Charles Finney Challenge Pt 1

0:02 Looking at our world from a theological perspective. This is the Theology Central podcast making Theology Central. Good afternoon, everyone. It is Thursday, August the twenty second, twenty twenty four. It is currently two thirty six pm Central Time, and I am coming to you live from the Theology Central Studio located right here in Abilene, Texas. And all I can say right now is, if you have ever thought about coming to Abilene, Texas, just perish the thought right now. Get rid of that thought. If you're driving a car right now and you're headed towards Abilene, Texas, turn the car around. Save yourselves. Forget about us. Just save yourselves. You do not want to come to Abilene, Texas.

0:52 Yesterday we broke a record. We had one hundred and thirteen degrees and now they're warning us it's going to be about one hundred in twelve, maybe within the next hour or so. We have, like you know, all kinds of weather heat warnings and advisories. Basically, don't go outside or you'll, you know, you will burst into flames. It is hot outside. And not only is it hot outside, we're here at the Theology Central Studio, the central cooling unit well started having some problems yesterday. We still need to get someone out to kind of, do you know, just kind of a maintenance check and make sure everything is working correctly. It's hard to know is there a real problem or things were just cutting off because things were overheating because it was one hundred and thirteen degrees outside.

1:41 Well at this point, I think it's about one eight, one o eight, one oh nine right now, maybe one ten, and I'm not I don't. I think things are still working okay. But you know, either way, even with the central air unit on up here in the studio itself right here in the studio, so I have to rely mainly on a window unit behind me. And I can't keep the window unit on when I'm broadcasting, which means as soon as I turn that off, it gets hot here in the studio. So I have limited amount of time. And I was sitting here debating, do you know what, just skip broadcasting? I mean, you know, nobody's going to care if you don't broadcast, and I understand that, but sometimes I want to broadcast, right, So I was like, well, what do I do? Well, I have the Sword of the Lord newspaper right here in front of me, right, we got to finish this small section on the Holy Spirit in revival probably takes me fifteen twenty minutes. But I'm like, well, we've kind of taken a slight detour, right, so maybe we should follow the detour. But then I was like, well, or maybe I just forget everything about revival, forget everything about the detour, and I have here in front of me. This was at the church for a long time in the library. I don't know why I ended up bringing it here, but I brought it here, and it's the kjav Study Bible, right, and I've had it for a long time. And I was like, and I saw it laying here, and I'm like, why did I bring this to the studio. I don't know. So I opened it up. There was a pencil marking a certain page, and I opened it up and it was

3:13 how to Read and Study the Bible. How to read and Study the Bible. And I'm like, ooh, this looks interesting. I would love to walk through this for like its own special series. But what I want to do is I want to approach the series, not like, hey, here's how to read and study the Bible. I know, I want to approach the series. Here is how a Bible publisher thinks that, you know, by they thought it was important to put this article inside the front of their Bible on how to read and study the Bible. So if you were if you just if we just take their advice, how well off would we be? Would we really know how to read and study the Bible if we just took their advice? Like I want to just use Hey, this is what they say we need to do to learn how to read and study. What do we actually get so we may walk through it? I think it will be fun. The first sentence here, I already have a problem with the first sentence because they state something that's not completely accurate. Sorry, I'm hitting the microphone.

4:17 So I thought about doing that, but again, that's going to turn into a series. I'm like, I don't really want to start a series when you know it's one hundred and twelve degrees outside, So I'm going to set that down. And I went back to the sord of the Lord Paper and I'm like, well, what we did earlier today or what not? Even the day before? I think maybe the day before as we were talking about revival and talking about this article, in the sort of the Lord newspaper. There was a message. There was a broadcast that's on the sermon's two point oh app on basically Charles Finnie and how he has shaped America, how he's shaped American evangelicalism. And I told everyone to go listen to that, and we did a partial review of that.

4:59 Then I came back today because in their review and their discussion of Charles Finnie, they began their discussion by saying Charles Finnie is in Hell, and initially I had some pushback. So I came back today to say, well, Charles Finnie denied substitutionary atonement, he denied penal substitution. He he was not Orthodox Christian. He wasn't even a Christian in any way, shape or form. So if Charles Finnie wasn't even a Christian, then wired churches today still being influenced and using his techniques, and they hold to a philosophy of revival that goes to Fennie, not to scripture, even though they try to use scripture to justify it. And they're taking their philosophy on revival from someone who wasn't even a Christian. Okay, that's problematic. So remember I gave everyone a challenge for the sermons two point oh app sermon challenge for Thursday, Friday, Saturday and at least till Sunday. You're supposed to grab the sermon's two point oh app look up random sermons on Charles Fennie and I said, on your you know, get set Are you ready? Go? Okay?

6:03 I know that's not exactly how you say power. You get the point right, go? So then I was like, okay, I've done it. Everyway's good to go. I'll move on. All right, right, I'll move on. How actually do you say that? On your mark? Get set go? That's how you say it, right? Obviously I didn't run track. Okay, on your mark, get set go. Isn't that the correct way? It better be the correct way. Okay. If it's not the correct way, do not correct me. Just let me live and being ignorant. Okay. But the point is I was like go, And then I was like, well, you know, it's gonna be like one hundred and thirteen degrees here. I don't know if I'm gonna be able to broadcast. I don't know if the AC is going to work or not work. I don't know what I'm gonna do.

6:44 So then I was like, but they're like, well, you know, if I told everyone to do this, I like to demonstrate that I'm participating, right, So I'm like, well, let me grab the sermon's two point oh app, I'll do a search and guess where I found what I ended up with. I ended up at a message called Revivalism and Charles Finnie. Revivalism and Charles Finnie. Now that's perfect, right because we have now the series that we're doing on revival based off this article in the Sword of the Lord. All right, hey, that's good. So it's connects to that. It deals with Charles Finny. That connects with our kind of our Charles Finny challenge. For the next couple of days, you're looking up random sermons on Charles Finnie. Okay, great, it allows me to participate. Great. This one is a relatively popular message. It has eighty downloads. I mean that's pretty good, right. I'm like, okay, well it was published on July the nineteenth, twenty fifteen. Okay, well, I mean maybe that's not super popular, but maybe we can increase the numbers to it, right, maybe we can get it over one hundred. Right, So Revivalism and Charles Finnie from Calvary Baptist Church. Revivalism and Charles Finny from Calvary Baptist Church, please go download it, have it saved in your library so that you can listen to it whenever you can, right, or you can continue looking for other sermons. So I'm like, you know what, let's now, Typically when I do a review, right, I mean this, the duration of this is over an hour.

