Truth Magazine

By Steve Wolfgang

Second in prominence and influence only to Billy Graham, Oral Roberts has had a major impact upon the American religious scene over the past forty years. At least two factors contributed to Roberts’ prominence. First, he was and is the most recognizable “leading light” among the Pentecostal, neo-Pentecostal, and charismatic movements – numerically and dynamically the most amazing international religious phenomenon of the modern age. Second, Roberts (as much or more than anyone else) is responsible for pioneering the mass media evangelism which has spawned the electronic church addressed in these articles.

Born in Pontotoc County, Oklahoma on January 24, 1918, only a few years after it had made the transition Indian Territory to statehood, Roberts has remained proud of his Cherokee heritage. Entering his teenage years at the beginning of the Depression, Roberts resented not only the poverty but the social stigma magnified by his parents’ convictions as Pentecostals. In 1935, he was diagnosed as having tuberculosis – a crisis which was resolved by his conversion and subsequent healing later that summer in an itinerant tent preacher’s revival.

Shortly thereafter, Oral decided to preach, joining with his father, who was a licensed preacher in the Pentecostal Holiness church – one of the largest of the Pentecostal bodies, exceeded in size only by the Assemblies of God, Aimee Semple McPherson’s Foursquare Gospel church, and A.J. Tomlison’s Cleveland, TN-based Church of God.

In 1937, Oral launched out on his own, conducting revivals and preaching over the radio. After several years of itinerant evangelism, Roberts worked with a succession of local Pentecostal Holiness churches in Georgia and Oklahoma, claiming to discover an ability to “heal” people of physical maladies, and noticing a “hunger for miracles” on the part of many people. In April, 1947, he began holding Sunday afternoon “healing services” in his church in Enid, OK. Later that year, Roberts moved to Tulsa to begin conducting healing revivals in various churches, including those outside his own denomination.

Upon the astute advice of observant friends and successful businessmen, Oral assembled an organization, Healing Waters, Inc., to handle his various enterprises. He began to publish his own magazine, Healing Waters, advertising his books and promoting his radio broadcasts. Roberts’ use of a large tent for his meetings eriabled him to go many places where there were no city auditoriums. Those cards and letters (to say nothing of dollars) kept rolling in.

Like Billy Graham, some of Roberts’ popularity was due to his willingness to become more “ecumenical” with the passing of time. He was also astute enough to by-pass the denominational hierarchies of the various Pentecostal groups, being instrumental in helping found and develop Demos Shakarian’s “Full Gospel Businessmen’s Fellowship International.” As with Graham, who moved steadily from the context of “Southern redneck fundamentalism” into the Protestant mainstream, Roberts allowed this increasing ecumenicity and desire for respectability to lead him into the Methodist church in 1968.

But it was Roberts’ entry into the visual media of film and television that was to set him apart. After producing a film about his ministry to be shown in churches, Roberts launched his television ministry in 1954. In the 1960’s, Roberts abandoned the Sunday morning “religious ghetto” of television programs for a series of slickly-produced, prime time TV specials which vresaged programs like “The 700 Club” and “PTL.”

But “the times they were a’changin.. in the ’60’s, and Roberts changed with them, abandoning his tent evangelism and turning his attention to Oral Roberts University (founded in 1966; indicative of his increasing acceptance by and of the religious world, Billy Graham spoke at the Dedication ceremony) and then to the “City of Faith” which would eventually begin to sap his financial strength seriously.

Roberts efforts on behalf of these enterprises (including his “vision” of a 900-foot Jesus and his recent threat that God would take his life if he did not raise $8 million for his medical school) have kept him in the news lately. However, his fortunes may be declining; Newsweek recently reported that Roberts’ audience had dropped from 2.5 million households in 1977 to 11.1 million in 1985, and TIME reported his 1986 proceeds at $55 million, down from $88 million in 1980.

Oral, however, is probably not finished. As Ed Harrell asks, “How do you top a 900-foot Jesus? Well, he did. I would never bet against Oral Roberts or Richard Nixon” (Newsweek, April 6, 1987, p. 20).

