“You aren’t going to find that kind of music in a reformed church.”  John MacArthur said that about the music of the Charismatic movement in the Strange Fire Conference (HERE is the a semi-transcript—there is stuff missing).  He said it is in fact the music is what drives these events and brings the attraction.  He says, “the attraction is sensual experience that disconnects you from the realities of life.”  He says it would end if you shut down the music and turn on the lights, and they must be “white lights,” he says.  John MacArthur is saying this.  Even more is said.  Todd Friel said that his children listened to “Jesus Culture.”  He asks, “Should I be concerned?”  MacArthur says, Yes, and it is demonic and pagan.

In fact, you do have this in reformed churches all over.  Where is MacArthur coming from?  What about the reformed Charismatics?  What about the sovereign grace churches?  What about C. J. Mahaney?  But that’s not all.  It’s all over the place in reformed churches.  You find worse in John Piper’s reformed church.  It’s just not true!

Pennington said that the music is the avenue to bring them into their teaching.  He said, “Mormons do the same thing.”

At the afternoon q and a, which I’m watching right now, they say that the music is where the problem is.  He says that evangelical churches are using unacceptable to suck people in, as if the music will result in people being saved.  It’s so close, MacArthur says, to what evangelicals use.  It’s hypnotic.  They are pulled in.  The music, the style, is what pulls them in.  They are saying this.

These men act like that this is somewhere else.  This is at MacArthur’s own church.  People who leave Grace Community and Masters bring it with them.  It’s all over.  The staff there, their defenders, are very touchy about that.  They use what they are attacking.  And a reason why people are at Grace is because this is acceptable.  Like Friel said, his own daughters have it on their play list.

Let’s go further with this.  The men they fellowship with, the men they promote, also listen to this kind of, even worse, pagan music.  You see the rock music their people enjoy.  James 3 speaks about this with the tongue.  Out of the same fountain can’t come bitter and sweet water.  If your fountain has this kind of pagan, godless, immoral, sensual music, then how can you say it is wrong or that it can’t be used for worship.  And in fact most of them do use that for worship.

The contradiction should be obvious.  I understand that some will say that it isn’t.  If it is wrong, then it is wrong.  I agree with these men.  A major problem is when the “good guys” sit with the “bad guys,” something Justin Peters said.  MacArthur and Grace and Masters College validates it by either having it or accepting, and it is accepted all over among these men.  They have bridged that gap and will not take a stand against it, so even though they are saying really great things against it, in their practice, they are not taking the stand against it.  They will push Douglas Wilson, who while working on one of his blogposts, wrote this:

While working on this post, to take a snippet of my playlist at random, I have listened to “Feelin’ Alright” by Joe Cocker, “Rivers of Babylon” by the Melodians, “96 Tears” by ? and the Mysterians, “Lonestar” by Norah Jones, “Almost Hear You Sigh” by the Stones, “Watching the River Flow” by Dylan, “Motherless Child” by Clapton, and you get the picture. 

If you play the music for any episode of Mortification of Spin with Carl Trueman, a favorite of these men, ironically a play on John Owen’s Mortification of Sin sermon, you get just the opposite of mortification.  Some would say this doesn’t matter.  It does!  You don’t mortify sin with this kind of music.  You make provision for it.  Owen would turn over in his grave.

These men also allow the eschatology, the dominion theology, by allowing and fellowshiping with postmillennialism and amillennialism.  The postmillennialism is common.  But they continue to fellowship with these men who make this kind of millennialism popular, that turns the goal of the church into a social goal.  And yet they don’t separate from Dever, Sproul, Keller, and Wilson, who push their amillennialism and postmillennialism.  You are going to get more of the same.

They talk about kind of mindless, new age style of music, and rock music.  They use it.  It helps keep them popular.  MacArthur said that the Jesus Movement was a true revival, and that bridged the gap for that music and that worship.  This is what fools people.  MacArthur said and it is written (you can find it):

I can trace certain trends and a visible process over the past twenty-two years. When I first came to this church as pastor, I started to preach this way and people flooded the place. It was an interesting time. It was just after the publication of The Living Bible — for what it is worth — and that certainly gave people a fresh insight into Scripture. Then came the New American Standard Version, the “Jesus Movement,” Calvary Chapel, and the intensive interest in personal Bible study. People came to church carrying Bibles with covers featuring a dove and a cross, and all that. Christian bookstores and publishers began to flourish. Maranatha Music hit — and Christian music exploded.  I really think that one hundred years from now the 1970s and the early 1980s will look like a revival — and that period really was.

For the similarities on the music, you can see it in these pictures from the Resolved Conference, which is put on by MacArthur and Grace.  Look what they do to And Can It Be.  This is exactly what MacArthur himself was speaking against.  Lights off.  Rock music.  it’s blasphemous. But now they are bringing it into the Shepherd’s Conference too (look at between 52 seconds and about 1:10 especially).  Look at Todd Friel himself and his intro (this is typical).  They use the same thing.  I see this as a bigger problem even than a John Piper, who is in the fuzzy middle between the Charismatics and the non-Charismatics, that Phil Johson talked about in his afternoon.  The gap is being bridged with the music.