8:14 So if we do a full review on this, you know what that means, right, this would be five, maybe six hours of broadcasting. So I don't know. I don't have a desire to do the whole thing, but I at least wanted to show you I'm participating, at least give you something to listen to, to encourage participation in this challenge, because hey, when it comes to church history, I cannot state this enough. Look, here's the practical. I may I may not know on your mark gets said, go, I may not know that. Okay, I may not know that, but I do know this, all right, I do know this. There's a lot of things I don't know, but when it comes to church history and theology, that's where I feel like I have at least some level of expertise.

8:55 I may not know on your mark, get said CO, but I know this, this is very important. Your ignorance of church history, your ignorance of who Charles Finny was, what he taught, what he believed, and what he promoted. Your ignorance of anything in church history does not, in any way, shape or form, negate its influence upon your Christian life. So many things that you think, so many things you just think that's the way it is in Christianity, so many things, the way you think you've been influenced by things in the past. Now here's the issue. Your ignorance of it does not stop, does not negate its influence upon you. You are still influenced upon it. You just don't know where the influence is coming from. You just look. But that's the way Christians have always done it.

9:45 Christians have always done church this way. Christians have always had an altar call, Christians have always had revival services. There's just so many that Christians have always had, pot lucks, chrit you just so many things that happen in your church. You just assume that's the way it was during the time of Jesus. Well, it's not. No, you've been influenced by so many things. Just your ignorance just means you don't know what you're being influenced by. Well, if there is eight, just think about this, Just think about how radical this is. If a major influence and modern day Christianity can be traced back to someone who actually wasn't a Christian, should that not bother us? Hey, Charles Finny had a profound impact on revivalism and the concept of revival and evangelical and fundamental circles. Now sad to say that influence comes from a man who wasn't even a Christian.

10:47 Do you realize like that makes us look like, whoa, we got a problem here. We got a problem right here in River City, ladies and gentlemen. We got a problem with a capital t okay to start doing the music. Man, all right, but you get the idea that's that's rather profound. Now, I told you look up random sermons on the sermon's two point oh oup on Charles Finny. I said, you may find some that are and are pro Charles Finnie. They're in Team Finny. You're gonna find others who are very much on antire There they're in the team against Charles Finnie. But that guess what, you'll get to hear different perspectives. All right, So let's listen to revivalism and Charles Finny. Now I can't I still I still believe, like I don't know who I can convince. There's someone I have to convince. Sermon audio, you've got the sermon audio.

11:48 You've got the sermon audio radio. Like it's a it's a tab sermon audio radio, and people can listen to sermon audio. But you're the the It needs to be changed, right, you need live people. They're hosting it, and those line people are putting together sermons randomly but on different like hey, for the next for the next three hours, today we're gonna only listen to sermons on Charles Fennie. Hey, the next three hours we're only going I mean, you could start the day. Today is Church History Day. Here on sermon audio radio, we're gonna start three. The first three hours is on Augustine, the next one is on Athanacious, the next is on and just look for sermons dealing with church history. You could do that and then the next day you could be like today it's all in Proverbs.

12:36 We're gonna look only at sermons on Proverbs chapter one and then the next day today, or you can just break them up in segment. It's not even an entire day. The next four hours is only sermons on Psalms chapter three, or we're gonna do the next hour. The next three hours is just random, and you have someone introducing, guiding it, directing it, putting them together, and unique ways finding different sermons. So that because now when you listen to sermon audio radio, it just it's like a computer just put in and it's almost seems like the same names over and over and over and over. You have a library of millions of sermons. Use that library you can create, you know, man, I just think there's so much potential there, and so I would love the opportunity. Just tell me I can use the sermons and then I'll just introduce them and I'll just play them. I'll just play them. I won't even offer criticism or critique. Okay, now I can't I actually do that. I don't know, but I just think, but I wish I could do something like that. It would be so awesome to have that library and just be able to you know, do introductions and play the sermon, and then I don't know, there's I just think you could do something unique. But I digress. See taking too much time here, But are you ready? The point is your ignorance of all of this stuff does not negate its influence. And if modern day Christianity is being influenced

14:08 by a man who turns out to not even be saved, that's problematic. So let's listen to this message revivalism. And Charles Finney from Calvary Baptist Church. I don't know how long we're gonna go. We're just gonna take it, and we may not go long. We'll see, all right, ladies and gentlemen, here we. Go for the series that we're doing on our Baptist heritage. And we've done many things that are principles, individual soul, liberty, the priesthood of the believer, Baptism by Immercian Congregational Church, government, and separation of church and state. Some of these things that have been Baptist principles. What I'm going to look at today is something that's a little more historical, and that is the idea of revival is revivalism. Now, I want to make a distinction here between revival and revivalism.

15:05 All right, so let's look at the distinction. Let's look at the nature of revival. I think some of you are still getting the sheet, but I'll try not to. There is a lot to cover, so I'll try not to lose you here. But we're under point number one. The nature revivalism, A the nature revival and then Arabic one definition of revival. Okay, this is good stuff already. What is the difference? What is the distinction between revival and revivalism? What is the difference between revival and revivalism? Is it the same?

15:46 Is it different? How are they related? How are they not related? Wow, I'm already this is I picked a good one. This already sounds very interesting. Starting off with a clear outline. All right, revival revivalism. He may define revival and revivalism. We may forget the distinction. Is there a difference we need to note? All right, let's let's let's find out. And it's very basic. A revival is the renewal of spiritual life to what is dead or nearly dead. So well else would we use this word? Okay, you go to the beach and someone is in distress, and the lifeguards go out there and they drag him to the shore. And this person's unconscious and they perform CPR on them, and the person gasps for air, and what do we say?

16:31 The lifeguards revived him? Right? Okay, so the person was nearly dead. And they were revived or someone literally does their heart stops in the emergency room and the doctors revived them. Right. They were legally dead and clinically dead and they revived them. So the idea of revival is that something was spiritually dead and is now spiritually alive. Now, one thing I do want to note is do know that the word revival is not in the Bible. I feel that because he said spiritually dead, so I typically say spiritually dead. We're referring to lost people. I think revival is about Christians who are dead in a sense spiritual activity, spiritual passion, spiritual zeal. They've fallen, fallen into becoming complacent, apathetic, not caring, spiritually lifeless, spiritually dead in that way, and they were revived. Revival is for the church. Revival is for believers. Revival is not for the lost world. Revival is for Christians who had maybe a passion, a zeal of fire, a desire, and they've lost it. They've become discouraged, depressed, feel like giving up whatever.

17:54 And now they are revived with a renewed passion and zeal for God. That I think, if we're gonna, if I'm even gonna even try to get into a discussion about defining it, I would define it more in those lines, right. It's for believers, it's for the church, not for the lost. It's for the church. I know in so many revival services is about bring your lost friends, bring your lost friends, and then it becomes an evangelistic campaign. Revival is not an evangelistic campaign. Revival is a call for God to break humble and revive his children. That is how I perceive it. You can obviously offer counter definition if you so desire.