Sources

Oral Roberts: An American Life (1985), by David Edwin Edwin Harrell, is comprehensive. Harrell’s earlier work, All Things Are Possible (1975) places Roberts in the context of the Pentecostal/Charismatic movements, as does Richard Quebedeaux, The New Charismatics (1976). Interesting perspectives from former “insiders” are provided by Jerry Sholes, Give Me That Prime- Time Religion (1979), and Patti Roberts, Ashes to Gold (1983).

Guardian of Truth XXXI: 12, pp. 380-381
June 18, 1987

By Steve Wolfgang

Jerry Falwell is perhaps the quintessential media- made preacher. When he graduated from Baptist Bible College in Springfield, MO in 1956 and returned home to Lynchburg, VA, he was a virtual unknown. He started a little church with 35 people in a rented pop-bottling plant. He proved to be a tireless worker, canvassing the town – but he also went on radio the first week, and purchased TV time within a year. Even then, without the mushrooming of cable TV in the 1970’s, the chances are that he would still be unknown outside the county.

Falwell was born in Lynchburg on August 11, 1933 and raised there, attending two years at Lynchburg College (affiliated with the Disciples of Christ) before transferring to Springfield after a “conversion experience” in a local Baptist church. His mother had often tuned in “The Old Fashioned Revival Hour” with Charles E. Fuller, a famous radio preacher of the World War II era, and his preaching influenced young Jerry considerably. Thus, media evangelism was prominent in Falwell’s concept of religion from an early age.

The college in Springfield had roots in the Baptist Bible Fellowship, one of the more prominent Fundamentalist organizations which arose after the Scopes Trial. When he roomed at Springfield with the son of John Rawlings, mainspring of Cincinnati’s Landmark Baptist Temple, the concept of a “super church” was planted in Falwell’s mind. Returning to Lynchburg after graduation, he began Thomas Road Baptist church in the summer of 1966. From an inauspicious beginning in the old Donald Duck Bottling plant (a rented facility against which was erected a tent-like lean-to for Sunday School classes), the church has grown into a 21,000 member congregation (about a fourth of the town’s population) with a staff of about 60 employees. Other enterprises include a summer camp, a home for alcoholics, and Lynchburg Christian Academy. Liberty Baptist College, which was begun in dilapidated downtown buildings in 1971, was moved to Candlers Mountain in 1977, where a host of new buildings had been erected and 7500 students are currently enrolled.

A large part of Falwell’s ability as a promoter (“Businessmen in Lynchburg say he is . . . the best salesman they have ever seen”), is his extensive use of media. His “Old-Time Gospel Hour” (a tape of the 11:00 Sunday service at Thomas Road, edited with some extra footage inserted) has been on-air since 1969, and is now carried on 190 TV stations plus cable outlets.

Additionally, in 1979 Falwell founded the “Moral Majority,” a political organization (he has repeatedly stated that it is not a religious body). Renamed the “Liberty Federation” last year, this group allows him to work in common cause with Jews, Catholics, Mormons, and Protestants such as Billy Graham (with all of whom he has religious differences great enough that they would not be invited to preach at Thomas Road).

With all these enterprises (church, television program, college, political organization – all of which overlap to some degree, despite Falwell’s disclaimers to the contrary), it is difficult to tell what is the total income generated. Most estimates, however, place it in excess of $100 million annually, which allows Falwell the use of a mansion donated to the church as well as the ministry’s Israeli-made private jet. With Falwell’s takeover of PTL after the Bakker scandal, he will, if he is successful in salvaging that operation, have at his disposal the additional cable outlets and TV production facilities of that group.

Sources

Strober & Tomczac, Jerry Falwell. Aflamefor God (1979); Falwell, Dobson, & Hindson, The Fundamentalist Phenomenon (1986); Frances Fitzgerald, “A Disciplined, Charging Army,” New Yorker, May 18, 1981; Christianity Today, September 4, 1981; TIME, September 2, 1985.

Guardian of Truth XXXI: 12, p. 374
June 18, 1987

By Steve Wolfgang

Without question, America’s “best known Protestant churchman” is, and for years has been, Billy Graham. Born November 7, 1918 on a farm outside Charlotte, North Carolina, William Franklin Graham grew to adolescence with the daily regimen of dairy farming punctuated by revivalism and church services. He was sixteen when, in May, 1934, his father loaned a pasture to Mordecai Fowler Hain, a fiery revivalist from Louisville, KY. Along with Grady Wilson, a boyhood friend who would remain a close associate through the years, Graham responded to Ham’s “altar call.”

