The American Church Series – Will your house be left unto you desolate?
[This is the 125th article I have written over the past 125 weeks. I feel it is time for a short sabbatical. This article will be the last for about eight weeks and serve as an introduction for a...
View ArticleThe American Church – 1 – Love letters to my family
Following the feast of the Passover the night Jesus was betrayed, He spoke to his disciples of a new commandment. A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you,...
View ArticleThe America Church – 2 – Knowing God
To know God is the universal and unending quest of all mankind. No culture or age is exempt, whether ancient or modern. In man alone among all of God’s creation there exists an incompleteness which...
View ArticleThe American Church – 3 – The Early Church 33-325
The struggle for sound doctrine Dorothy Sayers was a masterful mystery novelist during the first half of the twentieth century and was counted as an equal among such famous authors as Agatha Christie,...
View ArticleThe American Church – 4 – The Early Church enters the Middle Ages 325-1054
The fall of the Roman Empire The ascendance of Christianity came too late to redeem the social fabric of Rome and the western half of the empire. The Roman world was culturally and spiritually...
View ArticleThe American Church – 5 – The Church divides – Middle Ages 1054 -1517
The papacy in the second half of the Middle Ages The popes from the fifth century to the Reformation in the sixteenth century were not unlike the judges and kings of ancient Israel. The papacy...
View ArticleThe American Church – 6 – Reformation 1517
Calls for reformation within the church occurred over several centuries and produced a complex series of events that challenged the authority of the church hierarchy. Calls for reformation began with...
View ArticleThe American Church – 7 – Reformation – Europe and the British Isles 1517-1688
The Reformation churches establish themselves in Europe The outworking of the Reformation was unique within each country in continental Europe, Scandinavia, and the British Isles. The extent of reform...
View ArticleThe American Church – 8 – Escape to Beulah Land 1620-1865
Thou shalt no more be termed Forsaken; neither shall thy land any more be termed Desolate: but thou shalt be called Hephzibah, and thy land Beulah…[Isaiah 62:4. KJV] For all of its history, a principal...
View ArticleThe American Church – 9 – Growth and characteristics of the evangelical church
To understand the dominant Protestant paradigm and its characteristics that existed in 1870, we must understand the main currents of Christianity in America that began with the Pilgrims and developed...
View ArticleThe American Church – 10 – The unrecognized enemy
America the exceptional John Quincy Adams expressed the sentiments of many of the Founders when he wrote of the importance of the Bible and Christianity in the nation’s founding. The highest glory of...
View ArticleThe American Church – 11 – Trouble in Beulah Land
Therefore thus saith the LORD; Behold, I will give this city into the hand of the Chaldeans, and into the hand of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon, and he shall take it… For the children of Israel and...
View ArticleThe American Church – 12 – Babylon invades Beulah Land
The remarkable strength and vitality of the American church from its very beginning with the Pilgrims in 1620 until the mid-nineteenth century can be attributed to its success in resisting Satan’s...
View ArticleThe American Church – 13 – Liberals-Modernists abandon their faith 1870-1930
We have written of the Protestant hegemony that dominated America life and its institutions up to 1870. But the so-called “common faith” that supposedly blanketed all denominations and their particular...
View ArticleThe American Church – 14 – Fundamentalists abandon the culture 1870-1930
Between 1870 and 1930, the modernist-liberal Protestant leadership was comfortably entrenched among the elite of American society, but their theological positions which they had readily conformed to...
View ArticleThe American Church – 15 – Neo-evangelicals
In the 1920s the fundamentalists abandoned the culture to the modernists and humanist secularizers, and they also lost control of the large mainline churches in the 1930s. The mainline modernist...
View ArticleThe American Church – 16 – Spiritual humanism and the New Age
The great contest between God and Satan is for the allegiance of men and women. At stake are their eternal relationships with God. Mankind is fallen and lives in a fallen world. In order to restore a...
View ArticleThe American Church – 17 – The mechanical God
Positive confession and prosperity gospel Since the middle of the twentieth century a great many Eastern religions and New Age practices and beliefs have been absorbed into Western society. Almost...
View ArticleThe American Church – 18 – Norman Vincent Peale – His life and legacy
There were three major voices that stoked the fires that led to the reemergence of American evangelicalism in the late 1940s and 1950s. Two were of the preaching-revivalist tradition and principally...
