutes” (Christian News, Oct. 14, 1985).
--------William Schultz, national president of the Unitarian Universalism Association, said, “Unitarian Universalists are open to religious truths from all the great religious traditions, as well as from science and from human experience. God is too great to be limited by one dogma. We believe that the focus of religion ought to be on this life, rather than on preparation for or a perspective of life after death” (St. Petersburg Times, Nov. 16, 1985, Religious Section, pp. 6, 7).
--------The Jesus Seminar was founded in 1985 under the auspices of the Westar Institute. The 150 “biblical scholars” were led by Robert Funk (died 2005). Throughout the rest of the 1980s and the 1990s, participants cast ballots on the authenticity of Christ’s sayings in the four Gospels using pegs or balls. After discussing a passage, the “scholars” cast their votes. Red indicated a strong probability of authenticity; pink, a good probability; gray, a weak possibility; and black, little or no possibility. They concluded that Jesus spoke only 18% of the words attributed to him in the Bible.
1986--The opening service of the Sixth Assembly of the World Council of Churches in Vancouver, British Columbia, featured North American pagan Indians who built an altar and a “sacred flame,” into which they tossed offerings of fish and tobacco to appease their nature gods, and around which they danced. Three Hindus, four Buddhists, two Jews, four Muslims, and a Sikh were official guests of the Assembly, and there were readings from Hindu, Buddhist, and Muslim scriptures. In the General Secretary’s report to the Assembly, Philip Potter said that it is God’s will “to unite all nations in their diversity into one house.” That is a preview of the Harlot of Revelation 17.
--------By 1986, there were 20,730 women ordained to full-time ministry in U.S. denominations, representing 7.9% of all U.S. “clergy” (National & International Religion Report, March 13, 1989).
--------Speaking before the Church of England’s General Synod on July 6, 1986, Bishop David Jenkins received a standing ovation when he warned “against associating miracles with God and asserted that no church can settle decisively exactly what God is and what he wants” (Associated Press, St. Louis Post Dispatch, July 7, 1986).
--------The Day of Prayer for World Peace was held in Assisi, Italy, in October, led by Pope John Paul II. Joining the pope were representatives of 32 Christian denominations and organizations (including YWCA, Quaker, Mennonite, Reformed, Baptist World Alliance, Disciples of Christ, Lutheran World Federation, Anglican, Orthodox, and Roman Catholic) and several non-Christian religions (Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Judaism, Islam, African and North American animists, Shinto, Zoroastrian, Baha’i). Of the combined prayers of this mixed multitude, the pope said, “It is urgent that an invocation rise in chorus, and with insistence, from the earth toward Heaven, to ask the Omnipotent One, in whose hands lies the destiny of the world, for the great gift of peace” (The Tidings, April 11, 1986). The event was repeated in 1993 and 2002.
--------The House of Bishops in the Church of England published The Nature of Christian Belief, which said pertaining to Christ’s resurrection that a word such as “bodily” is “an inadequate or even misleading term, which does not do justice to Scripture.”
--------Carl Henry lamented, “Many evangelicals now measure growth mainly in terms of numbers; distinctions of doctrine and practice are subordinated in a broad welcome for charismatic, Catholic, traditional and other varieties of evangelicals. ... Numerical bigness has become an infectious epidemic” (Confessions of a Theologian, p. 387).
--------David Jenkins, Anglican Bishop of Durham, said God could be a woman. “Clearly God is not exclusively male. He (she?) must reflect all that is female. And he-she must go beyond all that” (Australian Beacon, October 1986).
--------The Bible Society of Australia published a book featuring Jesus Christ as a cartoon “ACTION MAN.”
--------Jesus Seminar scholar Ron Cameron stated, “The death of Jesus was like a car wreck; it’s an accident of history” (Christian News, April 7, 1986).
1987--The North American Congress on the Holy Spirit & World Evangelization brought together 40,000 attendees representing 40 denominations. Roughly one-half of the participants were Roman Catholic, and Catholic priest Tom Forrest brought the concluding message, urging unity for the sake of evangelism. He brought the mixed multitude to its feet in a pandemonium of clapping and shouting when he cried out, “We must reach the world, and we must do it the only way we can do it; we must do it TOGETHER!” One evening, roughly half of the crowd stood during an invitation indicating uncertainty about their personal salvation. In a press conference the next day, Pentecostal Vinson Synan, conference chairman, was asked by Dennis Costella of Foundation magazine why the conference leaders did not “speak definitively as to what the gospel message is so that there isn’t this confusion?” Synan replied that it takes decades to come to a proper understanding of the gospel and furthermore, “WE DON’T HAVE TIME TO DO THAT.” I was present at the press conference and heard this amazing statement myself. A major part of the North America Congress was Pope John Paul II’s Evangelization 2000 program, which had the objective of growing the Catholic Church by every means possible: through the baptism of non-Catholics and the “re-evangelizing” of lapsed Catholics. The program was devoted to Mary.
--------Michael Saward in England described the shallowness of evangelical Christianity as “a generation brought up on guitars, choruses, and home group discussions; educated, as one of them put it to me, not to use words with precision because the image is dominant, not the word; equipped not to handle doctrine but rather to ‘share’ ... suspicious of definition and labels” (Evangelicals on the Move, p. 92).
1988--Congress ’88, held August 4-7 at O’Hare Expo Center in Chicago, Illinois, united Roman Catholics, liberal and evangelical Protestants, and Baptists in the cause of “evangelism” without agreeing even on the definition of the gospel.
--------After worshiping in a Buddhist temple, Episcopal Bishop John Spong said, “As the smell of incense filled the air, I knelt before three images of the Buddha, feeling that the smoke could carry my prayers heavenward. ... My conviction is that the true God ... is within and beyond all of these ancient worship traditions. ... when I visit a Buddhist temple it is not for me a pagan place ... I will not make any further attempt to convert the Buddhist, the Jew, the Hindu or the Moslem. I am content to learn from them and to walk with them side by side toward the God who lives, I believe, beyond the images that bind and blind us all” (Spong, “A dialogue in a Buddhist temple,” The Voice, Jan. 1989; this is the official publication of the Diocese of Newark, New Jersey, of the Episcopal Church USA).
1989--An extensive survey of pastors and laity by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) found that only 5% believed the Bible should be taken literally, while 75% believed that those who have not heard of Christ will not be damned (National & International Religion Report, Mar. 13, 1989).
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 Protestant Charles Colson.
--------When questioned about his healing ministry in Australia in March 1990, John Wimber of the Association of Vineyard Churches testified that not all diseases are equally responsive to his healing ministry, that while he had a high success rate for headaches and backaches, of the 200 Down Syndrome children he had prayed over none had been healed (Phillip D. Jensen, “John Wimber Changes His Mind!” The Protestant Review, July 1990).
--------The World Council of Churches Seventh General Assembly in Canberra, Australia, opened with pagan worship by Aboriginal men who “girded in loincloths and feathers, their bodies painted in tribal decoration, danced around an altar and beat drums in a traditional purification ceremony” (Christian News, Feb. 18, 1991). South Korean Presbyterian feminist theologian Chung Hyun-Kyung summoned the spirits of the dead and “the spirit of Earth, Air, and Water” and said, “I no longer believe in an omnipotent, macho, warrior God who rescues all good guys and punishes all bad guys.”
1991--In Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism, Bishop John Spong of the Episcopal Church in America said, “Of course these [Bible] narratives are not literally true. Stars do not wander, angels do not sing, virgins do not give birth, magi do not travel to a distant land to present gifts to a baby, and shepherds do not go in search of a newborn savior.”
--------The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF) was founded in 1991 by churches that are opposed to the more conservative stance of the Southern Baptist Convention. The CBF was ultra-liberal from its inception. Consider the CBF-affiliated Baptist Theological Seminary in Richmond. John Ippolito, who studied at the seminary, published a report in the Baptist Banner in April 2001. At the seminary, he “learned to dismantle the Bible.” One of his professors taught that there is no revelation of Jesus Christ in the Old Testament. The faculty of the CBF-affiliated Wake Forest Divinity School have included a Catholic Benedictine priest and a feminist theologian who called God “our motherly father” (Calvary Contender, Sept. 15, 1999; Oct. 1, 1999).
1992--The February issue of the Bookstore Journal, the official publication of the Christian Booksellers Association in America, featured three articles on the theme “The Catholic Market: Dispelling Myths, Building Bridges.”
