From God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ, it's Ben's fault. Ben has, for the last two Sundays, or two Wednesday nights, been talking to us about Charles Spurgeon, the great 19th century preacher. And one of the great things that God did in Spurgeon's life was he elevated him to, quite frankly, the heights of popularity. He was the Not theologically, but he was the Joel Osteen of his day. He was the one who preached to 10,000 people on Sunday morning. As Ben said, he had to have a ticket to get in to hear him. And that was without all of the glitz and the glamour and the microphones and the broadcasting. But the unfortunate thing about Charles Spurgeon is that he was faithful to the gospel, and it cost him his life. He was faithful to the gospel of Jesus Christ, and in the last five years of his life, he literally was persecuted by his Christian brethren. He was persecuted for one reason and one reason only, and that was that he maintained firm relationships and an absolute demand that the Bible teaches the gospel of Jesus. And so what took place is that what we refer to as the downgrade controversy. One of the things that is interesting is that Charles Spurgeon didn't start it. He allowed in his publication a guy who really was concerned. His name was Schindler. This is kind of what we're doing. If you're looking at the outline, I don't want you to be afraid. I don't know that we're even going to come close to getting through that but one of the things that I wanted to do was follow up on what Ben had talked about and that is to see what Charles Spurgeon was doing he could have just as easily done today in exactly the same situation with exactly the same result because we are in the middle of what would be referred to as the downgrade. One of the things One of the things that we're seeing is that Spurgeon, and I'll just review historically where it was, and then what were some of the doctrines that caused this slide into liberalism, and then come over across the ocean from England and where this was happening into the United States and see what took place just this past century because we lived the downgrade controversy about three or four different times in different denominations and in different places. And as I mentioned earlier, it's happening here and today. It's even happening worse than it was in Spurgeon's day. This is just going to be some of the things that we're going to be looking at. As we'd mentioned, it's occupied the last five years of Spurgeon's life and it was a great burden for him. was the life of the Baptist community. Now we're going to have to remember historically kind of what that was. The Baptist community, you recall, that when the Reformation happened, Baptists didn't just pop up. In fact, the ones who were Baptists were, quite frankly, the heretics. not heretics from the sense of what we understand today doctrinally, but the Baptists were the ones who went way off into left field as far as dealing with some of the issues of the gospel. They initially said we need to look at baptism, which they correctly did, but then they got way far afield. What Spurgeon then inherited was a wonderful Puritan way of life which had centered in what is called the non-conformist community. That were not just people who wore tattoos and had earrings in their ears and piercings and so on, non-conformist. A non-conformist was in England someone who would not conform to the Church of England. Now, the Church of England was, for all intents and purposes, the Catholic Church of England, with one small difference. Brenda, do you remember what the difference is between the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church? Well, it did... Divorce was kind of the straw. The only difference was that Henry VIII, who wanted a divorce, and the Roman Catholic Church, rightly so, wouldn't give it to him. He said, well, forget you. I'm the king. I'll just take my church. And so the Roman Catholic Church of England became the Church of England, and the only difference is we took one person who happened to live in Italy or France, depending on the year, and replaced him with the King of England, and everything else was exactly the same. The priests were the same, the churches were the same, and everything else was all the same. And so in Henry VIII's day, it was just the Roman Catholic Church with Henry VIII instead of the Pope in charge. Fortunately, we had going on at the time what we refer to as the Protestant Reformation. And when Henry VIII died, that influence That influence came into the Church of England and tried very, very hard to make the Church of England something that was going to be a part of the Protestant Reformation. We had John Knox bringing Presbyterianism down from Scotland. We had Hugh Latimer, who was trying to, again, bring the gospel. So you had a whole lot of things that were going on in the Church of England. At that time, then towards the end of the 1500s and the early part of the 1600s, there were those who wanted to stay in this Church of England. They wanted all of the churches and they liked the infant baptism, they liked all the other things in the Church of England, but they wanted to purify the insides of the Church of England. They didn't just want to replace the Pope at the top, they wanted to purify, and these guys, of course, became known as Puritans. They were the ones who were adopting this Protestant form of government, this Protestant understanding of the scriptures, and it was a great time. This is the