Faith of our Fathers How we got so many Protestant denominations: America's passion for creating new Christian denominations, cults, and movements Faith of our Fathers! we will strive To win all nations unto thee, And through the truth that comes from God, Mankind shall then be truly free. Faith of our fathers! holy faith! We will be true to thee till death! (Third Stanza of Faith of our Fathers, the Protestant-rewritten 3rd verse of an 1849 hymn  originally by Anglican minister Frederick William Faber who converted to Roman Catholicism in 1847). Why do we have so many Christian divisions?  The Roman Catholic Church accuses the Greek Orthodox of splitting from them.  The Greek Orthodox says no, it was the Roman Catholic Church that abandoned the true faith - pointing to the rise of Roman popish dictators versus the early church's councils and church cooperation: "But she [the Roman Church] has separated herself from us by her own deeds, when through pride she assumed a monarchy which does not belong to her office." (Nicetas, Orthodox Archbishop of Nicomedia, around 1135) The Protestant Church says Roman Catholics and Orthodox abandoned the faith, the first more seriously.  Scores of later denominations and groups accuse all three of the these - yes, including the Reformation Protestant Church - of failing to uphold first century Christianity.  All these denominations claim they're faithful to the faith of their fathers.  To this day you'll hear Faith of our Fathers sung in Roman Catholic, Seventh-Day Adventist, Baptist, Presbyterian, United Methodist, and even Mormon churches.  The question remains; what faith and what fathers? Early Divisions   1 Corinthians 11:18-19 In the first place, I hear that when you come together as a church, there are divisions among you, and to some extent I believe it. No doubt there have to be differences among you to show which of you have God's approval. Only a few relatively long-lasting splits divided Christianity until the 19th century.  Prominent among these are the great schism separating Roman Catholicism from the Coptic Orthodox Church (451 AD), later the Greek Orthodox Church (1054 AD), and finally the Protestant Reformation (1517 AD).  While these are the great rifts, the Roman Catholic Church's past fondness for excommunicating everyone she disagreed with realistically solidified many other smaller divisions. This includes the French and Italian Waldensians (1173 AD), the English Lollards (1381 AD), and the Czech Hussites or later the Moravian Church (1415 AD).  Other splits would've perhaps continued except for much of her history the Roman Catholic church had no problem partnering with the state to exterminate disagreement. "To be Christian one must be Roman. One must recognize the oneness of Christ's Church that is governed by one successor of the Prince of the Apostles who is the Bishop of Rome, Christ's Vicar on earth" (Pope Pius XII, Allocution to Irish pilgrims, 1957) "So long as the member was on the body, it lived; separated, it lost its life. Thus the man, so long as he lives on the body of the [Roman Catholic] Church, he is a Christian; separated from her, he becomes a heretic" "Whoever leaves her [the Roman Catholic Church] departs from the will and command of Our Lord Jesus Christ; leaving the path of salvation, he enters that of perdition. Whoever is separated from the Church is united to an adulteress" (Pope Leo XIII Encyclical Satis Cognitum, 1896). "A Protestant is a heretic because he severed himself from the Body of the [Roman Catholic] Church. He is not a Christian, and certainly not a 'good Christian'" (Marian T. Horvat, Ph.D., Tradition in Action, 2018 - protesting a seeming softening of this in modern times). The Protestant Reformation The 16th century Protestant Reformation, though unified in primary purpose, created further division.  The goal of the reformation was to restore the church to biblically defensible practice and belief.  Its divisions came about as key reformers split over specifics, with some reformers feeling others didn't go far enough.  The goal wasn't to create new doctrine rather it was to reevaluate everything taught by scriptures and in historical (early church) understanding.  First divisions: Lutherans appeared in Germany, the Baltics, and Scandinavia.  Reformed Churches emerged in Switzerland, France, Hungary, the Netherlands and Scotland; later followed by the Anglican Church or Church of England (1534-1547 AD).  All these belong to what's known as the Magisterial Reformation.  Almost simultaneously, the Radical Reformation produced Anabaptist movements.  Most groups within the Radical Reformation were smaller, isolated, and independent.  Some of the largest were the Hutterites and Mennonites plus the separate yet related Amish.  Unlike the churches of the Magisterial Reformation, national governments never sanctioned those of the Radical Reformation and their teachings often saw them opposed by those governments. Radical Reformers wrote extensively and widely circulated their literature.  Anabaptists came to America to avoid governmental persecutions.  In parts of Europe, including Switzerland, Germany, and Austria, much of the public sympathized with the Anabaptists despite their formal persecution.  From America's founding, immigrants represented and founded Anglican, Reformed, Lutheran, and Anabaptist churches.  But something happened that saw a further fragmenting of American Protestantism, a trend unparalleled worldwide.  Indeed, the rest of the world knows America for exporting these later divisions. The cornerstone of the Protestant Reformation is sola Scriptura (by Scriptures alone). Roman Catholic and, sometimes, Orthodox theologians readily mock this idea.  For them, Scriptures is merely one sacred voice set alongside tradition.  Decrees and teachings of popes and early councils are equal to Scriptures.  In practice Scriptures needn't even speak to a subject for the Pontiff to rule or create doctrine.  The Bible is merely part of church Tradition and, as the Reformers saw, the Shepherd's voice becomes easily lost among the voices of His flock.  There's no fixed line between what God has spoken or when the Church has spoken.  Worse, nothing stands above the Church to provide absolute guidance (though they claim the Holy Spirit alone does so through their councils and popes). Appeals to early church fathers show chaotic opinion and competing views, perhaps excepting core beliefs of the church.  Opinion on which church father is trustworthy, or superior, varies widely, with later leaders deciding what is orthodox or heterodox.  There's endless question in these churches over what is a genuine apostolic tradition. The Roman Catholic Church commonly claims she wrote Scriptures, that she's the source of this divine book.  Reformers recognized that if Scripture is merely a written portion of a much larger body of church Tradition (and as Pope Pius IX, who reigned from 1846 to 1878, said: "I am tradition!"), then the Church is her own unaccountable authority.  Here the Church gets to define Scriptures and add to them as they want.  Further the Church claims unquestionable present infallibility on how everyone must interpret Scriptures - despite prior use or natural linguistic rules.  In reality, this leaves the Church positioned over Scriptures and Scriptures has no authority over the Church.   Anything the church declares sacred tradition demands belief solely because they teach it.  As one Catholic apologetic source claimed, the church is to "observe all I have commanded (Matthew 28:20)."  Since all Jesus taught isn't in Scriptures (John 20:30; 21:25), there must be teachings outside Scriptures the church must follow.  This functionally allows secret "truths" to later develop or appear under the claim of sacred tradition. Sola Scriptura restores God's Word to first place, to being the final authority, the final appeal for all the Church teaches and believes.  This isn't to say that Scriptures speaks about everything, only to say that whatever Scriptures speaks about, no one has the right to overrule, change, ignore or alter.  Scriptures alone speaks with unalterable apostolic authority.  The Reformation's Sola Scriptura doesn't ignore the church councils and church father's, it doesn't consider them irrelevant.  It weighs those Patristic statements and teachings by Scriptures and embraces all that's rooted in this God-given apostolic book.  Again, the Reformers didn't ignore the councils or the early church fathers; rather they searched them and appealed to their teachings to show they too recognized the absolute authority of Scriptures and all taught there.  The Reformation's reformation was to return the church to its earliest practice which recognized God's word, the Bible, as the highest and final authority.  The Church's foundation is this message of God's prophets and apostles (Ephesians 2:20).  When anyone speaks or decrees anything opposing, contradicting, or adding to this foundation, it's recognized as abandoning the foundation with Jesus Christ as its cornerstone.  God didn't need the complete Bible to exist throughout all time with His plan for Scripture's progressive revelation.  He revealed and had his prophets and apostles record what was necessary for their time and onward.  New Testament scriptures came on the scene during the lives of the Apostles, and their copying, circulation, and recognition took time throughout the Christian world. During every moment of that time, God gave each person in each place exactly what they needed.  And with its completion, God gave His church all the apostolic instruction the church needs to the end of time.  God chose the means by which He speaks with authority to His people.  His Scriptures are above the church and God doesn't allow mixing His message with lesser words.  God's word is the standard by which He judges His flock (Hebrews 4:12; 2 Timothy 3:16).  The Bible must stand alone in its authority over us. Proverbs 12:15  The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man listens to advice. The Latin slogan "sola Scriptura," meaning "by Scripture alone" does not mean "solo Scriptura," or "only Scriptures."  Sola Scriptura doesn't mean tradition or oral teaching has no place in the church.  Scriptures, itself, includes sacred tradition and the early church unquestionably learned apostolic beliefs without the presence of all written scriptures.  Yet, as Luke affirms (see Luke 1:1-4), God-provided written scriptures give believers "certainty" over everything the church teaches.  While oral traditions and teaching are useful, the final appeal for certainty must rest with God's written word.  Short of having a living, breathing, Jesus-appointed, apostle present, their written books are enough.  The apostle John affirms the sufficiency of this written word as complete for people to come to faith and find life in Jesus Christ.  He does so even though he knew far more of what Jesus did and taught and yet left this intentionally unrecorded (John 20:31). Reformation understanding of sola Scriptura didn't call for abandoning ancient church creeds, confessions of faith, and catechisms.  Rather it called on the church to view them as authoritative and binding doctrinal summaries in which the church recognized they taught ancient and accepted principles of Scriptures.  The creeds were subordinate to Scriptures.   Scriptures was never subordinate to any creed, confession, or other church-crafted statement.  This challenged the Roman Catholic view holding church authority as magisterial (sovereign), leaving Scriptures outranked by later church statements. The Reformation called for people to live by the beliefs and teachings of Scriptures with creeds, confessions, and catechisms as time-tested means of communicating and understanding long-held Scripture truths.  Scripture truth is the center of Protestant faith and without this key principle the Reformation crumbles. The Reformers gladly taught the Apostles' Creed and the creeds of Nicaea and Chalcedon.  Many, including Luther, Calvin, and Knox, wrote confessions and catechisms for their people.  They viewed these ancient and new summaries as important to upholding sola Scriptura and saw opposition to creeds as anti-Christian.  Again, Sola Scriptura recognizes church authority and tradition.  This recognition included confessions and creeds, but always as subordinate to, and only as they agree with, God's written word. Some of the radical reformation, especially as continued by many later Protestant denominations, was willing to abandon all creeds, confessions and catechisms.  "No creed but Scriptures itself" became a creed for many later Protestants.  This was no longer sola Scriptura but solo Scriptura.  Solo Scriptura encourages radical individualism.  It allows the individual to claim their belief or Scripture understanding supersedes all the church ever held. Solo-Scriptura allows modern understanding of words to supersede original understanding of words.  It allows private interpretation and judgment to reject all church authority including doctrine expressed by ancient confessions and creeds. It allows the individual to reject every sacred tradition and ancient teaching that tells us about historical church understanding of Scriptures.  "Although tradition does not rule our interpretation, it does guide it. If upon reading a particular passage you have come up with an interpretation that has escaped the notice of every other Christian for two thousand years, or has been championed by universally recognized heretics, chances are pretty good that you had better abandon your interpretation" (R.C. Sproul, The Agony of Deceit). 'I just believe the Bible' is no defense against cults, superstitions, apostasy, and heresy, since nearly every sect for the last two thousand years has claimed the Bible for support. The answer is not to make the church's teachers infallible interpreters of Scripture. Nor to ignore the church's teachers, but to have the humility to recognize that "iron sharpens iron" and that it takes the wisdom and insight of many interpreters over many centuries to help us to see our blind spots. Only a fool would ignore the accumulated wisdom of nearly twenty centuries.  (Michael S. Horton, If The Creeds Aren't Infallible, Why Use Them?) The reason the church embraces many historical creeds and confessions is because they summarize what the Bible teaches about key parts of our faith.  They express and summarize what God's church has always recognized in His word as key doctrines and practices, plus the historic meaning of God-chosen words.  These summaries enable a believer succinct expression of what the entire Bible collectively says about subjects spread over many passages.  Are the creeds infallible? No, but the universal confession of the whole church since its beginning, despite other divisions, is that the Bible clearly teaches that the affirmations we find in the Apostles', Nicene, Chalcedonian, and Athanasian creeds are essential for our salvation. Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox believers are united in their commitment to these essentials. They are not true because the church says so; the church says so because they are true.  (Michael S. Horton, All About Heresy) The Reformation had no interest in "change" for the sake of change.  As Calvin noted in his work "The Necessity of Reforming the Church," the Roman Catholic Church charged Reformers with innovation.  They still do so today.  This when in fact it was the medieval church's innovative changes to Christian belief and worship that demanded recovery of apostolic Christianity.  The Roman church pretended and still pretends to be "always the same," but continues to amass hosts of doctrines and practices unknown to the ancient church, much less the apostolic New Testament. Post Reformation Radicals Something happened roughly two hundred years after the Reformation began. Cultural trends prepared for the Reformation's solid "sola Scriptura" underpinning to pivot on a large scale towards the slippery slope of "solo Scriptura."  Like many movements, prior small-scale events prepared the way.  About halfway toward the pending cultural shift, during and following the English Civil War (1642-1651), a few dissenters gathered followers in opposition to the recognized Protestant church.  Most radical ideas and groups died with their promoters.  One exception was George Fox (1624-1691) founder of the Quakers.  God professedly revealed to him that direct experience with Christ, without the aid of ordained clergy, was necessary.  His visions included God showing him what places God wanted a "great people to be gathered" from. He traveled extensively in England, the Netherlands and even to the Barbados, seeking converts to his faith.  Christ has come to directly teach his people was central to Fox's message.  He taught his beliefs were a restoration of the true Christian church. Remember, at the time, the Church of England was the official church of Great Britain.  In 1650, authorities charged Fox with religious blasphemy and brought him before the magistrates.  One of these magistrates first derogatively referred to Fox's followers as Quakers, "because (Fox) bade them tremble at the word of the Lord."  Quakers internally referred to themselves using more biblical terms including Christians, Saints, Friends of the Truth, Children of Light, but later largely accepted and embraced the Quaker title.  Quakerism grew quickly in England and Wales, with about 60,000 followers by 1680.  For perspective that's over 1% of the entire population of these lands.  Officials viewed Quakers as heretics bent on changing the social and political order.  This led to governmental persecution and laws harassing Quakers and other dissenters, later ended in 1689 by the Act of Toleration. Fox, himself, spent much of 1660s in prison as did thousands of Quakers in the 1680s.  Before the Toleration Act, Quakers experienced persecution in America too.  In 1656, Massachusetts Bay imprisoned two female English Quaker missionaries in horrible conditions and then banished from the Colony, both counted as heretics with their property confiscated and books burned.  Four years later, the same colony hanged English Quaker Mary Dyer on Boston Common for repeatedly defying a Puritan law banning Quakers.  Immediately prior and following the Act of Toleration, many Quakers immigrated to the northeastern region of America seeking greater religious freedom.  Significant groups settled in West Jersey, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania.  In Rhode Island's first 100 years thirty-six governors were Quakers.  Quaker William Penn founded West Jersey and Pennsylvania, in 1676 and 1682 respectively, Pennsylvania as an American commonwealth under Quaker principles.  Quaker persecution by the Anglican Church in Virginia caused Quakers to flee south and start new colonies in Maryland and North Carolina.  Quakers are a prime example of solo-Scriptura run amok, making defining their beliefs problematic.  Perhaps the only constant among Friends (Quakers) is there are no universal beliefs for the entire group:  There's no Quaker Pope, so there's no one to say who is or is not Quaker and what that leads itself to is a huge breadth of belief that's held under the Quaker umbrella. Everything from more non-theistic Friends to very programmed, very evangelical conservative Friends, and I like that. I like that it can all be held and that we're all Friends. (A.J. Mendoza, modern Quaker, transcript "What do Quaker's believe?" QuakerSpeak, 05/31/2018)) The central paradox of Quakerism is the belief in a light that's in each person's conscience. Early and traditional Friends understood that to be the presence of Christ but they, from the very beginning also believed that that light was in everyone's conscience beyond the realm of Christendom. So there's this universal side, and then there's this very Christ-centered understanding of the Light, and they exist in this dynamic tension that can generate a lot of good energy as well as a lot of argument and disagreement. But if we keep trying to come to the center of the paradox by trying to come closer to one another across that divide, good things will happen. (Doug Gwyn, modern Quaker, transcript "What do Quaker's believe?" QuakerSpeak, 05/31/2018) The following list are majority views, yet most points have a Quaker subgroup disputing it: - The Bible is an important perfect source of God's revelation and a means to test personal revelation.  It's an "inspiration for daily living" and guide for how believers must worship together.  The Bible is a "library with the Holy Spirit inspiring but with fallible people writing and it needs us to be listening for guidance as we approach it... (Stephanie Crumley-Effinger, modern Quaker)."  "For many of us, the Bible is an inspired record of humankind's interaction with God through the ages. (Transcript 'Nine Core Quaker Beliefs,' QuakerSpeak, 07/19/2018)" - Revelation of God's truth is continuing an ongoing, His revelation of truth didn't end with the Bible's writing.  Quakers promote relying heavily on direct revelation from the Holy Spirit.  "God still speaks to us today.  That didn't end when the Bible was written... we still get to hear God's message and have the ability to transform our theology and our love for each other based on those messages (Mary Crauderueff, modern Quaker)."  "... prophets are still walking among us or being spoken to now... God isn't done talking (Lina Blount, modern Quaker).  - Quakers "welcome truth from whatever source it may come."  They see their experience of worship and of the Divine enriched by welcoming truth from different sources. - Most Quakers believe in heaven and hell and an afterlife but allow for individual personal interpretation defining each. - Baptism isn't an outward practice, only an inward conversion of the soul. - The Lord's Supper, or Eucharist, isn't an outward practice, rather an inward spiritual filling by Jesus himself - spiritual communion with God experience during silent meditation. - Quaker see humanity as mostly good and even those not saved are God's children.  Everyone has a "living, dynamic, spiritual presence at work" in them.  Sometimes they call this God, Spirit, the light, the inner light, the "Light of Christ," truth, or love.  "When you see that of God in everyone-that's everyone-that changes everything (Jane Fernandes, modern Quaker)." "The christ consciousness-the belief that each person has within them an energy that is unalterable of goodness-that is available to every single person, no matter your circumstance, no matter what you have done or not done or said or did or had or didn't have. You don't have to dress fancy on Sunday; you don't have to speak a certain way; you don't have to study a certain kind of text. Who a person is, by their very nature, we have that availability of God." (Valerie Brown, modern Quaker) - Quakers reject creeds or defined sets of doctrinal beliefs (non-credal).  Each person can experience God directly and unmediated; to lead you to the truth, God wants you to meditate on Him and individually commune with Him.  Direct and immediate spirituality having a personal meeting with God doesn't allow for formulaic expressions, liturgy, or clergy. - Quaker understanding and experience of God is "nurtured and enlarged in community."  They believe when they come together each "brings our own manifestation of the divine energy." - Experience is important; what do you know from your own experience: "You will say, Christ saith this, and the apostles say this: but what canst thou say? Art thou a child of Light and hast thou walked in the Light, and what thou speakest, is it inwardly from God? (George Fox, Quaker founder)" - Quakers have always held women and men as spiritual equals, both allowed to teach in their meetings.  "Some conservative meetings are divided over the issue of homosexuality." - Quakers reject having formal clergy and all religious rituals.  Similarly, they reject formal titles in the church and in society.  Since Christ is present in all, no pastor is necessary as Christ will speak directly.  All Quakers minister to other Quakers: everyone can speak in worship meetings and preach or teach ("we are all clergy").  The possibility they know who's in charge is a sign the Spirit may be in charge.  That said, some Quaker branches do have pastors and a worship service may look like a typical evangelical Protestant church service. How you live out your belief is a major part of their teaching.  Over centuries this showed in plain dress, refusal to swear oaths, and refusal to fight in war.  Many Quakers actively supported abolition of slavery and prison reform.  Friends were conscientious objectors in World War I and II, many willingly served in ambulance units while governments compelled others to serve in noncombatant corps.  In the 20th century, two US Presidents were Quakers: Herbert C. Hoover and Richard M. Nixon.  The former was a lifelong Quaker. Raised in a Quaker home, the latter largely didn't practice as an adult.  Two famous 19th century Quakers are philanthropist Johns Hopkins and chocolate maker John Cadbury. Most early Quakerism featured non-programmed "waiting worship." By 2012 an estimated 89% of worldwide Quakers belong to "evangelical" and "programmed" branches.  Roughly half the current 400,000 Quakers worldwide are in Africa and 35% in the Americas (less than 1% in Canada).  Following World War I some Quakers wanted to take a more orthodox (or fundamentalist) approach to their beliefs.  After World War II, in 1947, they formed an Association of Evangelical Friends. By 1989 this became the Evangelical Friends Church International (EFCI).  By 2014, the EFCI represented 1,100 churches of over 140,000 Friends in 24 countries (about 39% of worldwide Friends). The largest eastern US populations live in Ohio, Virginia, and North Carolina. The EFCI is part of the National Association of Evangelicals.  This group allows freedom of conscience over their members engaging in water baptism and giving or receiving communion within their churches.  John Wesley's Holiness Movement and his doctrine of Christian perfection or entire sanctification appears in one Quaker group.  These "Holiness Friends" claim early roots, holding believers could rid themselves of all voluntary sin as a chief Quaker view in the 19th century. These Quakers point to George Fox's message Perfection claiming this was the earliest Friends understanding. The First Great Awakening  Judges 17:6 & 21:25 In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes. The Age of Enlightenment (about 1715-1789), sometimes called the Age of Reason, closely aligned with the Scientific Revolution.  The Enlightenment placed reason as the primary source of authority.  While promoting personal liberty, tolerance, progress, and separation of church and state, its emphasis on scientific method and natural explanations for everything became an attack on religious thought and the church.  Everything could find explanation with enough natural knowledge. A Latin phrase used by philosopher Immanuel Kant encompassed the educational drive of this period: "Sapere Aude!"  Commonly translated as "Dare to know," it loosely translates or equates to "Dare to be wise" or "Dare to think for yourself!"   In Christian practice this meant more than prodding people to search Scriptures for themselves, it often meant abandoning long-standing church beliefs and practices. The Enlightenment set the stage for English brothers John and Charles Wesley in 1738.  John was originally an Anglican minister but had a conversion experience in the Moravian Church.  Wesley embraced much of the teachings of Dutch theologian Jacobus Arminius (1560-1609).  The Wesley brothers widely used and supported open air crusades to reach those who did not attend formal church services.  Many converts had no attachment to the Anglican Church though John Wesley remained a cleric.  He insisted they attend their local parish church as well as Methodist meetings.  This early revivalism included Calvinist George Whitefield (Anglican) yet soon saw a clear split as Wesley openly rejected both Luther's understanding of the bondage of the soul and the Reformation doctrine of predestination.  Wesley further taught a second blessing apart for the first blessing leading to salvation.  