The 19th Century, Section A
(Next Section B – Charles Darwin etc.)
“Man is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges and the infinity in which he is engulfed” Blaise Pascal (Christian, mathematician)
In the previous column, we examined the origins of the War against Christianity in the United States. It is important to examine these things because of the full fledged and all out warfare we are now engaged in with the powers of the air and demons in politics, federal courts, the media and academia. One of the three Pillars on which Business Men in Christ stand is Discipleship. It is what we attempt to do with these informational columns and this one is of supreme importance. It will require a lot of reading!
To be sure, the Westminster Confession is a tremendous document. The Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689, used by the Prince of Preachers Charles Spurgeon, is quite similar and should also be read. To read this, click on this link: www.spurgeon.org . I prefer the Baptist Confession of Faith for its brevity and concise nature, but the Westminster Confession is relevant to the discussion in this column. Thank you for reading!
The assault on Biblical Christianity began at almost the same time as the birth of the country, as we saw. The sad thing is the same men who brought this great country into being, sowed the seed for what is happening today. These are men from Thomas Paine who imported European atheism into American consciousness to freemasons George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, both Deists.
Academia back in the 17th and 18th Centuries had already turned its back on True Christianity when the once vibrantly Christian-founded Harvard University began its slide into post-modern secularism in the mid 18th century. Harvard went from Christianity and the Bible to Unitarian Universalism (a belief which denies the Deity of Jesus Christ, denies the Trinity and finds God in inanimate objects just like the Pagan Baals of the Old Testament!).
“But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong...” 1 Corinthians 1:27
This slide continued not just in Academia but in all aspects of public life as America went into the 19th Century. Historians have called the 19th Century one of the longest ever. Worldwide conditions were horrid with wars and rumors of wars! In the United States, the new country and its powerful were in wonderful bliss. New presidents included men like John Adams and John Quincy Adams.
People like to quote these two presidents as fine examples of Christian leaders. President Adams the elder (2nd President of the USA) was once a Congregationalist but became a Unitarian when Harvard and the rest of Boston became too “intellectual” for the Bible. Here is what he wrote about the Bible in 1816 “As I understand the Christian religion, it was, and is, a revelation. But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends, have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed? (John Adams, Letter to FA Van der Kamp, December 27, 1816)….I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved -- the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!
(John Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson, from George Seldes, The Great Quotations, also from James A Haught, ed., 2000 Years of Disbelief) 1
The emphasis on the word “CROSS” is mine. The Cross is where our Savior bled and died. It is where He gave it all so you and I can have eternal life with the Father after this life is over. This kind of elitist thinking from the northeast did not operate in a vacuum. As more and more of our national heroes who led the country from the early days, turned from the Lord, this type of thinking seeped into the very fabric of American, albeit drip by drip. John Adams was succeeded by Thomas Jefferson, whose beliefs were examined in Part One.
It would be easy to go down the list of influential people who played a part in bringing our Christ into disrepute He suffers today, at the hand of a worsening culture. But this is an overview and it is necessary to touch on several aspects of human life in the 19th Century to get a flavor of the conditions at the time.
War broke out in 1812 between the former colonial power Britain and the United States. In fact the Redcoats tried to reclaim its former colonies and ended up burning down the White House in 1814. During the same war, Frances Scott Keys saw the British bombarding Fort McHenry in Baltimore from the harbor was led to write a song called “The Star Spangled Banner”!
Over in Europe, Napoleon met his Waterloo in 1815 and was exiled to St. Helena. America introduced the first steam locomotive in 1830. The train would play the biggest role in the expansion of the Greatest Country to ever exist, from coast to coast. The full impact of this simple train called the “Tom Thumb” on a test run from Baltimore to Ellicott Mills would be felt way into the 20th Century. Today, if America’s freight does not move by rail, America does not move. Even with all this internet and Information Technology (IT), a computer program still can not move a load of steel from West Pennsylvania to Nebraska!
Over in England, Queen Victoria assumed the Throne of England for the rest of the 19th Century in 1837! Her influence would also be felt on the eastern Seaboard of the United States. In America, Slavery was in full boom, as the new country’s economy was in some of its best times. In the south, the slave-labor intensive plantations supplied most of the country’s agriculture while in the north the Industrial Revolution was spreading.
The introduction of the train and the opening up of the Lake Erie Canal in 1836 showed America the formula both for expansion and how to fuel it. The Louisiana Purchase from France and then the Westward Push gave the new country new possibilities. What exciting times these were! The Brooklyn Bridge was built in 1871. In 1875 baseball introduced the Baseball mitt for the first time to the game! Before that, men caught the ball in their hands just like its predecessor – the British game of Cricket! In fact it was so controversial; some men said they felt ashamed to wear a glove to catch a ball!! It was called the “kid-glove aristocracy”! (I have played many a game of both softball and cricket and you have to hold the bat differently in both games. The British cricket ball hurts big time, sometimes if you catch it with your bare hands! I have not seen a game in about 3 decades, but from internet photos, it would appear they now wear baseball-type helmets.)