mid-1600s. They wrote a great confession of faith that was based on the Presbyterian concept called the Westminster Confession of Faith. Oliver Cromwell was allowing them to come in. And so they were fairly well established. Well, the Church of England went back and forth and back and forth until finally Finally, in the year 1688, William of Orange came in and said, we're not going to do this back and forth warfare stuff, you know, Catholics killing Protestants, we're all going to live in peace. Well, all that meant was that those who were in charge of the Church of England kind of went underground and started to do their work silently. All through the 1700s that was taking place, but there was a very large movement of those who wanted to purify the lifestyle of believers in Jesus Christ. This is one of the things that took place. Well, this is the one that after going back and forth that Spurgeon, now in the middle of the 1800s, 1850s, was the one who inherited a lot of that influence. They're very godly people. They were the non-conformists because they wouldn't conform with all those Church of England guys who just simply wanted to have religion for religion's sake. They just wanted to be able to go to church on Sunday, get the water dumped on them, so they could go ahead and go on with their lives during the week. And so, that was one of the things that would take place. Now, they'd come in the next week. Of course, the concept of the Mass was the same. You came in and you had Jesus Christ sacrifice himself once again for your sins. You're good to go for another week, just like filling up at the gas station. And one of the things that happened is that there were a lot of people who would not conform to that, and that was Spurgeon's background. It gave a godliness of life. There were a lot of people who were very, very interested in living holy lives and adopting that Puritan lifestyle. During his ministry for the mid-1800s through really to the end of his life, however, he started to see that overall, little by little, there was a gradual slide going on. It wasn't real perceptible, but it was what we would refer to as the slippery slope. It was something that after the intellectual renaissance then of the Enlightenment back in the end of the 1700s, the age of reason had come. And all of a sudden now we're starting to look at the age of faith, which is what Calvin and Luther and all of them had proclaimed, until now we're starting to get to the age of reason. And one of the things that we're able to see is that there is a human-centered view of religion that's starting to take place. This is one of those things that we're starting to see is that little by little was creeping into the church, not that God stands in judgment over me and the things that I do, but that I am the one who determines what is right and not. All right, the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Spurgeon's Church, was a member of the local, well, not local, but it was the England-wide Baptist Union. The Baptists were fairly the non-conformist branch, the ones who would not, again, conform to the Church of England, all right, and their fellowship was all of the Baptist churches that were coming together were all in this one Baptist union. Spurgeon was not preaching against the Church of England. There were those in the Church of England that he agreed with or disagreed with. He was not preaching against the old rivals of Methodism, Wesley and Whitfield, excuse me, just popped in and out of my mind, and they were ones that Spurgeon absolutely, now he disagreed with Wesley's Arminianism, absolutely, but this he absolutely agreed with, that godliness of life, which is what Wesley was all about, which is what Whitfield was all about, was absolutely essential. And now he was starting to see that this godliness of life was starting to be eroding away during his ministry. And so one of the things that was taking place that many of the pastors of the churches, the Baptist churches, the only ones who were biblical at the time, were starting to question the biblical doctrines. They started with the 1850s with the publication of Charles Darwin's Origin of the Species. Of course, it had been going on for a long time, and this is, if Ed is not here for me to take a rabbit trail and for me to be appreciated, but one of the things that we can look at is that the whole concept of the doctrine of the creation of God, man being a creation of God, is at the very heart of Christianity. Now, why would that be? Why would creation, I thought that was just something that you want to believe in a creation that's all well and good. Why would creation be an essential doctrine to the gospel? Well, it tells us the magnificence of God, David. It tells us accountability to God. Why does creation mean accountability to God? Because we're his work. We are the work of his hands. As the psalmist, you read through the Psalms and take a look at how many references it is to God who made us. And we are his. As he says in Psalm 100, we are the sheep of his pasture. All right, we are the ones who created. Now, what does that mean? If he created me, then I have what relationship with him? I owe him everything. let's go back to what's taking place. All of a sudden the age of reason it comes and all of a sudden we're saying how on earth can you look at this or how in the world can you look at this earth which is obviously millions and millions of years old. Look at the Grand Canyon, look at all the time that it had to have taken to do