Why do we have all of these? so-called frustrations or debates
or dialogues about these doctrinal things. Where do they come from?
Well, first let me talk about heresy. Heresy by definition
is something that lays outside or in contrast to something that's
orthodox. Orthodox is something that's
accepted as truth. So in a sense, when we're talking
about the Bible, something is a heresy when it is a variation
of something that the scripture teaches. Now there's a lot of
things to discern and to discuss because I get blamed all the
time. Well that's your interpretation.
And I'm going to say this and it's going to sound extremely
arrogant. I can read English. I'm serious. I can read English
and to prove myself true in that I can read English real good. Well, in that, because we can
read English, all of us, we can understand that which the English
language is teaching us and showing us, especially when it's written
down. Written language is easier to comprehend and understand
than verbal language, but not everyone can read. So throughout
the history of humanity, we have seen a plenary or verbal voicing
of things. But when it comes to our faith,
we have both. We have what scripture teaches,
which is written to us, and then we glean and learn from that,
and then we teach it to others, like I'm doing up here typically
with my mouth, thus you are learning by what you hear. But the only
way for you to justify what I'm saying is true, is for you to
also read along, to look at what the Bible is saying. When we
see what scripture teaches, we have to look at the immediate
context. In other words, we need to see
what John 3, 16 is talking about by reading the actual sentences
around that verse. We cannot ever, it is the epitome,
and I'm gonna say this, of stupidity when we take a sentence, especially
one that begins with for, therefore, however, and whatnot, and begin
to develop a teaching or a doctrine on that that is not complete
in thought. It's just obvious, right? But
we live in a day and age where historically and traditionally,
when I say historically and traditionally, I'm talking about in the last
several hundred years. We have come from a learned group
of people who understand the written word better and equally
to a place where even the learned cannot read. They cannot read. And what I mean by that is not
that they're illiterate, it's just that they don't know how
to open the Bible and look at the immediate context. They do
not know how to do that. But they will do that with a
narrative, with a fiction book, with a newspaper. No one ever
picks up the newspaper and goes to the second page and says where
it said the article is going to go on page 6 and they just
flip over to page 6 and start reading. They read the front
page, they read page 2, they read page 6 in order because
that is how it's been delivered. I get the argument all the time,
well, I know because I've read the Bible 30 times in my lifetime. Well, good, I've read Betty Crocker
5 and I still can't cook. That's not an apologetic of authority. It's not a defense of scholarship. I'm glad people read the Bible.
Most people who read the Bible through, like Genesis to Revelation,
they don't know what it says. Matter of fact, most of them
don't know what it says because they're not reading the Bible,
they're just getting through it. Okay? So when it comes to
heresy, it is always birthed when man lays down the context
and the immediate context of Scripture, then the surrounding
context of Scripture. What Paul is talking about in
Romans chapter 5 is necessary and the only way we'll understand
it is to know what led up to that, which is Romans 1 through
4. So we can never say, well, I'm going to study predestination
and go straight to a specific text. We must take a letter,
and then we must take that letter in its context, and then the
surrounding context, and then we must take that in the holistic
context of the letter itself, which is in turn served in the
context of the New Testament, and that is also served in the
context of the whole of Scripture. Without that simple third-grade
reality, heresy will live. Point one. Point two, heresy
is required. It is required. Paul says in
1st Corinthians 11 19, for there must also be, and the Greek word
there, heresy translated most of the time factions or divisions
among you. Why? In order that those who
are approved may have become evident among you. So when people
come up with their own strange iterations of doctrine and their
own strange iterations of certain types of theology, we know who
is and who is not a true brother or sister by the fact that they
hold to what is true, not to what is new. I just made that
up. It's a poem. They hold to what
is true, not what is new. And I started thinking, well,
I'm just gonna give a list of every heresy that's ever been done.
And when I got through, there were like 70, 80 different ones,
and I tried to get the core, and I'm thinking, this isn't
gonna work. So I wanna give a few, and then I wanna talk about the
new. There are certain heresies that
have played Christendom throughout the ages. Some of them have been
not really important. You know, for example, baptism.
