Theological modernism permeated the churches of Germany and spread from there throughout the world.

The testimony of James Good,

“Rationalism was a terrible tide that “swept over Germany like a flood” (History of the Reformed Church of Germany 1620-1890).

The testimony of L.W. Munhall:

“The unspiritual condition of the churches … and the alarmingly prevalent skepticism, infidelity, and atheism among the masses of the people in Germany, Switzerland, and Holland is, without doubt, almost wholly attributable to the advocacy of these criticisms by a large majority of the prominent pastors and theological professors in those lands. The same condition of affairs is measurably true in England, Scotland, New England, and in every community where this criticism is believed by any very considerable number of people and openly advocated” (The Highest Critics vs. the Higher Critics, 1896).

The testimony of Matthew Arnold of conditions in nineteenth-century Britain:

“Clergymen and ministers of religion are full of lamentations over what they call the spread of scepticism ... ‘... the speculations of the day are working their way down among the people...’” (Literature and Dogma, 1873, p. vi).

The testimony of historian S.M. Houghton:

“The fact is that Germany, by the mid-19th century, was flooded by unbelief. Its schools and colleges, as well as its churches, contributed to this. Its Protestant hymn-book was revised in order to deprive it of much of its evangelical content. Philosophy replaced theology, and Scripture was dealt with savagely. Miracles ceased to be accounted miracles; they were explained away. Bible prophecies were discredited. Christ was robbed of his deity. His resurrection, it was said, never took place. Either he did not really die but suffered a fainting fit, or he retreated after his supposed death to some place known only to his disciples. D.F. Strauss startled the world by a Life of Jesus (published in 1835-36) which admitted a framework of fact, but claimed that much of the content of the Four Gospels was sheer mythology. Julius Wellhausen [1844-1910] achieved notoriety by attacking the orthodox teaching on the authorship, unity and inspiration of the Scriptures, and unhappily many followed in his steps. He was the chief pioneer of Higher Critical views, and under his influence many theologians throughout Western Europe and America questioned or abandoned the authority even of Christ himself” (Sketches from Church History, p. 239).

The testimony of Charles Haddon Spurgeon, who spent the last years of his life fighting against the “downgrade” in theology that had undermined the Baptist Union. In 1887 Spurgeon wrote the following haunting words:

“A CHASM IS OPENING BETWEEN THE MEN WHO BELIEVE THEIR BIBLES AND THE MEN WHO ARE PREPARED FOR AN ADVANCE UPON SCRIPTURE. ... Those who hold evangelical doctrine are in open alliance with those who call the fall a fable, who deny the personality of the Holy Ghost, who call justification by faith immoral, and hold that there is another probation after death. ... Attendance at places of worship is declining and reverence for holy things is vanishing. We solemnly believe this to be largely attributable to THE SCEPTICISM WHICH HAS FLASHED FROM THE PULPIT AND SPREAD AMONG THE PEOPLE” (Sword and Trowel, November 1887).

Spurgeon thus describes for us the wretched spiritual condition that existed in Britain in his day in the late nineteenth century. End-time apostasy was coming into blossom. Spurgeon’s battles against modernism within the Baptist Union occurred at precisely the same time that the English Revised Version was being prepared, and the same battle was being fought (and lost) in other denominations, including Anglicanism, Congregationalism, Presbyterianism, and Methodism. (An excellent overview of this is found in The Forgotten Spurgeon by Iain Murray, Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust).

The testimony of the Bible League, which was formed in Britain in 1892:

“Spurgeon’s days saw apostasy as a trickle; by the time of the Bible League’s foundation [1892] it had become a stream; shortly it expanded to a river, and today it has become a veritable ocean of unbelief. For the most of men the ancient landmarks have disappeared from sight. Life upon earth has become a voyage on an uncharted ocean in a cockle-shell boat ‘tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine.’ Never before in human history has the ‘sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive’ (Eph. 4:14) been so greatly in evidence. ‘Evil men and seducers wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived’ (2 Tim. 3:13)” (“The Bible League: Its Origin and Its Aims,” Truth Unchanged, Unchanging, Abingdon: The Bible League, 1984).

Throughout the twentieth century modernism continued to spread.

In 1918, Harry Emerson Fosdick, pastor of the influential Riverside Church in New York City, published The Manhood of the Master, denying that Jesus Christ is God.

Karl Barth (1886-1968), Emil Brunner (1889-1965), and Reinhold Niebuhr (1893-1971) founded neo-orthodoxy, which hides its unbelief under orthodox theological terms that are given a heretical meaning through obscure language (e.g., speaking of the “bodily resurrection” of Christ or the “second coming” or “the inspiration of Scripture,” but not believing 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.