After spending the following summers as a Fuller Brush salesman and playing baseball, Billy enrolled in perhaps the best-known Fundamentalist school of that day – Bob Jones College, then located in Cleveland, TN. Described as “an evangelical boot camp” replete with “grim barracks . . . and posted notifications like Griping Not Tolerated,” the school seems not to have suited Billy, who left after one semester.

Graham transferred to the Florida Bible Institute at Temple Terrace, located on the campus of what is now Florida College. He had learned of the Institute through friends, one of whom would later recall that “after Bob Jones, Billy landed on that campus like he’d just been let out of jail, ‘I and, according to one biographer, “He will still mention now and then as he muses back over the years, ‘That time down there, that’s when I was the happiest.”‘ The story of his emotional experience on the eighteenth green, dedicating his life to preaching, is well known.

W.T. Watson, founder and president of the Institute, recalled later that Billy “got down to business and started preaching to tree stumps along the Hillsborough River.” Remaining in Florida for three and a half years after his arrival in February 1937, Graham met many leading lights of Fundamentalism for whom Temple Terrace and the Institute became something of a mecca. One day Graham found himself caddying for a group of golfers from Chicago, which included the brother of the president of Wheaton College, a reputable evangelical school in suburban Chicago. Accepting an offer of a year’s tuition and board, Graham enrolled at Wheaton in 1940.

At Wheaton, Graham met his future wife, Ruth Bell (daughter of a Presbyterian surgeon who had founded “missionary hospital” in China), and began regular preaching duties at the Western Springs Baptist church. (Graham had changed religious affiliations in Florida when it was discovered, while he was preaching in a Baptist church, that he was a Presbyterian). After taking over the radio broadcast “Songs in the Night” with Canadian George Beverly Shea, Graham served for a while with Youth For Christ in England and the United States. While in Minneapolis for a “crusade,” Graham was heard by William Bell Riley, one of the leaders of the Fundamentalist movement, who recalled hearing Graham a decade before in Florida. In 1947, Riley persuaded Graham to take over as president of his organization of three schools in Minneapolis.

Being administrator of several schools proved not to suit Graham, however, and he soon turned to citywide 44campaigns,” involving several who had worked with him in the Youth For Christ organization. Perhaps the single biggest step to the platform of popularity came during Graham’s Los Angeles campaign in September, 1949, where he was able to attract attention from the press. When William Randolph Hearst cabled his editors (“Puff Graham”) during the fourth week of the campaign, resulting in Henry Luce’s visit to his campaign in Columbia, South Carolina a few weeks later. Graham had achieved entree into media stardom.

This sketch cannot report in detail Graham’s achievements since that time, but an historian currently at work on a “definitive” biography of Graham chronicled some of his achievements as of the late 1970’s, before his place in the evangelical galaxy began to be eclipsed by other televangelism supernovas: Graham’s weekly “Hour of Decision” radio broadcast was heard on over 900 stations around the world; his “crusades” being broadcast into over 300 TV “markets”; his syndicated column was carried by over 200 daily newspapers with a circulation of nearly 30 million readers; his Decision magazine, published in six languages and Braille, had a circulation of almost 4 million; several of his books, published in dozens of languages, have sold over 2 million copies each; the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, headquartered in Minneapolis with more than 500 employees, includes his own film-production company located in California, and his branch offices in London, Paris, Sydney, Hong Kong, Kyoto, and Winnipeg; he has even been TIME Magazine’s “Man of the Year.”

Graham has achieved all this by adopting a “generic” Protestant theology (many would say by “soft-pedaling” many Bible doctrines unpalatable to popular culture), by molding a relatively inoffensive message to his own style and personality and by cultivating such an efficient organization. Although Graham certainly lives comfortably and has many “perks” as result of his position, he seems not to have unduly enriched himself financially (although the Charlotte Observer, for whom Graham served as a favorite religious object of “investigative journalism” before Jim Bakker came along, did uncover a “secret” $22.9 million fund in the BGEA in 1977). There has never been a whiff of sexual impropriety in his life (unlike some other popular “televangelists”), and he still stands today, although challenged by rising stars such as Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Jimmy Swaggart, as “the high priest of the American civil religion.”