We forgive our Presbyterian friends for not getting it right, but
they will one day. We forgive a lot of people in the context
of polity. We forgive sometimes in the sense
of translation or other things. I have a hard time discerning
how insignificant what we would call non-essential doctrine is
because it leads to, it leads down the rabbit hole of pure
heresy, in my opinion. But heresy has not always meant
the negative thing that it means today. If someone calls me a
heretic, and it's true, I'm in big trouble because in essence
I'm a false teacher. If someone says you believe a
heresy, for the most part in our culture, it means that you
have come to a place where you have forsaken truth and believed
a lie. And there are a lot of heresies.
Let me suggest a couple of those that are pretty huge that still
have an aroma today, sort of like the burnt toast. It still
smells in the kitchen for days. Arianism. Arianism, and I don't
want to give the history of this because I really want to get
to the crux of new heresies. Arianism says that Jesus Christ
was something that God the Father created. the Russellites came
to this conclusion when Kingdom Hall was established and the
Jehovah's Witness which is what we call a cult began to say that
Jesus was the first of created beings and then Jesus then created
all things. So Arianism has always been around
the opposite of that, or not the opposite, but in contrast
to that in some sense, De Cetisism. De Cetisism says that Jesus wasn't
human at all, but He just appeared to be human. And therefore He
was really ethereal or divine as a spirit, but He just appeared
to be human. There's also the heresy of perfectionism
and every derivative thereof that teaches that man can be
perfect, that teaches that man is perfect, that it lends itself
to a lot of other secondary heresies that are birthed out of that
like work salvation, self-righteousness, etc. Kenosis is a heresy. that a lot of people don't understand,
but it means that Jesus gave up some of His divine attributes
when He took on humanity. Philippians, Paul tells us that
Christ took on human nature while He was also still God. So He
didn't give up His divine essence. He didn't give up any of the
attributes of His divinity. There's also another heresy that says
that the human nature of Jesus swallowed up the divine nature.
or that the human nature of Jesus and the divine nature merge into
this one Superman. That's not true, the scripture
doesn't teach those things. There's a heresy that's known
as tritheism, that the Trinity are actually three separate gods
that work in harmony. You've heard that argued, even
by some of the cults who will argue that Christianity and the
scripture itself is wrong because it teaches tritheism. There are
some people who believe that the Father suffered on the cross
not the Son or the Father suffered on the cross with the Son because
some of them would even say that Jesus is the Father and Jesus
is the Son and it lends itself to modalism in some way, but
patrapassionism. That means the passion of the
Father, patri. and that God the Father died
and suffered on the cross, etc. And these things run left and
right, and depending on where you look in history, there's
many iterations of them. There's one that still plagues
us today, especially with some of the Word of Faith cults. They
will say that they believe God is one person in three modes
or modules that is known as modalism, that God the Father became God
the Son, and then the God the Son became God the Spirit, and
they just sort of transform like Bumblebee off of the Transformers
as he needs to change whatever he's doing. There are a lot of
iterations of that type of thing, even some that say that God somehow
gave birth to the Son and the Son somehow gave birth to the
Spirit. They begat each other in all
this weirdness. And the list goes on and on and
on. There's heresies concerning eschatology. Preterism, full
preterism, for example, I consider a heresy. Now sometimes people
use terms, they don't necessarily mean what the terms mean. But
in the same way, We'll just, for the sake of our class tonight,
understand that there are some heresies related to end times.
There are some heresies related to the divinity of Christ. There
are some heresies related to the Trinity. There are some heresies
related to soteriology or the salvation doctrines, the Savior,
how God saves His people, covenants, and the list goes on and on and
on. The bottom line, as Solomon wrote very clearly in Ecclesiastes,
there is nothing new under the sun. But I will say that the
last and final heresy that we need to be aware of in our day
is significantly evil. It's significantly evil because
it has continued for a thousand years and it has continued to
wreck the annals of history relating to Christianity. It has continued
to devour truth, to put aside the scripture, and to lead many
people to a Christless eternity by them actually thinking they
are indeed Christ's people. In 360 A.D. there was a man by
the name of Morgan who was a British monk He later moved to Rome,
and in his Roman occupation as a monk, he was given to asceticism.
