What are the historical roots of what is now called "modern evangelism?" Many of the concepts that make up modern evangelism can be traced back to the eighteenth century and the First Great Awakening. Although the Awaking was mostly positive, there were some seeds of unorthodoxy that crept in near the end. Near the end, you began to see more preachers who emphasized more on the emotional, personal, and physical aspect of a persons reaction, rather then their inward change of the heart. This movement grew exceedingly through the years until man no longer relied on Holy Spirit to move men's hearts unto salvation but on their own means and methods.

The National Center for Family Integrated Churches welcomes Scott Diggs with the following message entitled, Roots of Modern evangelism. The topic I'm going to dig into is the invitation system, which is one of those aspects of revivalism. So, first of all, I just want you to understand the difference between revival, spirit-led, and revivalism. It's kind of man-made procedures to try to help induce the same. So I'm going to Open up with a quote from Ian Murray, from his book, Evangelicalism Divided.

This is a great book, and I believe that all men need to understand what has happened in the 20th century. I think the hardest history to interpret is kind of the history that we live in. I don't know if you're like me, but when I was in school, it was boring. The history that I was part of, I just felt it was boring. It was just kind of what's going on.

It's only happened a few years ago. And it was kind of hard to, I think, harder to interpret kind of what's going on in the more recent history and put it in the context of overall history. So this particular quote from Murray is one that I read and when I read this paragraph near the end of the book, I read it again and I read it again and then I typed it up and I read it to my wife and I think I read it to Kevin and Deenika. I read it to anyone that I could come in. I read it to my elders.

I read it to Scott Brown when I visited. And so we're going to use this quote from Murray, which is, I think, a beautiful summary well said by someone who studied revivalism. I think Murray's about 90. Probably studied this topic for over half a century. Okay, so listen to not me, but let's listen to Ian Murray.

He starts off on page 254 quoting someone else and then he's gonna he's gonna respond to this quote. Quote, in substantive terms the continuity of conservative Protestant theology in America is plainly discernible. From a distance it would appear as though little if any change has occurred in the past century. Evangelicals by and large have been successful in maintaining the cognitive boundaries which encompass theological orthodoxy as they have defined it. Yet, upon closer scrutiny, one can see that this continuity is far from perfect.

Qualitatively, there are some noteworthy differences. There is less sharpness. There is less boldness. And accordingly, a measure of opaqueness in their theological vision that did not exist in previous generations, at least to the present extent. David Wells has said, the New Testament strongly opposes those who teach error, and today any kind of witness against heresy and error, if not altogether silenced, has become muted to an extraordinary degree.

Even the mildest assertion of Christian truth today sounds like a thunderclap, because the well polished civility of our religious talk has kept us from hearing much of this kind of thing. A dynamic would appear to be an operation that strikes at the very heart of evangelical self-identity. What then is this dynamic? I believe that all evidence points in one direction. It is that evangelicals, while commonly retaining the same set of beliefs, have been tempted to seek success in ways in which the New Testament identifies as worldliness.

Worldliness is departing from God. It is a man-centered way of thinking. It proposes objectives which demand no radical breach with man's fallen nature. It judges the importance of things by the present and material results. It weighs success by numbers.

It covets human esteem and wants no unpopularity. It knows no truth for which it is worth suffering. It declines to be a fool for Christ's sake. Worldliness is the mind of the unregenerate. It adopts idols and is at war with God.

Because the flesh still dwells in the Christian, he's far from immune from being influenced by this dynamic. It is of believers that it is said, the flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh, and these are contrary to one another. It is professing Christians who are asked, do you not know that friendship with the world is amenity with God, James 4? And are commanded, do not love the world and keep yourselves from idols, 1 John 2 and 5. Apostasy generally arises in the church just because this danger ceases to be observed.

The consequence is that spiritual warfare gives way to spiritual pacifism. And in the same spirit, the church devises ways to present the gospel which neutralize any offense. The antithesis between regenerate and unregenerate is passed over, and it is supposed that the interests and ambitions of the unconverted can somehow be harnessed to win their approval for Christ. Then when this approach achieves results as it will, no more justification is thought to be needed. The rule of scripture has given place to pragmatism.

The apostolic statement for a still pleased men, I would not be a servant of Christ, Galatians 1, has lost its meaning. No Christian deliberately gives way to the spirit of the world, but we may all do so unwittingly and unconsciously. That this has happened on a large scale in the 20th century as to be seen in the way in which the interests and priorities of contemporary culture have come to be mirrored in the churches. The antipathy to authority and to discipline, the cry for entertainment by the visual image rather than by the words of scripture, the appeal of the spectacular, the rise of feminism, the readiness to identify power with numbers, the unwillingness to make beliefs a matter of controversy. All these features so evident in the world's agenda are now also to be found in the Christian scene.