all of those things. It is impossible for the earth to have just simply come into being the 6,000 years that man has been around. I mean, we can trace all of this and we have scientific reasons and justifications for that. Why is that a problem for us? For this very same reason. Because if God didn't create us, then we owe him nothing. We have no reason. And so guess what, Ben, we're looking for. Men were looking for a reason not to have to do what God wanted them to do. And so all of a sudden now, all of these things started to be questioned, all right? After the publication of this origin of the species, they accepted a thing called higher criticism when we looked at the Bible. All right, all right, what is higher criticism? Anyone? It's not lower criticism, okay? I got that. All right? Higher criticism. Lower criticism is actually something that we do. All right? If you come to our Sunday school, you listen to Pastor Greg, he's going to simply say, as the Bible was transmitted, you know, you know, some of the scribes made spelling errors, and we've got to make a determination about which spelling is correct. Well, that didn't change the fact that when it was started, it was God's word. Yes, we need to figure out which spelling was correct. Was it the past tense or the present tense or the future tense or whatever it was that we're talking about, all right, the right words, which, by the way, are less than 1% make, you know, any issue at all. But nonetheless, what happens if the Bible has errors in it? Well, all of a sudden now, it's not trustworthy. And how do I know that the very thing that he's telling me to quit doing because I really like doing this and the Bible is saying stop, that's not good. How do I know whether that's really God telling me to do this or just some norm from society? Well, this is one of the things that we're doing. Higher criticism, that's lower criticism, looking at the individual part. Higher criticism says, when I look at Isaiah, I can see that there's one writing style in the beginning of Isaiah. There's a totally different writing style at the end. So therefore, there had to be at least a couple of different Isaiahs. And after all, one of the things that was taking place is that this was so long ago that they were just looking through and trying to find different. How many do you think there were in the book of Genesis? How many different writers in the book of Genesis? Yeah, we said there's, you know, these guys who are very, very smart and they'll say, well, look at this. You know, here he's called, God is called Elohim and over here he's called Jehovah. Which is it? Is his name Elohim or is it Jehovah? Well, it's looking at it from two totally different perspectives. But there are all of a sudden then others, and as Ben has indicated, there are four different ones. All of them have their own biases and some guy, some real smart guy, long, long ago gathered all those together and they made one book out of it. So it's not Moses writing the book of Genesis, it's four different guys. And that's one of the things that higher criticism does. But in every situation it does what the what the bullet there says it is doing, it is undermining the authority of scripture. It's reducing it to just simply another human book. And that's the result of what's taking place. Now, if it's just another human book, then what does that mean for me? Yeah. You know, if I happen to like this author, that's fine. If I don't like that author, I just don't read his books or her books. And it doesn't matter. But that's one of the things that's taking place. And so as Spurgeon is seeing this going on in his day, in his monthly publication called The Sword and the Trowel, Remember where we got that from when Greg was in Nehemiah. He was talking about the building of the wall in which they had to have a guard right next to the guy who was laying the bricks because they had to have those two things together. One to keep the enemies away, one to build a strong foundation of the walls in Nehemiah. And so that was what his magazine was called. Alright, so in March of 1887, there was a gentleman named Robert Schindler who Spurgeon, I don't know whether he asked him to do it or he came to him and he says, I really would like to get something and your magazine is a great vehicle for me to do it. Regardless, Spurgeon was totally in agreement with him, published the first of two articles, March 1887 and then in April of 1887 he did the second version of that in which he referred to this slide is what is called the downgrade. Downgrade is nothing more than where the road is going down, all right, and it's difficult to stop once you get going. You know, if your cart that you're pushing, if you don't have the brake on, real well, all of a sudden that cart gets out of control and it crashes and burns at the bottom. And that was his comparison in what he referred to, Schindler referred to as the downgrade. After he did that, Spurgeon got so much emphasis that for the next five years there was hardly a copy of the Sword and Trowel that did not have some kind of an editorial comment from Spurgeon about this downgrade controversy. He told he had much correspondence that was taking place. All right, finally, he was questioned so much about that, particularly because the Baptist Union was something like, I don't know how much we're familiar with Baptist unions. Baptists are ones who like to say, we're a whole bunch of independent guys. All right, and we all just have our arms around each