18:41 Okay, that doesn't necessarily mean that revivals are bad things. But we do need to note that I'm not aware of the term revival in the way that we normally use the term being used in the scriptures. So let me say this. I would define a revival as a spontaneous spiritual event that affects a congregation, nation, or region. Most revivals we're going to talk about tonight had to do with a nation or a region resulting in greater spiritual health and conversions. So what usually happens is the churches get healthier and there's people are converted. So, for example, and I'll go through a list of these revivals, I'll mention one that I think is remarkable.

19:22 Okay, Now, if you say conversion is a side effect or like it's like because the church has revived, now they're gonna be more evangelism taking place, I would just say the conversion of the lost would be a side effect of the church being revived. But then we get into a discussion of well, wait a minute, So these people could have been saved, but they weren't saved, and then they get saved simply because the churches revived. Then does that mean salvation is not a sovereign work of God? And then what does election followed? Okay? I think I know there's a lot of philological issues that surround it. I'm just going to say revival itself is about the congregation, about the individual, It's about the children of God. What happens after that, Okay, But those are the side effects or those are the consequences of revival, but it's not revival itself. Revival itself is the reviving of God's people, and I do agree it's spontaneous. I don't think you can if you schedule it, then you typically then rely on techniques to manipulate. Then the emotional response where people fil revived, but it's only because they've been revived through psychological techniques that get them all fired up, and then it all crashes and burns.

20:42 In American history, we've already covered it a little bit, but that's the great Awakening, which is point D under two. I've created this definition from various definitions of revival I've come across. Based on this definition, we would all desire that God would send a revival. Okay, if you accept this as the definition revival, that is that God's spontaneously spiritually works in a congregation, a nation, or a region regrets, resulting in greater spiritual health or end conversions when we want that. In other words, would we say we would like to see Calvary Baptist Church see a work of God in which there's greater spiritual health in our congregation and people are converted. Who would complain about that? Nobody would complain about that, right, we'd all say thank the Lord for his work. And historically there have been revivals in which we can point to we saw in history God did something like this. Okay, some of these and I'll get into that in a minute. The Ulster Revival of sixteen twenty five in Ireland, the Pietistic Revival of Germany which began about sixteen sixty six.

21:44 Probably the best known group of these would be. This would have been I'm not sure if you're that familiar with the Pietists, but they were the precursors to the Moravians, who also come about one hundred years little less than a hundred years later after that. But Count Nicholas von Zinzendorf, that may not be a name you're really familiar with. There's actually a couple hymns in our Hymnal were written by Sinzendorf, and that comes out of that Pietism. What had happened is Germany had the Lutheranism in Germany had become stagnated, and there was it had become academic, and so there was this idea of we need some spiritual fervor, we need some spiritual you know, affection, some love for God, not just going through the motions.

22:27 The Moravian Revival. The Moravians were influential in another one of these, and that's point e, the Wesleyan Revival. It's because of the steadiness of the Moravians that John Wesley had his evangelical conversion and saw a significant revival in England. All right, the Great Awakening. The leaders in the Great Awakening were Jonathan Edwards and George Whitfield were some of the notable leaders in that time period. Whitfield sort of at the end of it, Jonathan Edwards at the beginning of it. Interestingly, Jonathan edwards book about the revival in Northampton is entitled something like the Surprising Work of God, and they had these really long titles, but it begins with the Surprising Work of God. In other words, the way Jonathan Edwards, who was really the one who started humanly speaking, who the Lord used to start the Great Awakening, was a man who said, basically, God did this all right, I just preached the Word and God did this. Sinners in the hands of an angry God. If you ever want to know if somebody's off base, historically, listen to the way they deal with the Great Awakening.

23:29 I have heard. Historians on the History Channel and these kind of things say things like Jonathan Edwards stirred people up into an emotional frenzy, and he preached this helfire and brimstone sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. Let me commend to you the reading of Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. You can find free copies of it on the Internet, and you can see he's preaching to a congregation of people which had a lot of unbelievers in the congregation, many unconverted people in the church, and he was preaching to them to convert, to come to faith and repentance in Christ. But the thing is, if you know anything about Edwards, he read his sermons and he read them with some emotion, but there was no pulpit pounding or screaming and yelling.

24:14 So this was not the kind of thing. That was as we think of today, you know, hyper emotionalistic. And it's always interesting because what that is is that's a historian who doesn't really understand the fact who's reading into it. You know, he thinks that he was oral Roberts or something. You know, some kind of thing like that. Reading that back into Jonathan Edwards, it's not what it was. Jonathan Edwards was actually surprised by the mass amount of conversions and people coming back to a walk with the Lord. George Whitfield admittedly was. A little more dramatic in his preaching Godly Man, but he was also involved in the Wesleyan Revivals, or what we'd call the Methodist revivals. George Whitfield was a Methodist along with John and Charles Wesley. Those were primarily in England, the Wesleyan Revivals.

25:00 Now we can ask ourselves the Pietistic Pietism revival and the Wesleyan revival, Pietism and Wesleyanism. Pietism and Wesleyanism. Here it would be the question, how philologically sound is Wesleyanism and Pietism. What would be some philological issues that would arise out of Pietism and Wesleyanism. Now, if you're having a revival of Pietism or Wesleyanism, how do we judge those revivals in regards to philological issues that may we agree or disagree with. See a lot of times we judge revivals by the response, the numbers, the way people acted, the fervor, the excitement, the brokenness, the emotions, whatever the case may be. But should we judge a revival on the number of people who have an experience or whatever the case may be, or the numbers the numbers of people, or do we judge it on the base of the theology that arises from that movement, that revival Pietism and Wesleyanism.

26:11 Right now, I almost want to look some things up right now, but I will not because then because it'll be awkward. But we need to write those down. So I'm going to write down the word Pietism and Wesleyanism if I can spell right. I probably spelled it incorrectly, but I can read it Wesleyanism and Pietism, and then maybe we'll come back to those at some point. But hey, if a lot of times Christians love to go there was this move of God, and this move of God and this move of God. But sometimes we have to go and go, well, wait, wait, what what was actually happening at that time? When someone says the Azusa Street revival, I'm sorry, that's not a revival from God. That whole thing was a radical, right, So just because some move happened doesn't mean it's from God. With the Brownsville Revival, Lakeland Revival, there's been a lot of these charismatics, so called revivals, and they're total in utter cancer upon Christianity.

