| Author | Message | ||
| Leifl Registered user Username: Leifl Post Number: 94 Registered: 3-2014  |
The Second Great Awakening was a religious movement in the early to mid nineteenth century, known for its emphasis on revivalism and spiritual experience. It produced a handful of new religious systems with certain traits in common, which distinguish them from the Evangelical churches. Belief systems of today which which trace their genesis to the Second Great Awakening are: - Mormons (LDS) - Jehovah’s Witnesses (JW) - Seventh-day Adventists (SDA) - Christian Scientists - Christadelphians The intent of this article is to demonstrate: - That these belief systems grew from a common root - Their structure, theology and claims are very similar - That they are not strictly “biblical” churches, but depend on extra-biblical sources of authority to maintain their doctrinal identity and unity - They all add requirements to the gospel that are outside the New Covenant. Blog article: http://youarecompleteinhim.com/2015/02/20/movements-second-great-awakening/ (Message edited by LeifL on February 21, 2015) | ||
| Mjcmcook Registered user Username: Mjcmcook Post Number: 1697 Registered: 2-2011  |
Leifi~ Thank-you for the 'link'~ I have found it very helpful! ~mj~ | ||
| Leifl Registered user Username: Leifl Post Number: 95 Registered: 3-2014 |
Hi mj, Thanks for the comment. Here are a list of other articles on my blog that deal with the Second Great Awakening: http://youarecompleteinhim.com/category/second-great-awakening/ The 5-part article on "How Americanism Changed our View of God and Man" you might find interesting. The fruit of the first and second great awakenings were very different. The first, with the Wesleys and Whitefield, produced Christians who committed themselves to orthodox Christianity. The Second Great Awakening, whose chief theologian was Charles Finney, produced more sectarian movements than any other era of Christian history. | ||
| Mjcmcook Registered user Username: Mjcmcook Post Number: 1698 Registered: 2-2011 |
Leifi~ Again, Thank-you! ~mj~ | ||
| River Registered user Username: River Post Number: 8186 Registered: 9-2006  |
We may find ourselves in disagreement here, but a second view of the happenings in those years won’t hurt us, and in my own opinion, did not produce those churches mentioned in the article. Here’s why. I’ve noticed people tend to view those great revivals that took place during those years as negative because of the rise of cult churches during that time. I think people tend to do this because the world itself is negative, and tends to ignore any outpouring of the Holy Spirit. A good general will know all of the ground he is going to fight on, not just the hill in front of him, and we need to be good generals in that we need to see the whole field, and the country around. If Lee had listened to Longstreet, and took Little Roundtop, it may have changed the outcome of the civil war, but instead the Northern regiments ended up with the high ground. Since I have no problem with saying slavery is wrong, I will use the south as the devil, and the north as the saints to demonstrate a thing…not that I believe Lee was the devil, or the south either, but the devil is in the details, so lets take the high ground, and hold it. To my mind, there were great outpourings of the Holy Spirit in those years, and the devil was on the battlefield. He was trying to turn the course of the battle away from the cross, and in doing so these false churches sprang up. The tact was simple, yet an old one…Ok, lets have church, but you have to do something besides having faith. Eat no pork, marry, and have many wives, and the story goes on. As the battle raged during the century, and beyond, there were people ready to listen to the false preachers of that time. But what about the real cross, the true cross? People were saved during those outpourings of the Holy Spirit, millions turned to the Lord. That is the positive outcome. An outpouring of the Holy Spirit does not produce false churches, the devil and his crowd produced false churches. Now one may accuse me of being so spiritually minded, that I’m no earthly good, but I had rather be so spiritually minded as to be no earthly good, as to be so earthly minded as to be no heavenly good. I say we need to be careful where we lay the blame for the rise of those false churches, lest we be an offense to the Holy Spirit. During the very beginnings of the church this went on as it did in what we call the awakenings, read Galatians. There may be some argument that there was even a fourth awakening during the sixty’s and early 70’s. Back then we were called Jesus freaks. I tend to believe there was an outpouring of the Holy Spirit in those times, not to the extent of what we call great awakenings, but an outpouring non-the-less. In my book title ‘God are you up there?’ I mentioned standing room only in a revival meeting. That was the truth, and since much of the story is true. I’m not writing this to chastise, I am just presenting a different view of those times. People write of those times that people were very ‘emotional’ as if it’s a bad thing. Was I emotional during the early 70’s? When I discovered Jesus, I was over the top emotional. Just Wow! | ||
| Mjcmcook Registered user Username: Mjcmcook Post Number: 1699 Registered: 2-2011 |
River~ "Just Wow!"~~~ You can say that again! Was "I" over the top emotionally when I met the "Real JESUS?"! Absolutely!!! If the "Truth" be told, I still am! Praise HIS Holy NAME! NAME Above All Names! ~mj~ | ||
| Resjudicata Registered user Username: Resjudicata Post Number: 456 Registered: 4-2014 |
