The History of Presbyterianismin the United States

Part 4: The Fire and Sword of DispensationalismA – Dispensationalism Comes to America (1862-

1909)

Master TimelineUnited States Europe

• 1620 – Mayflower lands• 1730s-1743 – 1st Great Awakening• 1776-1783 – American Rev.• 1790-1840 – 2nd Great Awakening• 1830 – Book of Mormon• 1850-1900 – 3rd Great Awakening• 1861-1865 – American Civil War• 1870 – Scottish Common Sense• 1889 – Moody Bible Institute• 1891 – Briggs’ address• 1909 – Scofield Reference Bible• 1910 – Pres. G.A.: 5 Fundamentals• 1914-1919 – World War I• 1922 – “Shall Fund.s Win?”• 1923 – The Auburn Affirmation• 1925 – The Scopes Trial• 1929 – Westminster Theo.

Seminary• 1936 – Orthodox Presbyterian Ch.• 1936 – John Mackay, Princeton

Sem.

• 1643 – Westminster Confession of Faith• 1650-1800 – Age of European

Enlightenment& of Scottish Common Sense

Philosophy• 1770s-1900 – Rise of German Higher

Criticism• 1789-1799 – French Revolution• 1827 – Plymouth Brethren begin meeting• 1833 – Slavery Abolition Act of England• 1859 - Charles Darwin – Origin of Species

• 1919 – Rise of Neo-OrthodoxyUnited States (cont.)

1937 – Death of J. Gresham Machen - Bible Presbyterian Ch. (McIntyre)1966 – RTS, Jackson, MI1967 – Confession of ‘67, Book of Confessions1973 – PCA1983 – Union of UPCUSA & PCUS

The Consequences of War:

Federal Casualties Confederate Casualties

• Killed in action or mortally wounded: 110,100

• Died of disease: 224,580• Died as prisoners of war:

30,192• Total Deaths: 389,753• Wounded in Action:

275,175• Total casualties, 1861 to

1865: 664,928

• Killed in action or mortally wounded: 94,000

• Died of disease: 164,000• Died as prisoners of war:

31,000• Total Deaths: 289,000• Wounded in action:

194,026• Total casualties, 1861 to

1865: 483,026

The Consequences of War:

•Many southern church buildings had been destroyed and Christians demoralized.

•“Reconstruction” added insult to injury and encouraged racial tensions.

The Condition of Christianity in Post-War United States

“[It] was a mosaic of divergent and sometimes contradictory traditions and tendencies that could never be totally integrated. Sometimes its advocates were backward looking and reactionary, at other times they were imaginative innovators. … At times they seemed ready to forsake the whole world over a point of doctrine; at other times they appeared heedless of tradition in their zeal to win converts. Sometimes they were optimistic patriots; sometimes they were prophets shaking from their feet the dust of a doomed civilization.”

Marsden, p. 43

Widely different attitudestoward priorities:

R. A. Torrey D.L. Moody

“Christ and His immediate disciples immediately attacked, exposed and denounced error. We are constantly told in our day that we ought not to attack error but simply teach the truth. This is the method of the coward and trimmer; it was the not the method of Christ.”

Revivalism instilled a strong commitment to the subordination of all other concerns – including concern for all but the simplest ideas – to soul-saving and practical Christianity.

To Moody most formal ideas seemed divisive and hence all but the least controversial were to be avoided.

Widely different attitudestoward priorities:

R. A. Torrey D.L. Moody

“Christ and His immediate disciples immediately attacked, exposed and denounced error. We are constantly told in our day that we ought not to attack error but simply teach the truth. This is the method of the coward and trimmer; it was the not the method of Christ.”

“Christ’s teaching was always constructive. … His method of dealing with error was largely to ignore it, letting it melt away in the warm glow of the full intensity of truth expressed in love. … Let us hold truth, but by all means let us hold it in love, and not with a theological club.”

Widely different attitudestoward priorities:

R. A. Torrey D.L. Moody

“Christ and His immediate disciples immediately attacked, exposed and denounced error. We are constantly told in our day that we ought not to attack error but simply teach the truth. This is the method of the coward and trimmer; it was the not the method of Christ.”

“Christ’s teaching was always constructive. … His method of dealing with error was largely to ignore it, letting it melt away in the warm glow of the full intensity of truth expressed in love. … Let us hold truth, but by all means let us hold it in love, and not with a theological club.”