27:13 So you can look up Pietism, Wesleyanism and draw your own conclusion. In eighteen hundred we come through. About eighteen thirty we start to see he really goes a little later that maybe eighteen thirty five we see the second grade in Awakening, and this is a mixed group even in the first grade Awakening. In the Great Awakening, there was an issue, and that is Jonathan Edwards wrote more pages criticizing the excesses of people who picked up the Great Awakening than he did defending the Great Awakening. He did write a book to defend. The Great Awakening because there were some people criticizing it, but he wrote more books criticizing the excesses because as the Great Awakening spread, what happened is you started to have elements that we would really today view as somewhat kind of charismatic elements. People barking, people being slain in the spirit, people you know, back flipping down the aisles on these kinds of things of church and all of that kind of showy kind of thing took a place to a limited extent, to some extent in the Great Awakening.

28:09 It was far more common in the Second Grade Awakening, especially in the Frontier. So you got to remember in eighteen hundred to eighteen thirty, the frontier's places like Tennessee and Kentucky. Okay, the frontier in Jonathan Edwards's day was Connecticut, but or New Jersey, your places like that, the various unsettled regions of that Vermont was the frontier in their day. But there were some of these excesses. So the Second Grade Awakening, the best known leader of it is a man named Charles G. Finnie. We're going to look at him tonight. He is the founder, really called the grandfather of Revivalism, Asahil Nettleton was a little more sound theologically than Charles Finny. Alexander Campbell, this is we mentioned the Campbell's a little while ago, a couple of weeks ago.

28:52 Alexander Campbell was the founder of the groups that believe in baptismal regeneration, that you have to be baptized to be saved. Churches today would be called the Disciples of Christ and churches of Christ and those kinds of things, and Christian Church and that kind. I want you to know. See now, see this is now just think about this logically, and the Great Awakening and the Second Great Awakening supposedly a. Move of God. But out of this move of God comes absolutely heretical, excessive abuses, crazy thilological concepts. So where do you draw the line between the move of God and the move of man? Where do you draw the line this is the move of God? Well wait a minute. When you have abuses and excesses and absolute, absolute heresy, then is that do you still when does it stop being the move of God? See a lot of times we just look at these movements, we're like, well, all this was happening, there was an explosion of religious fervor, there was maybe an a explosion of maybe a focus on religious ideas, But what's emerging from it or utterly philological heretics. Then I don't I think you've stopped blaming God for that move.

30:11 And you say, well, whatever happened happened. But sooner or later men took over and it became driven and motivated and guided by personality, by celebrity, by whatever, because It's funny he's talking about these two great revivals, the Great Awakening and Great Awakening too, and then he's immediately acknowledging all the problems that were happening within it and some of the people involved in it. When when do you say, well, I think the move of God has already stopped. Kind of thing. So lots of interesting things. Honestly, some of the worst aberrations in American Christianity are rooted in the second Great Awakening.

31:00 I'm not really over emphasizing that. One of them is Charles Finney's methods. Second, some of the other things that come up out of American Christianity that really are false teachings, like Mormonism and eventually Jehovah's Witnesses have their roots in the Second Grade Awakening, all right, So because of some of the excesses in the Second Grade Awakening. So if you were to ask me it was the Second Grade Awakening a good thing? Well, if the work that Ossa Hill, Nettleton and some others were doing, yes, there were some good people coming to Christ and things. Some of the other things that took place in the Second Grade Awakening. As a church, I think we would want nothing to do with Obviously, we don't want anything to do with Holy barking and Mormonism and things like that, but a lot of those things have their roots. In fact, Joseph Smith grew up in the same area of New York as Charles Finny. They come out of similar backgrounds, similar overreactions to things. By eighteen fifty seven to eighteen sixty, there's a prayer meeting revival that was led by Jeremiah Lanfear and New York City, in which he got men to come and meet for prayer during their lunch hour, and it started seeing churches full and people coming to pray and wonderful prayer meeting revival.

32:15 I think I will argue that a good portion of the second grade awakening was not an awakening from God. It was awakening to a lot of maybe spirituality and theological ideas, but it was heresy everywhere. Just he talked about Pietism and Wesleyanism. When you want to talk about Wesleyan theology, I would just point you to one of them absolutely abhorrent things of Wesleyanism is their doctrine just on sanctification. All right, let me just quote Wesleyan theology places strong emphasis on sanctification, the process by which a believer is made holy. Wesleyans believe an entire sanctification, also known as Christian perfection, where a believer can reach a state of perfect love and freedom from wilful sin through the Holy Spirit. That's utterly heretical Wesleyan. If do you have a revival and Wesleyan theology, the Wesleyan revival, that's not from God, So you can already cross out Wesleyanism.

33:22 Continue to look at the rest of the Pietism Wesleyanism. Anything associated with Finny we already know is utterly heretical. So see again, people love, We love to look back. So this is one of the issues with church history. We love to look back to church history. And here's what we do. We love to look back. First we look for anything that will support our side, anything that we think will support our side. We'll reach into church history like it's a buffet, grab it and say, see they agreed with us. Utterly ridiculous. When people do that, and then what we have another thing we have a tendency to do. Not only do we reach back and grab anything that will support our view, then we will tend to have a tendency. We look back and romanticize it, we turn it into like this fairy tale of church history.

34:10 Whenever you look at church history, you don't look to see what agrees with you or disagrees with you. You don't romanticize it. You just let it be what it was, the good, the bad, the ugly. And you know what church history always is. It's the history of sinners trying to figure out Christianity. And there is sin, and there is fighting and arguing. Sometimes there's killing. There's deceit, there's church splits, there's false doctrine, there's heresy, n It's filled with the same stuff that modern day church history is filled with. It's filled with the same stuff the Bible was filled with sinners trying to walk with God and doing so imperfectly, and selfishness and pride and ego and position and celebrity and fame and politics and everything is present.

35:01 When you look at church history, you look and let it be what it is. Don't make them what they're not, don't try to use them for your advantage. Let them be who they were, good and the bad. And when we look at some of these so called oh if we could go back to those times of great revival. Some of those great revivals produce some of the greatest heretical teachings in the history of Christianity. Well. Another well known revival is the Welsh Revival of nineteen oh four to nineteen oh five. The key leader of that was a man named Evan Roberts. And there have been claims of revival since the early twentieth century, but many of them have been localized or primarily charismatic in flavor. If you look up revivals online, one of the things you'll find is they'll start mentioning a Zuza Street Revival. If you're a little familiar with American church history, the Azuza Street Revival is the birth of Pentecostalism in America. So some of those kinds of things start. That's about right around nineteen hundred, I think it was nineteen oh three or nineteen oh five.

35:58 You see the Azusa Street Revival and those kinds of things. So not saying there haven't been any revivals, but the really big kind of nationally impactful ones, regionally impactful ones. I've listed many of them here. The Baptist benefited from many of the historical revivals. The Great Awakenings. These things Baptists caused Baptist churches to grow, caused them to see people reached for the. Gospel, and had a positive impact on. Baptist churches overall because the revivals were usually trans denominational, though Baptists were also influenced by the theological and practical ethos of the revivals. In other words, because the revivals didn't just Jonathan Edwards was a Congregationalist, but the Great Awakening didn't just happen among Congregationalists, all right, And because it influenced Presbyterians and Baptists and others, those groups intermingled.