This second work of grace could completely transform and purify a believer and make them fully holy.  This teaching became the doctrine of entire sanctification, a doctrine unknown to the early church or the Reformation.  [Though some Wesleyan scholars point to a few early church fathers, they confuse and merge ideas of Justification and progressive Sanctification].  Yes, Wesley taught that saints could be perfect here and now (known as Christian perfection).  Falling from this grace meant a loss of salvation and a need for a new salvation experience. John Wesley specifically taught the spread of the doctrine of entire sanctification was the main reason God raised up Methodists in the world.  Millennial expectation was part of early Methodism.  Wesley's hymns included millennial imagery and Wesley occasionally voiced warnings about an imminent Judgment Day. Some note likenesses between some of Wesley's teachings and Quakerism. John Wesley was unquestionably aware of Quaker teachings. Though he openly condemned some of George Fox's Quakerism "heresies," he favorably cited portions of Robert Barkley's 1676 Apology, a defense of Quakerism, in his disputes with Calvinists over predestination.     In matters that are obscure and far beyond our vision, even in such as we may find treated in Holy Scripture, different Interpretations are sometimes possible without prejudice to the faith we have received. In such a case, we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in the search of truth justly undermines this position, we too fall with it. That would be to battle not for the teaching of Holy Scripture but for our own, wishing its teaching to conform to ours, whereas we ought to wish ours to conform to that of Sacred Scripture. - Augustine, De Genesi Ad Litteram, 401-405 AD It was the Wesleyan salvation experience ("new birth") that brought opposition from the established English church.  They saw the emotionalism tied to this one-time-and-place experience as likely to produce "ill effects on weak minds."  Anglicanism also saw emphasis on unprepared and improvised prayers, versus fixed forms within the traditional church, as an affront. Though Methodist's first sought reform of the Church of England's dry religious condition, it soon led to their departure from that Church. The Wesleys were part of what became known as the First Great Awakening (1730s-1740s) in the American Colonies.  They were the exception in that most of the key teachers were Calvinists including the previously mentioned George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards (also Anglican).  While Edwards was passionate in his ministry, he focused on his own home parish with an emphasis on preaching solid doctrine and of sin and the need of repentance. In contrast, Whitefield was a touring minister who traveled 5000 miles in America (from Maine to Georgia) and his style was charismatic, theatrical and expressive.  Thousands gathered to hear him (including the religious skeptic Benjamin Franklin).  Major themes during the First Great Awakening included:   - All people are sinners from birth - Sin without salvation will send a person to hell - God will save all people if they confess their sins to Him, seek forgiveness and accept His grace in Jesus Christ - Conversion is not merely intellectual agreement to correct Christian doctrine; rather it's a "new birth" experience of the heart. - All people can experience a direct and emotional connection with God - Assurance of salvation is a normal expectation in Christian life - Religion shouldn't be formal and institutionalized, but rather casual and personal - God's message is for, and the church is to include, every person, regardless of gender, race, and status. Not everyone embraced the casual and informal preaching and ministry of Whitefield and Wesley.  It divided churches between those supporting the revivals and those who didn't - then known as New Lights versus Old Lights.  Some opponents accused the revivals of fostering disorder and fanaticism by enabling uneducated itinerant preachers.  Closed doors in long-standing churches merely led to more open-air meetings and larger audiences, something Whitefield and later Wesley especially capitalized on.  People uncomfortable with the traditional church would attend these informal services. "From being thoughtless or indifferent about religion, it seem'd as if all the world were growing religious, so that one could not walk thro' the town in an evening without hearing psalms sung in different families of every street."   (Benjamin Franklin) As this Great Awakening waned it saw evangelical Anglicans as an accepted part of the Church of England and the rise of Methodism as a denomination.  Congregational and Presbyterian churches were split while Baptist churches multiplied.  The nondenominational nature of the Great Awakening enabled the new teachings of the Wesley's to circulate alongside that of Whitefield and Edwards.  With Whitefield's death in 1770, Wesley's non-reformation doctrine became fully central and the movement became increasingly Arminian.  Even while Whitefield took part the wanted result, meaning more conversions, led to minimizing discussion on core doctrinal differences.  Most historians ironically credit Whitefield's efforts and preaching for the greatest spread of Wesleyan Methodism. Wesley's efforts continued to impact England while the Great Awakening stirred in America. By 1784, John Wesley began ordaining preachers ("elders") to send to the former American Colonies to fill a shortage of priests caused by the recent American Revolutionary War (1775-1783).  This led to an explosion of Methodist churches across the American continent.  Their continued traditions of open-air services and circuit riding preachers blended well with the American frontier.  Methodist's felt release from old religious forms and church buildings.  "Camp meetings" soon became all the rage.  By 1830 Methodists became the largest American denomination - but this is getting ahead of the next part of this history.  Wesley's unilateral ordaining and sending of preachers became a primary reason for Methodism's final split from the Church of England after Wesley's death in 1791.  It became known as a nonconformist church because it doesn't conform to the Church of England's fixed rules.  This split eventually created a large group of separate church denominations. At Wesley's death there were over 500 Methodist preachers throughout the British Empire and the United States. During the transition years between the Age of Enlightenment and Romanticism, brazen French Revolution (1789-1799) radicals sought to overturn politics by removing power from the monarchy.  But political upheaval wasn't their only goal.  They sought fundamental change of society by overthrowing long-standing traditions and practices and especially the church. To aid this, in 1793, they introduced the Republican Calendar. It consisted of 10-hour days, with 100 minutes each hour and 100 seconds each minute.  This was to remove religious influence found in the old calendar, making it difficult for Christians to keep track of Sundays and festivals such as Easter.  These calendar and time changes didn't stick but traditional weights and sizing slowly gave way to a new decimal measurement - why we have the meter and the kilogram today. The Second Great Awakening As so often happens, the Age of Enlightenment (and perhaps its extreme expression in the French Revolution) sparked a later response, a swing of the pendulum, called Romanticism (or the Romantic Era).  While it didn't abandon the individualist nature of Enlightenment, it transformed it.  A new focus arose in contrast to and in rejection of the Enlightenment's Deism and beliefs.  Setting aside skeptical rationalism and scientific facts the new focus was emotion and individualism, namely "What do I feel?"   The following quote well summarizes what this (and later) Romantic movements stress: "Romantic movements tend to disparage traditional religion and to affirm unorthodox, exotic, esoteric, mystical, and individualistic spiritualties..." (Spiritual but Not Religious: the Influence of the Current Romantic Movement; ATR:88:3, by Owen C. Thomas) Romanticism peaked around 1800-1850 in Europe.  Amid this individualistic emphasis on personal senses, thoughts and emotions, Romanticism sparked a sub-movement within Protestant Christianity. Romanticism wasn't only a European model; it became an American import.  Romantic thought brought new influencers in European Protestant Christianity (especially in England, Scotland and Germany) and in the United States.  In America the greatest expression of this was the Second Great Awakening. The United States was ripe for embracing a trend with a strong individualistic emphasis.  Individualism is interwoven within the American experience. It's the reason people celebrate the Wild West.  Americans applaud self-reliance and independence. Historically, that showed up in a wish for freedom from government control with a belief that an individual's interests should take priority over the State's interests.  For many people, this translated into a similar dislike of ecclesiastical organization and authority.  If the individual's interests didn't take precedence here, at least the local church gathering did rejecting any outside control.  American self-reliance encourages a child's independence, that they would be free do and go wherever they want.  The parent who seeks to restrain their child's freedom is selfish.  Church restraints were viewed as similar. Consider the idea of the Wild West in the 1800's.  During periods of worsened condition in the American East (mostly Northeast), the call of the West was individual freedom to live out a personal dream and "choose my own way."  Americans blamed these worsening conditions on labor limits, or political restraints, and even social or religious controls.  Individual freedom was the goal, based on personal standards, to live life as each chose.  The American Dream was an individual's right of life, liberty, possessions, and the pursuit of happiness all as each person defined it.  No one can tell me what to do or believe. If you believe what you like in the Bible and reject what you don't like, it's not the Bible you believe, but yourself. (Augustine of Hippo, Sermons, 391-430 AD) Most view The Second Great Awakening as a North American Protestant Christian revival beginning around 1790.  Others label it as "the rise of a free market religious economy in America."  It gained momentum during 1800 to 1820, peaking from 1820 to the 1840s, and reflected Romanticism in its focus on emotion, enthusiasm, and the supernatural. This popular movement was individualistic with most people rejecting Enlightenment's rationalism and powerless view of God. In the church these ideas sparked widespread rejection of older denominations and their leadership. Isolated or independent Revivalists, itinerant ministers, and circuit riders came on the scene and gathered large audiences for their teachings. Most were common people, many relatively uneducated, which appealed to the American form of Romanticism aiding these preachers in connecting with individualist-minded people especially along the frontier and rural areas.  From New England the movement quickly spread to southern Ohio and down into Kentucky and Tennessee. Simultaneously similar movements flourished in Europe's Romantic Era with strong evangelical growth in many countries. The Second Great Awakening's loosely related revivals saw millions of new members added to existing evangelical denominations when that denomination was accepting of some of the changes the movement brought. It often led to formation of new denominations or independent churches as people withdrew from older churches and associations.  In the north, a large area became known as the "burned-over district." This area, centered on the western and central regions of New York, had first seemingly experienced revival.  Yet, later, even the key revivalist involved in that area described the aftermath of religious disillusionment, with people abandoning churches, by that "burned-over district" phrase.  The area became noted for its later resistance to gospel teaching.  In American's frontier regions, including Tennessee, fiercely individualistic preachers and revival meetings led to the spread and formation of many Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches plus new (and especially Arminian) Protestant denominations and churches.  "There is, however, a huge difference between revival and revivalism" (Australian Pastor Stephen Tan, September 2018, loosely citing Ian H. Murray, Revival and Revivalism). Charles Grandison Finney (1792-1875) was the chief revivalist of the "burned-over district" during the Second Great Awakening. He grew up attending a Baptist Church in Henderson, NY, with his family, a church characterized by the emotional revival-style meetings of the early 19th century.  In 1821 he became a licensed minister in the Presbyterian Church even though he held major misgivings and reservations over key Presbyterian doctrines.  Largely Quaker Philadelphia invited Finney to come preach in 1828, with his message finding wide acceptance.   By 1832 Finney was a preacher in New York City and by 1835 pastor of systematic theology at the newly formed Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio.  Finney was an active revivalist in upstate New York and Manhattan from 1825 to 1835 and became known as "The Father of Modern Revivalism." He also actively campaigned for social reforms, abolition of slavery, child labor legislation, and equal education rights for women and African Americans.  Finney intended the church as an organization for personal and societal reform; he believed revivalism and reform were partners. In his view the focus wasn't the church as a means of God's grace, preaching and teaching the Word, providing the sacraments, and teaching believers to take the gospel into the word.  His focus was on the church changing society.  Finney mostly reduced the gospel to terms of how moral change would positively impact the nation and individual. This "change" doctrine largely replaced or suppressed Reformation doctrine.  