In 1931, Henry Sloane Coffin, former moderator of the Presbyterian Church in America, wrote: “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” (The Meaning of the Cross, pp. 118-121).

In 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” (Christian Fact and Modern Doubt, p. 162).

In 1943, Pius XII, in his Divino Afflante Spiritu, became the first Pope to endorse the use of the “scientific criticism” of Scripture.

In 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 book Preaching in a Revolutionary Age.

In 1951, Paul Tillich published the first part of his Systematic Theology, teaching that God, the “Ground of Being,” can be known only through myths. “

In 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).

In 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).

In 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.

In 1968, 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.

In 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 1976, Harold Lindsell testified: “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).

In 1977, Anne Holmes of the United Church of Christ became the first openly lesbian woman ordained by a mainline Protestant denomination.

In 1982, Robert Runcie, Archbishop of Canterbury, when asked by a newspaper reporter about the meaning of the cross, replied, “As to that, I am an agnostic” (Sunday Times Weekly Review, April 11, 1982).

That same year 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” (Schuller, Self-Esteem, p. 68).

In 1984, David Jenkins, who was consecrated Bishop of Durham in the Church of England in July, described the doctrine of the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ as a “conjuring trick with bones” (on BBC’s religious affairs radio program “Poles Apart”). Speaking before the Church of England’s General Synod on July 6, 1986, 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).

In 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).

In 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. There were readings from Hindu, Buddhist, and Muslim scriptures.

In 1989, an extensive survey of pastors and laity by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) found that only 5% of pastors believed the Bible should be taken literally (National & International Religion Report, Mar. 13, 1989).

In her speech before the World Council of Churches’ Seventh Assembly in Canberra, Australia, in 1990, South Korean Presbyterian 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.”

In 1991, 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” (Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism).

In 1993, at a Re-imagining Conference in Minneapolis, 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.”

In July 1994, the London Sunday Times, reporting on a conference for Christian atheists, said that at least 100 Church of England priests do not believe in a supernatural God.

WAR ON GOD’S WORD BY UNITARIANISM

Unitarianism denied doctrine of the Trinity and the Deity of Christ and the infallible inspiration of Scripture. As the nineteenth century progressed Unitarianism became increasingly skeptical and more closely aligned with theological modernism, philosophy, and religious syncretism.

By 1831, only six years after its founding, the British & Foreign Bible Society (BFBS) was already infected with Unitarianism. In that year a group of men within the BFBS attempted to have the Society adopt a Trinitarian policy “to ensure that Unitarians denying the Deity of the Lord Jesus Christ could not be admitted to membership or hold office in the Society” (TBS Quarterly Record, No. 475, April-June 1981, p. 3). After a “prolonged and heated debate in Exeter Hall in the Strand, London, at the Annual Meeting, the motion was rejected by a large majority.”

In England, the famous poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge helped popularize Unitarian unbelief. He rejected the divine inspiration of Scripture, saying that David’s psalms were inspired in the same sense as his own poems. He spoke of the virgin birth as “an excrescence of faith” which should be discarded. He rejected the biblical doctrine of eternal suffering.

Large numbers of the English Presbyterian and General Baptist churches were infected with Unitarian heresy.

In 1805, Unitarians took control of Harvard College in America with the appointment of Henry Ware to the Chair of Divinity, and by 1810, “nearly every prominent Congregational pulpit in eastern Massachusetts was held by a preacher of Unitarian doctrine.” In 1819, influential Presbyterian pastor William Ellery Channing publicly espoused Unitarianism in a sermon titled “Unitarian Christianity,” urging his listeners to keep their minds free from external authorities and to inquire more of “the oracle within.”

As in England, the American Unitarians became increasingly skeptical and anti-supernatural as the 19th century progressed. They preferred terms such as transcendentalism and anti-supernaturalism. In about 1819 William Channing “became the spokesman and the new leader of the Unitarians. In his sermons and writings he enunciated three principles of the greatest importance: God is all-loving and all pervading; the presence of this God in all men makes them divine, and the true worship of God is good will to all men” (Unitarianism and Transcendentalism, http://lonestar.texas.net/~mseifert/unitarian.html).