--------In his book The Body, Chuck Colson called for closer ties between evangelicals and Catholics. Colson said, “[T]he body of Christ, in all its diversity, is created with Baptist feet, charismatic hands, and Catholic ears--all with their eyes on Jesus” (World, Nov. 14, 1992). The Body was endorsed by many well-known evangelicals such as Carl Henry, J.I. Packer, Pat Robertson, Bill Hybels, and Jerry Falwell.
--------In The Battle for the Resurrection, Norman Geisler documented the denial of the bodily resurrection among prominent evangelicals, including George Ladd of Fuller Seminary, E. Glenn Hinson of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and Murray Harris of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. According to these, Jesus’ body vanished at the resurrection and He immediately ascended to heaven; His subsequent appearances were in a visible but non-material form by which He accommodated Himself to human understanding.
--------Marcus Borg of the Jesus Seminar said, “I am one of those Christians who does not believe in the virgin birth, nor in the star of Bethlehem, nor in the journeys of the wisemen, nor in the shepherds coming to the manger, as facts of history” (Bible Review, December 1992).
1993--A Pentecostal “revival” broke out at Carpenter’s Home Church in Lakeland, Florida, during meetings conducted by Rodney Howard-Browne. People began to laugh hysterically, stagger like drunks, and fall on the floor, causing Howard-Browne to label himself “the Holy Ghost bartender.” People flocked to the meetings from across Florida and from other states. Assemblies of God Pastor Dale Brooks, who canceled his services in Tampa, 30 miles away, to attend the Howard-Browne meetings, advised his people, “Don’t fight it; enjoy it; don’t try to figure it out” (Charisma, August 1993). That is a recipe for spiritual delusion (1 Peter 5:8).
--------The Jesus Seminar, which was founded in 1985, published The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus. Most of the words of Jesus in the Gospels are dismissed as non-historic. The introduction describes “the seven pillars of scholarly wisdom,” the first of which is “distinguishing between the historical Jesus and the stories that the gospels tell about him.”
--------The Clergy Association of Salem, Massachusetts, welcomed a high priest from a witch’s coven into its membership.
--------David Wells, professor at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, published No Place for Truth: or Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology, which even Time magazine described as “a stinging indictment of evangelicalism’s theological corruption.”
--------At an ecumenical Re-imagining Conference in Minneapolis, sponsored by the World Council of Churches, participants from mainline Protestant denominations worshipped God as a female Sophia and Chung Hyung Kyung of Korea told the crowd, “My bowel is Buddhist bowel, my heart is Buddhist heart, my right brain is Confucian brain, and my left brain is Christian brain.” A standing ovation was given to the lesbians in attendance.
--------“Fundamentalist turned ecumenist” Jack Van Impe published Startling Revelations: Pope John Paul II, a video presenting the pope as a true prophet and defender of the faith. This video became the biggest-selling item distributed by the Van Impe ministry.
--------During an Easter season service, a female priest at the Episcopal cathedral in Chicago said that if Jesus were to return he would want everyone to be free to enjoy sex, in whatever form that might be (“Show and Tell,” The Living Church, June 20, 1993).
--------In June, the first “Gay Pride Festival” was held in Tel Aviv, Israel.
1994--The “Toronto Blessing” broke out in the Toronto Airport Vineyard Church on January 20 during a meeting led by Randy Clark of the Association of Vineyard Churches. People shook, jerked, fell down, rolled across the floor, laughed hysterically, brayed like donkeys, and roared like lions. Some lay on the floor for hours. By the end of the year, an estimated 200,000 people had visited the church from around the world.
--------“Evangelicals and Catholics Together: The Christian Mission in the Third Millennium” (ECT) was signed by prominent evangelical leaders such as Chuck Colson, Bill Bright, J.I. Packer, Mark Noll (Wheaton College), John White (former president of the NAE), Os Guiness, Pat Robertson, and Richard Land and Larry Lewis of the Southern Baptist Convention (who later withdraw their names because of pressure from Hispanic Baptists). The misguided document stated, “We together, evangelicals and Catholics, confess our sins against the unity that Christ intends for all his disciples.”
--------The London Sunday Times for July 31, reporting on a conference for Christian atheists, said that at least 100 Church of England priests do not believe in an external, supernatural God.
--------Thomas Oden warned that theological seminaries are “awash in antisupernatural assumptions” and relativism. “The very thought of asking about heresy has itself become the new arch-heresy” (Oden, “Measured Critique or Ham-handed Trivia?” In Trust, Spring 1994, pp. 24-25).
--------In October, Episcopal priest Matthew Fox performed his Planetary Mass at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. It incorporated loud rave music, gyrating dancers, an altar in the shape of a sun and crescent moon, tai chi exercises, and references to “Mother God” and the sacredness of the earth. Bishop William Swing said, “I was very carried away by it” (“It’s All the Rave,” The Living Church, November 27, 1994).
--------At the General Convention of the Episcopal Church in America, the bishop of western North Carolina apologized for having offended some women by calling God “Father” (“Revival or Decline?” The Evangelical Catholic, March-April 1995, p. 10).
1995--On June 18, the “Pensacola Outpouring” swept into the Brownsville Assembly of God near Pensacola, Florida, during a meeting led by Pentecostal evangelist Steve Hill. The church’s pastor, John Kilpatrick, fell to the floor and lay there for almost four hours. He testified, “When I hit that floor, it felt like I weighed 10,000 pounds. I knew something supernatural was happening” (Charisma, June 1996). By the end of 1997, it was reported that more than two million people had experienced the “Pensacola Outpouring.”
--------Describing the theological shallowness of evangelicalism in the last half of the 20th century, David Wells said, “The sea that looked a mile wide turned out to be only an inch deep” (Wells, God in the Wasteland: The Reality of Truth in a World of Fading Dreams, 1995).
--------Referring to a theology conference sponsored jointly by InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and Wheaton College, Carl Henry warned that “not a single representative of historic evangelical orthodoxy committed to the unbroken authority of the Bible was featured” (Calvary Contender, July 1, 1995).
--------The Mystery of Salvation, published by the Doctrine Commission of the Church of England, stated, “[F]or many Christians today the idea of God offering himself as a substitute for our sins is deeply repellent” (p. 122).
--------Dave Tomlinson, a professing evangelical in the Church of England, wrote, “Doctrinal correctness matters little to God and labels matter less ... St. Peter will not be asking us at the pearly gates which church we belonged to, or whether we believed the virgin birth; the word ‘evangelical’ will not even enter the conversation” (Tomlinson, The Post-Evangelical, pp. 61-62).
--------Referring to his students, Yale University Divinity School professor Christopher R. Seitz complained, “Most don’t know the names of half of the books of the Bible, whether Calvin lived before or after Augustine, what the wrath of God means or how to understand a final judgment of the quick and the dead” (“Pluralism and the Lost Art of Christian Apology,” In Trust, Summer 1995).
1996--On February 9, a public message signed by 300 Anglican leaders was issued in support of the homosexual rights organization called the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement. Thirteen Anglican bishops added their names to this document.
--------In an interview on British Broadcasting Corporation's Sunday Programme on February 12, South African Anglican bishop Desmond Tutu called for the ordination of homosexuals. He said, “The Church has not got there yet, but if we were to say that in relationships it is desirable that there is fidelity between a couple, why should we not extend the same conditions to same sex relationships.”
--------On April 20, some 80 well-known evangelical theologians and church leaders signed the Cambridge Declaration, warning, “[T]he 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.”
--------In an interview with Christianity Today, Kenneth Kantzer, leading evangelical figure, said, “I do not for a moment deny the Christianity of any true Roman Catholic. Many Roman Catholics are certainly evangelical. We share the faith of the Apostles’ Creed and the seven ecumenical councils of the ancient church. We need each other in our battles against secularism and materialism” (Sept. 16, 1996).
--------George Carey, Archbishop of Canterbury, lashed out at fundamentalists who place the Bible “above and beyond human inquiry” (Christian News, Dec. 9, 1996).
--------R. Kirby Godsey, president of Mercer University (a Southern Baptist school until 2006), published When We Talk about God ... Let’s Be Honest. Consider some excerpts: “[T]he notion that God is the all powerful, the high and mighty principal of heaven and earth, should be laid aside. ... For the Christian faith, the Bible is not the center of faith. ... To ascribe infallibility to the written words of the Bible is wrong. ... This theory [substitutionary atonement] gives us a picture of God that looks more like a judgmental tyrant. It winds up making God responsible for Jesus’ death. ... Hell is not a boundary. ... The time of judgment may be endless, but it is not eternal.”