I hope they will have this in either video or audio or at least in print in their archives afterwards so you can hear this session, the first q and a on Thursday (THEY DO, HERE IT IS—as I went through it, stuff is missing).  Friel says something like this:  The Charismatics will say that there is nothing in the Bible about falling down, shaking, etc. (he says a few more of these things), and so it is permissible, so what do you say about that?  I thought that was a tell-tale moment, because this is typical of these evangelicals.  The Bible doesn’t say it’s wrong!  Phil Johnson himself would say that when we deal with these extra-scriptural issues that we are going beyond what is written (1 Cor 4:6) and he would treat me dismissively and disrespectfully.  MacArthur’s answer to this Charismatic argument, the same as what evangelicals and Phil Johnson himself would use?  That’s such a cheesy argument.  That’s his answer.  He counts it as nothing.  And, of course, it’s true, but it is their argument.  Here’s a statement from their Pulpit Magazine:

[T]he Bible tells us “not to exceed what is written” (1 Corinthians 4:6). We cannot add to the Scripture without subtracting from its effectiveness in our lives. If we elevate personal preference and man-made tradition to the level of God’s Word (Mark 7:6-15), we risk entangling people in the bondage of legalism and diverting them from the true issues of sanctification (Romans 14:17).

Cheesy?  What do you think?  Same argument.

MacArthur went into a long explanation for why it’s OK to use instrumental music with what point?  The only point it could have been was to try to explain the compromise of his own music.  It’s not that they use instruments.  And he extrapolates from that there is nothing wrong with guitars, and then electrical instruments.  Point being?  He’s justifying what they do with their music.  It’s not what instrument — it’s what they do with those instruments.  And if you are going to use electric guitars, what is a sacred or godly use of that instrument invented for rock music, to put on a particular tone that is in fitting with pagan music.  He says they need to turn on white lights.  Why?  Where does scripture say they need white lights?  He’s making applications all over the place.  MacArthur says the music is sensual.  It’s not the words.  The words aren’t very good, but they’re not wrong per se.  That’s a point Friel was driving at, and Friel could not get a solid answer, because he’s dealing with people who are tip toeing all around the edges because of their own compromise.  You listen to it or watch it yourself.

I could write a lot more, and this is not a very formal presentation, more off the cuff, but it is important, I believe, for folks to think about.  If this is going to change, and they want it to change like the Strange Fire Conference is talking about, then these very people need to repent of the past and make a change, to count it as dung, like Paul was willing to do with his past.  They need to stop defending it.  Do I think they will?  I wish it were so, but I don’t think they will.

You want to hear from conservative intelligentsia about biblical Christianity?  Rod Dreher of The American Conservative in the conclusion to his article, “Why Fundamentalism Often Works,” writes:

Fundamentalists don’t compromise. That is their strength. But it’s also their weakness. I went over a book the other day written by a theologically stout Evangelical (which is not the same thing as a fundamentalist). The book was about approaching culture. I found it hard to take, even though I found myself agreeing with the author on most general points. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was that irritated me so much about the book. What finally became clear to me was that it wasn’t so much the opinions the author held as it was the iron grip with which the author held them. It was as if nuance (emphasis mine), irony, and complexity were the enemies of clear thought and pure faith. . . .  But I tell you, if I had been raised as a fundamentalist or an Evangelical who was taught to see the world through a narrow and severe idea of truth, I wonder if I would be a Christian today.

I’m not saying he actually is a true Christian (he’s Eastern Orthodox), but it does make you wonder if he has read classic conservatives.   Nonetheless, this is a good discussion point for all of us, because Dreher doesn’t even see himself leaving his self open on this one.   He’s read The Conservative Mind by Russell Kirk, but he doesn’t write or talk like he has.  He seems an impostor conservative, having infiltrated a conservative magazine or think tank.  No, this is where we’re at today, that this is conservative writing.  Think about the title of the thing to start with:  Why Fundamentalism Often Works.  Should it be about whether something works or not, at least in the short term, or about whether it is true?  If it’s true, it works.

The world that we live in, created by God, doesn’t “work” like Dreher and is ilk speculate into their religion or worship.  In other words, his religion doesn’t match up with the real world.  When you think about it, analyze it, people are not so much into nuance in the world, because it doesn’t work that way in the real world, the world that God created, the world of God’s worship as well.  Truth by nature is narrow, binary, and it is all around us.  Men start getting nuanced only about their own religion, because it is about them, about themselves.  They are self-centered hypocrites.  Hypocrites because they don’t apply nuance anywhere that it benefits them to be narrow, only where they can get what they want.  They want their religion nuanced, because they want their religion to be about them, and not about God.  The universe isn’t that way.  God isn’t that way.

Let me illustrate with sports.  I don’t have television to watch sports, but I was keeping up with the Stanford-Washington football game on Saturday night online at cbssports, while working on something else.  Both were undefeated and Stanford was 5th in the country, Washington, 15th.  Stanford led the whole game, but Washington could win the game with a final drive.  It came down to a long fourth down play, and the Washington quarterback scrambled around and threw a pass to his receiver.  It was called a catch on the field.  If that had counted as a reception, Washington would have been in business to win the game, but, instead, lost, because it was overturned by a video referee, who said the ball hit the ground first.  I saw the replay and here’s a picture.  It hit the ground.  By the rules of football, narrow ones, he did not make the reception, so Stanford won and Washington lost.  Washington supporters said that the game should not turn on such a technicality, and Stanford, of course, said he didn’t catch the ball, so the game was Stanford’s.  What I’m saying is that one side wanted nuance and the other didn’t.  We didn’t get nuance and we’re fine with that in sports, ya know, because sports are so important…really.