other, and I don't question what you believe, and you don't question what I believe, but we'll all just put our arms around each other, and that's what we'll call our union. But Spurgeon was starting to see that many, many of the Baptist churches were starting to get pastors who were enamored with this naturalistic understanding that it wasn't really the Bible, it was just a collection of thoughts and a collection of other people's statements that were coming together. In fact, eventually, in fact, not that much longer, January of the next year, Spurgeon said, I just, there are so many and I'm getting so much pushback that I'm going to have to resign from the union, the Baptist Union. Well, that did not sit well because Charles Spurgeon was the big guy. He was the one that everyone knew. The Queen would go and hear Spurgeon preached. He was well known. Again, you had to get a ticket to get in just into the place that he was preaching in order to do that. Well, fairly immediately, fairly immediately, This was a problem. And all of a sudden now, the people felt free to start dumping on Spurgeon. They said, well, if you're going to make these accusations, give us names. Who is this going to be? Spurgeon said, it's irrelevant. It's not important as to what their names are. If they're doing this teaching, you know that they're doing this teaching. You don't need to have me to tell you their names. And Spurgeon wouldn't comply with them. And so they sent representatives to him and so on. And finally, because they didn't have any other creed other than all we need to do to be in the Baptist Union is agree that baptism is by immersion. If that's what you believe, that's all you need to believe. And all of a sudden, they said, well, we can get Spurgeon back in if we develop a creed. But Spurgeon said, you know, you don't understand. The issue of the gospel is what's at stake here. And these are the things. Now, Ben talked about this better than I did. Ultimately, again, this continued to plague him. He was prone to fits of depression, severe depression. He had to go away to the south of France and recuperate before he would get back into the pulpit again. And eventually, on one of his trips down to the Mediterranean Sea in France, he passed away. This is January of 1892. Well, one of the things that I wanted to do was start to look at the whole concept. Now, I've got a big word up here. You don't need to know this. This is not a, you know, can you impress someone because you know of a theological system called Sasinianism, all right? That is in reality what this is called. It's not anything that is new. It's been going on in the history of the church ever since the Apostle Paul was around in one form or another. It really, this particular version, actually had its start with the writings of a guy who was an Aryan. Aryan. Oh boy. Johnny, what's an Aryan? Okay, an Arian would be that. That was actually Arius is the guy who Arianism and he, Arius and Athanasius were the two during Constantine's time who were going to battle saying, Jesus is the son of God. And he says, yes, I agree, Jesus is the son of God. He is the firstborn of all creation. All right, no one was born before him. but he was the first who was born. And so that was one of the things that Athanasius said, wait a minute, we just said two different things. You just said that Jesus, there was a time that Jesus was not, and he had to be begotten. Well, of course I did, isn't that what John 3,16 says? That he is the only begotten son of God? He must have been begotten. Hello, what does our English mean? Well, the problem is that's not what the Greek word means. The Greek word does not mean born necessarily. It means the highest or the utmost. And all of a sudden now that was our first church council in which Arianism was condemned universally by the church and Trinitarian Christianity was actually adopted. It says we don't understand it, how God can be three persons, Father, Son, and Spirit, but yet one God. Three persons, one God. Why do we then insist on that? The answer is why. Either we have three or one, which is it? Well, the answer is yes we do, because absolutely the Bible teaches all three. There are situations in entire verses where all three are identified individually, but yet all one God. When Jesus is praying to the Father, Jesus is actually praying to the Father in that Trinitarian relationship. But Jesus says, I and the Father are what? And so the Aryan concept, of course it was coming up in the pre-Enlightenment. This guy Servetus was actually, found himself in Calvin's Geneva one day having a beer at the local, ale at the local tavern. and enjoying himself, where all of a sudden Calvin's guards come in and arrest him. And they arrest him, and this is something that happened Calvin did not necessarily agree with, but he actually was burned at the stake because he insisted on teaching this heresy, that Jesus was just a man. There's only one God. And that's eventually going to be what this whole system of Sassanianism is going to be called, is called Unitarianism. Have you heard about that group? Unitarianism. Why? Because there is just one God, and it's not Jesus. Jesus is a wonderful man, but Jesus is just a man. And so this concept now, after Servetus' writings get out, are published and actually thought through and taught by Leo and Fausto Sozzini, Italians. And they are able to come in and they start coming in and simply say, well, I understand what the problem is. The problem is that we're just simply letting