36:46 And what happened is then things that were distinctively Baptists the Baptists sometimes lost because of the intermingling with other denominations. And think about this, if you have a rapid. Growth to your group, if tomorrow there were four more Baptist churches in winder Garden, mostly full of new converts, what kind of theological things would we be discussing. Think about that these are enough people who have grown up with a Christian background. They'd have all kinds of new ideas and there'd be a lot of teaching that would take place to try to bring them into understanding biblical truth, right, because they'd be bringing in worldly ideas, and they'd be bringing in ideas of you know, well, you know, in the church I used to go to, we prayed the Rosary.

37:28 How come we don't do that here? Well, you have to have an answer for that. And if it's growing too fast and there's not enough, think of the frontier in America, not enough pastors. Many churches didn't have a pastor, they had a circuit rider who'd come once a month. Then it was very hard sometimes to keep control of some of these theological ideas. That came up. All right, So let's consider the nature of revivalism. So as I would say, we thank God when he does bring revival, We thank him for his goodness. We thank the Lord for when churches are made healthy and people are converted. But that's different than revivalism. Okay, revivalism is different from revival. Revivalism is the belief that the application of certain methods will certainly bring revival. In other words, it's not a surprising work of God. It's the implicate implementation of certain methods.

38:17 All right, Now, that's fascinating. Revivalism is about the use of methods to bring about revival. I will say this, whether remove the word revivalism, remove the word revival. Churches across the board, from Lutheran to Presbyterian, to Baptists, to Charismatic to Church of Christ, oh across denominational lines, they use methods. They constantly are strategizing and coming up with methods. Well, okay, what method what strategy a were going to use for our stewardship program? Because we got to bring in a certain amount of money? Okay, what what strategy? What? What?

38:59 What techniques are we going to utilize to try to get more people into the church because we're losing people. We got to maintain. We got to bring in a certain amount of people in order to maintain what we have. Remember I read that one study that you have to bring in like thirty people a year just simply to maintain your church. Churches are constantly looking. They may not say we're using these methods for revival, but churches are very much strategically driven by methods, by techniques. Let's try this, let's do this, We'll do we'll change our schedules, We'll do this, we'll do that, We'll add this, we'll do a wanna because if we get a Wana, we'll bring parents will bring their kids to our Auana program and then maybe then the parents will join the church. We'll do vacation, Bible school and all of this. Though as much as you want to say it's about educating, it's about doing this. Not in every case, but in many cases, it's more of a strategy and how to grow the church.

39:57 So many things that we say it's about loving people, it's about serving people, it's about bringing the gospel. I'm not going to say there's none of that there, But overall it's about how to get people into the building, to give money so that you can support the entire machine, the whole beast that you've got to feed the beast. You got to keep the machine going. And what do you need. You need people and you need money because without people, without money, you can't pay the bills. You can't pay the bills, people lose their jobs or you lose the building, and you can't do this. So you constantly are coming. And the goal with everything is how will it bring more people into the church. Many churches start church schools in order to well. Then people will bring their kids to the school, and if they bring them to the school, then maybe they'll come to the church.

40:44 It's so many and I'm not saying that there's not good motives, but we all know we're sinners and sometimes we have ulterior motives. So where do motives or where does strategies and where does techniques? Where do they stay in line with scripture? And when do we at some point we're overstepping and we're turning the church really into like we're running a business. We need marketing, we need a marketing strategy. We need this, we need that, we need well this work? Will this bring more people in? How do we measure success? How many people participated? How many people showed up for Sunday Night? How many people how many people are participating in our small groups? Okay, how about this? How many people are listening to our podcast?

41:29 How many people listening to us our sermon downloads? Everything is a pragmatic, strategic approach, and at what point does all of that become unscriptural and ungodly? Revivals took place previous to the development of revivalism, which is interesting. I guess what the revival When we'll look at Charles Finny because he's the grandfather of it. What Charles Finny probably would have said, I don't mean to speak for him, would have something like Edwards was doing these methods without knowing he was doing them. But Edwards actually would have repudiated Finny. No, I know enough about Edward's philosophy and theology, they would repudiated Finny. In practice, revivalism teaches that Christianity is dead and unhealthy if it does not apply the revivalistic methods developed by various revivalists over the years. In other words, if you don't apply these methods, your church.

42:23 Is going to be dead. Ironically, revivals have taken place without the application of these revivalistic methods. So that to me is an issue if it's just the result of means, and why does it happen when you don't apply these means? And that's I would contend, because it's a work of the Spirit over who we are not sovereign, We don't have the ability to manipulate the spirit. But we'll see that. Let's look at the development of revivalism. Then we will look at some passages of scripture tonight as we consider this inner light of scripture, Revivalism began as American phenomenon during the second grade Awakening. Okay, it's roots come out of the second grade Awakening. Obviously some of the very seeds of it come out of the first grade Awakening, but the second grade Awakening is really the soil for it.

43:03 Revivalism was refined and popularized by the ministry of Charles G. Finnie. Let's look at his background in life. Charles Grandison Finny was born in Connecticut in seventeen ninety two. He was the youngest child of a very large family of frontier farmers. Finny had natural leadership gifts and was quite tall. He was respected in his community. He did not attend college, but he read the law as an apprentice to an attorney. In those days, you didn't become an attorney by going to law school. You sat under another attorney and read law with him. He taught you the law, and you learned to practice from another attorney. You were an apprentice, and so he learned to read. I don't know that he practiced law for very long, but he did read the law and was trained to be an attorney. He grew up in a Baptist church and participated in revival services all right, that were holdovers from the first grade awakening.

43:51 He claims to have had an experience in which he was baptized into the Holy Spirit while in Adams, New York, all right, which I think he points to as his conversion. Let me say right off, this is a misunderstanding of the scriptures. The baptism of the Holy Spirit is not an experience. The baptism of the Holy Spirit is not an experience. The Bible doesn't command us to be baptized in the Holy Spirit. It says four we are all baptized into one body. Doesn't say go seek it. It tells us we are If you are a Christian, you have been baptized by the Spirit. What that means is you have been placed into the body of Christ. You are part of You are in Christ, You're part of Christ Church. It's not something you experienced. That's something God did.

44:33 Right now, this is really important because this is also a misunderstanding among Pentecostals and Charismatics, and that is that you have to seek the baptism of the Holy Spirit. The Bible never commands that. In fact, the Bible says and Romans eight nine, if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. If you don't have the Holy Spirit in dwelling you, you are not a believer. That's what Romans eight nine clearly teaches. Okay, so this idea that you have to somehow seek the Spirit or sometimes a differentiation will be made. You have the Spirit in dwelling you, but you don't have the Spirit's power yet. So you need to be fire baptized, or you have to have a spirit baptism, a second work of grace, or something like that, which is completely foreign to the New Testament. None of those things are there, but Finni claimed to have this baptism of the spirit.