And asceticism is a desire to live a really pious life that's
set apart for God in such a way that you deprive your body, sometimes
of food and necessities, of clothes, and sometimes you even take and
punish yourself in certain ways. like cutting your legs or tying
cords of barbed wire around your thigh and tightening it as you
walk and pray, whipping yourself on your back to some degree that
you might feel worthy of having made the journey of life. But
this man later was known as Pelagius. Pelagius had great influence
over doctrinal matters flowing in and out of Rome, and though
at this time Rome was not necessarily the superpower that we knew it
before, Rome still was a center of commerce. People were coming
in and out, so Pelagius and his teaching began to really have
transformative or influential power. There's another man around
the same time in Africa, Hippo to be exact, his name was Augustine.
Augustine had extreme influence. He revived over what we know
as Pauline doctrine, the doctrine of the Apostle Paul and the idea
of sovereign grace that Paul teaches. Augustine was the man
who really put forward this in this present day. Keep in mind
this is the 4th and 5th century So it did not take long before
the truth of Scripture began to be laid down. What's the birth
of that? Heresy. What is that birth? Heresy.
But the teaching of Augustine, Pauline theology, began to cause
rifts. it causes rifts today. The gospel
of free and sovereign grace eliminates a lot of people from, oh I'm
part of that by this response. You're teaching grace and people
are going to be given unto sin. What about, are you an antinomian? See we think it's a popular thing
today but it started in the days of Augustine. It started in the
days of Pelagius. It started in the 4th and 5th
century in this way. And it really didn't start there
because Paul had already established that reality that people were
saying that when he taught Rome here in the scripture. So should we continue in sin
that grace may abound? He said that's just dumb. That's
absurd. What is that? Who thinks that? Unconverted people think that.
That's who thinks that. Self-righteous people think that.
That's who thinks that. And confused Christians think
that sometimes. But this knee-jerk reaction to
the Pauline doctrine of sovereign grace gave that humanistic response
of, oh, grace alone will lead to more sinful living, and we
know an ascetic like Pelagius would have nothing to do with
that type of living. As a matter of fact, he preached
sort of evangelistically there in Rome, and he made it a real
passion of his to go out and teach about righteous living
and piety and holiness. But he began to teach against
then Pauline doctrine. He began to teach against the
gospel. And he began to establish some thoughts of his in order
to put right that which Augustine had made wrong. And he posited
that man was righteous at birth. Ultimately, when a man is tempted
he will be given unto sin, but until then he would be righteous. See the doctrine of sin is different
according to Scripture. Sin is inward nature or inclination
as well as rebellion in personal actions, thoughts, words, desires,
deeds. Sin by the definition of Scripture
and of Paul is missing the mark of God's absolute expectation
of perfection, holiness, and sanctification. missing the mark
of God's absolute standard of righteousness in thought, in
word, in deed, and in affection. Sin removes God from His place
of glory in the life of the believer. Romans 1 tells us very clearly
that they refused to worship God and in doing to ignore Him,
they gave themselves more and more unrighteous works. So therefore
God gave them over to that which they desired. Sin removes God from His place
of honor and in doing so places man and man's desire and man's,
listen to this, will over God. Sound familiar? That's exactly
what Lucifer wanted. That's exactly what he promised
Eve and Adam in the garden. You'll be like God. Because when
a man has volition to establish his own righteousness or to accept
a gift of righteousness, then what happens? Man is God. Sin, because it is what it is,
brings death, and that's the death of the mind, the body,
the soul, the will, etc. The imago dei, the image of God
and man is now gone. The image of God and man is righteousness,
holiness being set apart, not popped by the fall. Man is no
longer that way, but there is one man and his name is Jesus.
He is the Christ, which is by title, the Holy, Anointed One
of God. He is set apart So sin brings
death, sin brings divine justice, sin brings punishment and discipline,
and sin brings eternal death. Sin is original in all humanity
after Adam and Eve. And there are two ways we need
to understand original sin, and then I'll move on to the history
of heresies. First we need to understand sin
inherited. Inherited. Our nature is sinful. My nature is sinful. I have children. They inherit my sinful nature.
They have children. They inherit their sinful nature.