River, Nothing wrong with being emotional. This morning in church, I all but started bawling three different times. During Dale Ratlaff's sermon on Heaven during last week's FAF conference, I lost it emotionally several times. So being emotional is not the problem. This is a question of the integrity of the leadership. The Second Awakening Cults all featured dishonest and disreputable leaders. They started non-Christian cults, knowing full well that the great weight of Christian scholarship had rejected their views. They never told their deluded members this side of the story. They knew better, but never told their lay followers the whole story. The problem is not so much emotional lay people as it is exploitative and manipulative cult leadership. | ||
| Rocky Registered user Username: Rocky Post Number: 193 Registered: 3-2012 |
I think it is sad that there is such suspicion of outpouring of Holy Spirit - the enemy successfully captured people during that time and the cults contain prisoners of war - a spiritual war - had the outpouring been a small thing there wouldn't have been such a response by forces of darkness to defeat it through perversion of truth - but we shouldn't confuse that with the reality of an outpouring of revival -two very different things- the real and the counterfeit.... | ||
| Leifl Registered user Username: Leifl Post Number: 96 Registered: 3-2014 |
The a Holy Spirit has always been at work in people's lives. I wouldn't deny that. I'm a deacon at a baptist church. Baptist churches were filled during the second great awakening, as Methodist and Presbyterian churches were filled during the first great awakening. But late 1700s to mid 1800s there was a subtle but profound shift away from the central doctrines of salvation held by the early and reformation church, and it coincides with the political blossoming of Lockean Philosophy in the rise of America. (Now the rights of the individual over rulers or the collective have their rightful place in politics, but not in the spiritual realm, which is what I am discussing here). (American) Man had become liberated from the shackles of monarchy, tyranny and the political and thought processes of the "old world", and had finally become masters of their own fate (or so they saw it). They extended this newfound power and liberation to the spiritual domain. "Total depravity" of sinful humanity and the "sovereign grace" of God for salvation were no longer in vogue among a growing number of Christians during this era. The rights of the individual had become the paramount concern. God had no jurisdiction to trample on the rights of man. The will of man was the hinge upon which salvation was now based, replacing the grace of God as the soteriological focus, rendering God impotent, and man the reigning king of his own heart. In this new theology, man was not so much depraved as damaged by Adam's fall. "We" retained our faculties of judgment and an unfettered will, which we could use at our pleasure to summon the Holy Spirit at a whim to create the new birth. Charles Finney worked out the finer details of defending this theology, and his preaching left behind what has been called the "burned over district" for a century and a half. The Northeastern USA is widely viewed as the hardest spiritual soil in the country. This is the trail that I follow in the five articles mentioned above. The sectarian movements which were spawned took these philosophies beyond where Finney intended, yet I believe the germ is the same. Nevertheless, Christ was preached on at least some level by even those who had forsaken orthodox Christianity, and the Lord called many to himself. But it wasn't seen in the fruits of fanatics who left their children to freeze to death in fields while waiting for Jesus to return - those who had disregarded the words of our Lord that no one knew the day of the hour of his coming. Neither those who, after this great deception slit their own throats from ear to ear (in public), drowned themselves, or ended up in asylums. (Message edited by LeifL on February 22, 2015) | ||
| Resjudicata Registered user Username: Resjudicata Post Number: 457 Registered: 4-2014 |
Leifl, I read several of your arguments and must congratulate you on your basic premise that Adventism has substituted the Sabbath for the Gospel, and that the Gospel and Sabbatarianism are radically incompatible. | ||
| Colleentinker Registered user Username: Colleentinker Post Number: 15068 Registered: 12-2003  |
Very interesting, Leifl. I haven't studied it as much as you have, but I have pondered the effects of Finney's "decisional" preaching and its effects on Christianity, including the growth of so many near-Christian imitations. I agree that the Holy Spirit definitely was awakening people to the truth of Jesus, but the effects of the more Pelagian philosophy that underlay Finney's theology had serious consequences. And, as is always the case, there is nothing new under the sun. Pelagianism had been deemed heresy, and Pelagius declared a heretic, early in the 5th century. When Finney and then the teachers of false tag-along religions built their theology on the notion that man could choose to follow God and to believe in Jesus because sin had not polluted their will and free choice, they were adopting an ancient belief that had been known to be heresy for many centuries. It was not new, and it was not unknown. Pelagianism directly contradicted Romans 3 and Ephesians 2;1-3, to name only two texts. Colleen | ||
| Rocky Registered user Username: Rocky Post Number: 198 Registered: 3-2012 |
thank you leifi and colleen- charles Finney was a false teacher and I am still disturbed by the descriptions of alter calls featuring "the anxious bench" where people were "trying" to come to a decision, and other practices that are man driven not spirit led that were in use during that time- I recently saw a map of average church attendance in the US by state and the burnt over district is at the bottom to this day.... one man made a lasting negative impact by his error....rocky | ||
| Leifl Registered user Username: Leifl Post Number: 100 Registered: 3-2014 |
Here's an excellent article by Michael Horton about Charles Finney: http://youarecompleteinhim.com/2012/09/07/the-disturbing-legacy-of-charles-finney-by-dr-michael-horton/ |
