Truth About 21st C Christianity.(2)
In the aftermath of the 18th C ‘Enlightenment’ Christendom in 19th century America seemed to become fractious and deceived to the extreme.
This was to such an extent that hundreds upon hundreds of new cults emerged, each claiming to be solely unique in having more understanding of the Scriptures than the rest of Christendom.
This was the era of aberrant sectarianism. It was the period of extremes in which the liberals became libertine and the purists became simplistic in their bibliolatrous literalism of select parts of Scripture. The right wing in the USA became noticeably judgmental and legalistically confrontational in their homilies. Brazen bellicosity and denunciations were in vogue. All of this in the name of superior Christian truth for the separatist cause.
By the 20th C Barratt in his voluminous Encyclopedia of Christianity (1977) listed about 2,800 separate church denominations active in the world.
Christ had predicted that in the period after the beginning of sorrows a plague of false doctrine would confuse and, if it would be possible, deceive the very elect.
Standard Biblical Tenets Accepted by Sheep Before 19th C.
*Any honest study of the four gospels and Paul’s letter to the saints at Rome will amply endorse the following:-
1. Of the human race none want to seek God. (Romans 3)
2. All from birth are blind to their sin and resist gospel light
3. None of them have the ability to understand or want it.
4. Many of them will be religious, but use religion for self-justification.
5. From creation mankind has had perpetual attraction to religious mysticism
6. The image of God in mankind was marred by the Fall, but Adam fell from a state of innocence, not original righteousness. Innocence is not righteousness and it is not a tendency towards God even when confronted by Him, as was the case in Eden’s creation.
7. Conscience was corrupted when the race committed itself to mystical worship of the supernatural power of knowledge via Eve, the first created woman, who then deceived Adam.
8. The light of conscience had been crippled by self-interest since Adam fell.
9. Adam’s living soul died, when he sinned by rejecting the tree of eternal life offered him. He blamed Eve, and she blamed supernatural deception by the being with whom she had chosen to converse in her curiosity.
10. The blight of the curse from Adam’s original sin upon the human race is its endemic legacy of blindness. Also its spell of religious idolatry and mysticism upon the whole human race.
11. As in Eden, humanity today still resists God through the knowledge of good and evil and impenitently hardens its heart through reason.
BIBLE REFERENCES
Matthew 24:11; Matthew 24:24; Mark 13:22; 2 Thessalonians 2:3; Jeremiah 17:9; John 3:20; Matthew 24:11; Matthew 24:24; Mark 13:22; Romans 1:17; Acts 26:18; Romans 3:11; Psalm 14:3; Romans 3:12;