So everyone who is born of man has a sinful nature and it is
inherited. That is why Jesus' virgin birth
was a necessity. Secondly, it is imputed. Imputation, by definition, means
something credited to the account of another. So the guilt of Adam
is imputed to all his progeny. Everyone who is born of woman,
everyone who is born of man, rather, is guilty before God
because the guilt of Adam, not Adam's sin in itself. I'm not
guilty of eating the fruit of the tree. I'm guilty of the guilt
of Adam because it is imputed to me. People say, well, that's
just not fair. Well, if that's not fair, it's
certainly not fair to impute my sin to Christ, and it's really
not fair to impute Christ's righteousness to me. So if we're going to call
the kettle black, keep it that color. So this is the doctrine
that became the point of contention between orthodox teaching and
heresies. And this is where we are today.
The only way to overcome the idea of sovereignty in Pelagius'
mind was to illustrate that man was given the freedom of will,
action, and interest. He posited that the inner man
was unaffected by sin and it was not challenged or changed
by the fall and that all men within themselves have the capacity
toward righteousness and the free libertarian will given by
God to attain it. He further posited that the only
thing that ever made a man sinful was outward influence. So if
we could preach condemnation and the law and justice and then
tell them what to do, then maybe they wouldn't fall into sin in
the first place. So he preached heavily the law as a means to
life. Augustine, hearing of this and
being the prominent teacher that he was, decided, no, we're not
going to attack Pelagius, but we will attack his teaching.
And he began to write and publish a plethora of tracts and books. I mean, some of them by the name
of On Nature and Grace, On the Grace of God, Original Sin, et
cetera. And he published them and began
to disseminate them throughout the whole world, if we can. But
there was another man who was a lawyer who had sort of not
practiced law, but he was a very logical, brilliant man. His name
was Celestius, first name James. And Celestius became an avid
disciple of this new teaching of Pelagius, and he sought to
be a part of the clergy, though he was denied, absolutely. He
was condemned as a heretic. Turn to Romans 5 and look at
verses 14 through 19, because I think we need to have the scripture
in view as I finish this short history. Verses 14 said, Yet
death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning
was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the
one who was to come. But the free gift is not like
the trespass. For if many die through one man's
trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift
of the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many.
And the free gift is not like the result of that one man's
sin, for the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation,
but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification. For if because of one man's trespass,
death reigned throughout that one man, much more will those
who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness
reign in life through the one man Jesus. Therefore, as one
trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness
leads to justification of life for all men. For as by one man's
disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's
obedience the many will be made righteous." Now let's just stop
there. I'm not going to exposit that. I taught that many months
ago. You can go to gracetruth.org and you can look at it anytime
you want. But from this text, we see the reality of man. Not
to count that we've already seen chapter 1, 2, 3, 4. We've seen
that all men are guilty. All men are condemned. All men
are worthy of the wrath of God and no man will escape it. But
Pelagius denied this very text. He denied this text as error.
He denied that Paul was in error in the context of his teaching.
He forbid the consent that this was true and he knew that Paul's
teaching would lead to lucidiousness. immorality and debauchery. And of course this abuse of Scripture
was his motivation, but as it is with any unconverted man they
argue from logic and fear rather than hope and truth. Pelagius
traveled and befriended many people throughout his short life,
but in 418 he was condemned as a heretic and exiled to Egypt.
And in 431, we don't know when he died because after he was
exiled no one ever heard from him again. But in 431 at two
other councils, Carthage and Ephesus and then subsequently
Florence and Trent. So we have Egypt and Carthage
and Ephesus and Florence and Trent, all these councils of
churches getting together to condemn the teaching of Pelagius
as damnable, unforgivable heresy. And they also condemned him and
they condemned his crony, Celestius. He denied original sin He taught
that natural will had all ability to do good. He said that grace
was not effectual and that grace was not necessary for salvation,
but man's choices would affect God's movement. Election, according
to Pelagius, was based on foresight, not for knowledge. Foresight
is knowing something. For knowledge, as we've already
learned in the last few months, is what? Love. So at this mid
or early 5th century councils, they condemned Pelagianism very
shortly after its inception. But a compromise took place.