The first president was impeached in 1868 (Andrew Johnson) and unfortunately two of our great presidents were assassinated during the century – Abraham Lincoln and James A. Garfield.
College football actually began in Princeton of all places. Princeton is now a hotbed of unbridled Ivy League liberalism, anti-Christ philosophy and anti-Americanism. The rules for College football were developed there in 1867 and the first College Football game was in New Jersey in 1869 with Princeton against Rutgers. Professional football came to America in the 20th Century.
The last quick snapshot of America in this unique century of advance and creativity includes one Theodore Roosevelt. In April 1898, America declared war on Spain. On July 1, 1898, the Assistant Secretary of the US Navy launched his colorful place in history with an assault on an obscure Cuban hill called San Juan. The Rough Riders took machismo away from the Spaniards and began the period of American dominance as the greatest superpower on earth!
What of the church? False doctrines were already coming alongside Biblical Christianity. To be sure there were great times for Revival, Evangelism and Missions work in the country. Read this column on our website for some background on the 2nd Great Awakening which began with Jeremiah Lanphier in New York City in 1857. 2
In the early days of Westward Expansion, John Mason Peck stood out as the leading Evangelist/Missionary. Under harsh, horrid and primitive conditions, the great Peck lived in Illinois for a very long time. His funding was cut off from the Baptist head office in Boston at crucial times, but he managed to scrape together a living. He longed for and finally established a Christian newspaper in the state. Peck is responsible for creating the Illinois State Baptist Convention, the Illinois Baptist Education and the Western Baptist Societies. 3
Rock Spring Seminary was created by him and the First Baptist Church of St. Louis in 1818 he started, created a foothold for the spread of the Gospel of Christ into the West. Through fires, illnesses, death and poverty, he persevered for the sake of Christ. Go to this site to read more about John Mason Peck, the great Baptist preacher. They were not called Southern Baptists then, but the SB Convention Historical Archives have tremendous resources on this giant of the faith! 4
But wherever there were giants of the Faith like Peck, men like Charles Finney undercut them elsewhere mostly in the Northeast. Some Bible scholars credit Finney for being a major impetus behind the 2nd Great Awakening in the United States, without knowing the full truth about the man. Actually this great event (the Second Awakening) began with prayer and repentance in New York City with Jeremiah Lanphier! Finney’s popularity and his carefully honed ability to straddle the two competing philosophies of Calvinism (Jesus died only for the elect) and Arminianism (total free will of man) were what propelled him to the forefront of 19th Century evangelism. But never forget it was prayer which started it all.
(The 1st Great Awakening began with Jonathan Edwards in the 1730’s to the 1740’s. Edwards himself left the strict Hyper Calvinist roots of the Puritans and preached strictly from the Bible. The greatest sermon ever preached in America was on July 8, 1747 by Edwards in Enfield, Connecticut. Five hundred people got saved during the intense “Sinners in the Hands of An Angry God”! I recommend finding the audio of this sermon by Max McLean or reading all 12 pages with no paragraphs! It will leave you dumbfounded! Edwards would never last in one of America’s wishy-washy seeker-sensitive churches today!)
What most reformed theologians in the know about Charles Finney and have against him revolve around his questionable credentials. He apparently claimed to know the Westminster Confession and needed that to obtain a license to preach in the Presbyterian Church at the time. The Presbyterians were interestingly very conservative at the time, quite a turn around from their descendant, the PCUSA which now meets with terrorists like Hamas and supports changing the wording in the Bible from Father, Son and Holy Spirit to Compassionate Mother, Beloved Child and Life-giving womb!! 5
Finney appeared before the Board, in New York, to see if he was qualified to preach and by his own later admission did not know the Confession Document! Here is what he said: Unexpectedly to myself they asked me if I received the Confession of faith of the Presbyterian Church. I had not examined it;—that is, the large work, containing the Catechisms and Presbyterian Confession. This had made no part of my study. I replied that I received it for substance of doctrine, so far as I understood it. But I spoke in a way that plainly implied, I think, that I did not pretend to know much about it. However, I answered honestly, as I understood it at the time [Charles Finney, The Memoirs of Charles Finney: The Complete Restored Text (Grand Rapids: Academie, 1989), 53-54]. 6
Phil Johnson of John Macarthur’s Masters Seminary said when Finney actually read the Confession; he disagreed with almost every part of it!
The reason I am spending a little time with Mr. Finney here is while political and social leaders have a certain degree of power to adversely influence society; the only influence they have is set by the parameters allowed by God! There is a different standard for the church. I will examine the ‘outside influence’ next time. Charles Darwin’s ideas would not have damaged the Christian church today as much, if false prophets did not have ‘inside influence’!