In substance, Finney was a labeled opponent of Old School Presbyterian theology.  Dividing Presbyterians in New York and Philadelphia into Calvinistic and Arminian camps is part of his legacy. Finney's revivalism sparked much innovation in preaching and in the conduct of services. In contrast to then normal practice, he encouraged women to pray aloud in public meetings of mixed sexes.  Extemporaneous preaching characterized Finney's preaching (meaning he didn't prewrite or memorize his messages, rather they were spontaneous and improvised).  While he preset his topic, the specific content varied as he felt led.  While prior preachers would preach on sin, Finney would publicly call-out or censure individuals by name in his sermons and prayers. His greatest innovation was in developing the "anxious seat" or "anxious bench." This is the foundation of the "altar call" that later characterized fundamentalist and evangelical churches into this century.  Finney would call people forward to a place where they could receive prayer as they considered becoming a Christian.  Emotional draws, or rather what he would call "excitements," became a normal part of his revivalism tactics for converting people - many resulting in seekers fainting or weeping. "God has found it necessary to take advantage of the excitability there is in mankind, to produce powerful excitements among them, before he can lead them to obey." (Lectures on Revivals of Religion, 1835, Charles Finney) To this day many revere Finney in modern evangelicalism, often more for his methods than his theology.  Bible and seminary students study his works and methods in many colleges.  Finney's a noted hero of key figures and groups including Jerry Falwell, Billy Graham, singer Keith Green, Youth with a Mission (YWAM), much of televangelism, the Vineyard Movement, Promise Keepers, and many more. Most praise his revivalist practices without considering how his doctrine impacted the church.  Here Finney's popularity comes from being a pivotal figure in the widespread abandonment of Reformation belief, or orthodoxy, to an Arminian or Pelagian revivalism. Solid reformation theology and Bible teaching provided a better foundation for America and Britain's revival of the First Great Awakening (1730s - 1740s) under Edwards and Whitefield. The Second Great Awakening's revivalism, following in the pattern of John Wesley, abandoned most of this and began a continuing trend to the present.  Finney's teachings and practices offered underpinning for later evangelical trends and movements.  This includes fundamentalism, Pentecostalism, holiness doctrine, plus church growth, social justice, and political revivalism.        Finney claimed a second Baptism of the Holy Spirit, a direct ministry calling from Jesus, and rejected attending seminary or any Bible school as he began conducting revivals. His preaching focus was on self-change, with one of his popular sermons entitled "Sinners Bound to Change Their Own Hearts."  Consider part of his sermon introduction: 2. That it does not mean a new soul. We have one soul, and do not need another. Nor, 3. Are we required to create any new faculties, of body or mind. We now have all the powers of moral agency; we are just as God made us, and do not need any alteration in the substance of soul or body. Nor, 4. Does it mean that we are to bring to pass any constitutional change in ourselves. We are not required to add to the constitution of our minds or bodies any new principle or taste. Some persons speak of a change of heart as something miraculous--something in which the sinner is to be entirely passive, and for which he is to wait in the use of means, as he would wait for a surgical operation, or an electric shock. We need nothing added to the constitution of our body or mind; nor is it true in experience, that those who have a new heart, have any constitutional alteration of their powers whatever. They are the same identical persons, so far as both body and mind are concerned, that they were before. The alteration lies in the manner in which they are disposed to use, and do actually employ, their moral and physical powers. A constitutional change, either in body or mind, would destroy personal identity. A Christian, or one who has a new heart, would not be the same individual in regard to his powers of moral agency, that he was before--would not be the same agent, and under the same responsibilities. Finney's book, Systematic Theology (1851), shows his true theological emphasis.  Almost the entire book centers on moral human government, plus moral personal duty and action ("Obedience Entire").  Only at lecture 34-35 does he briefly touch the topic of the Christ's atonement, before returning to human government. He largely reduces the atonement to a good example for humanity... "Let it be remembered, the value of the atonement consists in its moral power, or tendency, to promote virtue and happiness. Moral power is the power of motive.  The highest moral power is the influence of example. Advice has moral power. Precept has moral power. Sanction has moral power. But example is the highest moral influence that can be exerted by any being. ...  The example of great men and of angels, has great moral power. But the example of God is the highest moral influence in the universe." (Systematic Theology, 1851, Lecture XXXV, Extent of Atonement) For Finney, Christ's atonement wasn't a substitutionary sacrifice paying our penalty before a Holy God.  He believed no one could impute sin to another and that God pardons sin without any need of punishment.  Jesus couldn't have died for anyone's sin besides his own.  In Finney's atonement, Jesus' death on the cross secured nothing at all for humanity's forgiveness. "Neither is the atonement nor anything in the mediatorial work of Christ, the foundation of our justification, in the sense of the source, moving or procuring cause." (Systematic Theology, Charles Finney) "The doctrine of imputed righteousness, or that Christ's obedience to the law was accounted as our obedience, is founded on a most false and nonsensical assumption." (Systematic Theology, Charles Finney) "It was naturally impossible, then, for him to obey in our behalf." (Systematic Theology, Charles Finney) Finney believed Christ died for something and not for someone. Jesus died for a purpose but didn't die for people. His death's purpose was to reassert God's moral government and lead us to everlasting life by perfect example. Returning to Finney's Systematic Theology, he finally gets to the topic of Justification in Lecture 56, this before another 17 lectures on Sanctification.  Finney's Systematic Theology is all about ethics and moral reform.  He taught that everyone's salvation rests in personal moral obedience.  God's justification becomes conditional on continuous obedience.  "Whenever he sins, he must, for the time being, cease to be holy. This is self-evident. Whenever he sins, he must be condemned; he must incur the penalty of the law of God ... If it be said that the precept is still binding upon him, but that with respect to the Christian, the penalty is forever set aside, or abrogated, I reply, that to abrogate the penalty is to repeal the precept, for a precept without penalty is no law. It is only counsel or advice. The Christian, therefore, is justified no longer than he obeys, and must be condemned when he disobeys or Antinomianism is true. Until he repents he cannot be forgiven. In these respects, then, the sinning Christian and the unconverted sinner are upon precisely the same ground."  (Systematic Theology, Charles Finney) Finney, afterwards, says that because of the sinning Christian's association with God, God "tends to reclaim him," trying to hedge his previously claim that a sinning Christian and unconverted Christian are identical.  In summary, Finney believed in full present obedience or entire sanctification - that no sin can remain in a believer.  The Reformers understood "simul justus et peccator," that believers are both just and sinful at the same time.  Finney rejected this Reformation truth: "This error has slain more souls, I fear, than all the Universalism that ever cursed the world. ...  "Whenever a Christian sins he comes under condemnation, and must repent and do his first works, or be lost." (Systematic Theology, Charles Finney) Finney held that sin wasn't an inherited result of the fall; rather He followed the fifth century heretic Pelagius in denying people inherited Adam's sin and guilt or that we have a sinful nature.  Declaring the doctrine of original sin "anti-scriptural and nonsensical dogma," he believed we sin both by choice and that we can stop sinning also by choice.  Adam merely led people into sin by his bad example; Jesus leads us out of sin by his perfect example.  Today's church growth movement, embracing whatever it takes to entice people to come in, owes a great debt to Finney's theology.  Specific Divine intervention leading to a new birth or revival is unnecessary.  Following the right principles and practices is all it takes.  "A revival is not a miracle, nor dependent on a miracle, in any sense. It is a purely philosophical result of the right use of the constituted means-as much so as any other effect produced by the application of means." (Lectures on Revival, 1834, Charles Finney) Finney's postmillennial end-times views provided impetus for his ministry.  Finally, I will demonstrate that both Finney's theology and ministry, as well as his involvement in social change, were driven by an eschatological vision of a new age. Charles Finney was a postmillennialist, and that aspect of his theology was both a driving force for much of his ministry and desire for social reconstruction, and a drawing force, providing final legitimacy for the complete work of the gospel, as well as final fulfillment of such work.  (Charles Grandison Finney: The Social Implications of His Ministry, Roger Joseph Green, in the Asbury Theological Journal, Vol 28, No 2, 1993) Another faction owing its existence to the Second Great Awakening is the Restoration Movement.  It's sometimes called the American Restoration Movement or the Stone-Campbell Movement.  The Second Great Awakening's individualistic climate quickly developed several independent revival strands.  Each idealized early Christianity as their leaders personally understood and taught it.  Separately Barton W. Stone at Cane Ridge Kentucky and father and son duo Thomas and Alexander Campbell (both educated in Scotland) in Pennsylvania and West Virginia (then Virginia) developed similar approaches.  They saw the church's creeds as keeping Christianity divided and felt their understanding would unify the whole Christian church on a pattern they believed came from the New Testament.  The Cane Ridge group simply identified themselves as Christians and the other as Disciples of Christ.  Both names were tries to use only New Testament names instead of "divisive" denominational names.  In 1832, these two groups joined fellowship with a handshake. Most within the Stone-Campbell movement, to the present, claim it's a unity movement more than a restoration; yet the restoration claim and title came from teachings of founder Alexander Campbell.  Campbell believed the movement was restoring ancient practice and faith, believing the church had lost or abandoned key doctrines over the centuries.  Both Stone and Campbell saw restoring apostolic Christianity as a means of hastening the millennium. To the present, these Restoration churches fully embrace "solo Sciptura" without directly saying so.  Internal slogans show their contempt for explanatory catechisms, creeds, or terms: - Where the Scriptures speak, we speak; where the Scriptures are silent, we are silent.  - No creed but Christ, no book but the Bible, no law but love, no name but the divine. - Do Bible things in Bible ways. - Call Bible things by Bible names.  (Names of human origin divide). - Creeds and church traditions divide. They believe the Biblical pattern mandates Christians celebrate the Lord's Supper each Sunday.  Baptism after profession of faith, by immersion, is necessary for salvation.  Nineteenth century leader and evangelist Austin McGary claimed a convert must understand their baptism is for forgiveness of sins for the Baptism to be valid.  Later minister and educator, David Lipscomb countered that baptism was valid if a believer's baptism came from their wish to obey God, whether they fully understood baptism's role in salvation or not.  These days it appears more churches follow McGary's view.  Some churches rebaptize those previously baptized by immersion, even in a Church of Christ, but without satisfactory understanding. Missionary efforts, beginning in the 19th century, saw the American Restoration Movement exported worldwide.  In America, by the 20th century, disagreements over musical instruments in worship and other underlying approaches to bible interpretation led to movement splits.  Three primary denominations or divisions include: The Churches of Christ (a cappella only, some opposing Sunday School, para-church ministries and bible colleges), the Christian Church (uses musical instruments), and the Disciples of Christ/Christian Church (instruments and some allowing women ministers).  By 2011 the Disciples of Christ officially stated they have no formal policy on same-sex marriage and, in 2013, voted for a resolution affirming all members regardless of sexual orientation.  They state that all policy decisions on same-sex marriage belong to local congregations. The Restoration movement influenced churches not directly associated with it through its ideas and slogans.  For example, without accepting the teachings on baptism's salvation and required weekly celebration of the Lord's Supper, many Baptists adopted "No creed but Christ, no book but the Bible." Jesus' second coming was a popular topic of the Second Great Awakening era.  During the early 1800's postmillennialism was popular.  Christians expected the current revival and societal transformation would alter the world (mostly meaning America and perhaps Europe). The changes would purify society in preparation for the Millennium. The expected Millennium was a 1000 year (or figuratively long period of time) of peace and happiness here on earth, after which Jesus would return.  