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-25-
God Hath Spoken
The American "Revolution"
In the history of mankind, there has only been one "revolution" like the American Revolution. Modern revolutions throughout the world have taken their cue from the French Revolution. As it was godless, so it was merciless, for it was lawless; and the revolutions of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, of Mao tse Tung in China, and Joseph Stalin in Russia all were modeled after the French Revolution.
In Cambodia, the Khmer was called the "Red Khmer" because he killed more people per capita than any other person in all of history. Stalin murdered about 30 million Russians in order to instill communism in that country. It is estimated that Mao tse Tung murdered 65 million Chinese to establish communism in China. The Khmer murdered only about 3 million people, but Cambodia had a population of only 7 million.
If God does not set revival fires in a nation, He will send revolution and anarchy, and that is what He did in France. The Reign of Terror, as it was called, was the direct result of liberalism. Revolutions always pave the way for tyranny because it is lawlessness that hatches the egg of oppression. In France, the tyrant who came to power was Napoleon.
German Rationalism, or Higher Criticism
Germany also embraced rationalism, but in Germany, the people did something that no other country had ever done: they attacked the authority and the credibility of the Scriptures, and they did it under the guise of scholarship.
The rationalism that invaded the seminaries of Ger-many produced "Higher Criticism," a continuation of biblical criticism. Men had attacked Scripture all through the ages, but never before had a nation espoused it.
The Higher Critics attacked the authority of the Pentateuch denying that under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, Moses wrote Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. They invented instead the "Documentary Hypothesis," or the "JEDP Theory." The self professed scholars attacked the credibility of the book of Isaiah by denying Isaiah wrote it being "borne along by the Holy Spirit" of God. They fabricated the "Deutero Isaiah Theory" teaching there were two men by that name who penned the book.
France had persecuted the people of God; Germany attacked the Book of God. France had tried to annihilate the people of God, but Germany tried to discredit the Word of God. To this day it does not matter to the "scholars" that the writers of the Gospels all testify that the Lord Jesus Christ taught Moses was indeed the writer of the Pentateuch; nor do they care that the apostle Paul affirmed the same.
Bultmann's "De-mythologizing" of The Bible
Rudolf Bultmann taught that the Bible is full of myths, so he and his disciples attempted to de mythologize the Bible. Bultmann said the account of Adam and Eve is a myth, and that it is not to be understood literally. He mocked at the thought that Jonah was swallowed by a whale, although our Lord Jesus Christ affirmed it. In the last century, Ferrar Fenton declared higher criticism was "either wild delusion or deliberate swindle." Reader, it is the opinion of this writer that it is the latter. It is certainly wicked for a person who is determined not to enter the kingdom of heaven to hinder those who would enter. These pretentious scholars are simply unbelievers.
The Rise of Nazism
God withheld revival from France sending instead a bloody revolution. He now withheld revival from Germany and sent the German people their own bloody revolution. After giving them time to repent, God punished the German people with Nazism.
Around the l850's rationalism was welcomed into the theological schools of Germany to corrupt young men with falsehoods concerning the Word of God. Since that time, Germany has not experienced revival, but one hundred years before, it was the sovereign pleasure of God to deal differently with England and with the American colonies. George Whitefield relates how one hundred preachers were converted in one town alone.
Compromise Evangelism
At the turn of the twentieth century, rationalism made a fresh comeback in America in the form of "Neo Orthodoxy." Following the Second World War, "Neo Evangelicalism" appeared.