this inscripturated word Now, you remember all the Bible studies that they had in Calvin's day, right? And after that, everyone was having a Bible study. No, why not? Where were the Bibles, brothers and sisters? Yeah, they were locked up. That was one of the great things about what was taking place in the Reformation. The Bible was available for the first time. Before that, they just simply had to say, OK, Roman Catholic priest, tell me what the Bible says. He says, OK. It says, you see that guy across the river who's selling indulgences? You better go buy one so you don't have to go to purgatory. All right? They're not going home to their Bibles and saying, that doesn't sound right to me. Let me start reading my Bible. because A, people weren't readers during that time. It was an age of great ignorance. Nonetheless, all of this reason, Socini started teaching that the scriptures then had to be interpreted in the light of reason. In other words, instead of the Bible coming in and becoming authority and it says, this does not make sense to me, What does the biblical believer do if you read this verse and these two verses and they don't make sense to you? What is the believer to do? Ask God for understanding. Why? Why should you ask God for understanding? Because He is the author of the book. He is the one who is making these things. And the issue is, because it's contradictory to my reason, That just simply means there's a problem with my reason. The Socinian problem is that they're coming and says, no, no, no, no, no, they're just books. They're just written by men. They're written by all kinds of different Isaiahs and different Pauls and different Peters, but they were just men. And after all, are we really sure that all of these things took place? I mean, are we really sure that Jesus was born of a virgin? I mean, really? Hello? Does that make sense to you? That Jesus Christ was born of a virgin? Says, does it make sense to me? I don't think that really happened. And so all of a sudden we start looking at the Bible from these eyeglasses to say, I don't think these things really are happening. I don't think these things are happening. The Bible is only an errant when it's understood in common sense. Jesus came, Jesus went up to the top of the mountain and here were Elijah and Moses, the prophets. Now, how did Peter and John know what they looked like? Oh, they had all the portraits of Moses and Elijah, all in the archives. Remember, when we were school kids, we went down to the museum and we saw these pictures. I know what they looked like. Did you ever wonder about that? How did they know what someone who 1,000 years ago, actually 2,000 years ago, all right, how do we know what they looked like? How do I know that's who those were? All right. And all of a sudden, well, probably what happened is they got up to the mountaintop. You know, the air was a little thin. And they were starting to, well, who knows? I don't know what kind of campfire they had there. But they surely had a great vision. And that's what they passed on. And that's probably all that that was. And on and on and on we go. And Socini, Socini actually one was his nephew and one was his uncle. And all of a sudden now starts him, and Jesus, was Jesus a wonderful guy? Absolutely, no debate about that. Jesus was fantastic. He was a great teacher, but he was just a guy. How can God come down and be a man? Really, think about it. And this is one of the things that were taking place. All right, Jesus was wonderful. He was compassionate. He inspired people. Do we have men that inspire other people? They can whip them up into a frenzy and they can come in. Sure, we just had a, in our last century, we had a world war about one man who could whip up hundreds and hundreds and thousands of people. Get them to go and do absolutely atrocious things because he was such a great dynamic leader. And that's really all that Jesus was. Now, there are all kinds of other things that are going along. I've got a few of them listed here. The sacrifice of Christ. The sacrifice of Christ was not Now, I want to do this. I'm going to go forward and I've got a quote up here. Let me see if I can find it here. There we go. This is a guy now who is reacting, I fast forward to America and this guy, but this is one of the things that is the direct result of this Sassanian theology. Let me read this and you can read along with me. Am I suggesting, this is a guy named John Shelby Sprung, Am I suggesting that these stories of the virgin birth are not literally true? The answer is simple and direct. Yes, of course these are narratives. They can't be literally true. Stars do not wander. Angels do not sing. Virgins certainly do not give birth. Magi do not travel to distant lands just to give baby gifts. Shepherds do not go in search of a newborn savior. To talk of a Father God who is a divine human son by a virgin woman is mythology. Our generation would never have created that. And obviously it could not use it. To speak of a Father God who is so enraged with human evil, that he requires propitiation for the sins that we can't pay and thus he demands the death of this divine human son as a guilt offering? It's a ludicrous idea to our century. That sacrificial concept that focuses on the saving blood of Jesus somehow washes me clean, so popular in the evangelical and fundamentalistic circles, is by and large repugnant to us today. Now, this is a direct quote from just a hundred years ago in America. And this is the kind of things that are the direct