People began to say, why can't this be a debate among believers
rather than a division amongst the lost and the elect? There's
a man by the name of John Cassian who was the abbot of Massilia
and he proposed at this time in history, why don't we take
Pauline theology and let's take Pelagian's thoughts and let's
try to find a compromise. So in this compromise he began
to not use scripture but to use a way of trying to placate to
the views of humans to come up to some place of unity between
the two views. and here are his thoughts. Original sin is true. Pelagius
was wrong. But it does not change the will
of man. It does not bother the will which
tells the ability of choice in spiritual matters. Cassian would
say human nature is weakened by the fall, but it is not helpless.
It is not destroyed on matters of salvation. He conceded that
grace was indeed required, but it was given to all people without
exception at all times. So the grace of God was effectual
or offered at all times to everyone. Then each man who receives grace
must deal with that as he decides in the freedom of his will against
his sinful nature. He must put his sinful nature
to the test and choose rightly. This is seen in his mind as the
first act of repentance where a man will stop choosing to sin,
stop choosing to not believe, and accept the offer of life
made possible by Jesus. Cassian called this, or others
beyond him, I don't know where the origin of this, the island
of righteousness that rests in the heart of all men. God leaves
in all men, and no matter how close God comes, or how many
steps God must take toward them, or how much work Jesus did to
accomplish, until a man steps forward toward Christ, God will
not, oh indeed, God cannot save him. Grace cannot work without the
consent of the sinner. God is not a, as we'll use in
the 1990s, a cosmic rapist. No, no, no. God must reward and
remain subject to the will of man. God can do nothing apart
from the permission of His creation. Scripture would suggest that
while the will is capable of general choice, it actually teaches
us something completely different of what Cassian and Pelagius
said. Scripture says man is morally
unable to come toward righteousness, not because the man is sick or
the man is weak, because the man is dead. In his sinful state, spiritually
speaking, he is not dying, he is dead. Scripture would suggest
that while the will is capable of making good choices even,
that it cannot come to seek after God. Paul says that very clearly. Semi-Pelagianism then, I wrote
plagiarism down here. Semi-Pelagianism then is the
new, new heresy that was birthed amongst the Cassianites or the
Cassianistic theology. And it says, God chose us because
we chose Him. That is skewed and that is a
terrible definition of election. It's not even found in the third
grade reading of the Bible. Semi-Pelagianism then is the
foundation and the essence of all or a majority of Roman Catholic
doctrine concerning salvation in man. So then let's fast forward
some years to the 16th century where we see pre-Reformation
and then Meformation and then post-Reformation. And 529, before
we get there, in 529 you might think, well what about this Cassian
guy? Whatever happened to him? Well, semi-Pelagianism was condemned
as Pelagianism as heresy by all the churches. In the midst of
the condemnation of the debate, though, it no longer became Pelagius
against Paul, it became Pelagius against Augustine. This is in
the 6th century. And so now Augustine, who's no
longer there to defend himself, and Pelagius, who's no longer
there to defend himself, are being pit against each other
and people lost sight of the whole problem in the first place,
which is Sola Scriptura, the Word of God. is the arbiter of
all these things. So the Council of Orange in 529,
it was condemned. In the midst of the condemnations
though, here comes Augustine back in the picture, not personally
but as teaching. And some stronger points of Pauline
theology like the sovereignty of God in election and salvation,
the sufficiency of the atonement, all these things were pushed
aside to incorporate new doctrinal positions And by the mid-16th
century, the Roman Catholic Church had adopted and applied the precepts
of semi-Pelagianism full throttle. It didn't happen there, but at
this point in history, they had been adopting it and applying
it for years. And this is what led to the ripe
tenor of the Protestant Reformation. I don't have to give you a history
of that, but you know some of the key people who were involved
there, Martin Luther. Martin Luther was a monk. He
had a very good friend by the name of Desiderius Erasmus. Desiderius Erasmus. And Erasmus, if you don't know,
is the first person to beat Spain to the punch of producing a Greek
New Testament in print. The longer marketing name of
that has been condensed in our day to be called the Textus Receptus,
which is the front matter, if not the front matter, but the
root matter of the eight text in which the King James Bible
was actually translated and transliterated. Don't worry about that, that's
another day in history. But Martin Luther and Erasmus
would be close friends, but by the end of their ministries they
would be mortal enemies on the issue of sovereignty and free
will. Erasmus, who authored the Greek
text, argued passionately for man's ability to reform and says
that man can make great strides by free choice in this place
so he can lead to eternal salvation and turn from them. Man chooses
God, he says, it is not the other way around. And there's a lot
to be said there, but let's move right along on to another part
of the world, and that would be Geneva and Holland. And we
have two people there, one by the name of James Arminius, a
Reformed pastor in Holland, and another by the name of John Calvin,
the pastor of Geneva. Both Reformed, however, Arminius
began to deny imputed guilt. Remember, imputation of guilt.