Therefore, here is what Finney said when he read the Confession. He said "When I came to read the Confession of faith, and saw the passages that were quoted to sustain these peculiar positions, I was absolutely ashamed of it," he frankly stated. "I could not feel any respect for a document that would undertake to impose on mankind such dogmas as those" [Memoirs, 61].7
So what was Finney’s influence, not just in the 2nd Great Awakening but in modern 21st Century Evangelism – almost 150 years later? He has spawned many little modern-day Finney’s…and they are all very dangerous to the God’s people! Note this: Finney rejected out of hand the basic tenets of modern Christianity and the Reformation! He did not believe in Justification by Faith. He outright denied the Holiness and Righteousness of Christ as the only basis of our being made right before God. 8 He taught instead it was up to the human beings to change their own hearts! This is FALSE DOCTRINE. It is not only a doctrine of Works and works by sinful man, but a doctrine designed outside of the Realm of Heaven and the Word of God!
Finney rejected Original Sin. 9 This is to say he did not believe Adam’s sin resulted in the Condemnation of man (Romans 5: 16-19). In doing so, he absolutely defied Scripture and the Book of Romans, the foundation of our faith beliefs. He constantly sought human wisdom to deny what the Bible said about Original Sin (re: all have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God, Romans 3:23)
Finney called “Substitutionary Atonement” a “theological fiction” (where God used Christ’s death on the Cross as payment of our sins. 10 God imputed upon Christ, our sinners, He imputed Christ’s righteousness to us and was therefore satisfied by His Sacrifice)!! The word “IMPUTE” from Webster’s dictionary means “to credit a person with”. This means every thing we are, saved, sanctified, justified and hopefully holy unto God, was a credit from Him!! We did not WORK FOR IT! It is SOLA GRACIA – ONLY GRACE!
Finney was known for his huge Revivals throughout the mid 19th Century, especially during the 2nd Great Awakening when millions of Americans came to Christ. Folks all through New England and the massive upstate New York area came to hear him in large numbers. He was the most popular evangelist of the time. He told the folks what they wanted to hear. He preached a Christianity of works of man and of people who could just be good if they had a change of heart. He told them what they wanted to hear! Sound familiar?!! There is now a huge church of 40,000 people in Houston where nothing is preached of the Cross, sin and repentance! “If you want the best life now” according to this popular preacher, “just blot out all the negatives and think positive’. We have done a complete 360 from the days of Charles Finney, huh?!
Here are the fruits of Charles Finney’s revivals: the Western half of New York state became known as ‘the burnt-over district” and all over New England a heavy dark cloud of Spiritual death has been hanging over the region from Finney’s revivals to this day. B.B. Warfield, an eyewitness and Princeton Theologian wrote this is his own memoirs “During ten years, hundreds, and perhaps thousands, were annually reported to be converted on all hands; but now it is admitted, that real converts are comparatively few. It is declared, even by [Finney] himself, that "the great body of them are a disgrace to religion" 11
The large majority of the U.S. population lived in the upper eastern portion of this country at the time, so this is a tremendous indictment. The same thing can be said today, even at some of these huge altar calls at Crusades. When follow up is made a year later, over 90% of those who answered an altar call can NOT be found walking with the Lord.
Christian Pop Psychology and its books are now big. Weak paraphrases of the Holy Scriptures like the Message are now the rage with our youth and even some preachers. The Church growth movement has gone totally out of control. Millions of dollars of church construction in almost every major American city or large suburb are driving a new kind of purpose driven movement, all based on self. Sure their philosophy has the Bible in front as a shield or even a co-pilot in the cockpit, but it has returned to the doctrines of self, preached by its great-grandfather Charles Finney. It is not necessary to call each name of each new movement leader here. They are the best selling Authors and preachers of our time.
Some of them are the darlings of the Mainstream media because their nice-sounding, ‘tickle your ears’ TV messages, is what the world likes. You see, there is no conviction of sin, or repentance in these seeker-sensitive churches. This means they are sensitive to the lost they seek to pack their churches with them. In order to make these new ‘favored ones’ or more accurately, “target demographic”, feel right at home, churches like the huge Willow creek church in Illinois, have removed all vestiges of the Cross from anywhere near their sanctuaries….the stories can go on and on!!
As mentioned, the main reason to trace the line from Charles Finney to now is to show how the evangelical movement was weakened from those great days of the 2nd Great Awakening in the United States. Finney was not the only false prophet of the 19th Century. He was just the most famous one. It was a time of major competition between the denominations as well. But the movement was so weakened by False Teaching from inside that when the Secularists with the power (for instance the Darwinists) came along later; it was easy to deal several lethal blows to American Biblical Christianity.
Next, we will examine more of these factors and the influence of Charles Darwin. In the meantime, if there is anyone reading this who does not have a personal, daily and vital relationship with Jesus Christ, please read the Westminster Confession. If the Holy Spirit convicts you and draws you to Himself, call a Christian friend, visit a Bible-preaching church or email us below. DON’T WAIT, DON’T LINGER! THE HOUR OF REDEMPTION IS NEAR!!
SHALOM!
Endnotes:
1. www.wikipedia.com (Information about Charles Finney and the Great American Awakenings)
2. Ibid
4. Ibid
5. www.spurgeon.org (for Westminster Confession and article quoted by Dr. Phil Johnson of Masters Seminary, in part)
6. Ibid
7. Ibid
8. Ibid
9. Ibid
10. Ibid
Scripture quotations taken from the New American Standard Bible®,
Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973,
1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation