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-24-
God Hath Spoken
Chapter 5
A HISTORY OF LIBERALISM
A very serious war has been waged for the past one hundred and forty years. In this war, the veracity of the Scriptures has been attacked.
Persecution
The French people refused the Reformation, and with it, Calvinistic theology. They rejected godly religion and chose instead to persecute all who embraced it. For one hundred and twenty years the French Protestants were hunted down.
In the sixteenth century, there was open persecution, but in the seventeenth century, the persecution became so intense that it was known as "the Dragonnades." The borders of France were watched in order to arrest all who tried to escape, and the holds of ships leaving French ports were gassed. No Protestants were allowed to leave for England or for other parts of the continent of Europe.
They were drawn and quartered. Their limbs were tied to horses that at the crack of a whip or the shot of a musket, the animals would leap into a gallop and "draw and quarter" the unfortunate victims. Others were drowned.
Excruciating tortures were devised to persuade dissenters to subscribe to the teachings of Rome. The Iron Boot was designed that when it was placed on the leg a rivet could smash the leg bone. People were tied on the Rack, their hands above their head, while with their feet tied they were stretched. The pain was agonizing. Sometimes the body was lifted by the wrists only to be suddenly dropped.
Others who could not subscribe to the religion of Rome were given the "Hot Foot." They were tied down as hot coals were applied to their feet. Some young Christian virgins were boiled in oil. But the attempt to stamp out Biblical Christianity within France actually hardened the French people, and they revolted at such inhumanity performed in the name of God. They turned instead to the philosophies of rationalism.
French Rationalism
The French people had rejected godly preachers, and now they accepted the preachments of Diderot, Rousseau, and Voltaire. They embraced the idea that truth is relative, and that there is nothing supernatural—that all miracles can be explained. Having no god greater than themselves, revolution erupted.
The French Revolution
Blood literally flowed in the streets of Paris, Marseilles, and in many other French cities. Rivers carried the bodies of those who had been butchered. The people of France had assaulted the "people of the Book," and now the life of every man was in danger.
Rationalism had nursed a desire in men to the free, but having refused to be governed by God, the people demanded unconditional rights. Until people learn to discipline themselves and to govern their own passions, they cannot be a free people. They must be kept in check by tyrants and by oppressive laws. This is the judgment God brings upon people in godless societies. It is an historical fact, and a Biblical truth, that laws are multiplied when the transgressions of a people are multiplied.
In the latter quarter of the l700's, the French people threw off the godly restrictions of Law and embraced a spirit of lawlessness. They desecrated cemeteries, destroyed houses of worship, and made bonfires of Bibles and hymnbooks.
The French people had persecuted the Huguenots for one hundred and twenty years, and now God punished France with a terrible revolution. Then, in the nineteenth century, portions of French society embraced communism. In this century we have seen France embrace socialism. God has not sent revival to France since the sixteenth century. The French people rejected the faithful preaching of God's Word; so God has taken it from them.
Revival in England and America
In America, rationalism appeared as Socinianism and deism. It became known as unitarianism, and as it denied the doctrine of the trinity, it denied as well the doctrine of the deity of Christ.
England flirted with the French rationalists who in time sparked the bloody Revolution. Historically, when liberalism invades the church, one of two things happens: God will set revival fires, or He will send revolution and anarchy. He sent revolution to France, but He chose to use the preaching of George Whitefield and John Wesley, among others, to set revival fires in England and in America.
It was by the grace of God that a mighty revival swept through England and delivered that country from the rationalism of the hour. There would be no revolution in England. In America, George Whitefield founded the first orphanage in the American colonies near Savannah, Georgia. He preached up and down the Eastern sea coast while Jonathan Edwards preached in Massachusetts. God mercifully blessed their preaching and sent a great revival. But if God does not send revival, He will turn a people over to revolution and anarchy.