Sources

James Morris, The Preachers (1973); Jeffrey K. Hadden, Prime- Time Preachers (1981); William G. McLoughlin Billy Graham: Revivalist in a Secular Age (1960); John Pollock, Billy Graham: The Authorized Biography (1966) and Billy Graham: Evangelist To The World (1979); Marshall Frady, Billy Graham: A Parable of American Righteousness (1979); C. Allyn Russell, Yokes of American Fundamentalism: Seven Biographical Studies (1976); William Martin, “Billy Graham,” in David E. Harrell, ed., Varieties of Southern Evangelicalism (1981).

Guardian of Truth XXXI: 12, pp. 388-389
June 18, 1987

By Walton Weaver

The current emphasis on building self-esteem as the focal point around which our preaching and teaching are to be centered is being received enthusiastically by many leading theologians today. During the last ten years the book market has been flooded with books on the subject. What was first laid down as a guiding principle in child-rearing has now been brought over into religion and is being held up as a sound biblical principle which should be utilized in the pulpit and across the dining room table.

Is A New Reformation Needed?

Robert H. Schuller, who is identified with the Reformed Church in America, and founder of the now 10,000 plus members Garden Grove Community Church in California, has written almost twenty books in the last fifteen years or so, and positive self-esteem has been the central theme in nearly all of them. Schuller is bold enough to say that nothing short of a “New Reformation” will do. Believing that the Protestant Reformation was a “mid-flight correction” which preached a God-centered message by emphasizing that man is a sinner, Schuller believes it is now time for the church to have another “mid-flight correction.” This time, however, the correction must be man-centered rather than God-centered. The man-centered approach is what is needed today to “communicate spiritual reality to the unchurched. ” The God-centered approach was what was needed in the Protestant Reformation, but not today. Only the “human needs” approach will work in our time. And, according to Schuller, the one basic human need – “the deepest of all human needs” – is “salvation from sin and hell.” But when Schuller defines the terms “salvation,” “sin,” and “hell,” so that they will nicely fit into his theology of self-love, or dignity of the human person, it is readily apparent that he is far removed from the Bible itself in the development of his new theology (or, as Martin Marty says, “a philosophy which makes room for God more than a theology that incorporates psychology”).

In Robert Schuller’s book, Self-Esteem: The New Reformation, he leaves no doubt as to where he is coming from. Every key word like sin, hell, salvation, anger and hatred is defined in relation to self-esteem.

Self-esteem: Self-esteem is the human hunger for the divine dignity that God intended to be our emotional birthright as children created in his image.

Sin: Any human condition or act that robs God of glory by stripping one of his children of their right to divine dignity. Or, stated another way, sin is that deep lack of trust that separates me from God and leaves me with a sense of shame and unworthiness. Again, sin is any act or thought that robs myself or another human being of his or her self-esteem.

Hell: The loss of pride that naturally follows separation from God – the ultimate and unfailing source of our soul’s self-respect. A person is in hell when he has lost his self-esteem.

Anger, hatred, What is anger? What is hatred? It is really fear. And what is fear? It is the feeling of being

fear, insecurity threatened – a deeper feeling of insecurity. And what is that feeling of insecurity? It is a lack of self-confidence: self-confidence to cope with the ‘threatening, situation. And what is that lack of self-confidence? It is the result of a too-low self-esteem. ‘I don’t think I can’ rises from the deeper, ‘I don’t think I am.’

Salvation: To be saved means to be permanently lifted from sin (psychological self-abuse with all its consequences as seen above) and shame to self-esteem and its God-glorifying human need-meeting, constructive, and creative consequences.

Redefining the Bible

There is no question that the Bible is being reinterpreted by those who are promoting the new doctrine of selfism. What is called “Christian Psychology” today is largely a borrowing from humanistic psychology. And from the kind of definitions we have just seen of key biblical words there can be no doubt that psychological definitions are winning out over biblical definitions. This is what Dave Hunt calls “the seduction of Christianity.” Every gospel preacher should read his two books, The Seduction of Christianity, and Beyond Seduction: A Return to Biblical Christianity. He has some good things to say about this matter of redefining the Bible to make it fit into this new self-love theory.