and inheritance of sin, nature. He would hold to the idea that
man was not holy, but he was also not guilty. Where that comes
from I don't know. And Arminius devised an idea
that man, while not guilty, was indeed broken. He had some problems,
he was corrupted, and he took the idea of ineffectual grace
from Pelagius and he used it to substantiate
a new doctrine that he coined prevenient grace. Grace that
goes before. And this is a universal blessing
to all human beings from the cross of Christ. And this prevenient
grace went before and destroyed the judicial consequences of
all who have died in Adam. Therefore, he taught that the
inherited nature of sin was true, but that the guilt of sin was
not true. Thus, through prevenient grace, God established a judicial
change. See, people don't even call it
that today. People think pervenient grace makes a man able. Arminius
said pervenient grace did away with the judicial consequences.
So then man in his free choice could become righteous by faith. This teaching would spread for
some time and it became more and more acceptable until 1618. Arminius and Calvin gone, dead. But yet there are people still
who begin to hold fast to these teachings. In 1618, nine years after Arminius'
death, the Council of Churches needed to deal with the continued
uprising of semi-Pelagian heresy. They convened to discuss the
issue of Arminianism, which had come to be known. The followers
of this semi-Pelagian Arminian heresy were known as the Remonstrant
Brotherhood. Remonstrant is to go against
something. They provided a listing of five
statements of opposition to the Orthodox position of Pauline
theology, which had become known as Augustine theology, which
had become known as Calvinism or Calvin theology. You see how
they continue to push the scripture away. And they came up with these
five oppositions, and I'm going to tell you what they are. And
then in 1618, at the Synod of Dort, the gathering
of the churches in Dort, they wrote 16 articles of condemnation
issued against the remonstrance and the doctrine of Pelagianism
and Semi-Pelagianism and Arminianism, just like every time in history.
Heresy, heresy, heresy, damnable, damnable, damnable. These were
later condensed into five points using the acrostic tulip to establish
a quick track for publication so that we could see at a glance
the biblical doctrine of sovereign grace. Now that is known as the
Tulip of Calvinism. Calvin had nothing to do with
it. It was not a doctrine that was created in that way. It was
a condensed condemnation for the sake of sovereignty against
Arminian, Pelagian, Semi-Pelagian teaching. Classical Arminianism
and the Remonstrance of 1610, that's when they sort of came
out, paved the way toward an utter renunciation of predestination,
a definite doctrine of falling from grace, and relative perfectionism
or what some people would call progressive or entire sanctification.
Sound familiar? These doctrines gave birth to
semi-Pelagianism and full Pelagianism as those who followed these teachings
receded from the dogmatic stance of the Reformers. There's a lot
more to be said, but for the sake of time, let me continue.
Here are the five remonstrants to which the tulip answered. Sixteen points, putting down
the five. Conditional predestination, the proof text there is John
3.16, God has immediately decreed from eternity to save those men
who by grace of the Holy Spirit believe in Jesus and by the same
grace persevere in the obedience of faith to the end and on the
other hand to condemn the unbelievers and the unconverted. So there
is a conditional predestination. The only way you can be predestined,
the only way you can be elected is by accepting God's plan of
election. I'm not going to talk about that
because you know what it is. The second thing they say is
that they believe in universal atonement and they use John 3.16
as the same proof text. Christ, the Savior of the world,
died for all men and for every man, and His grace is extended
to all men. His atoning sacrifice is in and
of itself sufficient for the redemption of the whole wide
world, and is intended for all by God the Father, intended for
all by God the Father. But its inerrant sufficiency
does not necessarily implies actual efficacy. The grace of
God may be resisted, but only those who accept it by faith
are actually saved. He who is lost is lost by his
own guilt. Saving faith, John 15, 5. Man
is fallen in his state, unable to accomplish anything really
and truly good, and therefore unable to attain a saving faith
unless he is regenerated and renewed by God through the Holy
Spirit. See how they're starting to try to placate. That's called compromise.