Many Christian-inspired reform movements began.  These included the anti-alcohol Temperance Movement (about 1850), antislavery movement (leading to Congress abolishing slavery in 1865), women's rights movement (about 1848), and the prison reform movement. These and more were all designed and promoted to correct society's evils before the coming Millennium leading to Jesus' second coming.    The American Romantic movement and Protestant Second Great Awakening were ripe for the message of William Miller (1782-1849).  Born in Pittsfield, MA, he later lived in Poultney, Vermont then Low Hampton, New York.  From this latter location began Adventism. The name refers to a belief in Jesus' imminent Second Coming, or Second Advent.  Counter to the era's prevailing postmillennial thought, this was a premillennial belief in the return of Jesus before a Millennial reign.   Miller grew up Baptist yet had abandoned this around 1804 for deist views typical to the earlier Age of Enlightenment of his birth year. He survived service in the War of 1812, seemingly in a miraculous way.  This he credited to God and began to reevaluate his now inconsistent deist views.  In the years following the war and the recent deaths of his father and sister Miller began to reflect on his own mortality and possibilities following death.  He saw only two possibilities: accountability to God or annihilation (stopping existence).  Neither appealed to him.  He returned to a Baptist Church, a church that began to ask him to share in preaching (as a sermon reader during the local minister's frequent absences). He pointed to an emotional personal conversion experience during this time.  Miller's deist friends challenged him to justify his new faith.  Miller assured them that by personal study of Scriptures he would "harmonize all these apparent contradictions to my own satisfaction, or I will be a Deist still."  This began his study of the entire Bible, beginning in Genesis.  He claimed to not move on from any passage until he came to clear understanding.  During this study he became convinced postmillennialism wasn't biblical and that Bible prophecy revealed timing for Jesus' second coming.  This Romantic Era and time of the Second Great Awakening was ripe for this individualistic self-taught teacher. William Miller, while claiming to use Scripture to interpret Scriptures, used a combination of excessive literalism, proof-texting, and speculation. He began his formal preaching ministry in 1831 as a Baptist minister.  From 1832 to 1844, Miller kept a log of his preaching including specific texts used for each presentation. During this twelve year period he preached over 3200 times - that's more than 266 times every year!  In his "Rules of Biblical Interpretation" he asserts only Scriptures can explain other Scriptures.  He believed that by gathering as many scriptures as possible on any subject one would find definitive answers on any subject you wanted to understand.  Miller asserted this remained true even if the gathered scriptures were only indirectly related to the subject under consideration.  His exegesis method allowed - or encouraged - people to take unrelated verses, or parts of verses, and combine them to prove a point without any regard for their original context.  A single common word was enough to tie passages together.  For example, the word "fire" in any verse allowed him to claim that "fire," and perhaps other details from that verse, belonged to the end-times fire by which God will destroy the world.  By this means of proof-texting he "proved" his interpretation of the Bible.  His "interpretation" using numerical values from Daniel and Revelation and more, combined with his understanding of history and speculation on symbolic use of numbers had him first set Jesus' return to March 21, 1843.  He compared contemporary world governments to Revelation's apocalyptic beasts.  When March 1843 passed without Jesus' return, a second date became the focus:  March 21, 1844. (Miller claimed his complex calculation was off because he forgot to consider the transition from BC to AD).  At its peak an estimated 50,000 to 100,000 people were actively preparing for Jesus return based on his predictions (some claim up to 500,000 Millerites overall).  Failure of this second date brought the most attention and disillusionment, yet a core of the most devout Millerites adopted a third date: October 22, 1844.  When this date predictably failed, some claimed an invisible or spiritual fulfillment; most abandoned Miller.  Overall, Miller's failed predictions became known as "the Great Disappointment."  Miller reportedly apologized after his final revision's failure: Miller responded publicly, writing, "I confess my error, and acknowledge my disappointment; yet I still believe that the day of the Lord is near, even at the door." (Memoirs of William Miller, Sylvester Bliss, 1853) Some modern Adventist church historians claim Miller never set specific dates because he gave a yearlong range for Jesus' possible return.  This enables them to claim Miller never set a "day" or "time" for Jesus return.  Most concede that he did, at least, embrace one specific date, shortly before its arrival. Miller's legacy comes through Adventism - churches which embraced his belief in the personal, visible return of Christ in glory (the Second Coming) as close, a belief shared by many Christians.  While other churches also embraced this premillennial view, it received greater emphasis in Adventism.  This extraordinary emphasis led many to predict, and accept, possible dates.  Related to Finney introduced controversy in Presbyterian churches, Adventism emerged as many Protestant churches divided into Calvinist and Arminian factions. Calvinists echoed the reformation stressing God's predestination and sovereignty while Arminians taught God's election relying on human choice.  Most Adventists, if not all, embraced the Arminian understanding of Jesus' atonement.  They argued Jesus' death was "provisionally and potentially for all men" yet efficacious only for those choosing to accept it.  Many of today's Protestant churches, including plenty of Baptist churches, could easily wear the Adventist label, as they embrace the Adventists' key doctrines and high emphasis on the Second Coming.  The Advent Christian Church, an evangelical Protestant denomination, is a direct descendant of the Adventist movement. The now extinct Evangelical Adventists and the small Primitive Advent Christ Church also trace their roots to this post Miller era.  An early influencer of these denominations was Jonathan Cummings, who reprised Miller's role and again predicted Jesus' return between the fall of 1853 and spring of 1854.  Another major influence on the Advent Christians saw the rise of the doctrine of conditional immortality among Adventist preachers including George Storrs (1796-1879) and Charles F. Hudson (1795-1881). These rejected "immortality of the soul," what they felt was a falsely added belief from Greek philosophy.  Rather, they taught God created man for immortality, but humanity lost that immortality in Adam's fall.  They embraced "conditional immortality" meaning only redeemed will receive eternal life at the resurrection.  The dead unconsciously await the resurrection and final judgment ("soul sleep").  In judgment, the wicked suffer final extinction. Another major branch of post Millerite Adventism are the Seventh-day Adventists started by Ellen G. White (1827-1915).  In 1840 Ellen's family became involved in the Millerite movement while living in Maine.  The family's involvement in the movement led to expulsion from their local Methodist church. In 1844, with the failure of William Miller's predictions, at age 17, Ellen White declared that God called her to be "another" light to the world.  Specifically, she became the leader of a small group of disappointed Millerites who didn't know what to do after Jesus didn't return on October 22.  Ellen claimed she experienced around 200 visions in public and private meetings throughout her life, teaching and publishing these visions for public use.  James White, a former Millerite who married her in 1846, believed her visions were genuine and supported her ministry.  White taught that William Miller's associates kept him from following her revealed truth, later stressing the associates are responsible for this sin: If William Miller could have seen the light of the third message, many things which looked dark and mysterious to him would have been explained. But his brethren professed so deep love and interest for him, that he thought he could not tear away from them. His heart would incline toward the truth, and then he looked at his brethren; they opposed it. Could he tear away from those who had stood side by side with him in proclaiming the coming of Jesus. He thought they surely would not lead him astray. (Early Writings by Ellen G. White) White's early Adventist supporters viewed her visions as the Biblical gift of prophecy, citing Revelation 12:17 & 19:10.  Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) beliefs vary from Reformation Protestantism in several areas.  A central doctrine is belief in a continuing and compulsory seventh-day Sabbath for the church.  They also hold to soul sleep (human unconsciousness in death until the resurrection).  As for eternity, they teach conditional immortality (annihilationism: all who are not believers in Jesus will stop existing following judgment). Still embracing Miller's 1844 date, they believe in an "investigative judgment" that began that year.  This teaches that God began a spiritual judgment of declared Christians which has been in progress since 1844.  Ellen White made this one of the "pillars of Adventist belief."  The SDA teaches their Pillars are necessary to prepare the world for the second coming of Jesus, declaring their development a continuation of the Protestant reformation.  They stress they exist to bring God's final message and warnings to the world.  "When the power of God testifies as to what is truth, that truth is to stand forever as the truth. ... Men will arise with interpretations of Scripture which are to them truth, but which are not truth. The truth for this time, God has given us as a foundation for our faith."  (Ellen G. White as quoted by George Knight, A Search for Identity) The SDA's focus on the Mosaic law's Sabbath brought with it a greater stress on Old Testament Scriptures.  Following the Law's dietary rules is key to their health recommendations.  Present recommendation to follow a vegetarian diet does allow for eating meats but only "clean" meats.  Early in the 20th century, focus on healthy eating and preventive medicine saw the church found many medical institutions and influence American eating habits.  On the latter, in 1900, two SDA members, John Harvey Kellogg and his brother W.K. Kellogg, founded a food company later called the Kellogg Company.  It marketed a healthy breakfast cereal formerly served at a church sanatorium run by John Kellogg.  A prominent patient at the sanatorium was C.W. Post, who also founded a cereal company.  Returning to the SDA Pillars, in their list of fundamental and nonnegotiable beliefs is "The Remnant and Its Mission (the three angels' messages)."  These "three angels' messages" are White's interpretation of Revelation 14:6-12, messages believed to prepare the word for Jesus' second coming.  From the Millerite period there's been some adaptation in understanding the angel's messages: First Angel's Message... Millerite: The message of Jesus' imminent second coming spoken and fulfilled during the two decades before 1844. SDA: The "everlasting gospel" and "good news of God's infinite love."  This includes warning that God's "investigative judgment" has begun with a call to worship the Creator of the world specifically by keeping of the Law's Sabbath commandment. Second Angel's Message... Millerite: Spoken during the summer of 1844, following the great disappointment, following many Millerites leaving the movement plus many Christians leaving their old churches "Babylon" and joining the Adventist movement.  Babylon include Roman Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants who reject Adventist teachings.  The message was "Come out of her, my people," linking Revelation 14:8 to 18:2-4. SDA: "Come out of her, my people (Revelation 18:4)."  Babylon is the apostate church including Roman Catholics and Orthodox, plus Protestants who have rejected Adventist truth.  Adventist believe there are some true believers in "Babylon," but God calls them to separate from Babylon.  The SDA is the end-time remnant, as described in Revelation, with a God-given message for the whole world - that God's people are to leave Babylon and join with them.  Third Angel's Message... Millerite: Keeping Sunday as the Sabbath connects to the "Mark of the Beast." This comes from believing the "Seal of God" in Revelation 7:2 is the Sabbath commandment of the Law.  They taught that God delayed giving the physical Mark allowing time for people in their "Babylon" churches to leave.   SDA: Keeping Sunday as a sacred day connect to the "Mark of the Beast." Those who don't honor the Law's Sabbath reject God's memorial of His creatorship.  Those willingly rejecting will receive the "Mark of the Beast" at a future date - when the whole earth becomes aware of their Sabbath duty (presumably by the SDA).  The SDA formally became a denomination in 1863.  To the present, the SDA refers to Ellen G. White's writings as "inspired messages God has given us in the last days." It specifically calls her messages "The Spirit of Prophecy" (quoting Ted N. C. Wilson, Seventh-day Adventist President, January 2017). Dr. John Thomas (1805-1871), an immigrant from England, started the Christadelphians (from the Greek "brothers in Christ").  After suffering shipwreck, he honored his in-the-face-of-death vow to God to devote his life to religion.  He gave up his medical career and began personal study of the Bible seeking answers to what would happen to him at death.  