As soon as the door was opened for the ‘truths’ of psychology to shed further light upon Scripture, a subtle process began that is bearing its deadly fruit in the church today. If ‘all truth is God’s truth’ and psychology is part of that truth, then it must be given equal authority with the Bible. Of course Christian psychologists deny this: They assure us that no psychological theory will be accepted that contradicts the Bible. But in actual practice ‘psychological truth’ is imposed upon the Bible and becomes the new grid through which Scripture is now to be interpreted. We are plainly told by some Christian psychologists that theology must be brought into line with psychological theory. Abraham Maslow’s ‘hierarchy of needs’ has even been baptized into the church and dressed in biblical language, in spite of the fact that Jews taught the opposite. (Maslow puts food, clothing, shelter, etc. first; Jesus puts them last and says to seek the kingdom of God and His righteousness first. This plain truth is reinterpreted by the new experts, and anyone without training in psychology is disqualified from taking issue with them (Beyond Seduction, p. 140).

Schuller uses the prayer that Jesus taught His disciples to pray as the basis for developing his new theology of self-esteem. He sees the theology of dignity or self-respect coming through in every part of this model prayer. But to find the gospel of self-love in every segment of this prayer he is forced (as he was in defining sin, hell, etc.) to redefine the terms used in the prayer so they will fit his self-esteem theory. “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name” reminds us of how great we are as God’s sons and daughters on planet earth; it is to make us conscious of our belonging to the family of God. So we are really praying, “God is my Father! I am his child. I am somebody! I bear his honorable name.”

“Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven, ” raises a hope for every human being to discover the lost glory his heart desires. It assures me that I might be able to be someone for somebody. It means God will give us a human need-filling dream to feed our self-esteem. “Give us this day our daily bread” is redefined by making “bread” mean life’s basic needs. That may, not seem at first to be a new definition, but when Schuller tells us that fife’s basic needs are summed iip in possibility thinking, or a process of thinking that is stimulated and sustained by trust, that is a new meaning of “bread”! Forgiving is living, so “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors” is meant to help us avoid the guilt of perfectionism without diffusing the drive to excellence. “We’ll take a giant step up the let’s-feel-good-about-ourselves-ladder when we experience the profoundly positive, regenerating, rejuvenating, revitalizing peace, love, and joy, that is the emotional reward of the person who receives and offers forgiveness,” Schuller says.

It is at this point that Schuller deals with the question of how one receives forgiveness he so desperately needs before he can really feel good about himself. In dealing with this question he discusses the terms sin, salvation and repentance. We’ve already seen how he defines sin and salvation. The core of sin is the lack of self-esteem, he says. The most serious sin “is the one that causes me to say, ‘I am unworthy. I may have no claim to divine sonship, if you examine me at my worst.’ For once a person believes he is an ‘unworthy sinner,’ it is doubtful if he can really honestly accept the saving grace God offers in Jesus Christ.” Salvation is deliverance from sin (psychologically defined) and shame to self-esteem. Salvation is based on God’s unconditional grace. What is grace? God’s love in action for people who don’t deserve it (you are worthy, but you are not deserving, Schuller says). In keeping with his positive approach, Schuller describes the incarnation of Jesus in positive terms, i.e., instead of it being the humiliation of Christ it wag God’s glorification of the human being. The cross of Christ is also to be viewed positively; it places God’s value upon us. By his resurrection Christ has given us his highest honor (again a positive interpretation) – he has given us the opportunity to do his work and take his place in the world. All of this means that we really are somebodies!