Instead of the churches revolutionizing the culture, the reverse has happened. Churches have been converted to the world. David Wells, again, has written, The stream of historic orthodoxy that once watered the evangelical soul is now damned by a worldliness that many fail to recognize as worldliness because of the cultural innocence with which it presents itself. It may be that Christian faith, which has made many easy alliances with modern culture in the past few decades, is also living in a fool's paradise, comforting itself about all the things God is doing while losing its character, if not its soul. The same worldliness has come to affect the way in which the gospel is often presented to the unconverted.

Leonard Sweet has pointed out that evangelicals and liberals are often similar in the inducements which they propose to their hearers why they should become Christians. Both offer such things as more success in life, a happier marriage, an integrated personality, more meaning to existence, and so on. In other words, the reasons for becoming a Christian are pragmatic and they are presented with stories of how it has worked for others. Neither the evangelical nor the liberal, says Sweet, is prone to provide the answer to the question that substantively engages issues of authority and identity which is, why should I become a Christian? Because it's true, end of quote.

Is that not a marvelous summary? So we're gonna dig into one example of this dynamic in the modern evangelism, what we may be called, what we may call the invitation system. So that's a summary of what I just read. Okay now we will dig into, so here's our roadmap. We're going to define the invitation system.

I'm not gonna go super deep here. I'm gonna kinda make the assumption that you get that picture of what that is. We're gonna primarily focus on its historical roots, and then with our time left, we're gonna look at biblical and pragmatic support, and then kind of review a list of theological and practical dangers. So number one, the terms. The altar call.

I think we've all heard this. This term is, I would call it a positive term. It's used by those who use the system, the altar call. Decisionism I would consider a negative term. You heard it mentioned in probably a number of the talks today decisional regeneration.

This would be a critical term. And then finally the term invitation is probably more of a neutral term. In a sense there was an invitation of sorts given last night, not to make a decision for Christ, but to come forward and to discuss what was talked about last night and to answer questions in one-on-one scenarios. Okay. So my definition of the term is, of what I mean by invitation system, is the formulaic calling of unbelievers to make a decision for Christ by use of an altar call, a public profession by raising hands, walking the aisle, a public pledge.

Usually these encompass reciting a sinner's prayer, kind of a repeat after me scenario, maybe even signing a decision card, and it's believed that this method helps to secure salvation. Okay? This system is of modern origin. This is a new thing in recent history. Now, Before I dive in, let's talk about what is kinda not up for debate.

And we'll lay that down as a starting point. First of all, scripture requires the foolishness of preaching. This is, the message must be spoken. And 1 Corinthians 1. Second, it is right and good to invite men to Christ.

We should invite men to respond to the gospel. Matthew 11. Third, men are responsible to repent and believe. Acts 17. And finally, there are true converts that come out of these kinds of events.

They may be low in number, and I think we'll touch on that later, but this is not to say that the Lord is, he's gracious. He saved me, and I'm on a journey like everybody else. But the fact that the Lord is gracious doesn't mean that he sanctions these kinds of methods. And in fact, I believe over time, as these errors have become more and more kind of prevalent, I believe that that grace, so to speak, is subsiding to a large extent as we have a system that's replaced the more historical ways of simply preaching the gospel and people responding to the call. Okay, now what is up for debate though is that engineering of responses from believers, or from non-believers.

So let's step back we're gonna look at the 18th century. I'm gonna take it for granted you know and we'll touch on it but essentially for 1, 700 years this is not the concept of offering an invitation with a sinner's prayer and a repeat after me in a mass kind of scenario is kind of unknown. So in the 18th century though, we're gonna talk briefly about the first great awakening. This was a mainly positive, I'm titling just the first great awakening in general, It's generally historic orthodoxy in the ways that the Gospel was presented. Obviously, the spirit moves, large numbers of people came to Christ.

And its leaders, people like Theodore Frelinghuisen, William Tennant and his son Gilbert, Samuel Davies, Jonathan Edwards. Edwards himself was not just a participant, but a careful observer, and in his book, a narrative of surprising conversions, he provides a detailed account of the famous revival at Northampton in 1735, and he provides a broad overall scriptural view and assessment as he attempts to discern the wheat from the chaff. Yet, near the end of the first great awakening, there was some, you know, I'll call it seeds of unorthodoxy being planted. Edwards witnessed this And he noticed or noted that as this era kind of creeped in, that the first great achement, the revival of that era began to subside as era kind of came in. One example is this, and you can read about Reverend James Davenport, had his own itinerary preaching ministry, and he began to emphasize emotional, personal, physical, visible aspects of conversion.