1997--In a May 30 interview, Billy Graham told David Frost, “I feel I belong to all the churches. I’m equally at home in an Anglican or Baptist or a Brethren assembly or a Roman Catholic church. ... Today we have almost 100 percent Catholic support in this country. That was not true twenty years ago. And the bishops and archbishops and the Pope are our friends” (David Frost, Billy Graham in Conversation, pp. 68, 143).
--------In an interview with Robert Schuller, Billy Graham said, “God is calling people out of the world for His name, whether they come from the Muslim world, or the Buddhist world, or the Christian world or the non-believing world, they are members of the body of Christ because they’ve been called by God. They may not even know the name of Jesus but they know in their hearts that they need something that they don’t have, and they turn to the only light that they have, and I think that they are saved, and that they’re going to be with us in heaven” (broadcast on Robert Schuller’s Hour of Power, May 31, 1997).
--------In his autobiography Graham said, “My goal, I always made clear, was not to preach against Catholic beliefs or to proselytize people who were already committed to Christ within the Catholic Church. Rather, it was to proclaim the gospel to all those who had never truly committed their lives to Christ” (Just As I Am, p. 357).
--------Oliver Barclay wrote, “No university in Britain would now boast that for them ‘the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom’” (Barclay, Evangelicalism in Britain: 1935-1995: A Personal Sketch, p. 129).
--------A religious survey found that the vast majority of young professing Christians in Britain see nothing wrong with sex outside of marriage; 85 percent of Roman Catholics and 80 percent of Anglicans held this view (Religious News Service, June 18, 1997).
--------In June, Charisma magazine noted that most popular praise anthems sung in charismatic and evangelical churches today are composed by Oneness believers who deny the Trinity. These include Dottie Rambo; Joel Hemphill; Lanny Wolfe; Geron Davis; Phillips, Craig and Dean; and Mark Carouthers, who wrote the song “Mercy Seat” which became the standard for the strange “revival” at the Brownsville Assembly of God in Pensacola, Florida.
--------The homosexual-oriented Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches was admitted to the Southern California Ecumenical Council. The Fellowship routinely performs homosexual weddings.
1998--In New Apostolic Christianity, church growth guru C. Peter Wagner said, “I believe we are witnessing a reinventing of world Christianity.” He listed nine marks of a new apostolic type church, including “New Power Orientation,” which refers to “healing, demonic deliverance, spiritual warfare, prophecy, falling in the Spirit, spiritual mapping, prophetic acts.” He also referred to “more emphasis on the heart than on the mind” (experience over doctrine).
--------Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey said, “For many of us in the Church, liberalism is a creative and constructive element for exploring theology today. ... It would constitute the end of Anglicanism as a significant force in world-wide Christianity if we lost this vital ingredient” (Church of England Newspaper, April 9, 1998, p. 8).
--------Carl Trueman of the University of Aberdeen wrote, “One need only look at many of the works emerging from contemporary evangelical scholars to find that the notion of scriptural authority as understood in any of its classical, orthodox ways has in general been replaced either by the concepts of neo-orthodoxy or simply by silence on the most prickly issues” (“The Impending Evangelical Crisis,” Evangelicals Now, Feb. 1998).
--------Contemporary Christian Music star Kirk Franklin said that “homosexuality is a problem today in gospel music--a major concern--and everybody knows it” (Church Boy, pp. 49, 50).
--------The play Corpus Christi by Terrence McNally opened in New York City in October. It depicts Jesus and the apostles as homosexuals with Jesus performing a “gay marriage” and Judas betraying Jesus because of sexual jealousy.
--------R. Mohler, Jr. of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, warned that the vast majority of Baptist and evangelical churches do not practice church discipline. “Consumed with pragmatic methods of church growth and congregational engineering, most churches leave moral matters to the domain of the individual conscience” (from chapter 8 of The Compromised Church, edited by John H. Armstrong, 1998).
--------The Jesus Seminar, which was founded in 1985, published The Acts of Jesus to publicize their findings about the Jesus of the Gospels. According to these “biblical scholars,” Jesus was born in Nazareth, not Bethlehem, he practiced faith healing to relieve “psychosomatic” afflictions, he did not turn water into wine, walk on water, feed the multitudes, or raise Lazarus from the grave, and he did not rise from the dead.
1999--Many popular contemporary Christian musicians joined in the festivities that preceded Pope John Paul II’s arrival in St. Louis on January 26 for the “Light of the World” Roman Catholic youth gathering. These included Audio Adrenaline, The Supertones, Rebecca St. James, and dc Talk.
--------Catholic Cardinal Francis Arinze, at the Thanksgiving World Assembly (Dallas, Texas) in March, said a person could get to heaven without accepting Jesus. Referring to a Vatican II document, he said, “God’s grant of salvation includes not only Christians, but Jews, Muslims, Hindus and people of good will” (Dallas Morning News, March 20).
--------Representatives of the Lutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church met in Augsburg, Germany, on October 31 and signed the “Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification.” The declaration supports the Catholic position that good works and sacraments are necessary for salvation.
2000--In an article in The Bulletin, Peter Carnley, who was elected head of the Anglican Church in Australia in April, stated that the author of the book of Acts wrote in ignorance when he said that Jesus Christ is the only way of salvation (Acts 4:12).
--------According to a report on the doctrine of hell sponsored by the Evangelical Alliance of the United Kingdom, many evangelicals reject the doctrine that hell is a place of fiery torment and hold to the doctrine of annihilation.
--------Speaking at Expo 2000 in Hanover, Germany, Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu stated: “And because everybody is a God-carrier, all are brothers and sisters; all are one family that can live in peace. Then evil will be overcome and God will say: ‘You are my children. Help me to realise my dream.” (Ecumenical News International, June 15, 2000).
2001--An article in the Independent Digital (United Kingdom) for May 1, 2001, was titled “Catholic church alarmed that priesthood is becoming a ‘gay profession.’”
--------Three Unitarian congregations in the United States are performing Wiccan rituals and referring to a goddess in their services. The latest to do this is Pleasant Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Garland, Texas. They use candles representing “the elements of earth, air, fire, and water” and sermons focusing on earthly themes.
--------An organization called Standing Together Ministries was founded to promote dialogue between evangelical Christians and Mormons. Founder Greg Johnson co-authored a book with Mormon Steve Robinson titled How Wide the Divide?, concluding that the divide between Mormons and Bible-believing Christians is not as wide as formerly thought.
--------While speaking in a Muslim mosque in Bahrain, Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey said, “Muhammad was clearly a great religious leader whose influence on millions has been for the good” and mocked Christians who preach an exclusive salvation and hold up signs saying, “Jesus is the only way” (Friday Church News Notes, December 21, 2001). The title of Carey’s message was “How Far Can We Travel Together?”
--------The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) General Assembly in July rejected a declaration that people can be saved only through faith in Jesus Christ. It passed, instead, a vaguely-worded statement that while Christ is “uniquely Savior” this does not necessarily mean that non-Christians cannot be saved through their own religions.
2002--The more than 1,185 attendees at the International United Methodist Clergywomen’s Consultation in San Diego were united in support of homosexuality. Lesbians were signified by women wearing black-hooded robes and holding signs which read, “We were baptized too,” while the clergywomen surrounded them to depict “a ring of solidarity.”
--------The first “March for Pride and Tolerance” was held in Jerusalem, Israel. Scripture calls end-time Jerusalem “Sodom” in Revelation 11:8.
--------A charismatic conference featured God singing the Beatles song “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” This occurred at the Heart of David Conference on Worship & Warfare, sponsored by Rick Joyner’s Morning Star ministries. The worship leaders were Leonard Jones, Kevin Prosch, and Suzy Wills. When Jones performed his version of “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” which he sings as if it were a love song from God, the band members said they felt a great heat on the stage, then a cloud allegedly appeared, followed by a sweet fragrance.
--------In August, Rowan Williams (who was consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury six months later), faced the dawn sun and, as prayers were chanted “to the ancient god and goddess of the land,” was inducted into the order of the White Druids. This was founded in 1792 by Edward Williams, and though some claim that it has no pagan associations, in fact it openly borrows from Hindu and ancient druid sources. Edward Williams “helped foster Unitarianism in Wales.”
2003--Feminist Patricia Ireland, former president of the National Organization for Women (NOW), was appointed the new chief executive of the 145-year-old Y.W.C.A. (Young Women’s Christian Association). In the 1990s the pro-abortion, pro-lesbian Ireland lived with another woman in Washington, D.C.
--------At the 55th annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society, members voted not to expel two members, Clark Pinnock and John Sanders, who espouse the heresy of open theism. This theology denies the foreknowledge and omniscience of God, claiming that He does not know the future perfectly. Gregory Boyd said, “God can’t foreknow the good or bad decisions of the people He creates until He creates these people and they in turn create their decisions.”