People don’t like nuanced water or nuanced sewage or nuanced bridges or nuanced skyscrapers or nuanced surgeons or nuanced pilots or nuanced safety or nuanced math.  We expect the price advertised, not something nuanced.  Anyone would expect nuance where nuance is expected, and that isn’t nuanced.  Paper or plastic does mean either/or.  You can have it both ways.  But the world generally operates in a non nuanced manner.  I understand, however, that people want nuance where people want it.  That is where it is self-centered and hypocritical.  You can’t support nuance when you want it.  You’ve got to be all nuance all the time.  Everyone knows the world doesn’t work that way.  God, Who gave us His book, the guidebook, that is not nuanced, doesn’t do nuance just because we want it.  We may want it, but it still isn’t happening.  To give people the impression that it will happen, to make it more popular to people who want nuance, when it isn’t happening and it won’t happen, is despicable.

Here is someone (Dreher), who likely claims a conservative mind, but would eject from Christianity if it lacked desired nuance.  It’s a version of taking your toys and going home.  How about this?  What if it is true?  If something is true, having some parts of it be optional or adaptable for our own personal taste, doesn’t help it.  God is One.  He is Indivisble.  Everything about Him is completely consistent.   Truth is the same way, since it comes from Him.  It doesn’t contradict itself or deny itself.

This debate, really our debate, because God isn’t debating it, reminded me of something Phil Johnson said about me a few years ago.

Virtually everything is clear and certain in your mind.  The pomos’ pathological uncertainty is in part a reaction to the unwarranted hubris of the rigid fundamentalist perspective you represent, and vice versa.

Phil’s a Calvinist, and this isn’t very Calvinist.  If someone is converted by the grace of God, isn’t he sure to persevere to the end?  I believe that.  A genuinely saved person won’t ever turn to uncertainty.  Phil’s comment, however, sounds just like Rod Dreher’s.  This is a common tack of evangelicals that I’ve read from Daniel Wallace too.  Wallace tries to protect evangelicals from apostasy by relegating inerrancy to a “peripheral doctrine.”  He writes:

When they place more peripheral doctrines such as inerrancy and verbal inspiration at the core, then when belief in these doctrines start to erode, it creates a domino effect: One falls down, they all fall down. . . . The irony is that those who frontload their critical investigation of the text of the Bible with bibliological presuppositions often speak of a ‘slippery slope’ on which all theological convictions are tied to inerrancy. Their view is that if inerrancy goes, everything else begins to erode. I would say that if inerrancy is elevated to the status of a prime doctrine, that’s when one gets on a slippery slope.

This is a new refrain.  They say certainty is the cause of apostasy.  Nuance is the preventative.  Wallace says that a belief in inerrancy is a slippery slope.  Of course, he means that if you believe in inerrancy, like a Bart Ehrman, for instance, and then you find errors, you’ll be forced to give it all up.  Phil Johnson is making the same point.

What Johnson and Wallace are saying, that mirrors Dreher’s statement, is true in a sense.  Here’s how. Postmoderns either want their own way or they want for their friends the liberty of their own way, and so they’ll reject whatever version of Christianity (there’s only one) that won’t allow for one of those two.  Uncertainty is a gateway to doing what you want.  You can’t tell someone they’re wrong when you’re not sure, so it’s imperative that you’re not sure, ironically.  Of course, it nibbles around the edges of truth like a school of piranhas.  And it’s a cop-out.  There’s nothing in the Bible that blames assurance for apostasy.  Nothing.  It’s a false theory, a man’s opinion, that is “above that which is written” (1 Cor 4:6).

Some might say we’re just talking tomAto or tomAHto (who cares!), but if we were, I don’t think an evangelical like Andy Naselli would have written this.  In the aforementioned linked article, Naselli refers a second time within a short period to a second kind of legalism, as defined by another continuationist, Sam Storm.   I’ve got to hand it to Naselli, and I mean this, that he admits that technically there really is only one definition to legalism.  That’s got to be tough truth for an evangelical.

Naselli’s admission was actually an answer to a friend, who argued that the Bible would not reveal that “second kind” to be legalism.  The friend called it in essence a doubtful disputation or a weaker brother issue.  Naselli pushed back with the idea that usage of legalism determines meaning, so now legalism does have a second meaning.  He qualified the difference by saying that the second kind is “legalistic” activity as opposed to a person who is a legalist, that is, the works salvation people are legalists and the second definition people are legalistic, not quite legalists.  Good to know.

What Naselli is saying is true in one sense, that is, the meaning of words can change with usage.  But someone can’t suddenly be sinning with a change in usage, which is what Storm and Naselli are saying.  Just because people start calling something legalistic doesn’t mean that the Bible is now calling those people legalistic.  According to my observation, I believe that’s what Naselli’s friend was trying to say.  It really is a nasty thing to call someone legalistic, when legalism is condemnatory and represents a false gospel.  On top of that, the second definition of legalism isn’t even legalism.