He had his own kind of visions. He would go into churches, he would be very disruptive. And unlike Edwards, he didn't carefully assess the fruit of so-called converts. Okay, so on to the 19th century and the Second Great Awakening. This I'm briefly defining as a period of novelty and invention.

So this is about 100 years later. So roughly it's the early 1700s first great awakening, early 1800s second great awakening. So by the end of the second great awakening, into the 1830s, a systematic way to gain positive responses from the hearers was devised and came into prominence with Charles Finney. He devised what we know today as the altar call was popularized by Finney as the mourner's bench or the anxious bench. Finney came on the scene later and the Second Great Awakening was probably 20 years or so in progress.

A contemporary of Finney, Albert Dodd of Princeton, pointed out the newness of the practice, and he showed that this method was without proper historical precedent. In his review of Finney's Lectures on Revival, Dodd stated that one would search in vain for a single example of this practice before the 1820s. In my opinion, this may slightly overstate the case, but the point is that throughout history, up to that point in time, when the gospel was preached, men were invited to Christ and not to decide at the end of a sermon whether to perform some physical action. This was the essence of the Anxious seat, creating the circumstances or pressures to gain a positive response. This core methodology was carried forward into what we know today as the invitation system or the altar call.

Finney believed that new birth and revival were not miracles. If you can believe that he believed that, he did. And he believed for revival to occur, no, he believed that they were states accomplished by means of the proper use of the will. Salvation was not dependent upon the sovereignty of God, but the ability of man. For a man to be regenerated, he must be excited to action.

And for revival to occur, such excitement had to be engineered on a much larger scale. To further this end, Finney developed what are known today as the new measures of which this was one. Now, I'm going to read you a quote from Finney's lectures on revivals of religion, where he teaches that the Anxioceet, the forerunner to the altar call, is a replacement for baptism. Quote, the church has always felt it necessary to have something of the kind to answer this very purpose. And the purpose he's talking about in context is help in overcoming the person's will.

In the days of the Apostles, baptism answered this purpose. The Gospels preached to the people, and then all those who were willing to be on the side of Christ were called on to be baptized. It held the precise place that the anxious seat does now as a public manifestation of their determination to be Christians." End quote. That statement is bewildering on many, many, many fronts. You can see the very low view of scripture.

And it falls to the background. Finney puts himself on par with the apostles, or he lowers the apostolic inspiration, whichever you prefer, and he makes them innovators like himself. Can you imagine advising something that you felt replaced baptism? The fact that it became known that this, among other things, became known as the new measure shows that it was not previously practiced, it was new. In my study of anything, whenever anyone defines something as new, it's really true, it's new.

And it wasn't there before. And this was indeed new. We don't see anything of this kind in Whitfield, Wesley, Edwards, et cetera. So as a summary of sorts, we can look at, contrast the first and second great awakenings. The nature of the first great awakening was more proclamation oriented, preaching the foolishness of the gospel, and it was God-centric.

In the Second Great Awakening, we have the concepts of persuasion and kind of a man-centric way of thinking. In terms of its illustration, they were biblical. A lot of preaching today lacks biblical illustrations. It has personal illustrations, which may not be so helpful in the end. It doesn't go to the Bible and find us those scriptural examples to build the biblical knowledge of the congregation and build the congregation's ability to have the interest in scripture and to learn more about scripture.

In the second great awakening, there are stories to convince. Application was we wait on God, God's spirit moves. We wait for his mercy to be poured out. In the Second Great Awakening we see the need for a decision and a rather immediate decision. We need to take advantage of a moment and make a decision.

And as for the preacher's view of the congregation. People should have faith. Everyone should have faith, but they can't. They don't have that ability because God hasn't given them that ability. In the Second Great Awakening, it's all people can have faith.

They just won't. They're stubborn. They're unwilling. There's a problem of the will. As you look at this slide, I don't know what comes to your mind in terms of the Second Great Awakening, but it's the summary of these principles of the Second Great Awakening here, it feels very up-to-date, very up-to-date.

Okay, so before we continue, let's take a brief look. We're not gonna drill in detail here, but let's just take a brief look at some of Finney's other theology. Finney was a generally, broadly unorthodox on a number of historically very important topics. And he was opposed to the doctrine of original sin. He was Pelagian, he did not believe.

He thought it was, direct quote, "'anti-scriptural and nonsensical dogma.'" He opposed the imputation of Christ's righteousness. He opposed the biblical teaching of regeneration, which is probably obvious by now. Same thing with his view on sin. He opposed substitutionary Atonement, instead he preferred the moral influence theory of the atonement. This taught that the purpose and work of Christ was to bring positive moral change to humanity.