Thomas had early contact and debates with the Restoration Movement's Alexander Campbell but felt his personal study superior in developing his beliefs.  During this time of developing and changing his views he sought baptism twice, each time renouncing his former belief.  Christadelphians still expect proper belief and full immersion as a sign of obedience. Thomas' beliefs were millenarian also with a strong interest in future events.  Much Christadelphian advertising focuses on prophecy with speculation over Armageddon's outbreak and Jesus' return.  While not setting specific dates, general date setting abounds.  As early as 1866, a Christadelphian brochure stated: "It is pretty certain that Jesus will return within the lifetime of the present generation."  (Christadelphian pamphlet Ambassador to the Coming Age) Before the Millennium there's a resurrection of all dead except those who've never heard the Gospel.  Those not resurrected no longer exist.  The faithful receive immortality, those judged unfaithful die again and then stop existing. (They believe traditional ideas of immortality are corruptions of original Christian belief). During the literal 1000-year Millennium Christ will rule on earth as the Davidic king and only following this will God destroy sin and death.  Key Christadelphian beliefs include: 1) Christadelphian beliefs come solely from the Bible.  (They believe churches not agreeing with the following points are embracing corruptions of original Christian belief.  They often teach this corruption came from exposure to pagan Greek philosophy following the 1st century). 2) Annihilationism (Conditional immortality of the soul).  There is no place of eternal torment for sinners, such as hell.  All dead before the resurrection cease to exist and lie in the grave in non-existence, knowing nothing. 3) Unitarianism (There's only one creator God; God isn't Trinity.  Jesus is God's son but not God.  The Holy Spirit isn't God, merely power from God). 4) Jesus is Son of Man with an inherited human nature from his mother, complete with inclination to sin.  He is Son of God from his miraculous conception by God's power.  Jesus Christ was part of God's plan from the beginning but never preexisted before his earthly birth.  Jesus remained sinless and became a perfect representative sacrifice. Following Jesus' death God granted him immortality. 5) They historical don't use the word "Church," a word associated with corrupt churches, rather "Ecclesias."  This is not rigid practice today. 6) Congregational government without clergy (run by male members). 7) Satan, or the Devil, isn't a fallen angel or independent spiritual being, rather a general principle of humanity's evil and sinful inclination.  8) Salvation comes from belief in Jesus Christ, with repentance, and through baptism by total water immersion.  There is no assurance of salvation; salvation comes only through remaining in Christ. 9) Objection to military and police service (pacifism).  The government granted them exemption from military service in the American Civil War. Thomas went on a preaching tour to England in 1848, where many churches allowed him to speak.  His "independence of thought" on Bible interpretation gained him audience in Restorationist thought churches, plus Adventist and Unitarian churches.  Christadelphian churches grew mostly in England and her colonies plus America. Now there are, perhaps 70,000 Christadelphians worldwide, with about 15% in the US, 19% in Australia, and 28% in England.  The rest span over 100 countries.  In the United States, they started first in New England and then spread west and south through Ohio to Kentucky and Tennessee.  Later expansion included Arkansas, Texas, California. Adventism was ripe for the bible teachings of Charles Taze Russell (1852-1916) in the late 1870s.  A product of both the Restoration movement and Adventist teachings, Russell attended a Presbyterian church when young and later a Congregationalist church as a teenager. By age 16 he questioned Christianity, its creeds, and its traditions.  At 18 he an Adventist preacher, Jonas Wendell, teach.  While not fully agreeing with him, he found new assurance the Bible was God's word.  His personal study led to hosting Bible studies and later publishing tracts, co-founding Zion's Watch Tower Tract Society in 1881 to spread his teachings.  Under his successor, Joseph Franklin (aka Judge) Rutherford (1869-1942), this organization became the Jehovah's Witnesses.  Under the claim of restoring Christianity to its apostolic roots they embraced Adventist ideas, resurrected old heresies, and developed new novel doctrines. For example, Russell said his six-volume series, Studies in the Scriptures, didn't come "through visions and dreams, nor by God's audible voice."  Rather, he claimed, his study aimed "to bring together these long-scattered fragments of truth (Zion's Watchtower, April 1, 1899)."  Beliefs include: 1) People must worship God only by the name Jehovah. 2) There is no inherent immortality of the soul 3) Soul-sleep at death until the resurrection 4) Annihilation for unbelievers 5) No Trinity; Jesus is a first creation of God 6) Jesus died on a stake and not a cross (the cross is a pagan symbol) and didn't rise bodily from the grave. 7) Reject birthdays and "manmade" or "pagan" holidays including Easter and Christmas  8) Refuse military service or honoring any national flags 9) Reject blood transfusion (equating it to eating blood in violation of Mosaic Law) 10) JWs must mostly limit social dealings to other JWs as society is under Satan's influence 11) JWs expel and shun (disfellowship) baptized members who leave or violate organization rules All these practices were, and are, defended in Solo Scriptura fashion using the Bible.  Having problems defending some of these beliefs by an ordinary reading of the text, they commission a "new" Bible translation.  The published New Testament appeared in 1950 and the full Bible in 1961. By 2018 they claim to have translated it into 172 languages.  The New World Translation of Holy Scriptures alters many passages from the meaning of the underlying Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, enshrining their sectarian beliefs in the text. In good Millerite Adventist tradition, Russell and Rutherford offered predictions about Jesus' second coming and the end times. Some dates: 1878: In 1876 Russell adopted an idea then taught by some Adventist preachers, that Jesus' Parousia, or presence, came in 1874.  God's then continuing harvest would last only until 1878 when He would transform all gathered saints into spirit form.  By 1881, Russell asserted that 1878 was an important year marking the date God cast off nominal (traditional) churches from his favor. 1881: Russell moved his 1878 date to 1881.  "We know not the day or hour, but expect it during 1881  (Zion's Watch Tower, February 1881)."  After this failure, he reassured followers that 1881 began a time when death was now a blessing.  God would now instantly change any saint dying into a spirit being.  Previous saints must still await the final resurrection to awake from their soul-sleep. His writings already pointed to 1914 as the end of the "time of trouble." 1914: Russell's book, Studies in the Scriptures, he plainly identified October 1914 as the "full end of the times of the Gentiles" and the last possible date for human rule.  Russell assured 1914 would begin Christ's millennial reign which would include immediate translation of the saints to rule with Christ.  His called on his study of both the Bible and the Great Pyramid of Egypt in support of his understanding.  He believed Hebrew slaves built the latter and incorporated hidden messages from God.  Some had trouble believing the end could wait until 1914.  Russell assured them the date was fix in prophecy and unmovable: "They are, we believe, God's dates, not ours (Zion's Watchtower, July 15, 1894)."  As 1914 approached and excitement increased, some followers gave away their belongings and quit their jobs. Russell saw the outbreak of World War I in July of 1914 as the beginning of Armageddon.  After Jesus' return date passed in October, Russell backtracked claiming "We did not say positively that this would be the year (Watchtower, November 1914)," even suggesting October 1915 another possibility. 1915: See 1914.  He also suggested the transition from human government to God's government could take many years; God may set up his kingdom gradually.  "&ldots; the Times of the Gentiles ended in October 1914" and "a few more years will witness their utter collapse and the full establishment of God's Kingdom in the hands of Messiah (Watchtower, September 1, 1916)."  Russell died in October 1916 convinced God's harvest of saints was continuing and the end was close.  After Russell's death they rewrote many sections of his Studies in Scriptures to mask his prediction failures. For example, 1914 was now "the beginning of the end of Gentile times" and no longer his predicted "full end of the times of the Gentiles."  Russell's successor, "Judge" Rutherford, later declared the Millennium would come within the generation of those Jehovah's Witnesses alive in 1914. 1918: Before Russell died in 1916, his final prediction revision set 1918 as the end. His claimed reasoning was a possible mistake in one of his calculations, stretching the period of God's favor on the Jews from 70 AD and to 73 AD.  This moved the end from 1915 three years later to 1918. God's day of vengeance on traditional churches and their members predictably didn't happen.  Rutherford's explanations varied over the next few years.  Most assigned some invisible, heavenly, fulfillment to 1918 and the earlier 1914 date.  He claimed God used the 1914 date to begin completing the ranks of the 144,000 who would rule with Christ - something said fulfilled by the mid-1930s.  The organization's continuing mission was recruiting the "Great Company" of second-class believers who would come thought Armageddon to live on the new earth while exposing the devil's schemes in obstructing the kingdom's earthly establishment. 1925: Rutherford moved into personally predicting the end, this time focusing on 1925. His famous booklet and message Millions Now Living Will Never Die called for God resurrecting the patriarchs, prophets, and faithful ones of old (returning "princes") to renewed earthly life in 1925. He believed this event was separate from a later resurrection of other saints.  He used cherry-picked dates, assumptions, and calculations to defend his predicted date.  After the sure failure of this prediction, the Watchtower Society officially suspended issuing prophecies focused on a specific date. This didn't slow down Rutherford. He continued to speak of the nearness of the kingdom.  Armageddon was a "short time away" and the living generation would see the world's end.  Six years after Rutherford's death in 1942, the Watchtower Society sold the building he built to house the returning princes and abandoned all belief in the prophet's separate return in 1950. 1975: In 1966 the Watchtower Society began focusing on this new 1975 date. Using their date for creation (autumn 4016 BC) they added 6,000 years of history and claimed humanity's earthly existence was about to end in the fall of 1975.  The next 1000-year period, Jesus' millennial reign was near, once the necessary transition Battle of Armageddon was over.  Unlike the earlier date-setting of Russell and Rutherford their statements had built-in doubt - "it could" happen.  This teaching combined with belief that Jehovah's Witnesses 15 or older in 1914 were the generation that "would by no means pass away" before the end came.  Most overlooked the Watchtower's intentional "it could" and accepted 1975 as a clear likelihood.  Teaching surrounding the seven thousand-year periods increased, suggesting a needed millennium in the seventh for Jesus to be "Lord of the Sabbath day." A dramatic spike in JW witnessing in 1974 showed most believed the end was imminent. In 1980, the Watchtower publication noted the Society regretted earlier claims about 1975 and insisted its members accept there was never a direct 1975 prophecy. Y2K: Watchtower publications in the 1970s and 80s often claimed an expected end before the century's end: "... completed in our 20th century (Watchtower, Jan 1, 1989)." They again set no firm date but many general statements fostered expectation it would happen before or then.  The Society still held that believers from the anointed class, the 144,000, from 1914 would still be alive when Jesus physically returned. At 86 years old, the 1914 generation was rapidly declining by 2000.  While there was popular expectation the organization restrained this perhaps fearing another false prediction.  For example, they altered later bound editions of the previous quoted 1989 Watchtower to state the Witnesses' work would be "completed in our day" rather than "in our 20th century." All these early predictions claimed the Millennium's start before the Jehovah's Witness anointed class - begun in 1914 - passed away. Since Jehovah's Witnesses claim a person aren't anointed until after their baptism, traditionally something happening in early teen years for most, there's fewer than most think.   Using the ending 1935 date, those anointed were 65 years old at year 2000 based on a birth in 1935.  But, working from a baptism date, say at age 14, they would be 79.  And these anointed class individuals are the youngest!  The few still alive from 1914 were already 102.  From the mid 1930's, when the anointed class list was reportedly complete, their number steadily began to decline.  This special group are the only ones allowed to eat the bread and drink the wine during the annual memorial or become part of the JWs Governing Body. By 2005 there were only 8,524 memorial partakers, a number that strangely remained almost constant over three prior decades, after experiencing expected steady decline from 1948 to 1969. From 2006 onward, this number has now climbed steadily reaching 18,564 in 2017.  This increase matched the Organization issuing a 2007 statement effectively erasing the mid-1930s anointed class cutoff: "we cannot set a specific date for when the calling of Christians to the heavenly hope ends (Watchtower May 1, 2007)."  