I’m not saying that I agree with or even understand everything in these two audio messages that I posted. On balance the messages are a fair and accurate description, diagnoses and remedy regarding the current downfallen and misguided condition of modern American Christianity especially pertaining to the (humanist, pragmatic and misguided) modern Cult of Calvinism movement.
- Summary: in the posted audios some of the material presented is that the Christian Church especially in recent modern times since about 1850 AD has been under tremendous attack from critics and that the relentless secular barrages have actually changed the modern Church and made it more like the world i.e. more focused on man’s desires than God’s desires.
Christianity has been morphing from the traditional Christian participation of biblical; baptism, communion, prayer, fellowship, devotional, outreach, witnessing, service, good works, etc. to simply a formalized ideological method for example where a person would agree with all or many of the traditional Christian beliefs and practices but they themselves do not directly participate in the vast majority of the Christian practices, now often substituted with a mandatory unbiblical tithing practice. The personal practice of genuine Christianity had moved from actually doing to actually only thinking about doing or agreeing to do it but not directly participating.
Modern Calvinism has been particularly devastating to the modern Christian Church in that modern Calvinism not only restricts individual participation in traditional Christianity it has so rationalized the practice of Christianity i.e. the 5 Points of Calvinism that it has redefined what is actual Christianity and in doing so has recreated a plethora of terms, definitions and customs that at best only vaguely represent true traditional Christianity.
Modern Calvinism has detrimentally accelerated the regression and lack of individual participation in the Christian Church by redefining Fundamental Christianity to the point that the onetime Fundamental Christianity that did agree with and practice Biblical concepts no longer exists. Today modern Calvinism is presenting concepts that are both extra biblical [i.e. Calvin’s Institutes] an unattainable [i.e. individual justification through individual obedience to elders and leaders]. In other words Christianity that at one time was well summarized and practiced in the Church Creeds and in the Church Professions of Faith and in the Church Doctrines has been redefined by the Calvinist movement into something that is only in appearance doctrinal but in reality is not really a true Christianity.
Download: Revival Hymn Video
Download: Revival Hymn Mp3
Download: Ten Shekels and a Shirt by Paris Reidhead Mp3
Ten Shekels and a Shirt by Paris Reidhead Text
Ten Shekels and a Shirt by Paris Reidhead
So it wasn’t long until we had this, that the fundamentalists knew each other because they said “We believe these things!” They were men for the most part that had met God. But you see it wasn’t long until having said “These are the things that establish us as fundamentalists!”, the second generation said “This is how we become a fundamentalist! Believe in the inspiration of the Bible! Believe in the deity of Christ! Believe in His death, burial, and resurrection! And thereby become a fundamentalist.” And so it wasn’t long until it got to our generation, where the whole plan of salvation was to give intellectual assent to a few statements of doctrine. And a person was considered a Christian because he could say “Ah hah” at four or five places that he was asked. If he knew where to say “Ah hah”, someone would pat him on the back, shake his hand, smile broadly, and say “Brother, you’re saved!” So it had gotten down to the place where salvation was nothing more than an assent to a scheme or a formula, and the end of this was that salvation was the happiness of man because humanism had penetrated. If you were to analyze fundamentalism in contrast to liberalism of a hundred years ago as it developed, for I am not pinpointing it in time, it would be like this:
The liberal says the end of religion is to make man happy while he’s alive, and the fundamentalist says the end of religion is to make man happy when he dies.
But again! The end of all of the religion it was proclaimed was the happiness of man. And whereas the liberal says, “By social change and political order we’re going to do away with slums, we’re going to do away with alcoholism and dope addiction and poverty. And we’re going to make HEAVEN ON EARTH! AND MAKE YOU HAPPY WHILE YOU’RE ALIVE! We don’t know anything about after that, but we want to be happy while you’re alive!” They went ahead to try and do it only to be brought to a terrifying shock at the first World War and utterly staggered by the second World War, because they seemed to be getting nowhere fast.
And then the fundamentalists, along the line, are now tuning in on this same wavelength of humanism. Until we find it something like this:
“Accept Jesus so you can go to heaven! You don’t want to go to that old, filthy, nasty, burning hell when there is a beautiful heaven up there! Now come to Jesus so you can go to heaven!”
And the appeal could be as much to selfishness as a couple of men sitting in a coffee shop deciding they are going to rob a bank to get something for nothing! There’s a way that you can give an invitation to sinners, that just sounds for all the world like a plot to take up a filling station proprietor’s Saturday night earnings without working for them.
Humanism is, I believe, the most deadly and disastrous of all the philosophical stenches that’s crept up through the grating over the pit of Hell. It has penetrated so much of our religion. AND IT IS UTTER AND TOTAL CONTRAST WITH CHRISTIANITY! Unfortunately it’s seldom seen. And here we find Micah, wants to have a little chapel, and he wants to have a priest, and he wants to have prayer, and he wants to have devotion, because “I KNOW THE LORD WILL DO ME GOOD!” AND THIS IS SELFISHNESS!!! AND THIS IS SIN!!! And the Levite comes along and falls right in with it! Because he wants a place! He wants ten shekels and a shirt and his food! And so in order that he can have what he wants, and Micah can have what he wants, THEY SELL OUT GOD! For ten shekels and a shirt. AND THIS IS THE BETRAYAL OF THE AGES!!! And it is the betrayal in which we live. And I don’t see HOW GOD CAN REVIVE IT! Until we come back to Christianity, as in DIRECT AND TOTAL CONTRAST WITH THE STENCHFUL HUMANISM that’s perpetrated in our generation in the name of Christ.
I’m afraid that it’s become so subtle that it goes everywhere. What is it? In essence it’s this! That this philosophical postulate that the end of all being is the happiness of man, has been sort of covered over with evangelical terms and Biblical doctrine until God reigns in heaven for the happiness of man, Jesus Christ was incarnate for the happiness of man, all the angels exist for the happiness of man…, Everything is for the happiness of man! AND I SUBMIT TO YOU THAT THIS IS UNCHRISTIAN!!! Isn’t man happy? Didn’t God intend to make man happy? Yes. But as a by-product and not a prime-product!
God bless everyone,
David Anson Brown