result of the Socinian philosophy. Let me go, let me find my way here. Thirty, oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. All right, and at the same time, let's see, all right, no predestination. That would be absolutely ludicrous. No divine foreknowledge of human activity is even possible. By the way, that's, you could open up your newspaper and read that. That's something that has made its popular circles here in just in the last 10 or 15 or 20 years. It's called open theology. God is very, very smart, but he's not that smart. He does not know what my choice is going to be. Now, he is a very good reactor, and when I make a bad choice, he can immediately, because he's a very powerful person, but there's no way that God can override my free choice. Incredible. Nonetheless, this is something that again is rooted in the whole concept of a rationalistic theology. It all comes down to I am God and what my rational thought processes are. That is the thing that we need to be able to recognize and do. One of the things that Calvin saw, excuse me, that Spurgeon saw, and in fact Schindler actually talks about this in his second, in his follow-up article on the downgrade. He says, I'm a Calvinist, I don't have any problem with that, but Calvinism is just Calvinism. The thing about Calvinism that is great is that Calvinism, you look at all of the systems all over Christianity, Calvin is the one that if you're going to find someone who steadfastly maintains the concept that came out of the Reformation of sola scriptura, through the Scriptures alone, that is likely where you're going to be, is someone who understands that it is the Scriptures alone. Because as you start to get away from God as the Sovereign, God as the One who speaks His Word, God as the One who sends His Spirit to interpret the Word and to put it into our lives, these are the things The further you get away from that, just a little bit, the more you have gotten away from the concept of the scriptures being the authority that we have. So it's not Calvinism itself, but it's this high view of scripture that continues to help. What's the first step away from Calvinism, of course? would be what we refer to as Arminianism. God still saves, we're still interested in the salvation of sinners, there is still a sin problem that has to be dealt with, but ultimately it is man's choice that God then will understand and honor in order for us to be able to come away from and deal with the concept. Now, how can I make that free choice? Well, the answer is, when man fell, I was greatly affected by that. I was woefully sick, but I still had a little life left in me. And through God's general grace, I am not dead, I am just disabled. And oh, by the way, Christ's atonement, it is universal. It's universal in its intent. In its application, yes, it applies to just the elect of God. But who are the elect? Well, of course, they're the ones who God looks down through the corridors of time and sees that will exercise their free will and believe, and then he elects. So to say that Christ died just for the elect, I don't have a problem for that as long as we understand that he died for all men in some way. And oh, by the way, if man chose to be saved, he can choose not to be saved. And that's a problem. Brenda? It actually contradicts their own thinking, because they were saying that God wasn't smart enough to know what we would decide, and yet they're saying that he was smart enough to know what they would decide. Yes. Anyway, so as we see the slope on the downgrade, one of the things that Schindler presented in The Sword and the Trowel was the whole concept that as you're starting to get a little bit more and a little bit more, a little bit more authority to man, a little bit less authority to God, Until ultimately then, the next step is a large step, but it's the one that Schindler makes, is from there we have a Jesus who is not divine. A Jesus, his words, I thought this, I put this on in the slide. He said that Christ is a super angel, but he's not God. He is the highest of all creation. He is the firstborn. He is the son of God, but he's not God. And that's one of the things. Yes, Marie? Oh, yeah. Yeah, Jesus is a prophet. All right. But no different a prophet than Moses was, or Abraham was, or Isaiah was, or Jeremiah was. Yeah, and they will elevate him, but they will not say that Jesus is Allah. You know, the Muslims will not say that, all right? And that's one of the problems. He's just another man, all right? Now, in Christian circles, I would be very leery, very curious if you were to hear a Muslim say that Jesus was a higher prophet than Muhammad, you know? Oh, really? Okay. Yeah. Well, you know, and a lot of them will. Now, one of the things that's taking place is that you can tell all of the different things that are going to come out of this is that if Jesus is just a man, well, golly gee, there are others who are just men. All right? Jesus was inspirational and lived a holy life. There were others who lived inspirational and just lived a holy life. All right? Buddha, you know, Maharishi. All of these guys, wonderful. In fact, you can just simply say, if Jesus is just another man, then there must be many ways that we can get to God. And who am I to say that my man is better than your man? I mean, it's not like we go out onto the football field and we can walk away with someone has the winning score and someone doesn't. This is a situation. And one of the things that's taking place then, in fact, the road to the