He opposed the Reformation teaching of justification. He was generally hostile to reform theology, which I think if he had studied may have been help to him in not devising new methods. We need old methods. If I was a candidate and ran for office, I would be the old, I would, you know, not, wouldn't be popular, but let's go back, you know, let's not invent new things. He strategically and purposely conformed his theology to match his revivalist practices, And these are my words, he was a pragmatist and from my point of view, in the fullest theological sense of the term.

And he believed that methods could produce results in a salvation sense. Okay, now Finney did have his contemporary critics. R.L. Dabney commented, we have come to coolly accept that 45 out of 50 converts, so called, would apostatize. If you want to read about the antithesis, so to speak, of Finney, you could read about Asahel Nettleton, who died in 1844.

Banner of Truth has a biography written by Bonar on Nettleton. Nettleton assessed his converts. As he was struggling with these new methods and seeing what was going on, this caused him to do his own assessment, and he did that. He reviewed converts in Ashford, Connecticut, and found three out of 82 had fallen away. He reviewed converts in Rocky Hill, Connecticut.

And 26 years after the fact, their pastor was saying that all were still in the faith, standing strong. So Nettleton rigidly refused to offer public altar calls, believing that it prematurely reaped what could turn out to be false converts. As it turned out, Finney's methods were picked up by D.L. Moody in the late 1800s and continued into the 20th century with Billy Sunday and Billy Graham. Now granted, these men were much more theologically orthodox than Finney.

Nevertheless, these popular evangelists contributed to the widespread acceptance and use of this system. So basically, over the past 300 years, we see an orthodox trend to unorthodoxy beginning with historic revival discernment and through a phase of novelty and invention. This then became the evangelical mainstream in the 20th century and we'll look at this next. Okay, as I get started in the 20th century, it's going to feel a little disconnected and hopefully I'll be able to bring this back around. But I need to lay a little groundwork and establish a relationship between Harold John Auchinge and Billy Graham, and a little bit about this historical context in which this relationship grew, which is in the 20th century.

Graham was born in 1918 in Charlotte. He went to Bob Jones and Florida Bible Institute. He converted from the ARP church to the Southern Baptist Convention, went to Wheaton as well, Married Ruth Bell, became a local pastor, and he began as a fundamentalist, a traditional evangelical. Today the term fundamentalist is a, we generally think of as a derogatory term because that's how it's ended up being defined over the last 80 years or so but in the early 20th century those terms were synonyms evangelicals and fundamentalists were essentially synonyms. The Scopes trial I think is a good is a good marker, essentially was a fundamentalist battle of sorts, kind of a change and the loss of, the loss of this case, so to speak, although it wasn't technically lost, but it really was lost, ended up in fundamentalists retreating from society to quite a degree, and becoming kind of on the cusp of this wave of fundamentalist popularity, that wave ebbed to a great degree after 1925.

In 1934, Charles Fuller's Old Fashioned Revival Hour begins on the radio, and I'll tie a few of these things together in a minute. In 1943, Harold John Akenge founded the National Evangelistic Association. Akenge was part of the the Westminster break from Princeton in 1929. He finished up his final year at Westminster and was part of that whole break. In summary, with the subsequent founding of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and the contentedness of, for lack of a better term, historical fundamentalism, historical evangelicalism, to be content with, as Paul Washer has said the other day, just content with the smallness, content with preaching of the gospel locally and local churches and not attempting to gain popularity from the world.

Akingay, we also have in the middle of this, we have this denominational slide with all the large denominations are moving liberal. And there is a struggle for control of the denominations liberal and conservative for lack of a better term kind of battles over a number of issues. Akingei emerges from that and essentially determines that he would like to combat that retreat from society and instead of separating from the denominations, he decides that he would like to put the wheels in motion to infiltrate those denominations with godly, fundamental, historical, evangelical men and doctrines, and he sets up a number of different things to achieve these ends. You've probably heard Doug Phillips talk about, I'm trying to remember the exact terminology, kind of the conspiracy of friendships, how small numbers of people can massively have an impact on culture. And in my opinion, this would be one of those examples.

It's really Akingei and Graham with the financial backing of Fuller and J. Howard Pugh that sets, in the invention or the definition of something called Neo or New Evangelicalism, attempts to win the day in the denomination. This is a lovely goal. Wouldn't it be nice if our mainline denominations could take a dramatic swing back to historical orthodoxy, and in many cases, their roots. But it doesn't quite work out that way.