Repentance is also defined as a positive creative force. It does not mean self-condemnation, self-denigration, self-abasement. “Rather, it means the turning of one’s life from sin to the Lordship of Christ. It is a turning from sin, with its rejection of self-esteem as the way to self-fulfillment to sanctification – the way of the Cross It is at this point that one is tempted (and thus the significance of that part of the prayer which says, “And lead us not into temptation”) to reject God’s plan for his fife, because the price will be high. But there can be no success without service. The Cross becomes God’s solution to humanity’s shame. On the Cross God made our human problem His problem. Our problem was and is a lack of self-worth, and on the Cross God demonstrated the infinite value of any and every person. So, to choose success as a goal (and setting goals is the only way to be enthusiastic) is to choose the Cross as the Way! This call of Christ to self-denial is a call to a commitment to do something creative and constructive. So it is a positive self-denial. The cross He calls us to bear will be offered as a dream, an idea. The greatest temptation will be to reject our cross out of fear of rejection, the possibility of a public humiliating failure, and this fear is a terrible threat to the ego. We should not be surprised by now when Schuller comes to that part of the prayer which says “deliver us from evil” and defines evil as fear, and then in this way comes back to his theme of a negative self-image, a lack of self-esteem, as the real evil we need to be delivered from. For what could evil be but fear, and what could fear be but a negative self-image?

Things to Remember

Now that we have Schuller’s view clearly before us, it might be well that we bring before our readers a few things to remember. An exhaustive response is not possible at this time, but a few things presented in a general way are certainly in order.

1. We should remember that any new emphasis that calls for a complete redefinition of all the key words that have to do with God’s scheme of redemption is to be viewed as highly suspect to say the least. Many false systems have been established in religion by someone taking one element in the Bible and seeing that element everywhere, or by misunderstanding some point of Bible teaching and then defining other terms related to the subject in light of that false definition. This danger must be avoided at all costs. As A. Berkeley Mickelsen warns:

. . . If a sectarian emphasis dominates our interest, we can make any passage a prelude to our favorite theme. Therefore, any out-of-balance interest, even if it is in a major element of the Bible, harms the interpreter. He loses a true sense of perspective. Once lost, a balanced perspective is difficult to regain. Under the illusion of being exhaustive in our study, we “find” what we are looking for in places where no one else has ever seen it (Interpreting the Bible, p. 371).

My teacher in hermeneutics during my junior year in college used to say, “If you allow a false teacher to create his own vocabulary, his arguments will be unanswerable.”

2. We must remember that many theological systems have been built upon extra-biblical presuppositions rather than upon the Bible itself. Schleiermacher’s theology was founded on pantheism. Hegel interpreted Christianity on the basis of logical pantheism. Kant’s notion of Christianity was guided by his theory of ethics. Ritschl’s theology is predicated on Kant’s philosophy. Much of neo-orthodoxy is inspired by Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Ebner, Kant, and Buber (Bernard Ramm, Protestant Biblical Interpretation, p. 168). I am persuaded that it has been demonstrated by Paul Brownback, in his book, The Danger of Self-Love. Re-Examining a Popular Myth, that the new theology of self-love is rooted in the philosophy of existentialism and in the humanistic psychology of Erich Fromm, Carl Rogers, and Abraham Maslow.

3. We must remember to take into consideration all the relevant material on the subject at hand so as not to be guilty of giving a distorted view. All subjects that the Bible treats are not of the nature of an either/or proposition. From what the Bible says on the subject of man’s worthiness one does not have to come down either on the side that says that man is totally worthless in God’s sight, or on the side that man is really somebody. There are passages that indicate that man is to have a certain amount of dignity about himself because he is made in the image of God, and he is made for a very high purpose. Looked at from the other side however, Paul asks, “For who regards you as superior? And what do you have that you did not receive? But if you did receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?” (1 Cor. 4:7) When extremes are taken on either side of an issue like this one, false conclusions are reached in other ways as well.

As a case in point, take Robert Schuller’s statement that “. . . once a person believes he is an ‘unworthy sinner,’ it is doubtful if he can really honestly accept the saving grace God offers in Jesus Christ.” Now wouldn’t it be interesting to see Schuller square that statement off with the fact that Paul from the time he first learned the truth about Jesus and himself, and was baptized and “immediately . . . preached the Christ in the synagogues,” viewed himself as the chief of sinners? (Acts 9:20; 1 Tim. 1:15) And even though he viewed himself as such a terrible sinner, he acknowledged that he was saved by the marvelous grace of God! Here then is a man who did believe he was an “unworthy sinner” but who honestly accepted the saving grace of God. Had Schuller not allowed himself to adopt such an extreme position on what he calls “the sacred right of every person to self-esteem,” he could have spared himself of making such a ridiculous statement.