--------An apex of the rock & roll Christianity philosophy was reached with the publication of Thomas Nelson’s Revolve: The Complete New Testament. It is set in a worldly teenage girl’s magazine format, complete with photos of pretty models and cool guys, beauty tips, suggestions on how to have fun on dates, how to feel comfortable wearing a bathing suit, a test to determine if you are introverted or extroverted, and lots of other vain things that distract from, and even contradict, the message of the Scriptures.
--------On June 7, the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire elected the first openly homosexual bishop in the history of the Anglican Communion. The newly elected bishop, V. Gene Robinson, had broken his solemn marriage vows 13 years earlier when he left his wife and two young daughters and to cohabit with his male partner. (Robinson “married” his partner in 2010 when same-sex marriage was legalized in New Hampshire and divorced him in 2014.)
--------In Lawrence v. Texas, the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated America’s laws against homosexuality.
--------The Humanist Manifesto of 2003, signed by 21 Nobel laureates, said, “Knowledge of the world is derived by observation, experimentation, and rational analysis. Humanists find that science is the best method for determining this knowledge as well as for solving problems and developing beneficial technologies. ... Humans are an integral part of nature, the result of unguided evolutionary change. ... Ethical values are derived from human need and interest as tested by experience. ... The responsibility for our lives and the kind of world in which we live is ours and ours alone.”
2004--The theme for a retreat at the Billy Graham Training Center in North Carolina was “Re-enchanting the Cosmos: The Imaginative Legacy of C.S. Lewis.” The retreat brought together Christians “of many traditions.” C.S. Lewis believed in prayers for the dead, purgatory, and theistic evolution; he denied the infallible inspiration of Scripture and the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ and taught that hell is a state of mind. His autobiography, Surprised by Joy, contains no biblical account of the new birth.
--------Speaking on January 31 to 700 delegates at his diocese’s annual meeting, Peter James Lee, Episcopal bishop of Virginia, said, “If you must make a choice between heresy and schism, always choose heresy.”
--------The February 27 edition of the Lariat, the school paper at Baylor University, a large Baptist institution, featured an editorial defending homosexual marriage.
--------Protestants and Baptists joined Roman Catholics in support of the R-rated movie The Passion of the Christ. Southern Baptist and some independent Baptist preachers gave their unqualified recommendation and even rented movie theaters for showings. Ignored was the fact that the movie’s producer and star are Roman Catholics who pray to Mary and that the movie was based in part on the deluded “visions” of a Catholic mystic.
--------In November, Standing Together Ministries co-sponsored an “Evening of Friendship” at the Salt Lake Tabernacle, featuring Ravi Zacharias (well-known evangelical speaker), Richard Mouw (president of Fuller Theological Seminary), Craig Hazen (a professor at Biola University), and Contemporary Christian musician Michael Card. Mouw apologized to the Mormons, saying, “Let me state it clearly. We evangelicals have sinned against you. ... We have demonized you.”
--------In accepting the Prince of Peace Award in November, Billy Graham said, “I remember we were in Calcutta ... we went to see Mother Teresa ... she was so gracious and so spiritual that I felt like kneeling down in her presence. I was so overwhelmed” (“Billy Graham Is Honored with the Prince of Peace Prize,” Assist News Service, Nov. 18, 2004).
--------Alexander Sanger, grandson of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger and Chair of the International Planned Parenthood Council, published Beyond Choice: Reproductive Freedom and the 21st Century. It is “a provocative book arguing that opponents of abortion ignore the facts of evolutionary biology, because they fail to recognize that human beings have evolved through natural selection the capacity to control their own reproduction.” Sanger wrote, “We cannot repeal the laws of natural selection. Nature does not let every life form survive.” He called abortion “good” and something we need to “become proud” of, because it “has been a major factor in advancing human evolution and survival.”
2005--Speaking at All Saints Church in Pasadena, California, on Nov. 4, Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu said, “God’s family has no outsiders. ... Jesus said, ‘I, when I am lifted up, will draw all.’ ... It is radical. Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden ... Gay, lesbian, so-called ‘straight.’ All, all are to be held in the incredible embrace of the love that won’t let us go.”
2006--In The God Delusion, Oxford professor Richard Dawkins claimed that belief in God is a delusion, which he defined as “a persistent false belief held in the face of strong contradictory evidence.”
2007--William Young’s novel The Shack quickly became a sensation. It was number one on the New York Times bestseller list for 50 weeks and by 2012 had sold 18 million copies internationally. It has been translated into dozens of languages and has been endorsed by leaders from all branches of Christianity. It is a fictional account of a man who is bitter against God and has a life-changing healing encounter. The “God” that he encounters, though, is not the God of the Bible. Fundamentally, The Shack is about redefining God. Young said the book is for those with “a longing that God is as kind and loving as we wish he was” (interview with Sherman Hu, Dec. 4, 2007). What he is referring to is the desire on the part of the natural man for a God who loves “unconditionally” and does not require repentance, does not require obedience, does not judge sin, and does not make men feel guilty for what they do. The Shack god is hugely popular in apostate Christianity.
2009--In God Is Not Great, Christopher Hitchens described all religion as man-made and called for a secular, Darwinian view of life based on “science and reason.”
--------Soulfest, one of the biggest contemporary Christian music festivals, is Exhibit A that music is at the heart of the one-world “church.” Since at least 2002, the festival has had a Roman Catholic presence. The festival features a daily Catholic Mass and performances by Roman Catholic musician Matt Maher. Joining hands with Rome are some of the most popular and influential CCM groups. Christianity Today says, “Maher is bringing his music--and a dream of unity--into the Protestant church” (“Common Bonds,” CT, Oct. 27, 2009). Maher says, “I look at it like the Catholic church is my immediate family, and all my friends from different denominations are extended family.” That is what C.S. Lewis taught in Mere Christianity.
2010--According to a 2010 Eurobarometer Poll, only 16 percent of the Czech and 27 percent of French believe in God. Overall, 20 percent of residents in the European Union claim to be atheists. The countries of the European Union have been described as “post-Christian societies,” and atheism has increased dramatically in the past few decades.
--------Christianity Today Editor-in-Chief Mark Galli blasphemously called God a “Divine Drama Queen” in his article of July 15. In evangelicalism’s most influential magazine, Galli wrote, “I like a tranquil, even-keeled, self-controlled God. A God who doesn't fly off the handle at the least provocation. A God who lives one step above the fray. A God who has that British stiff upper lip even when disaster is looming. When I read my Bible, though, I keep running into a different God, and I’m not pleased. This God says he “hates” sin. Well, he usually yells it. Read the prophets. It’s just one harangue after another, all in loud decibels. And when the shouting is over, then comes the pouting. ... This God is like the volatile Italian woman who, upon discovering her husband’s unfaithfulness, yells and throws dishes, refuses to sleep in the same bed, and doesn’t speak to him for 40 days and 40 nights. ... Jesus--God with us--seems to suffer the same emotional imbalance.”
2012--At the “Reason Rally” in March, which brought together thousands of atheists and agnostics in Washington D.C., organizer David Silverman boasted, “We will never be closeted again.”
--------Speaking at a solemn Mass in St. Peter’s Square after proclaiming seven new “saints,” Pope Benedict XVI urged his listeners to “turn to the Virgin Mary, the One who is Queen of all Saints” (“How to be evangelizers,” The Vatican Today, Oct. 23, 2012).
--------The Queen James Bible is a new “gay pride” Bible available on Amazon. By inaccurate translation methodology, it does away with the passages that warn of homosexuality.
-------The Alpha Course, an interdenominational evangelistic program, had grown phenomenally since its inception in the early 1990s. As of 2012, more than 18 million people had participated in the program in 169 countries, and its materials had been translated into 112 languages. It is a radically ecumenical program that is helping to build the end-time, one-world “church.” Founder Nicky Gumble says, “Alpha runs in every arm of the Church. .. We focus on what unites us. ... In every different part of the body of Christ--Presbyterian, Baptist, Lutheran, non-denominational, Catholic, Pentecostal, Bulgarian Orthodox, Coptic Orthodox--Alpha crosses all divides” (“The Alpha Course: An International Phenomenon,” WillowCreek.org, March 2012).
2013--Michael Marder published Plant-Thinking: A Philosophy of Vegetal Life, promoting the “plants rights” movement. Marder calls for “plant liberation.” The Dalai Lama says every living thing, including a tree or plant, has the right to survive (“Recognizing the Right of Plants to Evolve,” NPR, Oct. 28, 2012).