Some of them, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82), formed a religious philosophy that attempted to synthesize pagan religions such as Hinduism, Confucianism, and Zoroastrianism, with Christianity. He held to such heresies and pagan doctrines as the fatherhood of God, the divinity of man, the unity of religions, and man is one with God and has no need of an atonement. Emerson frequently quoted from Hindu writings such as the Upanishads and the Bhagavata Purana. In his message to the Phi Beta Kappa society at Harvard in 1837, entitled “The American Scholar,” Emerson exhorted scholars to free themselves of tradition (such as the Bible) and to maintain a “self-trust.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), author of On Walden Pond (Walden, or Life in the Woods), who said in his Journal, “I am a mystic, a transcendentalist, and a natural philosopher to boot.” He denied the Fall and the New Birth and the Saviour and sought for “truth” instead through communion with nature, study of eclectic philosophies, and reflection. In Walden, Thoreau said, “No man ever followed his genius till it misled him.” On the other hand, the Bible warns, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jer. 17:9). To follow one’s natural heart is to invite disaster and destruction.

In 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).

In 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.

In 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).

By 2001, some Unitarian congregations in the United States were performing Wiccan rituals and referring to a goddess in their services.

WAR ON GOD’S WORD BY HUMAN PHILOSOPHY

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) developed his “critical philosophy,” which taught that human reason is preeminent and which attempted to reconcile Scripture with “the holiest teaching of reason.” Kant denied the supernatural and taught that the Bible is largely mythical.

Georg W.F. Hegel (1770-1831) turned his back on orthodox Christianity and held to a type of pantheism. He denied that there is such a thing as absolute truth. He rejected the Bible’s view of man and his history and proposed that man is on an evolutionary journey toward perfection.

Ethan Allen (1738-1789) published Reason the Only Oracle of Man, which rejected the authority of the Bible.

Thomas Paine (1737-1809) bitterly assaulted the Bible and Christianity with his book The Age of Reason.

Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) popularized existentialism in contrast to biblical absolutes.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) claimed that God is dead, that he had been killed with “science,” referring to the theory of evolution. Nietzsche urged people to live life apart from any concern about God.

Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899) attacked the Bible and mocked its miracles in lecture tours and in his 1879 book Some Mistakes of Moses.

By the twentieth century, atheistic philosophy was predominant in higher education.

WAR ON GOD’S WORD BY EVOLUTION

Charles Darwin, in The Origin of the Species in 1859, proposed that man was a product of gradual evolution. In the 1871 sequel, The Descent of Man, Darwin was even more openly agnostic toward the God of the Bible. Thomas Huxley (1825-1893) joined his voice with Darwin in mocking biblical creation with Zoological Evidences as to Man’s Place in Nature (1863) and The Physical Basis of Life (1868). It was Huxley who coined the term “agnostic” to describe the state of not knowing whether there is a God.

In 1925, the Scopes “Monkey” Trial was held in Dayton, Tennessee, and Bible-believing Christians were made a laughing stock by the mainstream news media.

Since then, evolution has became the predominant faith of the scientific world; so much so, that to question it brings the wrath and ridicule of the scientific community down upon one’s head.

WAR ON GOD’S WORD BY COMMUNISM

Karl Marx and Friedrick Engels published the Communist Manifesto in London in January 1848. Socialist organizations began to proliferate across the world. Marx called religion “the opiate of the masses” and considered the concept of God a hindrance to human evolution.

Marx was excited about Darwin’s theory of evolution, calling it “the basis in natural history for our view” (J.D. Bernal, Marx and Science, 1952, p. 17). In 1861, Marx said that Darwin had given the doctrine of God “the death blow” (Gertrude Himmelfarb, Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution, p. 398). Marx wanted to dedicate his 1867 book Das Kapital to Darwin.

A month after the publication of the Communist Manifesto the French revolution broke out in all of its socialistic fury. In 1848, over 50 violent attempts took place to topple established governments (James Webb, The Occult Underground, 1974, p. 7).

By 1917, communist revolutionaries had gained control of the Russian empire and were well on their way to dominating and brutalizing a large portion of the world.

WAR ON GOD’S WORD BY THE CULTS

The Bible’s infallibility and sufficiency has been attacked by the cults. Joseph Smith published The Book of Mormon in1830, claiming that God instructed him to add to the Bible.

Ellen White, co-founder of Seventh-day Adventism, claimed to have received 2,000 visions and dreams between 1844 and 1915, which were supposedly given by divine inspiration. They say, “The divine inspiration [of the Bible and of the writings of White] is the same in both cases. ... The Holy Spirit that inspired Moses, Paul, and John, also inspired Sister White” (The Spirit of Prophecy Treasure Chest, p. 30).

Charles Taze Russell, founder of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, denied the Deity and bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ, the doctrine of eternal Hell, and salvation by grace alone.

