The Roots of the Present Age of Apostasy
The characteristics, heretical teachings, and deeds of separations have become more prevalent as church history has progressed from about 1900 to the present day. This is the age of the Church of the Apostasy.
The roots of the present Age of Apostasy began in Europe, particularly with German rationalism, where the inerrancy of the Scriptures was denied with the development of biblical criticism and the documentary hypothesis. If the present Age of the Apostasy had a definite beginning (and this is impossible to determine), for the United States, it might well have been January 20, 1891. On that day, a man named Charles Augustus Briggs gave his inaugural address at the Union Theological Seminary in New York City. At that time, Union was Presbyterian seminary training ministers for Presbyterian pulpits. In his inaugural address, Briggs made six points, some which involve destructive heresies: First, there re three great fountains of truth: the Bible, the church, and reason, thus, reason and the church became equal in authority with the Scriptures; Second, not only were some of the Old Testament prophecies not fulfilled, but they were also reversed; Third, he questioned the Mosaic authorship of the five books of Moses; fourth, he questioned the unity of Isaiah; Fifth, he stated that those who died unsaved would have a second chance; and sixth sanctification is not complete at death.
Briggs was not the first Modernist, but this address was the first public affirmation of Modernism in a theological seminary in the United States. Charge were brought against Briggs by the New York Presbytery on two occasions (1891 and 1893), but the charges were dropped, mainly to preserve the unity of the church rather than to deal with what was actually said. When the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church put Briggs on trial in 1893, he was suspended from the Presbyterian Church. As a result, Briggs became an Episcopalian, and the Union Theological Seminary withdrew from the Presbyterian Church and became independent. However, although the Union Theological Seminary became independent, they still continued to train ministers for the Presbyterian Church and for their pulpits. This set the stage for the way that apostasy would develop in the course of the twentieth century. Apostasy would first begin in a denominational school, and thus affect the training of ministers who were to fill the pulpits of the churches for those denominations. Eventually, more and more liberals took over the pulpits, and more and more churches became liberal themselves.
So throughout the first two decades of the twentieth century, apostasy took over the schools and trained ministers for the denominational churches. In an effort to stem the tide, in 1910 the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church issued the Five Fundamentals of the Faith, which included: First, the inspiration of Scriptures; Second, the Virgin Birth; Third, the substitutionary atonement; Fourth, the resurrection of Jesus; Fifth, the miracles of Jesus. Those who subscribed to these five points were labelled "Fundamentalists", and so a new word was coined. Those who denied these fundamentals were called "Modernists" or "Liberals". The General Assembly issued these in 1910 and reaffirmed them in 1916 and 1923.1
Footnotes:
- Dr Arnold G. Fruchtenbaum, The Footsteps of the Messiah, Copyright © 2003,2004 Ariel Ministries. All rights reserved. Used by permission. pp 72 - 73