45:14 Interesting, how Finni. You kind of see again some of the beginnings of the charismatic movement clearly taking shape here. But again we see Finny already before we even get to his views on the atonement and substitutionary toonement and penal substitution. Before we even get to that, we can see he was already going off the road from biblical orthodox Christianity. Very early on. In eighteen twenty one, Fetti studied under George Washington Gail. Needless to say, George Washington was a popular name for boys in eighteen twenty one in America to become a minister in the Presbyterian Church. Okay, Gail, from what I've read of him, seems to been a pretty good man.

46:01 Finny had misgivings about the doctrines of the Presbyterian denomination, as he records in his memoir, Unexpectedly to myself, they asked me if I received the Confession of Faith of Presbyterian Church. I think that's kind of funny that he thinks it's unexpected. You're gonna be ordained by the Presbyterians and they're going to ask you, do you agree with the Westminster Confession. That's what they believe. Okay, even today, that's the standard for being ordained as a Presbyterian minister. Do you agree with the Westminster Confession? I was teasing. I was at an ordination council on Friday for a young man who's one of our missionaries, Ben Michelak, and I. Was teasing him. I said, see, if you were Presbyterian, this would be a lot easier. You wouldn't have to write your own doctrinal statement and defend it. You could just say I agree with the Westminster Confession, and.

46:41 You'd be good to go. But and then they might ask you a few questions to make sure you could defend your ideas. But as Baptists, we expect people to write up their own doctoral statement. We read it and we look at it and go, do we agree with this? And part of that has to do with our individual soul, liberty things and some of that. But so, he said, he was surprise. He said, I had not examined it. He must to be ordained as a Presbyterian minister, but he hadn't read the Confession, that is, the large work containing the Catechisms and the Presbyterian Confession. This had made no part of my study. I replied that I received it for the substance of doctrines so far as I understood it, which is really. Clinton asked, I don't know to label that answer. You know what I'm saying.

47:28 I think that's a fair not trying to be political here, but I think our whole culture knows what it means if you're trying, if you're answering, like Bill Clinton sometimes answered things. Okay, and that. Is that you answered, and the substance of what you said was on them face value, somewhat true. But it really didn't tell the people what they needed. They couldn't get to the truth through your words, in other words, in other words, So basically what he said to this group of men who were going to ordain him as Apprenticabsterian minister was, as far as I understand your confession, which he didn't tell them he'd never read, I agree with it for substance of doctrine. But I spoke in a way that plainly implied I think that I did not pretend to know much about it. However, I answered honestly as I understood.

48:09 It at the time. So basically what he said was I agree with it as far as I understand it. But the implication was he didn't know it. And then he later in his life said, or later in his memoir even says that he started to read the confession decided he didn't agree with it at all. Then he used the platform that he was given as an ordained Presbyterian minister to attack the Presbyterian Confession. Now, let me ask you what would be the ethical thing to do there. The ethical thing to do would be to resign as a Presbyterian minister and go minister in a denomination you agree with not to cut down the Presbyterians while you're a Presbyterian minister. That doesn't make any sense. Charles Finney became active as an evangelist in Jefferson County, New York. Jefferson County. From what I understand is over like in Lake Ontario. I don't know, I don't know New York.

48:57 This is good stuff. You need to go. You need to find this revivalism and Charles Finni. Download this, download this down. You're getting some good church history. And we've already the other message we reviewed just briefly. You know, Charles Finnie and how Charles Finni shaped America. They talked about the same thing, about how he basically kind of lied about the whole thing. Okay, so Charles Finnie is not being painted in a good light, even before we get to some of the theology that we know is abhorrent. Worked well, I looked it up on Google Maps, but it's over toured Lake Ontario over that way. So this was definitely frontier in the early eighteen hundreds. Okay, I think it's still a fairly rural area. During this time, he applied the revivalistic methods that he was developing. Charles Finnie moved to New York City in eighteen thirty two and ministered at the Chatham Street Chapel and introduced some of his revivalistic methods in the urban setting. Later, he founded the Broadway Tabernacle in New York, New York, Finny became active in social reform. He often denounced slavery from the pulpit and became active in the abolitionist movement in eighteen thirty five.

50:07 Remember the abolitionist movement. Remember I was hesitant there. I got ready to read the word abolitionist. I was gonna say I almost mispronounced it, but I stopped myself because I was like, are we sure? So I went and looked it up. Abolitionist? Okay, yeah, And that is so this is a second confirmation, because when I first heard it, I'm like, well, did he was he an abolitionist? Did he did he want to abolish? I was going to say abolitionists, but abolitionists if I'm saying it correctly. I was like, okay, that that seems to be correct. So we've got two sources that confirms it was an abolitionist and he wanted to get rid of slavery. Now we've got to remember, Hey, this is how human beings are. We're complicated people, right, Sometimes there's good, sometimes there's bad.

50:51 There's a lot of the social things he did the abolitionist movement, trying to get rid of slavery, his college allowing I think one of the first colleges to allow African Americans and let women. There was a lot of these social things he did that were good, and we cannot deny that they were good, all right. Became a faculty member at Oberlin College in Ohio. Oberlin was the first college in America to accept women and black students alongside white male students. There's a reason he went to Oberlin, and it's because of his social activism. It appealed to him. And I'm not saying that Oberlin was a negative place. I'm just saying it appealed to Finny. Finny became the president of the college in eighteen fifty one. Oberlin College in the town worked to help fugitive slaves to the underground railroad and to fight the Fugitive Slave Act to oppose it. Finny was also active in the anti Masonic movement.

51:47 He was a Mason in his early life, but he rejected it as being anti Christian. And now let me say this, I don't know if anybody in our church is a Mason. I'm not sure our constitution says anything about it. But the basic tenets of of Masonry, of the Masonic group are antithetical to Biblical Christianity. However, I think there are a lot of people who are Masons that don't know what the Masons think. It's just a social gathering for many people, like the Elks club down the street or something like that, and they don't really think of it as a theological thing. They think of it more as a social club. And so I do recognize there are good Christian people who are Masons. The issue that you sometimes have, though, is that you have to take these secret oaths and it'd be very hard, I think as a local church for us, and we've never excluded anybody for this, but I think we'd have at tension here, and that is if we have a responsibility for somebody spiritually, but yet they have secret beliefs that we can never know. That would be difficult for us to have, you know, provoke one another eleven good works because you've got a secret society you're a member of, which makes things a little more difficult. I think Finny was right on some of these issues. He was probably right on some of his concerns with the Masonic group, Masonic Lodge, and those.