--------Reformed denominations in America and the Roman Catholic Church have signed an agreement to recognize each other’s baptisms. The “Common Agreement” says, “Baptism establishes the bond of unity existing among all who are part of Christ’s body and is therefore the sacramental basis for our efforts to move towards visible unity.” In addition to the Roman Catholic Church, the signers represented the Christian Reformed Church in North America, the Presbyterian Church USA, the Reformed Church in America, and the United Church of Christ.
--------Micah’s Rule is a new contemporary Christian trio composed of Greg McCaw, a homosexual; Chasity Scott, a lesbian; and Mary Anne Hewett, a “transgender.” Their first CD is “a mix of Southern gospel, classic country, blues and a medley of 1960s peace songs--all with a Christian message” (Religion News Service, Feb. 15, 2013).
--------Leaders of the Baptist World Alliance (BWA) are praising Pope Benedict XVI. BWA General Secretary Neville Callam called the pope’s theological works “a rich storehouse of spiritual reflections worthy of detailed study” (Baptist World Alliance News, Feb. 14, 2013). BWA president John Upton praised the pope’s ecumenical vision and his willingness to reach out to Baptists. There was no warning of the pope’s false gospel and other damnable heresies.
--------In May, the Vatican hosted the fourth Buddhist-Christian Colloquium with the theme “Inner Peace, Peace Among Peoples.” The World Council of Churches, which encompasses 340 Christian denominations and groups, hosted a “Buddhist-Christian encounter” in Bangkok. Interfaith dialogue is viewed as the path to a “new age.”
--------Vanderbilt Divinity School appointed lesbian Emilie Townes as the new dean. Townes is an ordained American Baptist clergywoman and “a pioneering scholar in the field of womanist theology” (Christian News, Oct. 7, 2013).
--------During papal mass on May 22, Pope Francis said, “The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone! Even the atheists!” (“Pope at Mass,” Vatican Radio, May 22, 2013).
--------In June, Tel Aviv hosted its 15th annual “Gay Pride Festival,” with a record-breaking 100,000 spectators and participants (“Tel Aviv celebrates gay pride,” The Times of Israel, June 7, 2013).
--------Speaking at the launch of a “gay rights” campaign backed by the United Nations, South African Anglican bishop Desmond Tutu said, “I would refuse to go to a homophobic heaven. ... I would not worship a God who is homophobic and that is how deeply I feel about this” (“Archbishop Tutu,” BBC News, July 26, 2013).
--------Bill Maher, entertainer and political commentator, said, “[T]he God in the Old Testament is a psychotic mass murderer” (“Real Time with Bill Maher,” July 26, 2013).
--------The General Assembly of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) voted in July to welcome “open members of the homosexual and transgender community to worship and serve in the denomination’s churches the same way members of different races and ages do” (“Disciples of Christ Church Votes to Affirm,” Christian Post, July 19, 2013).
--------Gary Hall of the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. said, “We must now have the courage to take the final step and call homophobia and heterosexism what they are. They are sin. ... if we are faithful in proclaiming and living [the gospel], today’s generation of LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual] youth will thrive and grow and take their places around this table, with Jesus, as we bless, forgive, heal, and love the world” (“National Cathedral Leader,” CNSNews, Oct. 7, 2013).
--------A new book entitled Saffron Cross describes the marriage of a female Baptist minister to a Hindu monk. The author, J. Dana Trent, grew up in Binkley Baptist Church in Chapel Hill, NC, and was ordained in a Southern Baptist congregation. In 2010, she married Fred Eaker, an American convert to Hinduism, and they spent their honeymoon in India. Trent says, “Christianity is absolutely the path for some, but not for everyone” (“New Book details Baptist/Hindu marriage,” ABP News, Oct. 28, 2013).
--------In August, three women in Massachusetts claimed they are the world’s first lesbian “throuple” after they “married” each other. Massachusetts allows same-sex marriage but still has a law against polygamy, but officials said there would be no penalty for this matter.
--------Lynn Green was appointed the first female president of the Baptist Union of Great Britain. She received a standing ovation during her inaugural sermon when she proclaimed, “I believe that our union is ready for generational change ... It is time to ... embrace a new way of being for the 21st century.” This is the philosophy of the emerging church.
2014--A two-day “Freedom and Friendship” conference was held in Salt Lake City in January, attended by 3,500 “evangelicals” and Mormons. Ravi Zacharias was a featured speaker (“Popular Christian Apologist,” The Christian Post, Jan. 20, 2014). The meeting was sponsored by Standing Together, an organization dedicated to Christian unity.
--------In April, Rick Warren, pastor of the Southern Baptist megachurch Saddleback, praised the Catholic Church and the popes and called for unity with Rome. He said Saddleback practices Catholic contemplative prayer. When he was writing Purpose Driven Church, he would light candles before he began his work. He said Saddleback recently received a delegation from the Vatican consisting of about 30 Catholic bishops to study the church’s “style of evangelization.” When asked by EWTN’s Raymond Arroyo, “What is keeping Christians apart?” Warren replied, “I think we need to go back to the words of St. Augustine. ‘In the essentials we have unity; in the non-essentials we have liberty; in all things we show charity’” (Rick Warren, EWTN, “World Today,” Apr. 10-11, 2014).
--------Two “evangelical” publishers came out with pro-homosexual books this year. Convergent Books published God and the Gay Christian: The Biblical Case in Support of Same-Sex Relationships by Matthew Vines. Vines is president of Reformation Project, the purpose of which is “to train Christians to support and affirm lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in all aspects of church life.” Howard Books published Facing the Music: Discovering Real Life, Real Love, and Real Faith by lesbian Contemporary Christian Music artist Jennifer Knapp.
--------Pope Francis’ visit to Israel in May was a one-world “church” event. He was visited by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and accompanied to the Wailing Wall by the Chief Rabbi of Israel. The pope was welcomed to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre by leaders of various Orthodox groups (Coptic, Ethiopian, Syriac, Armenian) that share control of the building with the Catholic Church.
--------On June 1, more than 50,000 charismatic Catholics attended a rally at Rome’s Olympic Stadium. As Pope Francis knelt by his papal chair, the crowd prayed for him in gibberish “tongues” (Charisma, June 11, 2014). A life-size statue of Rome’s Mary, the Queen of Heaven, stood at the front of the papal podium.
--------President Barack Obama proclaimed June “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride Month.”
--------Police in the U.K. opened a hate crimes investigation against Attleborough Baptist Church of Norfolk for posting a message on its outdoor sign board stating, “If you think there is no God, you’d better be right,” above a photograph of burning flames. Pastor John Rose agreed to take down the sign (Wymondham and Attleborough Mercury, June 9, 2014).
--------In an address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Pope Francis said the Bible is not incompatible with evolution. “When we read about Creation in Genesis, we run the risk of imagining God was a magician, with a magic wand able to do everything. But that is not so. ... [C]reation continued for centuries and centuries, millennia and millennia, until it became what we know today” (“Pope Contradicts Genesis Account,” Christian News Network, Oct. 27, 2014).
--------A lesbian homosexual rights activist was appointed Dean for Religious Life at Stanford University. Jane Shaw, an Episcopal priest, said in a recent interview, “I’m really interested in how you welcome many different kinds of constituencies, certainly not convert them, not even necessarily to do religion all the time” (“First Person: A conversation with Jane Shaw,” Palo Alto Online, Dec. 22, 2014).
--------The first ever meeting between Salvation Army leaders and a pope occurred at the Vatican in December. The journey to Rome, led by Salvation Army General Andre Cox, was the culmination of six years of ecumenical dialogue (“Addresses at the Vatican,” salvationarmy.org, Dec. 12, 2014). The Salvation Army website calls the pope “His Holiness.”
2015--Relevant, the magazine for hip emerging Christians, ran a report in the February issue by Rob Fee on “11 Phrases that Freaked Me Out as a Kid.” These include “the Lamb that was slain,” “washed in the blood,” “on fire for God,” “the Holy Ghost,” “born again,” “I’m not of this world,” “the Lamb’s book of life,” “the devil as a roaring lion,” and “guard your heart.” Relevant, which claims to reach about 2.3 million 20- and 30-year-old Christians, makes a mockery of the holy things of God’s Word.
--------Amy Grant is a figure head for CCM’s push for the one world “church.” On April 19, she joined the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Catholic Matt Maher, and others for a unity concert in Ypsilanti, Michigan. In January, Grant was one of the headliners for the “We Are United” concert promoting ecumenical unity. The “33 greatest CCM artists in history” who participated represented a “who’s who” of Contemporary Christian Music and illustrate that no one is building the one world “church” more effectively than contemporary musicians.