“Behind these two answers lay not only contrasting personalities but different basic assumptions, assumptions concerning the importance of ideas as such. Both approaches are important to an understanding of the resulting movement.”

Marsden

Revivalist Expansion

Charles Finney D.L. Moody

• Appealed to intellect but created new access through and emphasis on emotion:▫ the creation of the

gospel song,▫ the social, religious

meeting,▫ witnessing/testifying of

one’s transformed life.• Started sermons with a

verse but rarely dealt with the text.

• Applied principles of small group meetings on a massive scale.▫ employed a song leader

(Sankey) as a means of building up emotional themes of the distress of sin, passionate surrender to the love of Jesus.

• Moody’s sermons “virtually abandoned all pretense of following … a text, and were closer to ‘layman’s exhortation’ filled with touching anecdotes with an emotional impact.”

(Marsden, p. 45)

Revivalist Expansion

Charles Finney D.L. Moody

• Appealed to intellect but created new access through and emphasis on emotion:▫ the creation of the

gospel song,▫ the social, religious

meeting,▫ witnessing/testifying of

one’s transformed life.• Started sermons with a

verse but rarely dealt with the text.

• Applied principles of small group meetings on a massive scale.▫ employed a song leader

(Sankey) as a means of building up emotional themes of the distress of sin, passionate surrender to the love of Jesus.

• Moody’s sermons “virtually abandoned all pretense of following … a text, and were closer to ‘layman’s exhortation’ filled with touching anecdotes with an emotional impact.”

(Marsden, p. 45)

The Inquiry Room

“The Calvinists tended to stress intellect, the importance of right doctrine, the cognitive aspects of faith, and higher education. … Many Congregationalists and Presbyterians, especially those of the … ‘New School,’ combined educational and doctrinal emphases with intense emotion.”

Marsden, p. 44

Master TimelineUnited States Europe

• 1620 – Mayflower lands• 1730s-1743 – 1st Great Awakening• 1776-1783 – American Rev.• 1790-1840 – 2nd Great Awakening• 1830 – Book of Mormon• 1850-1900 – 3rd Great Awakening• 1861-1865 – American Civil War• 1870 – Scottish Common Sense• 1889 – Moody Bible Institute• 1891 – Briggs’ address• 1909 – Scofield Reference Bible• 1910 – Pres. G.A.: 5 Fundamentals• 1914-1919 – World War I• 1922 – “Shall Fund.s Win?”• 1923 – The Auburn Affirmation• 1925 – The Scopes Trial• 1929 – Westminster Theo.

Seminary• 1936 – Orthodox Presbyterian Ch.• 1936 – John Mackay, Princeton

Sem.

• 1643 – Westminster Confession of Faith• 1650-1800 – Age of European

Enlightenment& of Scottish Common Sense

Philosophy• 1770s-1900 – Rise of German Higher

Criticism• 1789-1799 – French Revolution• 1827 – Plymouth Brethren begin meeting• 1833 – Slavery Abolition Act of England• 1859 - Charles Darwin – Origin of Species• 1862-77 – Darby travels to the United

States• 1919 – Rise of Neo-Orthodoxy

United States (cont.)

1937 – Death of J. Gresham Machen - Bible Presbyterian Ch. (McIntyre)1966 – RTS, Jackson, MI1967 – Confession of ‘67, Book of Confessions1973 – PCA1983 – Union of UPCUSA & PCUS

“No doubt social pessimism contributedto the growth of the dispensationalistmovement in post-Civil-War America during the

Gilded Age. The war clearly had not

introduced a golden age of the reign of

righteousness as some had predicted.

Moreover, the progression from General

Washington to General Grant hardly

suggested the coming of a millennium.”

(Marsden, p. 67)

The Context of Darby’s Attraction

The old Postmillennial view

was not working.

“Even though the missionary movement was at its height, the simple facts were that the non-Christian population of the world was growing faster than the number of converts.”

(Marsden, p. 68)

The Context of Darby’s Attraction

“A thousand pulpits are drifting from the doctrine of inspiration, the deity of Christ, the vicarious atonement, the resurrection of the body, and the eternal retribution.”

(A.J. Frost, 1886)

The Context of Darby’s Attraction

The growing fear of a rising Modernism.

•The seminaries, the intellectual leadership of Christianity, are openly betraying the church.

•A suspicion of higher intellectual learning.

•A growing distrust of the historic creeds.

The Context of Darby’s Attraction

The growing fear of a rising Modernism.