52:54 Kinds of things. In his personal life, Charles Finny was a widow or twice and was married three times, so he had two wives die and remarried for a third time. Charles Finni's theology, let's consider Phini's theology. Despite the fact that Charles Finny was ordained by the Presbyterian denomination, he rejected the theology of Presbyterianism. However, his rejection was not a rejection in favor of Baptist theology, but rather his own revivalistic theology. Finny stated, as soon. As I learned what were the unambiguous teachings of the Confession of Faith upon these points he's talking about the Westminster Confession, I did not hesitate at all, on all suitable occasions declare my descent from them. I repudiated and exposed them. Wherever I found that any class of persons were hidden behind these dogmas, I did not hesitate to demolish them. To the best of my ability, so he said and his own memoirs that he attacked as a Presbyterian minister, attacked the Westminster Confession, which is again questionable in my mind. Not that I think the Westminster Confession is right on every point. I just think that obviously I'm a Baptist, not a Presbyterian, but I think that it's on ethical to be a Prisonitarian minister and attack the confession of faith of the Presbyterian denomination. Again, find it another denomination to become a part of Phinea's viewser probably a reaction to the hyper Calvinism that was going on in New England in Finney's day, and it contributed to the dead spiritual atmosphere that provided fertile ground to Phinney's teachings. So a form of Hypercalvinism had been spreading.

54:20 Hypercalvinism is the belief that humans don't have a responsibility basically, and that especially that it's inappropriate to use human means to spread the Gospel. So Hypercalvinists are generally against missions, organizations and those kinds of things, and it depends on the level of the hyper Calvinist. A friend of mine relates that he was talking to a man one time, and the man could preach the gospel to him, but the man said, you know, I cannot believe the gospel because I'm not elect and that because therefore so therefore I can't believe it. I haven't been elected. How this man knew this, I don't know, because it seems to me that the commands to believe in repent her commands. And it seems like this was an excuse not to believe the gospel to me, and that the man believed that until somebody believed it was inappropriate, until they were regenerated, it was inappropriate for you to preach the gospel to them. That's an excessive kind of hypercalvinism.

55:17 So some of these kind of bizarre ideas were going on in Finny's area, and some of his ideas are over reactions to this. Finney's aberran views one of Phinney's most significant doctrinal heresies. And I'm not using these words lightly. Let me say this, I am not using these words lightly. I do believe, and. I'm going to say in my conclusion that Charles Finny was a false teacher. One of his most significant doctrinal heresies was his false teaching regarding justification. He denied that Christ's righteousness is the sole ground of our justification. Wow, so if this is correct, Charles Finny denied then that we are saved by himputed righteousness. Now, I will argue that you have a lot of evangelicals today who say they save, we're saved by imputed righteousness, and then and then just maybe inadvertently, inevitably, whatever you want to describe it. They almost turn into a workspace system, whether they like it or not, because people are works based by nature. But Finny seems to deny justification based off in imputed righteousness. We've already determined he wasn't a Christian, he wasn't saved, and this would be further support of that.

56:39 He denied that christ righteousness is the sole ground of our justification. Finny wrote, I could not but regard and treat this whole question of imputation, in other words, that Jesus righteousness is imputed to us by faith as a theological fiction somewhat related to our legal fiction of John Doe and Richard Rowe. I'm not sure really what he's referring to legally there, but what he's doing is he's taught talking about the imputation of Christ righteousness and justification as a theological fiction. This is a serious error that attacks the very heart I'm saying this, the very heart of sola fide. Sola fide comes from the Reformation, and it means faith alone. In other words, how are you justified? You believe in Christ, You're justified by faith alone, not faith plus works. Well, then how do you have righteousness?

57:22 Because Jesus was righteous and God imputes that righteousness to you. That's a very important doctrine. This undermines justification by faith alone. What he's saying here. Finni instead taught that sinners needed not only Christ's obedient life known as this, not only Christ's obedient life and death for justification, but also their own. That a person's continued obedience was a condition for justification. People's obedience is a conditional requirement for justification. Now, many Christians will not say what Phinni said. They will not say it's a conditional requirement for justification. But what they will say is, just if you are justified by imputed righteousness, you will prove it by doing this, this, and this, and if you don't do this, therefore you are never justified, meaning you have to do it in order to be justified. Well, the minute you say you have to do something to prove that you're justified, you're denying justification by an imputed righteousness.

58:17 This is what I'm always yelling about. So many people condemn Finny, but they really teach the same thing. They just use they play little games with language. Well, I'm not saying it's a requirement for justification. I'm just saying that if you're justified, you will do this and this and this, and if you don't, you are never justified, which you just then mean I have to do it in order to be justified. If you make any requirement of doing anything in order to be saved, prove save anything, then you've destroyed justification by an imputed righteousness. Imputed means it's simply God's righteousness accredited to my account doesn't make me righteous. It declares me to be what I am not.

59:03 In other words, not only do you have to respond and repent in faith to Jesus, but you have to keep obeying God, and if you don't, you will not be finally justified, declared righteous by God. But let's compare this to a few passages of scripture. John three, verse eighteen Finny was really wrong here, and that's why I say this is a serious false teaching. I will go further. He wouldn't just really wrong. He was straight up poetical teaching a false gospel. He did not he was denying Christianity, and he was teaching a counter Christianity in its place.

59:48 John three eighteen says, he that believeth on Him, that is on Jesus, is not condemned. So let me ask this. If you have to obey in order to be justified, how can you, the person who believes on him, not be condemned. So that's the point. Once you come and repentant faith, true saving faith to Jesus Christ, you're not condemned. But the one that believes not is condemned already. There's only two states. You either are justified or you're condemned. And you're justified or condemned on the basis of faith, not on what you do, will do, should do, could do, may do. Has nothing to do with what you do, and has everything to do with what Christ did. Your salvation is not it doesn't have anything with what you do.

1:00:33 It's everything what he did, and people say, well, there's a test. Well, whatever tests you give me to prove my faith, I'm going to give it to Jesus. And Jesus is going to say I did all of these things. I've passed your tests. Leave him alone. I'm the one who justifies. You cannot lay charge to anyone whom I've justified. God is the justifier. You can't charge anything to the elect because they've been saved by God. They've been justified by God by an imputed righteousness. Because that because he's condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. Let's ak at giant John five twenty five. Verily, verily, I say unto you, the hour is coming, and now is when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that here shall live. So are you spiritually alive when you hear the gospel and respond to it absolutely Galatians three thirteen. Galatians three thirteen says Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law being made a curse for us. Here's imputation our alien guilt. It was alien him, it was not his, our guilt was laid on him and his alien righteousness.