--------Prominent evangelicals continue to come out in support of “homosexual Christianity.” Tony Campolo issued a news release saying, “I am finally ready to call for the full acceptance of Christian gay couples into the Church.” David Neff, retired editor of Christianity Today, said on Facebook, “God bless Tony Campolo. He is acting in good faith and is, I think, on the right track.”
--------Baylor, the world’s largest Baptist university, dropped its ban on “homosexual acts” in its sexual conduct policy (Houston Chronicle, Jul. 7, 2015).
--------In July, Darlene Zschech and Hillsong joined hands with the pope at the Convocation of the Renewal of the Holy Spirit at the Vatican. On her Facebook page, Zschech said, “Honoured to be singing this week, with Andrea Bocelli, Don Moen, Noa [Israeli singer], with Pope Francis and thousands of worshippers gathering in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican. This is a celebration of unity and peace in the Renewal of the Holy Spirit. Amazing days for the Body of Christ.”
--------In Obergefell v. Hodges, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that all states must recognize same-sex “marriage.”
2016--In July, the “Together in Europe” ecumenical congress previewed the one-world “church.” It featured 1,700 Christians from around 300 denominations, Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, Baptist, Evangelical, Pentecostal, etc. Pope Francis and Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew I sent video messages to the meeting. The Congress finished with an open air rally attended by around 5,000 people under the banner “500 years of division is enough--unity is possible.”
--------On July 21, the 15th annual gay pride parade was held in Jerusalem, with an estimated participation of 25,000. Some participants waved rainbow flags with the Star of David at the center (The Times of Israel, July 21, 2016).
--------The United Methodist Church elected its first “gay” bishop, Karen Oliveto, in spite of the denomination’s ban on same-sex relationships. Oliveto is pastor of the Glide Memorial United Methodist Church in San Francisco, a church with a long history of rank apostasy.
--------In August, a Satanist led the invocation for the assembly of the Kenai borough in Alaska (Media Research Center, Aug. 12, 2016). Iris Fontana of the Satanic Temple intoned, “Let us embrace the Luciferian impulse to eat of the tree of knowledge and dissipate our blissful and comforting delusions of old,” concluding with, “Hail Satan.”
2017--A lesbian couple, Sally Sarratt and Maria Swearingen, were called as co-pastors of Calvary Baptist Church of Washington, D.C. The church was founded in 1862. It departed from the Southern Baptist Convention in 2012 and affiliates today with the American Baptist Churches USA.
--------The Queen’s chaplain, Gavin Ashenden, was forced to resign after speaking out against the reading of the Muslim Koran at St. Mary’s Cathedral, Glasgow. He had called upon Kelvin Holdsworth, Provost of the cathedral, to apologize and rightly stated that Holdsworth lacked the “theological astuteness” for the job (“ChristianToday.com, Jan. 22, 2017). Instead, Ashenden was axed by the ultra-apostate Church of England.
--------A replica of a Roman arch devoted to Baal was erected for the World Government Summit in Dubai in February. The original arch was built in the second century AD in Palmyra, Syria, as a gate to a Roman temple of Bel, which is known in the Bible as Baal. The arch was a joint project of Oxford and Harvard (“New World Order forming under pagan temple of Ba’al arch?” BreakingIsraelNews, Feb. 16, 2017).
--------On its Facebook page, the Israel Air Force promoted a “gay couple” in honor of Family Day. Next to the smiling portrait of Captain Adir Gabbai and his partner Dean, the post informs us that the two served in the same unit in the IAF, and that eight years later they are now “newlyweds” (Arutz Sheva, Feb. 27, 2017).
--------Vanderbilt and Duke Divinity schools are promoting gender-neutral language for God. Masculine pronouns are to be avoided. For example, instead of saying, “God the father,” professors are encouraged to say, “God the parent” (TruthRevolt.org, Jan. 17, 2017).
--------According to a Barna Poll, 79% of Americans are comfortable with women serving as spiritual leaders in churches.
--------In 15 years, 500 London churches of all denominations have been turned into private homes. During the same period, 423 new mosques have been built (“Londonistan,” The Gatestone Institute, Apr. 2, 2017).
--------In his commencement speech at Harvard University, Mark Zuckerberg said his social network, Facebook, can offer the same sense of community as church. Facebook’s new mission statement is “Bring the world closer together.” The method is networks of online groups that create a sense of community. Currently, 100 million people participate in Facebook networks. Community building is a New Age technique geared to create a new world. It is a process of breaking down the divisions between people and emphasizing unity and group thinking as opposed to individualism. It requires a non-judgmental attitude and a willingness to accept different views and practices as legitimate.
--------The Anglican Church’s General Synod voted in favor of “offering special services to welcome transgender people to the Anglican faith” (“Anglican Church set to offer,” The Guardian, Jul. 9, 2017). Proposing the motion, Chris Newlands said: “I hope that we can make a powerful statement to say that we believe that trans people are cherished and loved by God, who created them, and is present through all the twists and turns of their lives.”
--------The Holman Christian Standard Bible, produced by the Southern Baptist Convention, incorporates “gender inclusive language.” The 2017 edition translates the term anthropos, a Greek word for ‘man,’ in a gender-neutral form 151 times, rendering it “human,” “people,” and “ones.” “Men of Israel” becomes “fellow Israelites”; when describing Jesus’ incarnation, the “likeness of men” becomes “likeness of humanity.” The CSB translates the term adelphoi, a Greek word for “brother” in a gender neutral form 106 times, often adding “sister.” “Brotherly love” is translated “love as brothers and sisters.”
--------The 2017 Greenbelt Festival, England’s oldest and largest Christian rock festival, featured Muslim “healing chants” by a Sufi organization “founded on the Holy Quran” and devoted to “guiding seekers of Allah” (ChristianToday.com, Aug. 7, 2017). Greenbelt is literally filled with heresies yet has been supported by the biggest names in Contemporary Christian Music. The “loosen up, don’t be so strict, stop being judgmental” philosophy ultimately erases all boundaries. CCM is a bridge to every element of apostasy.
--------On August 23-24, leaders of the World Council of Churches had a private audience with Pope Francis in the Vatican Palace to discuss ecumenical unity and the salvation of the world. WCC general secretary Olav Fykse Tveit called the meeting fruitful and said that “the unity of the church and the unity of humankind are interconnected” (WCC News, Aug. 24, 2017). They want to save the world from such things as poverty, racial and religious division, nuclear armament, and climate change.
2018--Bono, frontman of the rock band U2, says Paul was wrong about women, homosexuality, and other things. He said this in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, which was published Dec. 27, 2017. U2 and Bono are praised almost universally among contemporary Christians. Bono has been applauded by Eugene Peterson, Brian McLaren, Tony Campolo, Bill Hybels, Rick Warren, Rob Bell, and a great many others. Christianity Today almost worships U2.
--------The Episcopal Church diocese of Washington, D.C., has rejected the God of the Bible for a mythical god of feminist theology. On January 27, delegates to the annual convention approved a statement “to utilize expansive language for God ... and, when possible, to avoid the use of gendered pronouns for God” (i.e., “He,” “Father,” “King”) (LifeSite News, Feb. 1, 2018). “The Rev.” Linda Calkins of St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church in Laytonsville, Maryland, said, “Many of us are waiting and need to hear God in our language, in our words and in our pronouns.”
--------The Gaither’s Homecoming Magazine recommended the writings of New Age goddess Sue Monk Kidd and Catholic/Buddhist mystic Richard Rohr. In 2009, the Gaithers hosted William Paul Young, author of The Shack (which presents God as a woman). In 2005, the Gaithers Praise Gathering featured emerging leader Brian McLaren, who denies the need of Christ’s blood atonement, and New Ager Leonard Sweet.
--------According to a new report titled Europe’s Young Adults and Religion, 70% of youth in the United Kingdom self-identify as having “no religion” and 63% “never pray.”
--------In a tweet on April 21, rapper superstar Kanye West said, “I don’t subscribe to the term and concept of God fearing. That’s a dated mentality that was used to control people. We are in the future. If God is love and love it’s [sic] the opposite of fear then... to fear God makes no sense.”
--------Matt Maher, one of the most influential contemporary worship musicians, said in an interview that he worships Christ in the consecrated wafer (the host) of the Catholic mass. He says, “I do a mass every Sunday night at 6 PM at my church, Saint Tims, and on Tuesday nights we do a thing called XL. ... with about 25 to 30 minutes of Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament” (“Matt Maher Interview” Kim Jones, Mar. 6, 2017, Thoughtco.com). Adoration of the blessed sacrament refers to worshiping a wafer as Jesus Christ.