So where are we? We are 1934. So that was a little more background knocking, National Evangelistic Association. You have this national, a new national conservative, theoretically, group, an association of churches and individuals, okay? Graham, in 1944, is beginning his first attempts at mass evangelism in kind of the mid-40s, and he is the first full-time employee of Youth for Christ, and he begins traveling the world, and teaching people how to organize youth rallies.

In 1947 then, Fuller Seminary is founded by Aking-Ge. Charles Fuller and the Revival Hour program becomes the financial engine to fund Fuller Seminary, and Fuller Seminary is funded with that idea to train men to conservative men, fundamentalist evangelical men, that theoretically differ on the one topic, which is we don't separate, we infiltrate. And the seminary is founded to be kind of the scholarly engine to produce men with the credentials because you need the credentials to get into the mainline denominations and to rise through the ranks of the mainline denomination. So Akenge was the first president. Graham was on the founding board of Fuller, and Akenge became part of the board of the Billy Graham Association, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.

And in this time here in 1947, Akenge writes several years later, not many years later, but the use of the term new evangelicalism is a new term, and That's the definition I've given you in my description here in a lengthy way, the definition of new evangelicalism. Then in the very late 40s into the early 50s, we have the early Graham Crusades, which have kind of shocking numbers of people kind of coming forward in the invitations, and the LA Crusade in 49 puts Billy Graham in the national spotlight. William Randolph Hearst of all people, probably not a person we think of as an evangelical Christian, really took, and I haven't studied this in detail, but you know took a liking to Graham for some reason. Maybe it sold papers, didn't dig into that, but also gave the Graham Association lots of publicity in these early crusades. He was invited by Akenge to go to Boston.

Akenge was a pastor of Park Street Church. Fuller Seminary was on the west coast, so he was president in absentia, I think is the Latin term of the seminary. And during these three years of these early crusades, Akingey really becomes a mentor and confidant to Graham, and Graham writes, you can find it, he didn't really make a move without talking to Akingey. In 1950, the Graham's Hour of Decision radio program went on the air. And then in 1954, there was a large three-month London Crusade.

The LA Crusade you can think of as kind of national spotlight for Graham. You can think of the London Crusade as international spotlight. In 1956, Christianity Today magazine was founded by Graham and his father-in-law Nelson Bell. But the editorial support, I think it's fair to say it was founded by Graham and his father-in-law, but the editorial support. And the magazine was really run by, in my opinion, by Aking-Gey and Fuller Seminary and people that came and were associated with Fuller.

In 1957, there was a crusade in New York City. This is a significant event because leading up to this a lot of the prestige and influence kind of was growing as this popularity, the magazine, the newspaper, the early success of these mass evangelistic events. And Graham began to draw criticism from the fundamentalists who thought that the National Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches' affiliations, which were affiliations for these crusades, you need to have a broad, to have a broad acceptance in the city, you have to have a broad kind of coalition from lots of different groups and lots of different denominations and associations. And so the fundamentalists were not so happy about this. This signaled compromise with modern and kind of corrupting influences.

And the New York Council, the New York Crusade itself was sponsored by the Protestant Council of New York, which is a very liberal, liberal group. So this results in kind of this break with the fundamentalists. So there's this, Marsden has a book called Reforming Fundamentalism. There's a sense where there was this attempt to reform fundamentalism and some of its areas where it frankly I think needed some reforming. But the swing to the other way, and essentially you have this new evangelicalism now, which is becoming very distinct from fundamentalism on some pretty core topics.

In response to the criticism, Graham said, I tend to go anywhere sponsored by anybody to preach the gospel of Christ if there are no strings attached to my message. The one badge of Christian discipleship is not orthodoxy, but love. Christians are not limited to any church. The only question is, are you committed to Christ? We don't have time to go into a lot of this here, but Now love, and we certainly agree with the preeminence of love, love needs to be behind everything, but this is not a supreme virtue that allows us to engineer the scriptures and replace baptism, for example, to erase original sin, to say, well, maybe Jesus wasn't born of a virgin.

Orthodoxy is important. So in the end, Graham admitted that crusade had little impact in terms of Bible sales, church membership, things like this. 1957 began the first kind of national broadcast on ABC, friendships with Eisenhower and Nixon administrations. And So then 1966, Graham organized the International Congress on World Evangelism in Berlin. 1200 evangelical leaders, evangelical I guess I would probably put in quotes, from 104 nations.

That's almost half the countries on, over half the countries on the earth at the time. So you see there's a strategy for infiltration. We have a national association, we have a seminary, We have a magazine, we have international associations, and we have a profile with, a publicity profile with world leaders and things of this nature. So Now, you might say, okay, maybe you're getting the connection, but I want to move now to kind of tie it all together with Akingei's 1966-66, the year I was born, World Congress on Evangelism message, what I'm titling historic equivalency. Okay, so let me go to, now remember, Murray talked about that qualitative dynamic.