But see, Arminian theology has never placed faith as the cause
of regeneration. It always comes after rebirth.
monergism. Regeneration precedes faith.
But they subject the will of man sufficiently able to resist
the grace of God. How does that work? Pelagian theology argues that
regeneration is a result of man's free will faith. It comes from
something within him whereby he cooperates with God and meets
God who is on the way to get him. This heretical thinking
ultimately gives birth to a man named Charles Finney and his
theology. But point number four of the
remonstrance, resistible grace. They say grace is the beginning,
the continuation, the end of our spiritual lives so that man
can neither think nor do any good or resist sin without preventing,
cooperating and assisting grace. But as for the manner of cooperation,
this grace is not irresistible, for many can resist God. Five, they say the uncertainty
of perseverance. They give no scriptural reference
or argument for this, they just assert it. Although grace is
sufficient, they say, and abundant to preserve the faithful through
all trials and temptations for life everlasting, it has not
been proved from the scriptures that grace, once given, can never
be lost. And it goes on and on and on.
With a clear picture of these doctrines, it should be clear
that Arminian doctrines are significantly and absolutely Pelagian, and
thus heretical in every way. Mostly the erroneous doctrines
we find in so many circles are clearly heretical at the same
time. Damnable beliefs because they reject the gospel of God
as the effectual means through which He saves His people. Many
arguments will likely be had until the Lord comes back to
this earth, but rest assured that none of them will succeed
in deciding the elect of God. Any man who considers himself
able to rightly orchestrate divine understanding in the mind of
another has misunderstood the higher points of God's sovereignty.
Man proclaims and God saves. Our reasoning and our arguments
is best served by what is clearly taught in Scripture. So this
day-old debate of Arminian and Calvinism, it's not even the
debate. It's the holy, righteous sovereignty of God's ineffable
glory versus man and his heart. And that is the dumbest comparison.
See why I say it is the last and final most wicked heresy?
I've got to close this out with some thoughts. What happens today? What happened
after that dort? Well, a gentleman by the name
of John Wesley came on the scene. John Wesley would advocate for
an Arminian position on these matters coupling original sin
with now prevenient grace. So what you have by the time
Wesley comes around is a big kind bowl of what we would call
today as traditionalism, evangelical traditionalism. But as we know what happened
to Wesley, his theology led to great division even amongst his
own disciples. They would not come to terms
so they began to systematize all of these theologies and by
mid-19th century these diverse free will theologies and methodologies
were flourishing against the teaching of original sin and
praising the sovereign free choices of man. Whitfield, of course,
I could talk about him, but Whitfield was on the scene with Wesley.
He rebuked him often, but that's a whole other issue. Finney,
1792 in New England, a man by the name of Charles Finney was
born. He writes about his conversion to Christ, which happened, according
to him, in 1821. And he declared that God called
him to be an advocate for the truth. And so in 1824, he was
ordained by the Westminster Presbytery. to be an evangelist. And in his
doctrinal, in his ordination, he had to adhere to the doctrinal
standards of the Westminster Confession of Faith, which is
fully Pauline, with miny little caveats, which is basically,
with only several changes, the London Baptist Confession in
1689. And as he began to preach, his
preaching did not line up with what he said he believed. And
when he was confronted on that, as later learned in his writing,
he had never read the document. And so when he read the document,
it enraged him so much that he became convinced that he needed
to reform evangelism. So he continued to preach and
adopted Pelagianism while being an evangelist unto the Presbyter. So they rejected him, he tried
to get into Princeton, be ordained as a pastor, they rejected him
because he was a heretic. But yet in today's evangelical
traditionalist mind, he is the father of modern day evangelism. He posits against scripture that
the command of God insists that if their command is there, there
must be the ability to answer it. So when God says, Be holy,
man has the ability. When God says, Love me with all
your heart, man has the ability to do it. For how stupid is it
for God to command that which cannot be done? He is the father of what we know
as pressure evangelism. He started the very first altar
call. He would have what's called the
mourner's bench or the anxious seat, trying to replicate in
his own writing. Now this is not my opinion, none
of this, I just took all this stuff from historical books. He's the father of all of these
practices that we say are evangelistic methods. Before Charles Finney,
there was never a time where someone was engaged in a way
of decision, making a decision for Jesus. It had never been
heard of. It had never been written about. It had never been preached
about. But yet this was his new version of Pelagianism, which
is semi-Pelagian Arminianism, which is evangelical traditionalism. And Finney wrote books, Revival
and Revivalism, where he says that man can even command the
work of God, that if we draw a circle on the ground, that
God told Him, whoever stands in that circle will be born again.