--------Michael Walrond, Jr., pastor of the megachurch First Corinthian Baptist Church of Harlem, told the congregation that “the belief that anyone who doesn’t believe in Jesus is going to hell is ‘insanity.’ ... so the key is you believe in God. And whatever your path is to God I celebrate that” (Christian Post, May 19, 2018).
--------Sir James Munby, England’s top family judge, President of the Family Division of England’s High Court of Justice, says society should “welcome and applaud” the collapse of the traditional family (Breitbart, June 3, 2018).
--------Timothy Rogers, popular American pastor, evangelist, and singer, says hell is a “fairytale” and “an imaginary place.” “To believe in Hell means you have to believe in Santa Claus” (Christian Post, June 21, 2018).
--------The World Council of Churches and the United Bible Societies have jointly published a book that glorifies the ecumenical movement. Titled Your Word Is Truth: The Bible in 10 Christian Traditions, the book claims that the Bible is the unifying element in ecumenical relations (Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, Baptist, Pentecostal, etc.). In fact, when the Bible is interpreted literally, it destroys the ecumenical movement.
--------The leading cause of death in 2018 was abortion. According to the news and data site Worldometers, 42 million babies were aborted.
2019--The pope’s first ever meeting with Mormon leaders was held on March 9. The occasion was the dedication of the new Mormon temple in Rome. After the meeting with Pope Francis, Russell Nelson, President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said, “[Our differences are] not nearly as important as the things we have in common” (RNS, March 11, 2019).
--------Prominent evangelical speaker and author Beth Moore said the Holy Spirit taught her that men that oppose female preachers do so because of “sin ... power ... misogyny ... sexism ... arrogance” (Christian Headlines, May 14, 2019).
--------First United Methodist Church of Birmingham, Alabama, screened an episode of the children’s show Arthur that depicts a same-sex wedding (Associated Press, June 3, 2019).
--------In the Closet of the Vatican by Frederic Martel describes the gay subculture at the Vatican and calls out the hypocrisy of Catholic bishops and cardinals who in public denounce homosexuality but in private lead double lives. Martel, assisted by 80 researchers and translators, conducted nearly 1,500 in-person interviews with 41 cardinals, 52 bishops or monsignors, and 45 Vatican and foreign ambassadors. The 555-page book was published simultaneously in eight languages in 20 countries, many bearing the title “Sodom.”
--------According to the latest polls, church membership in America dropped 20% since the turn of the 21st century, from 70% to 50%. Among those aged 18-29, the average is about 40%.
--------At the 2019 SBC Convention in Birmingham, Alabama, the worldliness that permeates the denomination was on full display. Top leaders donned long-haired wigs and performed Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama” for the carnal pleasure of the SBC pastors in attendance. The wannabe rockers were the presidents of the SBC mission board, the SBC Executive Committee, the International Mission Board, and two seminaries. There is nothing godly or morally innocent about Lynyrd Skynyrd. Their main message is “live as you please,” which is to shake one’s fist at Almighty God and His holy laws. During a youth event, SBC President J.D. Greear danced onstage with two other men to Whitney Houston’s filthy “I Wanna Dance with Somebody.”
--------Arturo Sosa, head of the Jesuits, told the Italian magazine Tempi that the devil “is not a person” but is a symbolic “way of evil” (Daily Wire, Aug. 21, 2019).
--------A “transgender” man claiming to be a woman named Erica Saunders was ordained on September 8 as pastor of the Peace Community Church in Oberlin, Ohio, currently affiliated with the Baptist Peace Fellowship. Saunders is a graduate of Wake Forest Divinity School, which is affiliated with the Cooperate Baptist Fellowship (CFB).
--------Rutgers Presbyterian Church in Manhattan is a showcase for the one-world “church.” It brings together Presbyterians, Roman Catholics, Jews, New Agers, even atheists around the themes of social justice and saving the earth (New York Times, Sept. 6, 2019). The congregation is involved in such things as climate change activism and homosexual rights. Tibetan Buddhist prayer flags adorn the church, and visitors can choose from a variety of buttons to wear declaring their “gender identity: he/him, she/her, they/them.”
--------The Binghampton Presbyterian Church (PCUSA) of New York City set up a modernistic image of Sviatovid, an ancient European god of war, for the annual Lumid festival.
--------On September 17, students at Union Theological Seminary of New York City confessed their climate sins to plants. The seminary announced on Twitter, “In worship, our community confessed the harm we’ve done to plants. ... we’re treating plants as fully created beings.”
--------Mattel launched a “gender inclusive” line of dolls entitled Creatable World. Kim Culmone, senior vice president of Mattel Fashion Doll Design, said, ‘[A]s the world begins to the celebrate the positive impact of inclusivity, we absolutely fundamentally believed it was time to launch a doll line free of labels and free of rules for kids.” That is a lie. New age inclusivity is not inclusive. It emphatically shuts out and aggressively seeks to cancel anyone who disagrees with its group think.
--------The InterVarsity campus group at the University of Maryland, Baltimore county (UMBC) hosts a Queer Bible Study led by a lesbian named Alyssa Walter, who “came out” as a “queer Christian” in 2018.
--------On October 1, a British judge said that the Bible’s teaching on homosexuality is “incompatible with human dignity.” The case involved Dr. David Mackereth, a Christian who was fired after 26 years of service as an emergency doctor for the National Health Service for his refusal to recognize a “trans” man as a woman. Mackereth would not surrender his belief in Genesis 1:27, “... in the image of God He created him, male and female he created them.” He appealed the decision, but his appeal was denied. It is therefore impossible for an outspoken Bible believer to work in government health care in England today.
--------Popular CRU (formerly Campus Crusade for Christ) leader Matt Mikalatos promotes Native American pagan mysticism and claims that homosexuals do not have to repent of homosexuality. He wrote, “Don’t assume that because someone is Queer they are not already connected spiritually ... maybe deeply connected!” (Reformation Charlotte, Sept. 30, 2019).
--------Baylor University, the world’s largest Baptist university, is “committed to providing a caring, loving and supportive community for students in all aspects of their lives, including the development of their sexuality.” University President Linda Livingstone announced that students would not be disciplined for identifying as LGBTQ and that the university would provide resources for them.
--------Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, hired Karen Prior, a liberal feminist who promotes “Christian homosexuality” and says that abortion is not murder.
--------Bethel Church in Redding, California, is a window into the broad Word-faith element of the charismatic movement. The hugely influential church publishes popular contemporary worship music. Its School of Supernatural Ministry has graduated many thousands since 1998. Students are taught how to “practice His presence,” heal the sick, prophesy, and cast out demons. The church is pastored by a husband-wife team, Bill and Beni Johnson. They teach and practice all sorts of heresies, such as the continuation of apostles and prophets, gibberish tongues, healing guaranteed by Christ’s atonement, clairvoyance, grave soaking (lying on a grave to soak up the deceased’s “anointing”), and the appearance of “glory clouds,” gold dust, and angel “feathers.” Beni said one of her students was told by God to go to a chapel and shout “Wakey Wakey!” Suddenly, a huge angel stepped out and said, “I am the angel from the 1904 revival and you just woke me up.” The proper shout would be “wacky, wacky”!
--------The BBC released online videos titled “The Big Talk” for use in British schools as part of the UK’s new Relationships and Sexuality Education (RSE) curriculum, which came into force in September 2019. Children are taught that there are “over 100 different gender identities” and people can go to prison for “being disrespectful or hateful” to those with different sexual orientations.
--------The head of the Salvation Army, Brian Peddle, met with Pope Francis in Rome on November 8 to express ecumenical oneness and to discuss joint efforts to save the world through social action.
--------Community Christian Church, a megachurch in Naperville, Illinois, put the Christmas story to Beatles music. The pageant was entitled “Let It Be Christmas: The Gospel according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, George and Ringo” (Religion News Service, Dec. 18, 2019).
2020--Hillsong Phoenix hosted Alpha Conference 2020 in January, complete with a Catholic mass. Speakers included Sarah Shin of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, Kelvin Walker of the Christian & Missionary Alliance, Catholic priest James Mallon, and Catholic contemporary worship leader Matt Redman.
--------Daniel Cameron, theology teacher at Moody Bible Institute (MBI), holds the heresy that Jesus shared man’s fallen nature. He had an epiphany of this doctrine at a Chris Tomlin Christian rock concert while listening to the words of “Jesus Messiah.” As proof of his doctrine, he quotes heretics Gregory of Nazianzus (a disciple of Origen), Karl Barth, and T.F. Torrance (Christianity Today, Dec. 5, 2019).