And hopefully you see that qualitative dynamic, You're seeing high quality to lower quality. If you don't see that it's going to get very clear. I'm going to quote, you can go out to the Wheaton website, it has all these materials, you can even hear, like I listened to Akingay, you can listen to this message, for example. And there's a wealth of information out there. So in 1966 at the World Congress on Evangelism held in Berlin, Akenge, in his message on the basic theology of evangelism, openly embraced Finney and connected his methodology to the modern invitation system.

And he does more than that. Okay, he's gonna connect it all the way back to the Reformation. So, quote, a biblical foundation supports all great movements of evangelism. The Reformation, in a literal sense, was a revival. The leaders of the Reformation embraced the truths of the New Testament and sought to reform the existing church in accordance with these truths.

They discovered that the church was unreformable and they themselves were excluded by excommunication from its membership and benefits. Therefore, Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and their co-laborers returned to the New Testament Christianity, though it meant separation from the Roman Catholic Church of the day. I think that generally, fine, right, agree. On to the next paragraph from Akingay again. The evangelical revival, by this he means the first great awakening, under the Westleys and Whitfield occurred two centuries later in the recovery of wide ideas of Christian experience that have been obscured.

From the Puritans, they inherited the emphasis on the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. From the Lutherans, they received the truth of justification by faith. They rediscovered the truth of the witness of the Holy Spirit and of personal assurance. Okay, so we see a connection with the Reformation kinda just like the First Great Awakening. Okay?

Generally, I'm following him so far. Okay? I do think it's interesting that Akenge does not mention Edwards when he mentions the first great awakening. But okay, next, the Finney revival, reading again here, third paragraph, the Finney revival as Akinge calls it, this is the second great awakening, of the mid 19th century came from the emphasis upon the law and the gospel. Charles G.

Finney's preaching of the law produced conviction and his offering of the gospel brought comfort to the hearts of convicted men. Finney's emphasis was in accord with such great confessions as the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Heidelberg Catechism, wherein the law is given its proper place in Christian life. So note the connection here with Finney in historic confessions. We kind of briefly, we don't have time, but he clearly didn't believe very key components of these confessions. And also note the attribution of this revival to one person, It's called the Finney Revival.

Okay, so the Reformation was a revival just like the first great awakening, just like the second great awakening. Now I think you can see the departure and why I'm calling it historic equivalency. Today, the Billy Graham Evangelistic meetings emphasize the Bible is a sword of the Spirit. Dr. Graham's often repeated clause, the Bible says, is characteristic of his evangelistic emphasis.

Hence, in these various movements, we see that evangelism was based upon biblical theology, " end quote. So The historical train has arrived at its station. So Reformation is like the First Great Awakening is like the Second Great Awakening is like modern kind of mass evangelism invitation-oriented events. It's not mentioned here, but modern evangelistic meetings are broadly ecumenical. We don't have time to go into this, but Roman Catholic and Anglican leaders play a large part in supporting these.

In the past, they've included men like Mervyn Stockwood of Southwark Cathedral in London, Archbishop Michael Ramsey, and other men who denied the virgin birth, the bodily resurrection of Christ, or sought to put the Anglican Church back under Roman control. I haven't done a full study of all these folks, but you can just kind of look them up and look up a few of those names. The reason I mention this is that the qualitative difference. Akenge is equating the modern events with the Reformation. You could come out of a modern event and get sent back to a Roman Catholic church.

That's pretty different from the Reformation. So, you can, this is a significant, significant leap. I'm gonna pick up Akingue again. He goes on now, and he subtly, well, I took the word subtly out, he doesn't subtly, he acknowledges the novelty of the invitation system by saying, quote, yet we witness two attitudes towards the giving of an invitation. Some ministers, much used of God, have never taken an invitation to accept Jesus Christ and will not permit such an invitation to be given in their pulpits.

I refer to men like the late Dr. A.W. Tozer, Donald Gray Barnhouse, and Martin Lloyd Jones, who was still living at the time. On the other hand, invitations extended in the ministry of Billy Graham and others have found thousands responding affirmatively to the opportunity to accept Christ. In both instances, there have been valid and permanent conversions.

I've personally known many of them. Here's the statement. We must conclude that we cannot be exclusive in our methodology, nor can we sit in judgment upon those who use a different methodology in evangelism from our own. God is sovereign, God honors his word when it's preached, he attends it by the ministry of the Holy Spirit, and it may be done in different ways." End quote. So here you see full acceptance of these new methods being put on par with historic methods.