A word that I would compare to the second kind of legalism is “homophobia.”  You know you’re not homophobic, but how can you argue, because anyone who hates homosexuality is now homophobic? Why?  Because that’s the usage of the word.  It doesn’t matter that God would then be homophobic based upon that definition.  Usage determines definition.  If you call something “good,” that is actually “bad,” is it now “good” because of usage?  That would be like, I don’t know, calling something good evil and evil good.  That’s how a society might get there.

How nice is it to change the meaning of a word by using it against people for so long that now that very ominous word refers to those people?   It never meant that before, but now it does!  Yes!  And it’s you!  Not me!  When you are on the name-calling side, it can come in very handy.  “He’s legalistic.”  “He’s not, but he is, because it’s what I think about it.”  “He’s that legalistic guy, right?!”

The second kind of legalism, I think many reading this know, is used to intimidate anyone with a stronger standard than you have.  That’s how its usage has exploded.  And now we include it as a second definition, because that’s how it’s being used to hammer those to the right.  Anyone to the right gets lambasted as a legalist…oops…legalistic.  Different.

Let’s think for a moment if these targets of the word “legalistic,” the so-called second kind of legalism, even fit their own definition.  Naselli includes two different definitions for this second kind of legalism, one by Don Kistler:

Legalism is behavior motivated by the false notion that sinners can earn favor with God, either before or after salvation, through legal means—obedience, ritual, self-denial, or whatever.

I ask, “How is that not the first kind of legalism?”  I often call Kistler’s explanation, “racking up merit points with God.”  My salvation is already set. I’m already justified.   If I preach against rock music, many evangelicals would call it “legalistic,” but I’m not doing it to earn favor with God through legal means.  I’m not trying to rack up merit points with God.

Then Naselli included a long quote from Phil Johnson.  Both these quotes are from the same book, and Johnson’s long quote is from a chapter on “two kinds of legalism” of which a lengthier portion can be read here [You would do well to look at the comment section of Naselli’s first post on legalism, to get an evangelical (new-evangelical) mindset on the subject].

I’m not going to reproduce Naselli’s quote of  Johnson, but notice the pejoratives of Johnson to refer to fundamentalists, who are to the right of him on certain cultural issues, that every Christian agreed upon 100 years ago and for a millennium before and no one called a legalist for it.  This Naselli and Johnson stuff is brand new in Christianity, so either Christians had totally apostatized in their practice of the truth or the brand new thing is wrong, the second choice the only possibility.  Johnson says there is a legalism despised by the “strict fundamentalist with his thick rule book.”  Johnson defines the second kind of legalism as Pharisaical, as opposed to Judaizing and Galatian, that is achieved by legal means, and he quotes Colossians 2:20-22 to buttress the point — “Do not handle.  Do not taste.  Do not touch.”

Who were these people confronting the Colossians?  They were ascetics, like the monks of the medieval period, who burned the ends of the fingers off to stay away from lust.  Who are these fundamentalists teaching asceticism?  There are likely some out there, but this is not a major issue in any form of evangelical Christianity that I know of.  Fundamentalists generally oppose asceticism.  So if we say, “Don’t watch filth on television,” a command which isn’t in the Bible, is this a thick rule book as a Pharisee adding to scripture?  Of course not.  Is that different?  It’s an application of the Bible.  Part of Christian leadership is helping people with application to scripture.  When people do not apply the Bible, it’s sin.

I’ve read enough of Phil Johnson to find that he says gambling is a sin.  Scripture doesn’t say that.  He says that certain words are sinful to say, words the Bible doesn’t tell us are wrong.  In other words, he makes applications.  I listened to a question and answer session with his pastor in which he said that reading fantasy, like that about werewolves and vampires, opens a door to demon activity in your life.  That’s not in the Bible either.  If some were to use Johnson’s own evaluation, those people would say he is “going beyond what is written” (1 Cor 4:6), a pet proof text for evangelical license, used like a sledgehammer to intimidate, to intimidate like the ascetics did to the Colossians.

What you will not read, and I’ve never read from one evangelical, is that the Pharisees practiced a form of left-wing legalism too and mainly.  They reduced scripture down to a limited amount of application of scripture that they could keep on their own.  Anything they couldn’t keep, because it was too hard, or because they just didn’t want to do it, they said wasn’t important enough.   They ranked the teachings to the greatest and the least, because they were keeping them all on their own.  Legalism isn’t just adding, but also taking away.

The teachings, for instance, that Phil Johnson would mock and misrepresent, as well as Naselli, that are to the right of them, are practices that they call legalistic.  There are ones that are easier for them and those they say are scriptural — they are the greatest to them.  Anything that God teaches, we should obey.  Much of that takes application.

Johnson at the more expansive location, like revivalists I heard long ago, uses an incredible illustration of a conversation he said he had with a fundamentalist pastor about music.  Johnson writes:

I once had a protracted discussion with a fundamentalist pastor who insisted that it is a sin to listen to contemporary music because so much of it is loud and rhythmic.

