RPG Adults
A FALLING AWAY: THE EVANGELICALS
FRIDAY, JANUARY 17
Isaiah 56:9-12
Acts 20:24-32
“But he that shall endure
unto the end,
the same shall be saved.”
A FALLING AWAY: THE EVANGELICALS
More than seventy years ago, the evangelicals, on the whole, stood for the great fundamentals of the faith and kept separate from those who did not. Today, this is not so. They have left the “old paths, where is the good way” (Jer 6:16). Some seventy years ago, a movement called “new evangelicalism” began in the USA led by men like Dr Billy Graham, Dr Harold Ockenga, Dr Carl Henry, and others. These men abandoned their former position of separation from those who did not hold to the evangelical doctrines, namely, the RC, the liberals and modernists, and non-Christian or anti-Christian movements.
The result of this shift of position was a disastrous FALLING AWAY. God sent them “strong delusion, that they should believe a lie” (2 Thess 2:3, 11). Over the years, by association and friendship with unbelievers, the evangelicals have drifted into the ecumenical current of mainstream Christianity. In 1974, a gathering of evangelicals was convened by Dr Billy Graham in Lausanne to map out the course for the future. There the seeds of compromise and further FALLING AWAY were sown.
In 1989, the evangelicals gathered at its historic “Lausanne II Congress on World Evangelisation” in Manila, Philippines. Under the patronage of Dr Billy Graham, with other prominent evangelicals such as Dr John Stott, Dr Leighton Ford, the evangelicals welcomed to their fellowship the RC, WCC, the Orthodox Church, and the Charismatics. One small step in 1948, abandoning the biblical separation doctrine, led to a great FALLING AWAY by 1989. And in 1994 and 1997, the Evangelicals and Catholics Together (ECT) Document I and II were signed. These sealed the evangelicals’ sacrifice of the purity of their faith, making a mockery of the sacrifices of the 16th century reformers. They are committed to the spirit of ecumenical unity, cooperation with liberals and unbelievers, and sociopolitical involvement as “Christian duty.”
The FALLING AWAY of the EVANGELICALS is a sign of our Lord’s imminent return.
THOUGHT: Does my church hold to the doctrine of biblical separation?
PRAYER: Keep me, O Father, away from all unholy union.