I don't even wanna say it's a historic method when we just preach the gospel. I guess it's not a method. We just preach the gospel. So that concludes kind of our brief historic review. And we see that equivalency.

Now with the time that I have left, which is little, we'll go through a few of the arguments that supporters of the system use. There are four primary arguments. There's a scriptural argument. There is a psychological argument. There is the argument of the visible demonstration.

And then finally there is a practical argument. On to the scriptural argument. The idea is that Christ always called people publicly. Texts such as, you need to confess me before men or confess me with your mouth. These are taken to be supporting of the system.

We'll look at, look at Matthew 10, which Scott Brown alluded to last night. He mentioned it, even mentioned this in very brief form. I'll just dive in a little bit deeper here. Matthew 10, 32. Everyone who confesses me before men, I will confess him before my father who's in heaven.

Whoever denies me before men. I will also deny him before my Father in heaven. So these verses supposedly support that Jesus demanded a public profession of faith in him. However, we can see here just from the context Jesus is not speaking to unbelievers. He's speaking to his 12 disciples.

He's actually called them apart from the crowds and he's speaking to them. Also, the context is in a missionary endeavor. As the disciples went from town to town, he encouraged them to confess him before men. Christ is not teaching some kind of formula that one can repeat. And he's not saying by an act of a confession that sinners become believers.

That he's not saying, he's not suggesting that maybe some psychological pressure would help kind of lock in, right? None of those kinds of things are in the passage. It has nothing to really do with unbelievers. The passage has more to do about perseverance. And this is a lovely quote from Gardner Spring.

There's one grace you cannot counter-fed, and that is the grace of perseverance. He who endures to the end will be saved. You can't fake endurance. Okay, I'm going to, Romans 10 is another one. Revelation 3, I stand at the door and knock.

Again, a message delivered to churches, the Laodicean church, this lukewarm church. And Jesus saying, I can't even get in the door, you've closed the door of the congregation, right? The context here is not unbelievers. Okay, next, a psychological argument. The story goes, so responding publicly to a gospel appeal, proponents have said, coming out publicly seals and settles it.

There's something about coming forward and standing here. It's an outward expression of an inward decision. The implied meaning seems to be that a step made publicly is more likely to be decisive and irrevocable. There's something about coming forward and standing in front of the congregation that helps the individual be confident that he's made a decision that honors God. So in this argument we see unwillingness is now elevated to be the basic human problem, not sin.

It's my unwillingness to to go forward. And the problem of overcoming that unwillingness, there's an appeal to kind of modern behavioral psychology. This is psychology, not scripture, in my opinion. Emotions are a poor indicator. We have the concepts of, in the scripture, we do need to confess publicly, but in scripture there is a private versus a public action, right?

We're called to give in private, we're called to pray in private, we're called to fast in secret. Okay, next, the visible demonstration argument. If I could go back to the psychology argument just for one moment. This strikes me more, you know, pressure, you know, past pressure when I was 25 to join a health club. You know, to sign, to, if I don't do it now, the price is gonna go up and this is something really special, or an emotional appeal at the end of a, you know, for me to give or to make a donation.

That's the psychology, those are the human elements. This doesn't apply to the offering of the Gospel. The Spirit moves. I don't overcome my unwillingness by sheer will and taking advantage of a moment and somehow locking it in publicly by stepping forward. Those are all marketing ideas, not, you know, not Holy Spirit ideas.

So the visible demonstration argument. Those who respond are a visible demonstration of the power of God's word. This convicts those who are not saved and encourages the saved. The idea is you have lots of people going forward, people witness that and they're encouraged or they think, well maybe I should get up too, other people are doing it. To be fair, most modern adherents of the invitation system, they don't believe that going forward makes you saved, but they are aware of these dramatic fall away weights, which are estimated to be 85 to 97%, probably in the very high 90s.

Yet they still persist in publishing these misleading numbers about the number of people who come forward. They're counting people that come forward. They're not counting those who they, they don't apply the methodology of who they think may really be saved to dramatically reduce the numbers down to the 3%, right? It's not good for the balance sheet. Okay, finally, the practical argument.

The altar call provides an easy way to present new converts to the church. So here we have, We have local, we're talking about mass evangelistic events, that's mainly what I focused on, but the altar call in a local church, there's local manifestations too, right? So the idea here is in the practical way, in a local church, the altar call provides an easy way to present new converts to the church. It provides the opportunity for members to join the church, and without an altar call, it's more difficult for people to publicly identify with Christ or the local church. I would submit that the baptism is, this is a good way to do this.