A rising disrespect/disregard for the doctrinesof the church.

“[A]merican dispensationalists did not consider separation from their denominations a necessary consequence of their belief, … they thought in terms of individuals rather than institutions. … The institutional church hence had no particular status. … The true Christian was one separated from sin and worldliness.”

(Marsden, p. 71)

The Context of Darby’s Attraction

A new attention toward the Holy Spirit –the rise of the Holiness Movement

“The dispensationalists and holiness teachings held by the more Calvinistic evangelists and Bible teachers were closely connected. The holiness teachings of nineteenth-century American evangelicalism were built upon the idea that the present era was the age of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit which had begun on or near the time of the first Pentecost as recorded in the book of Acts. Dispensationalism’s central teaching – that the church age was the unique age of the Spirit – stressed the same thing.”

(Marsden, p. 72)

The Context of Darby’s Attraction

“[E]nthusiasm [i.e., eagerness to receive Darby] came largely from clergymen with strong Calvinistic views, principally Presbyterians and Baptists in the northern United States. The evident basis for this affinity was that in most respects Darby was himself an unrelenting Calvinist. His interpretation of the Bible and of history rested firmly on the massive pillar of divine sovereignty, placing as little value as possible on human ability.”

(Marsden, p. 46)

The Context of Darby’s Attraction

Darby’s influence gains footing:

• James H. Brookes, Presbyterian Minister “the Father of American Dispensationalism”

•Entered the ministry after only 1 year at Princeton Seminary.

•Licensed & ordained by the Presbytery of Oxford

•Third pastorate at 16th & Walnut St. Presbyterian Church, St. Louis, MO.

•Most effective through writings, including Israel and the Church.

Darby’s influence gains footing:

• James H. Brookes, Presbyterian Minister “the Father of American Dispensationalism”

•Niagara Bible Conference (1876-1897) “Believers’ Meeting for Bible Study”

It appears, then, that America was attracted more by Darby’s idea of an any-moment Coming than they (sic) were by his foundational concept of the two peoples of God. … Postmillennialism made the event of the millennium the great object of hope; but Darby, by his insistence on the possibility of Christ’s coming at any moment, made Christ Himself, totally apart from any event, the great object of hope.

(Fuller, Hermeneutics, pp. 92-93)

Darby’s influence gains footing:

• James H. Brookes, Presbyterian Minister “the Father of American Dispensationalism”

•Niagara Bible Conference (1876-1897) “Believers’ Meeting for Bible Study”

Cyrus Ingerson Scofield,Congregationalist

Minister•“Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth”•1909 – Scofield Reference Bible

Four Distinctives offered by the Scofield Reference Bible:

1. A supposed, qualified “literal” approach to interpreting the Bible.

2. A sharp distinction between Israel and the church as two peoples of God.

3. The precise scheme for dividing the history of the world into epochs or dispensations.

4. The belief in a pretribulational rapture.

The most significant distinctive of Dispensational thinking: The essence of dispensationalism, then, is the

distinction between Israel and the Church. This grows out of the dispensationalists’ consistent employment of normal or plain interpretation, and it reflects an understanding of the basic purpose of God in all His dealings with mankind as that of glorifying Himself through salvation and other purposes as well.

(Charles Ryrie)

[T]his distinction is the heart of that system of theology. … [It] is the cornerstone of dispensational theology.

(Keith Mathison)

John Nelson Darbycalled these his “rediscovered truths”

The early church fathers are almost unanimous in their identification of the church and Israel. One example will suffice. Justin Martyr (A.D. 110-165) is often quoted by dispensationalists attempting to prove the early history of premillennialism. He was a premillennialist, but he was certainly not a dispensationalist. In chapter 135 of his Dialogue with Trypho, Justin writes, ‘As, therefore, Christ is the Israel and the Jacob, even so we, who have been quarried out from the bowels of Christ, are the true Israelitic race.’ Here is Justin, a gentile church leader, speaking to Trypho, a Jew, and claiming that the church is the true Israel.

(Keith Mathison, p. 13)

Darby’s influence spreads:

Clarence Larkin• Ordained a Baptist Minister, 1884• Served two churches in Pennsylvania• Books: Dispensational Truth

Rightly Dividing the Word The Book of Daniel others

New CovenantPresbyterian Church

Preaching God’s Sovereign Grace

to a World of Need128 St. Mary’s Church Rd.,

Abingdon, MD 21009410-569-0289

www.ncpres.orgwww.ephesians515.com