Wow.  I’ve never heard such an inane argument about music like that in my life!  I don’t even believe that’s what anyone said.   It’s such a joke really, I can’t believe Johnson would even refer to it.  Who makes that argument?  I have to admit, I have heard other evangelicals reduce teaching against rock music as “people against using drums and guitars,” as if anyone thinks that’s the problem.  Johnson really should read MacArthur’s commentary on Ephesians, which I would think he has.  He should act like he has.   MacArthur wrote:

Rock music, with its bombastic atonality and dissonance, is the musical mirror of the hopeless, standardless, purposeless philosophy that rejects both God and reason and floats without orientation in a sea of relativity and unrestrained self-expression.

He says a lot more against it.  So somebody Johnson says he talked with had a horrible argument, but MacArthur says he’s against rock music too, and teaches that it is wrong for Christian music or worship.  People taking the right position can have a bad argument, but that doesn’t make them legalistic or legalists.  Is there a retraction of this statement somewhere?  Or is MacArthur legalistic?

First, to these purveyors of dual definitions of legalism, everyone to the right of them is a legalist.  They have to be.  Second, they are legalists.  They are left wing legalists, who would rather reduce application of scripture to what they can do or want to do.  I don’t know of anything in my thick rule book that is anything different than how Christians historically applied the Bible.  Every Christian did.  Professing Christianity began to change with the world as a means of church growth mainly.  Now they’re addicted to the world and instead of giving it up, they’ve got the kind of arguments Naselli and Johnson use.

Don’t believe them.

What they are offering with a cover of code-word legalism is cheap grace, grace that accepts or excuses unscriptural behavior.  Sure, they will say they’re for costly grace.  They cheapen the grace of God. They cheapen what Jesus did.  Grace isn’t about immodest dress, it’s not about rock music, it’s not about watching movies at the theater, it’s not about bringing half or more of that into the church, turning worship into profanity.  First, they say we can’t know what all the Words of God are, second, we don’t know what they mean, and, last, we don’t know how to apply them.  They leave us without authority to live by.

It’s attributed to professional baseball player Mark Grace, “If you’re not cheatin’, you’re not tryin’.”  Christians can’t support that particular credo.  Christians aren’t supposed to cheat.  It’s not Christian to cheat.  But Christians do.

Without new measures it is impossible that the Church should succeed in gaining the attention of the world to religion. There are so many exciting subjects constantly brought before the public mind . . . that the Church cannot maintain her ground without sufficient novelty in measures, to get the public ear. The measures of politicians, of infidels, and heretics, the scrambling after wealth, the increase of luxury, and the ten thousand exciting and counteracting influences that bear upon the Church and upon the world, will gain men’s attention, and turn them away from the sanctuary and from the altars of the Lord, unless we increase in wisdom and piety, and wisely adopt such new measures as are calculated to get the attention of men to the Gospel of Christ. . . .  It is evident that we must have more arousing preaching, to meet the character and wants of the age. Ministers are generally beginning to find this out. And some of them complain of it . . . The character of the age is changed, but these men retain the same stiff, dry, prosing style of preaching, that answered half a century ago.

The Christian faith is unrivaled among the world religions for its genius in innovation and adaptation.  And no branch of the Christian faith has demonstrated this genius more than the evangelical movement. . . . Fundamentalism . . . prides itself on being world-denying by definition.  Today it has become world-affirming in a worldlier and more compromising way than . . . liberalism.

Groups . . . engaged in youth work . . . thoroughly accommodated themselves to American culture. . . .  [T]hese youth groups did not ignore the pop culture.  Rallies were a Christianized form of entertainment, tailored for the youth.  The music was lively, celebrities gave their testimonies, and the leaders dressed in the latest styles.

Not many evangelicals or fundamentalists or independent Christian denominations would consider themselves Roman Catholic (RC).  Most would probably resent being associated or labeled with Roman Catholicism.  I’m not trying to poke at the bee hive here.  It’s not my point.  I want readers to think about this.

As most of you know. RC dominated much of the world and all of Christendom for centuries.  Some of Christendom remained separate, but most of it folded into RC until the Protestant Reformation.  Protestants retained and still retain a lot of RC.  They know it.  Many, if not most, don’t mind your saying it.  However, they are more RC then they think or claim.  And then even those who don’t see themselves as Protestants have also been affected.

Jesus at different times warned against the leaven of either the Pharisees, the scribes, or Herod.  These were different types of detrimental influences from these sources.  Paul warned the Corinthians and even other churches about the influence of Babylonian paganism and mysticism.  We should always understand the possibility of influences, not assume that our belief and practice has not had a wrong influence.

Roman Catholicism (RC) either remains within or has infiltrated evangelical Christianity (EC), seen in many different ways and not necessarily in the following order.

One, the Allegorizing or Spiritualizing of Scripture

Allegorical interpretation has been the domain of RC, an integral part of being RC.   RC doesn’t take scripture literally, rejecting plain meaning of the text.  I’m not going to explain why RC does this, but it is RC.   There is so much allegorization in EC, taking the RC approach.  How?   In a more technical sense, covenant theology itself is the influence of RC to accept allegorization and spiritualization.  We could just park there.  However, more specifically, churches and men continue to spiritualize “the church.”  They don’t take ekklesia literally.  This is a leftover of RC.