1:02:06 It was not native to us, it was alien to us, is credited to us. Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law being made a curse for us, for it is written, cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree Jesus. The way justification works is that he bore our sins and his body on that tree, and his righteousness is credited to us because it's not we need. Righteousness and we don't have it. We could go to Romans three and see something very similar. That God might be just and the justifier of the one that believes in Jesus. How does God maintain his justice toward people who are who are legitimately sinners? And that is because Jesus died in our place. Here we have a quote from Charles Finney's Systematic Theology. By sanctification being a condition of justification, the following things are intended.

1:02:59 He says sanctification is a condition of justification. Saying sanctification is a condition of justification. I'm sorry they're Christians who believe that. They would say they don't, but they do. They do that. How do they judge your justification by your sanctification. If you are not scan they will say, if you are not sanctified and you have never been justified, sanctification proves your justification. God will sanctify those whom He justifies, So then your justification is dependent upon sanctification. No sanctification, you prove you were never saved. It's the same thing Finny was teaching, we just worded differently. I reject Finny's version, and I reject the version taught by many Christians today. My justification is not judge. My justification is not judged by my sanctification. My justification is not dependent upon my sanctification. My sanctification is separate from my justification. My justification has nothing to do with what happens to me will do. It is all a what crist Christ did. My justification solely rest on what Christ did, not what happens to me at all in me at nothing about that. My sanctification has nothing to do with my justification. We have to make them distinct. If we blend them together, we basically then we have a justification based off infused righteousness, and then our sanctification. Well, you almost end up back to.

1:04:23 Catholicism, sanctification is that process by which, this is how we normally define it, the process by which we're made more like Christ. Okay, in our walk, we're all experiencing, if we're believers right now, experiencing sanctification. Some are at further levels in that walk, but we're all experiencing sanctification. But he's saying, it's a condition of justification, that present, full and entire consecration of heart and life to God and his service is an unalterable condition of the present pardon of past sin and of present acceptance with God, that the penitent soul remains justified. No law than this full hearted consecration continues. Another your justification ends if you don't continue in full hearted consecration to God's.

1:05:12 And the game we play is not that your justification ends. We come around and say you were never justified. So that's the game we play. See Fanny said your justification ends, and we just say, well, it never started, you were never justified. We play the exact same game. Fanny wasn't saying something that's not present everywhere within evangelicalism today. Well, if you don't do this, you don't do this, you don't do that, you were never saved. Okay, it's it's but bo. We're not saying you have to do it in order to be saved, but we're just saying if you don't do it, you were never saved, meaning I have to do it. You're just playing semantics.

1:05:55 It's false teaching. If he falls from his first love into the spirit of self pleasing, he falls again into a bond descent into the law, is condemned and must repent and do his first work, must turn to Christ and renew his faith and love as a condition of his salvation. What this means is he believes you could be justified then no longer justified than renew that and be justified again. Okay, that's false teaching, and this doesn't come to the level there are people out there who believe you can lose your salvation. That's not merely what he's saying here. He's actually attacking the very basis of our salvation. Okay, there are. People who believe Jesus' death and righteous life are the basis for our justification. But yet they believe that some people can apostatize who had already believed and lose their salvation.

1:06:43 All right, I don't believe that. But that's not the same level of error is saying that Jesus death and righteous life are not the basis of our justification. Do you see the difference. That's a huge difference. Second false teaching of Charles Finny. The necessary implication of Finney's rejection of judicial justiceification by judicial what I mean is when God declares us righteous on the basis of jesus righteousness, Are we actually righteous? No, Jesus is, but his righteousness is imputed, is credited to us, and so therefore God declares us righteous. By judicial what I mean is in God's law court. In other words, So, for example, do we understand this a little bit? I think something like a marriage would be something like this. So when you go many of you are married, some of you hope to be someday.

1:07:32 When you go to the pastor or the justice of the peace or whatever, and you get married, what changes about your nature when you get married? When the person says I pronounce you man and wife, what changes about your nature? Do you become a different person? No? Sometimes your spouse might wish you had, but you don't. Right. What happens is your state changes. The government now declares you married, your judicial legal standing is different because you're now no longer single, but you're married, and so that means in legal settings there are various situations in which you're gonna be treated differently because you're married, all right, that your spouse is gonna be partner with you in things. And so that's an illustration over simplistic illustration, but a illustration of the fact that God has judicially declared us righteous, not because we're actually righteous, but on the basis of Jesus righteousness and his judicial justification. Because he rejected this, he also rejected what we call the penal satisfaction view of the Atonement, that is that Jesus daff paid the penalty that satisfied God for sin.

1:08:45 Now, what he's describing again is the idea of our positional standing for God with God because of christ imputed righteousness. Positionally, I'm a new creature. Old has passed away, all things have become new. Practically, I'm not new. I'm still old. I'm still a sinner. Thing has changed. Justification does not change me practically. It changes me positionally, does not change my nature. And I know that goes against much of evangelicalism teaching because they're like, no, no, no, no, you have to change. You have to change, you have to change. And if you don't change enough, you were never saved. Well, then that means you don't believe I was saved by an imputed righteousness. You believe I was saved by an infused righteousness. Not only was this a problem of Finny, it's a problem of modern evangelicalism. It is everywhere. There's a high probability it's in your church as we speak.

1:09:33 And then he goes on to say, Finny, deny penal substitution. Now I'll stop there because we're sixty nine minutes. You need to go listen to the rest of that. Revivalism and Charles Finny revivalism and Charles Finny revivalism and Charles Finny. Hang on, let me pull up the name of the church. I think it's Calvary Baptist. Let me pull it up here Revivalism and Charles fin Our Baptist Heritage, Calvary Baptist Church. Please look it up, please find it. Please listen to the rest of it. I implore you to do so. A lot of times our reviews lead me utterly frustrated and irritated. This one is a pleasure to listen to.

1:10:15 This one is great. I only wanted to go about thirty minutes on this. We've gone seventy minutes because this is one of those that's absolutely awesome. We've heard a lot the last review we did on Charles Finney also, even though at first I was a little bit more opposed to it, again they did a great job. So we're hearing some really good stuff and that's always positive. I like when the reviews turn out more positive. I never intend them to be negative, but you never know what's going to happen. But I'll stop right there because now it's about one hundred and forty seven degrees inside the studio, so yeah, here in West Texas, about one hundred and twelve degrees currently outside. And when I broadcast have to turn off the AC unit because well, it makes a lot of noise. And when I do that, who it gets high to stop right there. That's some good stuff. That's some good stuff. We're off to a good start. We're off to a good start in our look at Charles Finny. That's some good stuff. So please go listen to the rest of that, please go go listen to the rest of that. All right, Thanks for listening everyone, have a great day, a great couple of days focusing on Charles Finny and let's remember our ignorance of the past does not negate its influence on us in the present. Thanks for listening. God bless