downgrade, you'll see there that Socinianism, All right, full-blown, total rationalism that Jesus is absolutely not God. There is no such thing as the atonement. Justification by faith, there's no justification. Why is there no justification? There's no need for justification. All right, if there is no sin, now we all sin, so that's not the problem, but if there's no original sin and no atonement for sin by someone else, then we're all in the same boat, and there is no difference. And this is one of the things that we're starting to see. Well, Spurgeon, all right, here's another slide just simply on this, so Sinianism, all right? There's no supernatural, there's no need for the mediation of Christ, there's no need for the imputation, to me, of his righteousness. All right, there is, because after all, and this is going to be one of the things that happens, if there's no sin, then who is saved? We're all saved. There is no one. What is the qualification to get into heaven, according to the universalist? You just gotta die. As long as you die, it doesn't matter how bad you are. And of course, there is some sense of, well, why should I live a moral and a holy life? Because that's one of the things that, you know, in their favor, Socinians were very interested in. All right? I want to have this very moral. I want to be doing right things. I want to be kind to widows and orphans. I want to come in and be seen as a very nice guy. Well, what about the guys who are very, very evil? That's one of the things that is taking place is that remember in the Church of England we have the whole influence of the Roman Church. How do you deal with evil people since everyone's going to heaven? Well, there must be some kind of a got to work your way out. You can either work your way here in this life or you can work your way in the life to come. In fact, we have this marvelous place called Purgatory. All right? It's not marvelous for the people that are in it, but at least it's hopeful. Did you ever see Purgatory as hope? Yeah. Hopefully, someday I'll get out. All right? Spurgeon tells the story in one of his records about a husband that lost his wife, and he was the most faithful in prayer of anyone he'd ever known. But all he could pray about that God would take his good works and apply them to his wife so that she would eventually get into heaven, and so on. When you see... Linda's friend is certain that his wife is already out there. I mean, he's visited with the Pope. Well, the very emphasis and what Ben is saying, for those of you who didn't hear, there are people who are absolutely convinced that they have done enough good works to get them into heaven. And this is one of the things that's coming out of this Socinian theology, which plays right into the hands, of course, in the Anglican or the Roman concepts. is ultimately, in fact, that's why sometimes you'll hear it referred to as Unitarian. Again, why is it Unitarian? Because Jesus is not God, the Spirit's not God, who's the only person to be God? God is God, that's it, all right? There's only one God, Unitarian, all right? Many ways to get to him, all right? Jesus is not the only way. And so these are the things that are taking place. And of course there's no supernatural. There's no virgin birth. There is no Holy Spirit. There's no new birth. There's no miracles. All right. How do you explain all of these things that the Bible talks about? Resurrection from the dead. Isn't that the key? Every Easter we talk about the resurrection of the dead. Absolutely we do. How does the universalist, the Unitarianism, the Unitarian deal with the resurrection from the dead? The one thing that energized? Well, that's what the Unitarian will say, is that that's nothing more than Jesus was so inspirational. When I saw him give up his life for me, I was so inspired that it just seemed to me like he had risen from the dead. And I just, you know, he did. Did he, yeah, yeah, it seemed that way for me too. And all of a sudden now, this is just simply the apostles or the prophets, apostles and prophets, all of the people there in the first century were just so inspired that, you know, within a couple of generations, Jesus really did rise from the dead. He really did. Those guys saw it. They were, and, All that the Unitarian will say is, he says, yes, that was a great sacrifice. So the death of Jesus Christ on the cross was an example. It was something for us to emulate. I mean, what does the Bible say? Greater love hath no man than this, than what? A man lay down his life for his friends. Let's tell a story about a soldier falling on a grenade in the foxhole. Let's tell a story about the father who runs into the burning building and saves his daughter and comes out and he dies and she's able to live. Do we see those every day in our paper? Why do we see those? Because there is a part of the downgrade that's in our society, it's in our culture, that these are the ones who we lift up. These are the ones who are examples. All right, of course the last bullet of that, therefore the Bible is just the record of man's search to become religious and to have these same feelings, this same depth of feelings that were so intense when Jesus Christ died on the cross. They were so intense that he seemed to them as if he had risen from the dead. Ultimately, This is what it's all about. There is no separation of the righteous and the wicked. Ultimately, I think that's what the real issue is. I do not want to risk going before God thinking that I had chosen wrongly in this