When someone comes to the word “church” in scripture, he should read it as a visible, physical assembly.  You can’t find a spiritualization of it, a universalization of it, anywhere in the Bible.  You definitely have to read in the catholic idea in order to get it out.  It’s not there without reading it into the Bible.  So why or how is it read in?  It’s RC.  RC allegorized scripture.  A universal, invisible church is one of the leftovers not eliminated by the Protestant Reformation.  They kept that in play, and why not?  They didn’t mind a state church.  It was convenient.  The church as a replacement of Israel was fine with them too.

Men also spiritualize a quarter of the Bible in the way of the eschatological or prophetic passages.  That has become acceptable, not a separating issue.  You can be wrong on thirty percent of the Bible and that’s not going to be a deal breaker with many, if not most.

Another type of example of this is preaching a book like Song of Solomon as an allegory about Jesus and the church.  This kind of spiritualizing has seeped even into unaffiliated Baptists, who would totally decry the above examples.  They don’t even know that they too have been influenced by reading covenant theologians or by those reading covenant theologians.

Two, the Emphasis on Buildings

The emphasis on buildings comes out of Roman Catholicism.  It is again related to covenant theology.  Old Testament Israel built a temple.  RC builds temples, cathedrals, and in them priests make sacrifices.  The people come into these temple cathedrals.  People associate the church with a building, because they associate the church with Israel.  This is all, again, RC interpretation.

Evangelicalism, fundamentalism, most of Christianity has taken this and run with it in line with how people feel.   RC has influenced people’s expectations of a building.  Notice how Mormonism has played off of this too with their buildings.  They know that people think the building is the church and that there is something more spiritual to walking within its walls, like you’ve just entered the holy of holies or holy place.

The New Testament advocates financial support for church leaders and for needy saints in the churches.  There is not one teaching about support of a building.  And yet, look at how churches spend their money.  The building is crucial to churches when it is absolutely absent from the NT.

Three, the Acceptance of Infant Sprinkling

Infant sprinkling isn’t in the Bible unless you allegorize scripture.  And allegorization opens the door to almost anything.  But why does it need to be in scripture?  The church is Israel.  Israel is the kingdom of God.  The church is the kingdom.  This is all RC.  You become a part of Israel through circumcision.  Infant sprinkling is the New Testament circumcision.  Catholics and Protestants teach infant sprinkling as a means of grace.

I agree with the estimation that more people have been condemned to hell by the doctrine of infant sprinkling than any other doctrine. And today it doesn’t matter.  Ligon Duncan and Carl Trueman and R. C. Sproul go everywhere with great adulation.  On the other hand, in the colonial period, Baptists were whipped and banished in the Massachusetts Bay Colony because they would not sprinkle their infants.

Four, the Focus on Experiences

RC is a history of extra-scriptural authority, not just traditions.  You’ve got the apparitions of Joan of Arc, weeping statues, bleeding ones, Juan Diego finding miracle flowers and his miracle visions of the virgin of Guadalupe, and many more.  This shows up all over in the Charismatic movement, in revivalistic evangelicalism, now in reformed continuationists, and even in the regular “the Lord spoke to me” or “the Lord told me to do this” with unaffiliateds.

It doesn’t stop there.  The most dangerous form is the advent or escalation of the ecstatic or euphoric manufactured by the “worship music.”  People replace true spirituality with feelings and sentimentalism, at the loss of reverence.  The microphone handling pop singer in church stays.  People need the feeling.  They don’t think they’ve got something authentic or legitimate without it.  They’re fooled.

Have you noticed the newer yodel-like, Celtic voice-hitch (lilting) that is utilized by pop singers, often the country singers?  Is this just something that God likes to hear?   They can’t just sing a note anymore. You hear them hit the note and slide down or hit below the note and slide to it.  It creates a kind of artificial yearning noise, like someone’s voice cracked out of utter earnestness and overwhelming feeling.  There’s also something of the noble savage here, because it’s Jethro, who just walked out of the backwoods, unspoiled by humanity, who talks this way.  It’s fake.  It’s contrived.  It’s also connected to new-age gobbledygook (Enya is a good example of this).  This is just one example of the type of manipulation for emotional effect.  It causes an experience that is taken as spiritual.  Granted, almost everyone who does it is just impersonating somebody from the world, who started it in pop music, but in pop music it’s being used like I’m describing.  The people who copy it must be real like goths with dark clothes and heavy pewter crosses must be real.

The Jews sought after signs.  Men seek after signs.  A wicked generation seeks after signs.  Signs will be sought after.  This isn’t just RC, but it is RC, nonetheless.

Five, the Acceptance of Amillennialism

I’ve already touched on this, but there is a big push toward Amillennialism in evangelical Christianity today.  If it isn’t believed, it’s accepted as a legitimate alternative.  RC developed a theology to fit its view of government and power.  The covenant theology arose to defend it.  No one in the Bible believed this.  This is continued RC influence.