Even while now effectively claiming the 1914 to 1935 date useless, the Governing Body doesn't want large numbers claiming they're newly anointed to the ruling class. Those taking the count at the Memorial cannot judge who truly have the heavenly hope. The number of partakers includes those who mistakenly think that they are anointed. Some who at one point started to partake of the emblems later stopped. Others may have mental or emotional problems that lead them to believe that they will rule with Christ in heaven. Therefore, the number of partakers does not accurately indicate the number of anointed ones left on earth." (Watchtower, Jan 2016) By their own admission, perhaps the entire current Watchtower governing body has mental or emotional problems as all of them claim their anointing from after 1935.  It's likely they will sometime soon rewrite, or suppress, their entire doctrine about the 144,000.  Regardless, they've found a way to deceptively increase their once disappearing anointed class likely trying to prevent another false prediction.   Another Adventist influenced teacher, Herbert W. Armstrong (1892-1986), founded the Radio Church of God in 1933, later renamed the Worldwide Church of God (WCG) in 1968.  Early followers claimed this pioneer of radio and tele-evangelism as both an "apostle" and end-time "Elijah," bringing a restored Bible message to the world before Jesus' return.   In solo-scriptura fashion, Armstrong claimed his teachings came directly from the Bible.  His mix of beliefs included earlier Adventist teachings and several new novel doctrines.  Armstrong came from a Quaker family but wasn't religious.  While a young adult, Armstrong's wife came under the influence of the Church of God (Seventh Day).  This was a branch of Adventism that rejected Ellen White's teachings and split off in 1858 before she formed her Seventh-Day Adventist Church in 1863.   She challenged Hebert to study Scriptures to see that their seventh day teaching were correct.  This began his lifelong habit of intensive personal Bible study sessions. He claimed his study's God-inspired, with God opening his mind to truths that historical Christian churches hadn't found or accepted.  For some reason he sought Baptism from a Baptist pastor in 1927 but became a member and ordained minister in the Church of God (Seventh Day) in 1931.  His independent mindedness caused him problems within the denomination and he became allied with two other rogue preachers, C.O. Dodd and Andrew Dugger.  Together they wrote a book entitled A History of the True Religion, from 33 AD to Date.  In it they claimed secret direct descent from the first century New Testament Church to their Sabbath-keeping Church of God (Seventh Day).  Dugger went further in predicting a 1936 date for the apocalypse.  The church finally expelled Dugger and Dodd, who quickly formed their own - still in the fashion of a Church of God (Seventh Day).  Armstrong joined them as they promised to make him an apostle.   Armstrong now began to teach a form of British Israelism, the belief modern-day Jews aren't true physical descendants of Israel.  He believed the lost tribes of Israel migrated to western Europe making current Brits and Americans heirs of God's covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  He taught this understanding was necessary for interpreting prophetic passage in Scriptures and held this as his God-given mission to spread this message in preparation for the end times.  Dugger, whose 1936 apocalyptic prediction was obviously wrong, now expelled Armstrong from ministering in the new church in 1938.  Armstrong took this as evidence God was directing him personally to lead an independent revival work in these last days. Returning to 1933, Armstrong began broadcasting a morning devotional on a local Oregon radio station which later turned into an entire program of his own making - The World Tomorrow.  In 1934 he added the regular publication of The Plain Truth.  In this magazine Armstrong began making prophetic claims.  He claimed Hitler and Mussolini were Revelation's Beast and False Prophet deceiving the nations for a short time just before Jesus' return.  ...notice, first, that this war will involve ALL nations. It will be the first real world war. Secondly, it will center around Jerusalem. ... And thirdly, this war will END with the Second Coming of Christ! (Armstrong, The Plain Truth, February 1939) His audience drank in this prophetic speculation and many more started listening. He regularly taught that Biblical prophecies loomed behind current world events.  By 1942 Armstrong's broadcasts were available nationwide.   Central teachings included: - Bible prophecy based on Anglo-Israelism (everyone could understand prophecy if they knew this) The world's traditional churches are the "Laodicean Church" - Denial of the Trinity; claiming an open "Family of God" and the Holy Spirit as "the power of God" God and the Word are two separate Gods part of the God group that later became a family. "The doctrine of the trinity is false. It was foisted upon the world at the Council of Nicaea. It is the pagan Babylonish trinity of father, mother and child-substituting the Holy Spirit for the mother, Semiramis, and calling it a "person"&ldots;. God is a kingdom-the supreme divine family which rules the universe! The whole gospel Jesus brought to mankind is, merely, the Good News of the Kingdom of God-and that Kingdom is God. It is a family-a ruling divine family into which humans may be born! ... So the Eternal Father is a Person, and is God. Jesus Christ is a different Person-and is God. They are two separate and individual Persons (Revelation 4:2; 5:1; 6-7)." (Herbert W. Armstrong, The Missing Dimension in Sex, October 1964) Converted, faithful, believers become part of this Family too. "We are not going to have God's rank or authority. We will not share past eternity with God. But from the instant we are changed from flesh and blood into spirit beings we will be God as God is God for all eternity!" (Philadelphia Church of God, Is God a Trinity?, November 1992)   - Christians must keep parts of the Mosaic Law, including: A seventh-day Sabbath Dietary rules Covenant law "holy days" including the Passover and Feast of Tabernacles Tithing (up to 30 percent) Keeping the Law was necessary for salvation - Soul-sleep at death until the resurrection - Three resurrections: Faithful Christians Most people.  This large group will have a second chance to accept the gospel and receive salvation Evil people.  This smaller group acted so badly they made themselves ineligible for a second chance - Final annihilation of all non-saved (no eternal punishment in Hell) Following Armstrong's death in 1986, his successors, Joseph Tkach, Sr., and Joseph Tkach, Jr., began to reevaluate Armstrong's teachings. This resulted rejecting the worst of Armstrong's errors and heresies.  They abandoned his focus on prophecy (1990), including now recognizing the Trinity (1993) and rejecting need to keep the Mosaic Law (1994).  The finally adopted a new name: Grace Communion International.  During the transition some followers and churches broke away and continue to follow Armstrong's original teachings. Simultaneous to the rise of the American Restoration Movement and William Miller's teaching, another influential teacher arose in Ireland and England: John Nelson Darby (1800-1882).  In the late 1820s another evangelical group split from Anglicanism, called Brethren churches.  Appearing first in Dublin Ireland, they saw themselves not as another denomination but rather as a network of like-minded churches (or assemblies).  Like the Restoration movement, they rejected man-made titles - coming to use "Brethren" from Matthew 23:8.  The group stressed sola scriptura: The Bible as supreme over all church doctrine and practice, above any other source of authority.  The Brethren within a couple decades (1848) split into Open and Exclusive Brethren, the first keeping lose association, the latter closely knit.  The ones known as the Plymouth Brethren are a major part of the Exclusive.  Darby, having left the Anglican church, was an early teacher within the Brethren movement and founder of the Exclusive branch, so they're also sometimes known as "Darbyite Brethren".   In 1827 Darby fell off his horse and suffered serious injury.  He later noted it was during this time he began to understand the "kingdom" described in Isaiah and elsewhere in the Old Testament was different from the Christian church.  During this same period, he began to fellowship with an interdenominational group of believers. By 1832 his fully developed theology included what's now called Dispensationalism featuring a pretribulation invisible rapture and a seven-year tribulation. (To be fair, the idea of Dispensations first occurred to Joachim of Fiore who lived 1135-1202. Another contemporary of Darby, George Faber, also taught about Dispensations at least five years before Darby.  Joachim and Faber each had three dispensations, Darby created five).    Darby saw God as having a separate plan for earthly Israel and the Christian church.  Israel's plan would resume after God removed the church. Not all Brethren churches accepted Darby's Dispensationalism.  Further, Darby's extreme view of the priesthood of all believers saw him abandon all idea of formal clergy.  He believed clergy was sin against the Holy Spirit as it hid understanding the Spirit could speak through any church member.  No clergy became characteristic of Brethren churches.  Darby's overall theology was a mix of Reformation understanding merged with novel interpretations unseen throughout church history.  While many later Darbyite churches are Arminian, Darby defended the Anglican doctrines of election and predestination. Darby, the "father of Dispensationalism," began a trend continued by much of Dispensationalism.  His premillennial Dispensationalism divided history into epochs or dispensations, with recent events providing proof the church was currently in the "Great Parenthesis" or church age.  In his scheme, this present age was imminently about to end. For proof Darby pointed to wars and rumors of wars, increased societal wickedness and new technology (electricity, telegraph and later telephone) as evidence the end was near.  Dispensationalist similar current events two centuries later.  Darby made at least five missionary journeys to North America between 1862 and 1877, exporting his beliefs to the United States (mostly New England and the Great Lakes region) and Canada (Ontario).  He used his classical skills to translate the Bible from Hebrew and Greek into several languages (including German, French, and English), plus wrote volumes of Bible commentary plus hymns and poems.  When asked, he refused to contribute to the Revised Version of the King James Bible (published 1881/85).  Charles Spurgeon, who vocally opposed this movement, called their hermeneutics "warped." He further noted that Darbyism sparked a growing shift to "isolationism, obscurantism and a [divisive] party spirit." As early as 1829 Darby notably predicted Israel's rebirth as a nation, a necessary step in his dispensationalist views of Israel.  Another needed and still looked for event is restoring temple worship in Jerusalem. Cyrus Ingerson Scofield's Scofield Reference Bible did more to spread Dispensationalism than any preacher or teacher.  Scofield (1843-1921), a pastor who never attended seminary, expanded and adapted Darby's Dispensationalism (Darby's five dispensations now became seven).  He first published his Bible in 1909 with his first revision in 1917.  It became the first Bible since the 1560 Geneva to include an entire commentary alongside the Biblical text in the same volume.  Its chain references and notes tied together unrelated bible passages and provided a guide for following dispensational themes throughout the Bible.  It also included Archbishop James Ussher's chronology which notably calculated Creation's date at 4004 BC.  Scofield's Bible took off as the start of World War I meshed well with a dispensational events-oriented view of prophecy.  When Israel became a nation again in 1948, seemingly fulfilling Darby's dispensational predictions, the Scofield Bible's premillennialism looked prophetic.  Millions of copies entered circulation.  A follower of Scofield, Lewis Sperry Chafer (1871-1952), founded Dallas Theological Seminary in 1924 which became a center of Dispensationalism within two decades.  In 2018, this nondenominational institution advertises that its students represent over 70 denominations each embracing a common statement of faith. Their published statement of faith is distinctly dispensationalist (see especially their articles:  V-The Dispensations, XIX-The Tribulation, XX-The Second Coming of Christ, and XXI-The Eternal State). Popular books such as The Late Great Planet Earth by Harold Lee (Hal) Lindsey (1970) and the Left Behind Series by Jerry Jenkins and Tim LaHaye (1995-2007) continue to circulate Dispensationalism.  These represent over 28 million and 80 million copies respectively.  Dispensational television celebrities and authors gain great followings.  This included Jack Van Impe (1931-) and Grant Jeffrey (1948-2012) who skeptically reviewed world events and innovations as signs of the world's coming end.  Some notably predicted when Jesus would return.  Most don't do this with specifics, choosing to speak in generalities giving broader date ranges when it "could" happen.  Grant Jeffrey lived long enough to see every on of his almost guaranteed published "possible" date predictions fail.  Followers of these teachers mostly dismiss these failures because "what if they're right the next time?"       The American Restoration Movement had an extreme side.  The Shakers and Mormons are the best examples of the Radical Restoration Movement.  While the first started in England it quickly moved to the United States. The Shakers are formally The United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing (USBCSA).  They are a Christian millennial restorationism sect started in 18th century England.  People first called them "Shaking Quakers" because of their emotional ecstatic behavior during their worship services.  