life. What does the Unitarian say? That's all right. Everyone sins. You sin, he sins, she sins, we all sin. And therefore, it's okay. I am the great forgiving father, and that's what forgiveness is. And you want to know what greatness is? Look at me, because I can forgive you and him and her, and I can forgive all of us. And after all, that's what it's all about. After all, Really? God would be unfair? God would be unfair, wouldn't He, if He sent someone to hell for eternity, for something that was just temporal in nature? Just a sin that I committed here in this life? You know, I can understand, the worst sin, the worst sin I mean, let's talk about Hitler and Mao Zedong and Pol Pot and people who just massacre Stalin, who just put to death millions and millions of people. Well, that's pretty bad, but eternity? One of the problems I have, I'm dealing with a young man today. God, I just can't believe in a God. who would send someone, as bad as sin is, eternity for the rest of the world? I just can't believe in a God like that. Where is God? God is below my judgment. I am the judge and God is the one to be judged. He is the one who is going to be according to my rational thinking, according to the way. Now see, this is what Spurgeon was seeing coming. He was not only seeing it coming, but he was seeing it coming gradually, little by little. And the problem was that this was in the group that he was associating with. And so all he did was raise the alarm. Eventually he says, gosh, I just cannot be in fellowship with people who believe this. This is not Christianity. That's what Spurgeon's concept was. This is not Christianity at all. In fact, it's worse than Galatians. It's worse than a false gospel. It's not even good news for anyone. It's just, yeah, you're using the word Jesus, you're using the word God, you're using, but it's a different religion that you're talking about. And that's in the middle of that which is called Christianity. And little by little by little, Spurgeon was told, Come on, give these guys a break. We know you don't agree with them, but really, you know, you can't be their judge. You can't sit on top of them and do justice to what they believe. These are things. The universality, last point, universality of all ending up in heaven remind us again of the Roman doctrine of purgatory. And it's just a matter of time and ultimately everyone can come out. Well, we're out of time this evening. If you're looking at your notes, we're probably not even to the third page yet. We'll continue because one of the things that I wanted to do was help us to see that in Spurgeon's day, Spurgeon didn't die and all of a sudden people said, oh, we didn't realize he was this serious. We really need to turn this around. The answer is we're behind the times a little bit in America, not much. That was already happening in America. The next section is different American groups that are going to deal with that. And not only that, there's a couple of other historical emphasis. One's happening or happened just a few years ago right here in the state that we live in, right here in Texas. We had a great turmoil about a group of men who wanted to do something to stop the slippery slopes slide, the downgrade, to be able to stop that. They were able to for a little while. Ultimately, what's the only thing that's going to change, brothers and sisters? This will only change one way. And that is if we're faithful with the Gospel and the Spirit of God is faithful about putting it into the minds and the hearts of His people. This is not something that say, oh, we understand, we're the special Gnostics, you know, those who have the knowledge, and that's what we're saved by. Well, brothers and sisters, either we're saved from the wrath of God or we're not. Other than that, it's just a matter of live life, be moral, have wonderful lives, don't kick your cat, don't run over the little old ladies when they're crossing the street and you're good to go. This is an issue. Other than that, just remember that this is going to be one of those situations in which we honor humanity. We worship the world we live in and it's getting worse and worse. Anyway, I've got several other contemporary examples. I have one from the Southern Baptist Church, one from the Missouri Synod Lutheran Church, one from the Episcopal Church, one from the Presbyterian Church. All of those are wrestling with exactly the same thing, different times, different places. But what I wanted to show you is that what Spurgeon was dealing with is something that we are dealing with, that we need to be informed about. I'm not going to give you a test next week to see if you learned all of these things. I hope that your interest has been sparked and you go home and take a look at these things. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Father, we come into your presence really not knowing what to say. really not knowing why we see so much that Satan works in this world to try and get away from your authority. Father, we ask that you would help us to be kind and compassionate, to be concerned about our neighbors, to be the godly people that you would have us to be, but yet, Father, never to do so for any other reason than the great appreciation we have for Jesus Christ and what he has done. Father, help us to never denigrate the Lord Jesus Christ. Help us to always remain firm to the gospel. Be with us now and bless us in your holy name. Hear our prayers this evening as we come and pour our hearts out to you through Jesus our Savior. Amen.