Schuller’s view of every person’s sacred right to self-esteem is so distorted that he repeatedly tells us that we should spare the dignity of folks by not calling them sinners. If he is right, will someone please tell me what Paul was doing when he stood before the “unchurched” Felix and reasoned “about righteousness, self-control, and the judgment to come,” and by such preaching made Felix “afraid.” Schuller is telling us that preaching that makes people afraid, fearful, or feel bad about themselves, destroys their feeling of self-worth and should be avoided. Don’t call people sinners, he says. Did Paul not know that he should have been trying to build Felix’s dignity, make him feel good about himself, and make him feel like he was somebody?

4. Finally, let us remember that we cannot build strong churches by positive preaching and teaching alone. We must never be mean or obnoxious in our approach, but faithfully preaching the word of God does demand that we meet the person where he is. Paul preached to Felix what Felix needed to bring about necessary changes in his life. This same design must characterize all our preaching and teaching. This applies to the churched and the unchurched alike.

The admonition to “preach the word . . . reprove, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and doctrine” (2 Tim. 4:2), applies to all who need to be reproved, rebuked and exhorted! There is a need for building up and for planting, but there is also a need for plucking up, breaking down, destroying and overthrowing (Jer. 1:10). When we see a self-love advocate like Robert Schuller define the new role of those who have been “led . . . into an existential encounter with . . . unconditional love and acceptance” as that of building people up and not putting them down (in essence by not calling them sinners), we know right off that the “New Reformation” he is calling for is not biblical. Robert Schuller, and most other advocates of self-love today, are advocating a perverted concept of self-esteem.

Conclusion

Are we ourselves in danger of being influenced by this new theology of self-worth? There is no doubt in my mind that we are in serious danger. Most of the sermons being preached in pulpits in some “conservative” churches are being developed right out of the books being written by “evangelical” writers in the denominational churches. Men like Chuck Swindoll, Warren W. Wiersbe, John White, Anthony A. Hoekema, and many others. Admittedly, not all of these men are self-worth advocates. But the point is that some of the churches are not getting all they need by way of good balanced preaching. Some controversial subjects are being ignored altogether. The only preaching some are doing is positive preaching. How long has it been since you have heard the preacher where you worship preach on instrumental music in worship, worldliness, church support of human societies, the sin of sectarianism, the identity of the New Testament church, salvation by grace through faith, etc. You may be hearing some good sermons on prayer, how to build a stronger relationship with the Lord, how to surrender to Jesus, the Lord’s life, death and resurrection, etc., but how much plucking up, breaking down, destroying and overthrowing have you seen lately?

It is time for concern when religious papers are being circulated and churches are being built on a totally positive approach. It is time for concern when preachers are reading more from Tim LaHaye, and other modern “evangelical” writers, than they are from T.W. Brents, J.W. McGarvey, David Lipscomb, Roy Cogdill, and other good seasoned and sound Bible students from the past, as well as those who are with us today. It is time for concern when we are being told that the Samaritan woman of John 4 was not lost because she was a sinner, but because she did not believe in Jesus as Messiah; or, in other words, she was not lost because she was in the wrong church, because the man she lived with was not her husband, etc. Brethren, had she believed in Jesus as the Messiah and yet remained with that man who was not her husband, and had she continued in the “Church of the Samaritans,” would she have been saved anyway? Or, if Jesus had never come, would she have been lost or saved? If lost, why? Tim LaHaye, or Chuck Swindoll, or Warren Wiersbe, and all the other “evangelical” writers would have liked our brother’s statement about the Samaritan woman. But I still believe R.L. Whiteside was right when he said, “The gospel was designed to save a world already condemned. It is only in a relative sense that people are lost because they do not obey the gospel. Primarily people are lost because they are sinners” (Paul’s Letter to the Saints at Rome, p. 23). Read his illustration about the man drowning. He refuses to be rescued. Why did he drown? Because he did not get into the boat, or because he was in the water? Because he was in the water. He would have drowned just the same had there never been a boat.

Brethren, it will take only one generation of totally positive preaching, where there is no plucking up, breaking down, destroying and overthrowing, for the Lord’s church in our time to completely lose its identity. May God save us from ourselves!

Guardian of Truth XXXI: 12, pp. 375-378
June 18, 1987