--------According to Hillsong Australia, over 20 denominations are represented at its annual conferences, including Anglican, Apostolic, Baptist, Brethren, Catholic, Church of Christ, Assemblies of God, Foursquare, Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, Seventh day Adventist, and Uniting. Hillsong is a major producer of contemporary worship music with the goal of uniting “the greater church” for the expected “latter rain” miracle revival outpouring.
--------In December, a “transgender woman,” Nicole Garcia, was ordained pastor of Westview Lutheran Church in Boulder, Colorado, a congregation which is part of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
2020--The immoral, blasphemous Super Bowl halftime show featured Jennifer Lopez posing on a cross while people fell down on their faces in simulated worship.
--------At the Baylor University chapel service on February 12, Kaitlin Curtice prayed to “Mother Mystic.” Baylor is the world’s largest Baptist university. Curtice is a practitioner of New Age contemplative mysticism. She defines “contemplation” as “listening to the Divine/Mystery/Higher Power/God, and letting the overflow of that love stretch into other realms of life” (Sojourners, Sep. 4, 2019). In her speech at Baylor, she said she dipped a tobacco leaf into the water of Lake Michigan and “Mother Earth spoke to her” (KWTX television, Feb. 13, 2020).
--------On February 29, Protestants and Catholics celebrated mass together for the first time in John Calvin’s cathedral in Geneva. Daniel Pilly, president of the Parish Council, said, “The idea appealed because it corresponds to our desire to make the cathedral a meeting place for all Geneva Christians. A space that transcends confessional boundaries.”
--------On April 28, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) posted a prayer tweet addressed to “Mother God,” asking “her” to “raise us up to salvation ... so we may share the sweetness of your holy word with all the world.” This was one of the ELCA’s #Bread4theday Twitter posts. This is the largest Lutheran denomination in America.
--------In Francesco, a new biographical documentary, Pope Francis speaks out in favor of homosexual “civil unions.” He says, “They’re children of God and have a right to a family.”
--------J.D. Greear, President of the Southern Baptist Convention, is calling on Christians to stand up for homosexual rights and “gender justice.” He says that using “preferred pronouns” for “trans” people is “pronoun hospitality” (Reformation Charlotte, Oct. 29, 2020).
2021--Dr. Craig Mitchell, President of the Ethics and Political Economy Center, warned of professors in two Southern Baptist seminaries who teach Neo-Marxist heresies like Critical Race Theory. The professors are Curtis Woods, Jarvis Williams, and Kevin Jones of Southern Seminary and Walter Strickland of Southeastern Seminary. According to CRT, all whites are racists and America is fundamentally racist.
--------In celebration of “Pride Month,” the Education Institute of Scotland sponsored “The Gospel According to Jesus Queen of Heaven,” a blasphemous portrayal of Jesus as transgender. The play’s creator, Jo Clifford, a man who identifies as female, says he is a Christian.
--------A Gallup Poll found that 70% of Americans favor same-sex marriage, a 10% increase since 2015.
--------Harvard University appointed an atheist, Greg Epstein, as president of its chaplaincy program. Epstein is the author of Good Without God.
--------The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) ordained its first “transgender” bishop, Megan Rohrer, a man pretending to be both a man and a woman and using the pronouns “they” and “them.”
--------DC Comics is recreating superheroes as homosexuals to further brainwash a confused generation. Superman is now Jonathan Kent, a bisexual climate-change warrior, and Robin of Batman has a boyfriend.
--------Kid Rock’s filthy new song “Don’t Tell Me How to Live” trumpets the heartbeat theme of rock & roll since its inception. Rock music has done more to destroy the moral character of modern society than any other one thing.
--------According to a new poll by Probe Ministries, 70% of “evangelical Christians” disagree with the Bible’s teaching that Jesus Christ is the only way to God.
--------NASA hired 24 theologians at the Center for Theological Inquiry in Princeton, to advise on possible contact with aliens (Relevant Magazine, Dec. 29, 2021).
--------On Dec. 26, Desmond Tutu, Anglican archbishop and civil rights campaigners, passed away. Eight years earlier he said, “I would refuse to go to a homophobic heaven” (“Archbishop Tutu,” BBC News, July 26, 2013). No doubt, he got his wish.
2022--On January 8, a new Canadian law says belief in heterosexuality and cisgender is a myth, thus denouncing the Bible.
--------63 million babies have been murdered in America since the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision by the Supreme Court (Christian Headlines, Jan. 21, 2022).
--------Drag queens are “ministering” in churches. St. Luke’s Lutheran Church, Logan Square, Chicago, hosted a drag queen prayer time for children. Park Slope United Methodist in Brooklyn, New York, hosted a drag queen dance party. St. Mary’s Road United Church in Manitoba hosted a drag queen who answers prayers. Naples United Church of Christ, Naples, Florida, hosted a drag queen show for youth ages 12-18.
--------Michael Youssef, pastor of the Church of the Apostles, a megachurch in Atlanta, Georgia, told his congregation that “questioning God is OK” (Christian Post, Jan. 26, 2022).
--------The Mennonite Church USA passed a resolution on May 29 allowing homosexuals to join the churches and allowing pastors to officiate at same-sex “marriage” ceremonies (Religion News Service, June 2, 2022).
--------For its 100th anniversary, the Hymn Society published a series of songs that glorify homosexuality under the title “Songs for the Holy Other.” The 46 songs include “A Hymn for Self-Acceptance,” “God Calls You Good,” “God of Queer Transgressive Spaces,” “The Kingdom of God is the Queerest of Nations,” “Queerly Beloved,” and “Quirky, Queer and Wonderful.”
--------The New Room in Bristol, England, the first Methodist chapel established by John Wesley, announced that it supports same-sex “marriages” (Premier Christian News, June 30, 2022).
--------On August 14, Crescent Hill Baptist Church of Louisville, Kentucky, by unanimous vote, appointed homosexual Jordan Conley as co-pastor. The other pastor is a woman. According to the church’s web site, Conley “lives with his husband ... and their dog, Kenzie.” Crescent Hill Baptist was established in 1908 and was so closely aligned with the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary it was called “the seminary church.”
--------The Contemplative Tarot promotes occult tarot cards as a Christian contemplative method. Author Brittany Muller grew up Roman Catholic, rejected “Christianity,” discovered tarot, then returned to Catholicism and brought her tarot cards with her as a new way to seek God.
--------The new Dean of Canterbury Cathedral, David Monteith, is a homosexual who is in a “same-sex civil partnership” (“New Dean,” Oct. 11, 2022, englishcathedrals,co.uk). Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, said, “I’m delighted by David’s appointment.”
--------A boy named Brian who claims to be transgender won the 2022 regional Miss America competition in Derry, New Hampshire. The Miss Greater Derry pageant winner is qualified to enter the Miss New Hampshire contest, which is the state level competition for the national Miss America pageant.
--------At least 1,100 clergy have indicated they would conduct same-sex marriages should it become allowed in the Church of England, according to a survey carried out by the Campaign for Equal Marriage in the Church of England.
--------A Smart Girl’s Guide: Body Image Book by the American Girl company, maker of popular dolls, is marketed to children ages 10 and up. It says, “Your gender expression can be feminine, masculine, or somewhere in between--and it might change!”
--------AWANA has become permeated with Critical Race Theory/LGBT inclusion activism. Speakers at recent AWANA forums include Sam Allberry, a homosexual Church of England priest; Andy Crouch, former editor of Christianity Today who “used his position to promote the LGBTQ activist Revoice movement; Rebecca McLaughlin, who promotes the American Psychological Association’s Sexual Orientation Gender Identity; and Shai Linne, a rapper who advocates Black Lives Matter. Mark Markins, new CEO of AWANA, says the organization must be “looking ahead and charting a course to the future.”
2023--A poll of 24 countries by the Policy Institute found that belief in God among UK adults has declined by more than a quarter since 1981. People in the UK are less likely to believe in God than people in almost any other country in the world.
--------Presbyterian Pastor (PCUSA) Rebecca Peters said in a sermon that she felt “God’s presence” and “felt no guilt, no shame, no sin” when she had two abortions (The Christian Post, Aug. 5, 2023). Peters is author of Trust Women: A Progressive Christian Argument for Reproductive Justice.
The previous information is only the “tip of the iceberg.” We have merely touched on a few of the high points of the apostasy of the past 200 years, and it is in the context of this terrible apostasy, and as a prominent part of that apostasy, that the unscriptural theories of modern textual criticism were developed and gained widespread favor and the modern versions have proliferated.
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