Mary Baker Eddy published Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures in 1883, claiming the Bible is full of mistakes and that it cannot be understood properly apart from her “Key.”

WAR ON GOD’S WORD BY PSYCHOLOGY

In 1895, Josef Breuer and Sigmund Freud published Studies on Hysteria. Freud named his system “psychoanalysis” and opened the door for the sexual revolution of the 20th century, teaching that when man acts upon his innate desires it is not sinful but natural. Freud once stated, “The only unnatural sexual behavior is none at all.” Psychology has almost destroyed the biblical concept of personal accountability, resulting in incalculable harm to Western society.

Influential psychologist Carl Jung (1875-1961) delved deeply into Eastern religions, Gnosticism, mythology, astrology, and occultism. Even though he attended séances and acquired a spirit guide named Philemon, he has had a vast influence on Christianity, philosophy, and the arts. Merill Berger says, “The moral relativism that released upon us the sexual revolution is rooted in an outlook of which [Jung] is the most brilliant contemporary expositor.” Jeffrey Satinover adds, “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” (Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth, p. 240.

WAR ON GOD’S WORD BY THE NEW AGE

“Madame” Helena Blavatsky, who has been called “the mother of the New Age,” founded the Theosophical Society in 1875. She claimed that the Bible is a myth and that Lucifer is God. Theosophy brashly said that the Mosaic account of creation was “imposed” upon the West by “ignorant monks and theologians” and that it has been a drag on man’s evolution (William Judge, The Ocean of Theosophy, p. 18). Theosophy proclaimed that the idea that man is “bad, sinful, weak from their birth” is a lie, that actually man is “the most intelligent being in the universe” and an “immortal thinker.” Theosophy says that the idea that there is an Almighty God who judges men on the basis of their actions in this life is “a huge and cruel joke” that has plunged mankind into darkness (pp. 93, 101).

In 1935, Harvey Hardman, one of thousands of New Thought metaphysics teachers promoting the same vain dream, proclaimed:

“Modern man, released by science from his prison of fear; no longer harassed by the spectre of hell; freed from the hypnotic spell of the belief in Satan, is moved by the impulse of a searching curiosity about religions. He is examining the foundations of the ancient faiths in the light of a new conception of the universe” (Making Yourself the Master).

New Age’s vain dream put on a little more steam with the 1950s Beat Generation. Its guru, Alan Watts, observed that Zen Buddhism “appealed to the youth because it did not preach or scold as did Hebrew-Christian beliefs” (David Stuart, Alan Watts, p. 181). Watts’ biographer described the mood of the post-World War II generation:

“A new generation of Americans had weighed the old, found it wanting in a sense never before seen on the American shore, and in rejecting the old ways of the generation above thirty-five, had turned to a freedom that the older people called license. ... And high among the leaders of this new society, foremost among the gurus who would convert the youth to new ideas about religion and philosophy, was a slender, youth-oriented Englishman by the name of Alan Wilson Watts--one of the first ... to be an advocate of free love and free wine and free spirit, and NOW--which he called Zen Buddhism” (Stuart, pp. vii, viii).

The Watts’ way was “women and ideas, and liquor and LSD and pot and irreverent people who were all doing their own thing” (Stuart, p. 205). His Zen was “me, myself, and I,” and as such he was a fitting guru for the ME generation.

That was the 50s Beat Generation, which became the 60s Hippie Generation, which is still with us today.

In about 1965 “Jesus” allegedly told Helen Schucman:

“Do not make the pathetic error of ‘clinging to the old rugged cross.’ ... This is not the gospel that I intended to offer to you.”

She wrote this message down in A Course in Miracles, which has since become a best seller.

In 1992, God allegedly told Neale Walsch:

“I have never set down ‘right’ or ‘wrong,’ a ‘do’ or a ‘don’t.’ To do would be to strip you completely of your greatest gift--the opportunity to do as you please, and experience the results of that” (Conversations with God, book 1, p. 39).

In 1994, Robert Aitken and David Steindl said:

“Unfortunately, over the course of the centuries [the idea developed that] there was this gap between us and God, somebody had to make up for it--all that business. WE CAN DROP THAT” (The Ground We Share, p. 45).

In 1997, Frank Tuoti said:

“... the quotation ‘No one comes to the father except through me’ (John 14:8) is often used to declare that no one except the Christian can attain to God--or for that matter be ‘saved.’ THIS WE KNOW IS NONSENSE” (The Dawn of the Mystical Age, p. 86).