Six, Clerisy

Clerisy works for this, perhaps sacerdotal society, or nicolaitinism.  A certain class arises, respected beyond scripture.  The Bible is the authority, but the clerisy trumps scripture.  Men become enamored with these Christian celebrities, where their word becomes of greater value than a point from God’s Word.  Carson says.  Grudem says.  Piper says.  Mohler says.  Daniel Wallace says.  Hyles says.  Warren says.  Bauder says.  Chappell says.  The Gospel Coalition says.  The FBFI says.  With RC, it’s the Pope says or the Bishop says.

Seven, Social Work

You hear the widow and orphan and poverty passages taken out of context.  They mix Old Testament Israel with the church again.  When Acts 6 and 1 Timothy 5 talk about widows, they mean true widows alone, and true widows in the church.  Postmillennialism, a hopeful or optimistic form of amillennialism, influences toward transforming the culture or society.  This is where evangelicalism starts mirroring Mother Teresa.  The New Testament does not teach this.  This is not the mission of the church.  I’m fine with culture changing.  I’d be glad for postmillennials to succeed.  They won’t.  They could only succeed by preaching the gospel, and that’s not how they’re getting it done.

Another form of postmillennialism that has mixed with RC is the communist form of liberation theology.  They have a different view of how to get it done than the reconstructionists, but both are attempting to change the world through social programs.  They allegorize the Bible to back up their view.  The popularization of liberalism in our culture has lead churches, it seems, to join them, rather than fight them.

Eight, Centralized Authority

You see this in our government, but it is also in evangelical Christianity.  A simple assembly, the government in the New Testament isn’t enough.  You’ve got to have something bigger — the mission boards, the colleges, the universities, where these parachurch organizations have more power and influence than the church.  RC didn’t start this, but it is the major form and influence since Christ.  It started at the Tower of Babel or maybe before that when Cain wouldn’t replenish the earth.

Conclusion

I often hear two positions as to the meaning of Babylon — one is Roman Catholicism — the other is pagan religion.  The two are dovetailed now to the degree that they aren’t even different anymore.  I could argue both and I might not be arguing something different.  I don’t know, and it probably doesn’t matter whether the false prophet will lead a Catholic church or a one-world paganism.  Roman Catholicism could work just nicely.  Evangelical Christianity seems to be helping to pave the way.

Speaking of “the conference,” we have more audio up at the Word of Truth Conference site, from the 2012 conference (here).

Through the centuries since Christ, what is Christian history or the history of the church, men have thought of a new thing to do or a new way to do something that they were already doing.  Someone may be reacting to a problem or adjusting to a lack of numeric success.  People may try new things, they “work,” and then others want to know what they did in order to get those results.  They want to copy some successful method that wasn’t being used before that is now seen as a key to success.  So then we often see something new come into the church, and sometimes there is a debate about whether it is biblical or appropriate.

Nothing separates like death.  Ask Nadab and Abihu, when they offered strange fire to the Lord.  No one could fellowship with them anymore after they took on room temperature.

Should we put strange fire on the back burner on a low simmer, or should we totally extinguish?  I say let it burn as long as it does a lot of other good things.  Just kidding on that last sentence.  You can heat up your soup on a low simmer, so why not allow some usefulness?  Just kidding again.  God is deathly serious about strange fire.  Seriously.  And literally.  Conservative evangelicals have a conference or write a book, but retain a kind of back-slapping jocularity with the strange fire adherents.  Perhaps even call it a true revival if it helps.  I’m thinking of the Jesus’ movement, among other things.  Let your microphone bearing entertainer/worshiper jerk people’s emotions accompanied with a shimmer on the snare drum and cymbal.  You are still in good company with C. J. Mahaney and John Piper — they’re different.

Should strange fire be on a sliding scale?  Strange fire was a change in recipe to the incense burned to the Lord.  Should we allow a certain percentage of strangeness?   1% of it.  10% of it.  God did say that if there were ten righteous people, He would have spared Sodom.  Maybe there is something there about what He’s willing to put up with, and we should make that the new standard?

When we’ve decided that a degree of error is acceptable, we then must determine how much is OK to put up with.   The modern, very new concept of unity, by the way, excuses it.  Error should be tolerated for this “unity.”  It isn’t uniformity or unanimity — it’s unity — which they say is different.  That might not be in the Bible (it isn’t), but I think unity will still work with most.  And then evangelism.  You care for lost people more if you’re willing to put up with differences in doctrine.  You can marginalize big chunks of scripture, if it means more people being “saved.”

Order A Pure Church.

During and then shortly after what has been called the “Great Awakening” of the mid 18th century, Jonathan Edwards first preached sermons, then wrote articles, that turned into a full fledged book, Treatise Concerning Religious Affections (RA).  It’s viewed by Christians, even by people in general, as a classic in American literature.  It is a classic Christian volume.  It is praised by evangelicals and fundamentalists as true, a must read, and an important work.

To start, Edwards addressed the Great Awakening while it occurred and those who opposed any criticism of it.  After it was over, and he observed its results, he evaluated what had happened.  He provided in RA a basis for analysis, listing distinguishing marks of genuine spirituality. His listed characteristics were either right or wrong.  If they were wrong, RA is not a helpful book.  It isn’t a classic.  It isn’t a must read.  It should be avoided at all cost.