View ArticleThe American Church – 19 – Norman Vincent Peale’s practical Christianity
Satan was a rebel against God’s crown and glory and a fallen creature before God created man. Matthew Henry wrote that Satan “…knew he could not destroy man but by debauching him. The game therefore...
View ArticleThe American Church – 20 – Church Growth Movement
Norman Vincent Peale and the Church Growth movement Norman Vincent Peale’s practical Christianity is often credited with being the forerunner of the of the modern Church Growth movement. The...
View ArticleThe American Church – 21 – Robert Schuller and the Church Growth movement
In his flattering 2005 biography of Rick Warren, George Mair identified the principal founders of the Church Growth movement: C. Donald McGavran, Gilbert Bilezikian, and Robert Schuller. The son of two...
View ArticleThe American Church – 22 – Rick Warren and the Church Growth movement
Rick Warren is a fourth-generation preacher. His great-grandfather came to Christ in Charles Spurgeon’s church in England. Following training in Spurgeon’s college, Spurgeon sent him to America to...
View ArticleThe American Church – 23 – Rick Warren and The Purpose Driven Church
Rick Warren published The Purpose Driven Church in 1995. Preceding the title page were forty-one endorsements written by many well-known luminaries spanning both the evangelical and non-evangelical...
View ArticleThe American Church – 24 – “Doing church” the Purpose Driven way
In The Purpose Driven Church Rick Warren writes that Christians are obligated to remain faithful to the unchanging Word of God but also must minister in an ever-changing world.[1] To accomplish this...
View ArticleThe American Church – 25 – “Doing church” or “being the Church”
Doing church To achieve the goal of balance among the five purposes (fellowship, discipleship, worship, ministry, and evangelism), Rick Warren organized the Purpose Driven church around two concepts....
View ArticleThe American Church – 26 – The foolishness of preaching v. foolish preaching
The foolishness of preaching Writing to the Corinthians, Paul described his calling as an apostle of Jesus Christ. “For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel: not with wisdom of...
View ArticleThe American Church – 27 – Words matter
John the Apostle began his gospel with these words, “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the Word was God.” [John 1:1. KJV] From this single verse we can know that God and His...
View ArticleThe American Church – 28 – What are we to do with “sin”?
The modern American church has mistakenly sought to accomplish its mission through the attainment of cultural relevance by introduction of man’s ideas and methods and abandonment of unchanging biblical...
View ArticleThe American Church – 29 – The work and message of the cross
There is one incomprehensible moment in all eternity and creation’s flow of time at which the Creator’s incarnate Son was executed. Jesus was nailed to a rugged cross by His special creation—man. In...
View ArticleThe American Church – 30 – Worship – It’s NOT all about you
Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas, is the largest congregation in America having over 40,000 who attend the 16,800 seat nondenominational Christian mega church. From their base at Lakewood, Pastor Joel...
View ArticleThe American Church – 31 – Spiritual conditions in the evangelical church –...
“Ouch!” was Bill Hybels’ response to the results of a 2004 survey of the spiritual growth and well-being of the congregants at Willow Creek Community Church near Chicago. Hybels had pastored Willow...
View ArticleThe American Church – 32 – Evangelicalism’s Frail Vessels
As noted in Chapter 1, the church over the course of its history has suffered attack from within (theological compromise) and without (cultural compromise), but the principal thrust of both attacks can...
View ArticleThe American Church – 33 – Modern American evangelicalism – Reaping the...
For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind. The standing grain has no heads, it shall yield no meal; if it were to yield, aliens would devour it. [Hosea 8:7. RSV] Many modern evangelical...
View ArticleThe American Church – 34 – Evangelical Winter
Max Lucado is a wonderful and inspiring writer. Few can match his ability to bring fresh insights, infuse substance, and bring clarity to both the commonplace and complex things of life. One of his...
View ArticleThe American Church – 35 – Evangelicalism and the culture
To this point the book has been largely an examination of the condition of the American evangelical church and the reasons for its decline which has resulted in a diagnosis from which we derive the...
View ArticleThe American Church – 36 – Restoring New Testament Christianity
If the church (the body of Christ) desires to restore New Testament Christianity, it must first understand what the term encompasses and requires. Where better to find that understanding than the New...
View ArticleThe 2018 Election – Another pivotal moment in America’s history and destiny
History is littered with pivotal moments in which the trajectory of a people, a nation, or the world has been decided. Perhaps no single event contains more of those decisive moments than World War II....
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