In 2005, the Group of 1000 proclaimed:

“We believe that divinity does not judge, and neither does it condemn or punish. We believe that we have been given the power by God to create our own reality, individually and collectively. ... We are committed to creating a Civil Rights Movement for the Soul, freeing humanity at last from the oppression of its belief in a violent, angry, and vindictive God” (http://www.thegroupof1000.com/Belief.htm).

In January 2008, Oprah Winfrey said:

“The old way is the ... Church authorities tell you how to worship and how to behave outside of church. The new spirituality is that you are your own best authority as you work to know and love yourself, you discover how to live a more spiritual life.”

With each passing decade the New Age’s vain dream grows stronger and gains more adherents.

WAR ON GOD’S WORD BY HUMANISM

In 1933, the Humanist Manifesto was published in The Humanist Magazine. “It referred to humanism as a religion, but denied all supernaturalism and went so far as to affirm that: ‘Religious humanists regard the universe as self-existing and not created’” (“Humanism,” New World Encyclopedia).

The Humanist Manifesto II, which was published in 1973, proclaimed, “No deity will save us; we must save ourselves.” It looked on the public school system as the chief means of proselytizing children into the Humanist faith. It said, “... the battle for humankind’s future must be waged and won in the public school classroom by teachers who correctly perceive their role as the proselytizers of a new faith: a religion of humanity that recognizes and respects the spark of what theologians call divinity in every human being.”

In the latter half of the twentieth century, Humanism permeated the public school systems of western countries.

WAR ON GOD’S WORD BY NEW EVANGELICALISM

New Evangelicalism was born in the late 1940s as a rejection of biblical fundamentalism. Influential evangelical leader Harold Ockenga claimed to have coined the term “neo-evangelical” for a speech he gave in 1948. He said that New Evangelicalism is “different from fundamentalism in its repudiation of separatism.” He said that New Evangelicals determine to engage in theological debate with modernists and to work alongside of them in denominations rather than separate from them. He also said that New Evangelicals intend to reexamine “theological problems such as the antiquity of man, the universality of the flood, God’s method of creation, and others” (foreword to Harold Lindsell’s book The Battle for the Bible). This meant that New Evangelicals were open to the theory of evolution and to modernistic approaches to the Bible.

The New Evangelical philosophy has spread throughout evangelicalism, and the result has been apostasy, because to reject biblical separation is to reject the divine means of protection from the devil’s devices. Consider some of the testimonies to evangelicalism’s theological corruption.

By 1976, 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).

In 1978, Richard Quebedeaux wrote: “... it is a well-known fact that a large number, if not most, of the colleges and seminaries in question now have faculty who no longer believe in total inerrancy, even in situations where their employers still require them to sign the traditional declaration that the Bible is ‘verbally inspired,’ ‘inerrant,’ or ‘infallible in the whole and in the part,’ or to affirm in other clearly defined words the doctrine of inerrancy...” (The Worldly Evangelicals).

By 1982, 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).

In 1974, just before his death, well-known 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.”

In 1985, Herman Hanko, professor at 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).

In 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).

On April 20, 1996, some 80 well-known evangelical theologians and church leaders signed the Cambridge Declaration, warning: “... the word ‘evangelical’ has become so inclusive as to have lost its meaning. … As Biblical authority has been abandoned in practice, as its truths have faded from Christian consciousness, and its doctrines have lost their saliency, the church has been increasingly emptied of its integrity, moral authority and direction.”

WAR ON GOD’S WORD BY THE MODERN VERSIONS

The modern Bible versions that have been published since the 19th century have been at war on God’s Word in many ways.

For one, the theories of modern textual criticism, which created the Greek text underlying the modern versions, adopted naturalistic methods of criticism and denied the divine preservation of Scripture.-----

Another way that the modern Bible versions have been at war on God’s Word is the fact that the textual critics and the translators were overwhelmingly unbelieving in their doctrine. ---

Another way that the modern Bible versions have been at war on God’s Word is through the dynamic equivalency method of translation that takes frightful liberties with the Scripture, replacing God’s words with man’s thoughts. ---

In 1962, Kenneth Taylor published The Living Bible, which though it takes frightful liberties with God’s words became very popular throughout evangelicalism. The early editions 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 when it was promoted by Billy Graham.

In 1981, Robert Bratcher, translator of the very popular Today’s English Version, published by the American Bible Society, 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 was speaking at a national seminar sponsored by the Christian Life Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention in Dallas, Texas.

WAR ON GOD’S WORD BY ROCK & ROLL

The rock & roll era was born in 1954 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 also paved the way for “rock & roll Christianity” at the end of the 20th century.