To me, a chief irony of the “love” for RA among evangelicals and fundamentalists is the way they go ahead and violate it’s major premise so freely.  In his introduction, Edwards writes:

And so it is likely ever to be in the church, whenever religion revives remarkably, till we have learned well to distinguish between true and false religion, between saving affections and experiences, and those manifold fair shows, and glistering appearances, by which they are counterfeited; the consequences of which, when they are not distinguished, are often inexpressibly dreadful. But this means, the devil gratifies himself, that multitudes should offer to God, under the notion of acceptable service, what is indeed above all things abominable to him. But this means, he deceives great multitudes about the state of their souls; making them think they are something, when they are nothing; and so eternally undoes them: and not only so, but establishes many in a strong confidence of their eminent holiness, who, in God’s sight, are some of the vilest hypocrites.

What Edwards says doesn’t leave room only to be admired.  You can’t really like Edwards’s book and then go ahead and participate in what he so exposes as ‘the devil gratifying himself’ and the ‘deceiving of great multitudes about the state of their souls.’  A vast, vast majority of evangelicals, including the conservative ones, and fundamentalists fall under the direct admonishment of Edwards in his book.  What he criticized in his era was far less damaging and dangerous than what transpired in what is called the Second Great Awakening, which was then even at least that much less so compared to today.

Conservative evangelicals and fundamentalists are rife with false spirituality either camouflaged or counterfeited by what were the “enthusiasms” of Edwards’s day and the “new measures” of Finney’s.  The worship of most evangelical and fundamentalist churches is the product of revivalist manipulation, defended by a perversion of sola Scriptura.  The defenders of today’s contradictions to Edwards’s work, who wrap (and rap) themselves in Edwards, attack the practice of Edwards as rigid and extrabiblical.  Edwards repeats words like “beauty,” “excellency,” “glory,” and “lovely,” elements that form an essential part of his presentation of Christian discernment.  Edwards wanted sola Scriptura, not accensi sensus or passio or emovere.  If it’s going to be Scripture, you keep it to Scripture.

Edwards writes that true religion is “the result of holy affections,” which “are no other than the more vigorous and sensible exercises of the inclination and will of the soul,” distinguished by “vigorous exercise of the inclination and will towards divine objects.”  The will (inclinations) approves or disapproves of the objects (thoughts and ideas) beheld by the mind (heart).  Holy affections come from an inclination of the will, not the emotions or passions.  Revivalism and ultimately Charismaticism has left its mark on today’s conservative evangelical and fundamentalist churches.

Showing the distinguishing signs of holy affections, Edwards lists these first four:

1. Affections that are truly spiritual and gracious do arise from those influences and operations on the heart which are spiritual, supernatural and divine.
2. The primary ground of gracious affections is the transcendently excellent and amiable nature of divine things as they are in themselves; and not any conceived relation they bear to self, or self-interest.
3. Those affections that are truly holy, are primarily founded on the loveliness of the moral excellency of divine things.
4. Gracious affections arise from the mind being enlightened, rightly and spiritually to understand or apprehend divine things.

Much of what counts as true religion or spiritual worship is ginned up by the sensual and syncopated rhythms of the musical instruments.  Conservative evangelicals and fundamentalists fail.  Church activities are “holy” amusements.  Evangelicals and fundamentalists are some of the best experts on movies, the theater, and pop music.  And the latter has moved its way into the churches and with the addition of “Christian words” masquerades as a genuine spiritual experience.  That sweet, sweet spirit is the spirit of the age, not the Spirit of the Lord.

How can the affections be truly spiritual and gracious when they are in fact not spiritual, supernatural and divine?  They aren’t gracious affections because they aren’t transcendent.  They are not founded on the loveliness of the moral excellency of divine things, but on chords and runs and riffs and microphone handling.  It doesn’t begin with the enlightening of the mind, but with the titillating of the passions.

You can’t love RA and then directly violate RA.  You don’t love RA.  You dumb RA down into an association with you that does not exist.

Let’s say you’re all in with RA.  You believe it and practice it.  But you yoke up with those who don’t.  Remember.  Edwards said the false spirituality was Satanic and destructive.  You can’t love RA and not cleanse yourself of its defilements.

Either really believe RA or take a stand against it.  If it’s true, believe it and practice it.  If it’s not, then publically repudiate it.  There really is not middle ground with that book. Edwards never intended there to be.  Those of you who know you’re more sola Scriptura than Edwards because of his extrabiblical rigidity, stand against him.  Mark him the legalist you would if you lived in his day, just like those who enthusiastically did in his day.  Don’t act like you believe RA, when you know you don’t.

Edwards exposed earlier revelations of strange fire.  Today repudiators of strange fire embrace the strange fire Edwards rebuked in RA, while professing to love RA.  Is there some kind of middle ground on strange fire, a sort of modified, acceptable perverted flame?  Can you pick and choose various acceptable iterations of corrupt blazes that work for you, while pointing your extinguisher at others?  That seems strange.

You love your success too much to love RA.  You prioritize passion.  You traffic in emotion like a den of thieves with an exorbitant exchange rate.  You put on a show.  You market vain repetition.  You can’t love RA, because you know how much people want the exact opposite.  Some of you crusade against what is closest to RA, so stop your fibbing that you like it.  You don’t.  Just admit you’re its enemy.  Stand against it.  You do today.  Just confess that you would in Edwards’s day too.