He was the first to employ singing. in his evangelistic efforts.
Choirs and special music to draw people, oh, I like to hear singing,
let's come in. And he was the first to employ the idea of bringing
sort of an ambiance around the teaching of Scripture. And he
was the first to actually engage with people who were considering
themselves converted, but yet they would come down and weep
and mourn to bring a sense of remorse amongst the people. Everything
that he wrote is there in his writing. It's in the Ethereal
Library that you can go and look at right now for free online.
It's all there, not to count the dozens and dozens of ways
in which he refuted Scripture as authoritative, which he refuted
the divinity of Christ in many ways, which he absolutely rejected
the atonement in so many points. And he is the father of decisionism.
Now let me say this as a way of closing because these types
of historical dogmas have a way of making enemies. There is no man who is my enemy
who is also my brother. My brother is not my enemy. So
people who posit themselves against me, posit themselves against
history, posit themselves, position themselves against Paul. They
position themselves against Christ. And they embrace a heresy. They
embrace a cult. The only difference in Joseph
Smith and Charles Finney is Charles Finney never wrote a book claiming
it was divine. But he made his own religion.
And he propagated his own gospel. And a contemporary of Finney
was a man by the name of D.O. Moody, and a contemporary of
Moody is a man by the name of Billy Grail. And we live in a day now where
most quote evangelicals would actually say, oh yeah, yeah,
yeah, yeah, Mormonism is a cult, Jehovah's Witnesses is a cult,
world religions are cult-like, cult being not orthodox, these
people are not our brothers and sisters in Christ, unless you're
a part of that a communicable mindset, because that's a class
in itself. But why is it that we don't evangelize
people who believe a false gospel, but rather we say they need to
be trained a little bit more? I'm not talking about ignorance
and blindness and no access to truth. I'm talking
about people who are obstinate. People who refuse that, which
scripture clearly teaches. Why is it that we call all of
those things cults, but not those people who are traditionally
minded in our lives? You see how dangerous this is?
See how dangerous what I just said can be? Because there are
some people who are dear friends of mine. There are some people
who may also be my brothers in Christ, who will hear this and
go, are you talking about me? You're talking about my church, I might
be talking about your denomination just like I'm talking about my
denomination. But I can tell you this, if you don't believe
in the sovereign work of God in saving His people, you have
not believed in the gospel of grace. We cannot continue down the path,
beloved, of turning an unloving blind eye to people who are perishing
when the scripture compels us to preach the gospel. Heresy
is no longer just being wrong about something. Heresy is damnable. Let's pray. Father, that which
I've said this evening is not necessarily easy to understand
and hold, but Lord, You are sovereign in it and over it, and I pray
that the historical things that I talked about would be listened
to, and Lord, the dogma, if it's not necessary, would be ignored.
Father, it is out of a divine love for us that you give us
clarity. It is out of our love that we
have for one another that you give us the burden to speak the
truth. So I pray that as we leave this
place tonight, Lord, that we would hold fast to that which
is true. And we would see just how ridiculously simple it is
for heresy, one man in your sovereign plan, could turn whole generations
of nations in all the continents of the world against the gospel
of grace, thinking that they are indeed your people. Father,
the same way you worked with the nation of Israel, you have
also worked with the evangelical world and with the Protestant
world. Call us to your Word, to proclaim it to the nations,
that the elect of every nation and tongue and tribe would be
called to faith, to the praise of your glorious grace, and that
we would not shy away from evangelizing our neighbors, our family, our
own church members, and that those who embrace the truth would
indeed be passionate about it. We love you, Father. In Jesus'
name we pray. Amen.