And what occurs to me is, well what does this say about a local church's fellowship if The only time they can do this is at the end of the service for like a couple of minutes. I think it speaks as to that church's fellowship. It feels like maybe they're a little bit more on a schedule. You have an hour, you have 15 minutes, and then a 45 minute Sunday school, and you need to keep people moving. You have a number of people come forward, and it's just it's kind of this efficient way to deal with people maybe in larger churches.

This is not the biblical Sabbath, this is not the biblical meeting of the church just to come up with some pragmatic way to introduce large numbers. The congregation should know these people, right? And there should be plenty of events available for people to be introduced into the church. OK, I'm going to buzz through, I don't remember how many I have here, about 12 or so, and I'll just read them off here, some theological and practical dangers. I'm not going to get through all these, but I'll try to drill down on one or two.

So number one, it's dangerous to promote a practice that's not substantiated in Scripture. Two, the invitation system tends to equate the act of coming forward with salvation. This is dangerous. It's an inward thing that happens, not an external thing. It gives false assurance to unbelievers.

The Bible warns us about being too hasty to identify with people. 1 Timothy 5 says, don't lay hands on anyone too hastily, thereby you share in the sins of others. Keep yourself free from sin. New converts are instructed in 1 Timothy 3 not to be put into office. John the Baptist turned away Pharisees and Sadducees who came forward, he called them a brood of vipers and called them out.

Number four, The invitation tends to produce false converts, right? We have these dramatic fall away rates. Number five, the invitation system over emphasizes sheer numbers. These are marketing kind of, God doesn't work on statistical probabilities. When meeting a spouse, we don't go try to put ourselves in the place of trying to just get in the way of sheer numbers.

We just serve God, right? God doesn't work on statistics, right? When we have a troubled pregnancy, we, you know, The doctors want to scare us with it. I don't care about statistics. We just, God is in control.

Let me emphasize, People say, what about the 3, 000 at Pentecost? Well, okay, let's talk about the 3, 000 at Pentecost in Acts 2. These are real numbers with no fall away rate. How about that? Right, it's recorded in Scripture.

They're added by God, verse 47 of Acts 2. Peter didn't have a technique that he used to garner these numbers and it says later that they continually devoted themselves to the apostolic teaching. There wasn't a single fall away. So large, we must never conclude that large positive response to the gospel proves that our God is blessing our methods. Six, some of these practices may be considered dishonest in the attempt to create false impressions.

Did you know that sometimes in those events they have they they plan all the helpers, all the counselors in the audience, and they go forward first, which creates the impression of people going forward early on. That kind of scares me because I think about Barabbas and I think about the Pharisees and Sadducees planting people in the crowd. It seems like it would be, it's a similar kind of a thing, right? You're trying to trick people to get in action. The invitation, number seven, the invitation system seeks to condition people for a response through the use of externals, uplifting music, dynamic personality, an emotional atmosphere.

David Wells' book is great, called The Courage to be Protestant. He talks about the difference between character and personality. And today, we use personality, not character. Character is what you are. Personality is what you project.

What you project has become more important. If I project better, then I'm a better preacher and I get more responses. Doesn't seem so biblical. Number eight, invitation system preachers frequently appeal to the will of their hearers and virtually skip their minds. Number nine, the invitation system implies that sinners have the power to believe on Christ at any time of their own choosing.

Finney actually wrote a sermon that said, sinners bound to change their own hearts. Number 10, the altar call proponents tend to approach evangelism in a formulaic and mechanical way. Contemporary revivalists seem to think that one approach or method is sufficient for all. There are a variety of messages found in scripture. Consider Jesus with the rich young ruler in Luke 18, or Zacchaeus in Luke 19, Nicodemus in John 3, the woman at the well in John four.

Consider Paul in Thessalonica when he was speaking to the Jews in Thessalonica. Think of him when he was witnessing to the Greek philosophers in Athens. Some of those, you know, the Jews had an Old Testament background, the pagans didn't. There was a different way he presented the gospel, but it was the same gospel. There are different approaches.

It's just not an engineered approach. Number 11, when engaged in evangelism, there's no need to employ a sinner's prayer. There just is no formula. And number 12, revivals and mass conversions are truly rare in history. It's really something odd to look at the 20th century and match this back to the First Great Awakening or the Reformation.

In conclusion, so an invitation is not something which one attaches to the end of a sermon, but rather the gospel message is itself the invitation. When one declares the Gospel message and urges sinners to flee to Christ for refuge, he is, at that very moment, engaged in inviting sinners to be saved. The Spirit needs no help, just yielded, faithful messengers of the Good News. Thank you. The National Center for Family Integrated Churches is dedicated to proclaiming the sufficiency of scripture for church and family life, and to the establishment of biblically ordered churches.

For more information, resources, and products, please visit our website at www.ncfic.org. FIC.org Thank you.