From the beginning their leadership was both male and female and they became known for promoting sexual equality.  Teachings included the need to renounce sinful acts, pacifism, and practiced a simple-living celibate communal lifestyle.  They constantly taught the world's end was near and reform was necessary before the soon coming end. Around 1747 Jane Wardley started having visions from God supposedly directing her to teach the truth about the end of the world.  She taught that Christ's return was near and that his second coming would be in a woman's form.  She appealed to Psalms in support of this claim. Her first convert was her husband James.  Many former Anglicans and Methodists followed.  Jane often began shaking, and rocking, as she received her visions. Listeners found Jane well-spoken.  Her message: Repent. For the Kingdom of God is at Hand. The new heaven and new earth prophesied of old is about to come. The marriage of the Lamb, the first resurrection, the New Jerusalem descended from above, these are even now at the door. And when Christ appears again, and the true church rises in full and transcendent glory, then all anti-Christian denominations-the priests, the Church, the pope-will be swept away. (E.D. Andrews, The People Called Shakers, 1953) Shaker theology saw God in dualistic form as male and female (reinterpreting Genesis 1:27).  Since they believed Christ's second coming was as (or through) a woman, Shakers looked to women for leadership.  The parents of Ann Lee (1736-1784) were early members and their daughter became a member around 1758, Ann quickly becoming a leader. In 1770, the Shaker's claimed God revealed Ann Lee in "manifestation of Divine light" to be Christ's second coming or Christ's female expression.  They called her "Mother Ann."  Mother's revelations included insights into Adam & Eve's fall and its ties to sexual intercourse. Sex itself, she taught, was an act of impurity.  She called for followers to confess their sins, give up their worldly goods, and renounce "lustful gratifications" by giving up marriage and remaining celibate.  Shakers saw themselves as the second Christian Church under a female expression of Christ.  The first Christian Church was under Jesus as a male appearance of Christ.  Of course, since Shakers believed the end of the world was near - they, the second Christian Church, the Shakers, were the Bride made ready for the Bridegroom.  Since Ann was the second coming, God did away with marriage at her appearance, providing biblical reason for celibacy with no marrying or giving in marriage.  Elders and eldresses jointly governed the church, men overseeing men and women overseeing women. Following her imprisonment in Manchester, another of Ann's revelations was to move to America and set up the "Church of Christ" in this land.  In May of 1774, she and eight followers sailed to colonial America.  Since oaths were against Shaker faith, officials had them imprisoned on arrival for failing to swear the Oath of Allegiance.  Their imprisonment over religious belief raised sympathy among citizens and helped spread Shaker religious beliefs.  On release, still claiming to be Christ's "second coming," she traveled the eastern states preaching. Ann regularly claimed to receive heavenly visions and prophesied in tongues. Her services with tongues-speaking often included singing, bodily contortions, and dancing.  Many American Shaker communities formed in New England during the last decades of the 18th century.  Mother Ann's death seemingly had little effect.  A former New Light Baptist minister, Joseph Meacham (1742-1796), became the new Shaker leader - also believed to have Mother Ann's spiritual gift of revelation.  (New Light, or Separate, Baptists were non-Calvinistic Baptists known for their emotional conversions during the Great Awakening).  Meacham brought Lucy Wright (1760-1821) into ministry service and together they began a Shaker form of religious communism or communalism.  By 1793, the Shaker community as an organization owned all the group's personal property.  Lucy continued Ann Lee's missionary pattern, with Shaker missionaries holding revivals not only in New England but also on the western frontier.  She also introduced new hymns and dances to make sermons livelier.  Lucy also aided Benjamin S. Youngs in writing his 1808 book. Its long title: The testimony of Christ's second appearing: containing a general statement of all things pertaining to the faith and practice of the church of God in this latter-day. Shaker missionaries quickly entered Kentucky and Ohio following the Second Great Awakening's Cane Ridge Kentucky revival of 1801-1803. Shaker societies formed in Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana. Shakers worship took place in plain white undecorated meetinghouses.  Services included marching, singing, dancing, even spinning, twitching, jerking and shouting.  While the earliest services were loud, chaotic, unstructured and emotional, later Shakers crafted precisely choreographed dances and orderly marches.  The Shaker movement reached its height between 1820 and 1860 with about 6,000 members.  The "Era of Manifestations," starting in the late 1830s, characterized this mid-19th century period.  Declared spiritual revelations, known as Mother Ann's Work, included dances, "gift drawings," and "gift songs."   The tune from the song "Simple Gifts," written in 1848 by Elder Joseph Brackett from the Shaker community in Alfred, Maine, lives on in modern times.  An English songwriter in 1963 used this tune for the hymn "Lord of the Dance." During the civil war, Shaker as pacifists refused to kill or harm.  President Lincoln exempted them from military service making Shakers some of the first conscientious objectors in American history.  Economic changes following the war impacted the economic prosperity of Shaker communities, making converts harder to find.  With official celibacy, converts and adoption were the only means for Shakers community growth.  People sometimes abandoned orphans or foundlings on Shaker's doorsteps as they welcomed all. Yes, the government used to allow this religious community to adopt children - something fully banned by the mid-20th century.  At age 21, these adopted youngsters had to choose to leave or remain with the Shakers.  Unwilling to remain celibate, most chose to leave.  By 1920, only a dozen Shaker communities remained in the America.  In 2018 only one Shaker community remains, in southern Maine, with only two remaining members. Mormon founder, Joseph Smith, Jr. (1805-1844), taught the church lost the gospel. The gospel needed recovery and not merely a reformation.  Unlike classic solo Scriptura, he didn't direct appeal to personal interpretation of Scriptures, rather he claimed to have found new, added, Scriptures.  To be fair, he also rewrote the Bible, claiming to have personally and infallibly completed a new translation.  His New Translation of the Bible and Book of Mormon, both published in 1830, effectively enshrined his personal doctrinal views in the text.  His personal changes are  more brazenly obvious than most in Restoration movements. The year Smith published the Book of Mormon, what began as a church with six members, soon gained many new members. Two early converts to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints were a pair of Campbellite ministers from Ohio, Parley Pratt (converted in 1830) and Sidney Rigdon. Rigdon was instrumental in seeing the church transfer from Fayette in Seneca County, New York, to Kirtland, Ohio.  Some early and unproven speculation even credits the real authorship of the Book of Mormon to Rigdon.  Parley was instrumental in Rigdon's conversion and became one of the original Mormon Twelve Apostles in 1835.  Rigdon had earlier disagreed with Alexander Campbell over speaking in tongues.  From its earliest days there are extensive reports of Joseph Smith speaking in tongues and later Brigham Young.  The practice died down in later Mormonism and functionally no longer is a part of Mormon worship from the 20th century onward. Parley Pratt undertook Mormon successful missions in Canada, with some of those converts becoming missionaries to England, Parley himself going on mission to England in 1839, one month after breaking out of Missouri jail. He remained in England until 1842 and had much success.  While there, Parley served as founding editor of a newspaper, the Latter-Day Saints' Millennial Star, which continued in publication until 1970. A prolific writer, Parley continued to write all his life.  This included books on theology, plus he authored over 50 Mormon hymns, some still used to the present. In the early 1840's, shiploads of new converts sailed from England to resettle in Nauvoo, Illinois, where Smith took his followers in 1839 to escape Missouri's religious persecutions. Another persistent thought is that a fiction author unrelated to Mormonism, Solomon Spalding (1761-1816), provided the source material behind Smith's North American tale.  Spaulding, a Congregationalist minister from Conneaut, Ohio, wrote two manuscripts from 1809 to 1812, one about a Roman discovery of America and another about a "record found buried in the earth."  Researchers haven't been able to recover a copy of this latter text.  We have only testimony about it following Spaulding's death and Smith's publication of the Book of Mormon.  Solomon's brother, John, described the plot of Manuscript, Found as telling of America's first settlers, "endeavoring to show that the American Indians are the descendants of the Jews, or the lost tribes."  He noted it described their journey to America "under the command of Nephi and Lehi," with their later quarrels resulting in separation into two warring nations, "the Nephites and Lamanites."   When Mormon missionaries, Samuel Smith and Orson Hyde visited Conneaut, Ohio, in 1832, and preached from the Book of Mormon, another resident, Nehemiah King, stated the Mormon text resembled Spaulding's story from years earlier.  In all, eight Conneaut residents then signed affidavits claiming the Book of Mormon including portions identical with Spaulding's earlier work, often called the Oberlin Manuscript.  (Spaulding's widow and daughter provided their affidavits years later).  Because E.D. Howe published these claims in his 1834 anti-Mormon book Mormonism Unvailed, a contemporary exposé, many dismiss it as biased propaganda.  The earlier Spaulding text contains a historical romance featuring a Roman ship discovering America, allegedly "translated from the Latin, found on 24 rolls of parchment in a cave, on the banks of the Conneaut Creek."   Interestingly, the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (RLDS) published this book in 1885.  The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS) followed suit in 1886 and again in 1910.  The Mormons named it Manuscript, Found, muddying the idea that Spaulding also wrote a separate work by that name.  The early Conneaut residents claim the Oberlin Manuscript's proper name is "Manuscript Story - Conneaut Creek." Joseph Smith claimed he found the Book of Mormon by divine direction.  He claimed the book contained writings of ancient prophets living in America from about 2200 BC to 421 AD.   Nephites and Lamanites are prominent peoples in this account. The source material for this book Smith discovered on "golden plates," written in "reformed Egyptian," buried in the "Hill Cumorah" in Manchester, New York.  The last prophet writing in the book, a man named Moroni, supposedly buried it in ancient times.  God then sends Moroni, as an angel, to Smith in 1827 to reveal the plates to Smith.   Conveniently provided "rose-colored glasses" enabled him instantly to read and translate the contents into English.  The "translated" work interestingly included King James English, rather than standard 19th century English.  Significant portions mirror, with adaptation, parts of the King James Bible.  The key event in the book is Jesus' appearance in America after his Middle Eastern resurrection. Smith's primary message was that God gave him this material to restore Christ's true church in these "latter days."  His early teachings included belief the then current world order was rapidly ending and that after judgment day Mormon saints would inherit the earth.  Smith didn't have a problem with setting a date range for this return.  In 1835 he claimed God told him that Jesus would return within the next 56 years.  "Joseph, my son, if thou livest until thou art eighty-five years old, thou shalt see the face of the Son of Man; therefore let this suffice, and trouble me no more on this matter."  16 I was left thus, without being able to decide whether this coming referred to the beginning of the millennium or to some previous appearing, or whether I should die and thus see his face.  17 I believe the coming of the Son of Man will not be any sooner than that time.  (Joseph Smith, Doctrines and Covenants 130:15-17; also noted in their official History of the Church 2:182) The LDS tries to explain away this failure, saying Jesus didn't return because Smith didn't live to age 85.  This either makes God not omniscient or intentionally willing to mislead Joseph Smith.  The LDS believe the Millennium is a time of peace and righteousness when Jesus will personally reign on earth, with his brother Satan bound with no power over people because of their goodness.  They also believe Latter-Day saints will build a necessary future temple in Jerusalem.  Near the Millennium's end, God will briefly release Satan.  The Archangel Michael, who the LDS believe is Adam, will lead the righteous in a final battle against Satan and his followers.  The LDS believes few intentional unbelievers will follow Satan and suffer judgment in "outer darkness," because everyone has a second chance to follow God and accept Mormon doctrine.  Mormons believe they will complete "temple ordinances," namely Baptism, for everyone in the human family tree back to Adam.  The present LDS leadership doesn't follow Smith in date setting.  All Latter-Day Saints claim the Book of Mormon as "another testament of Jesus Christ," a continuation and clarification of the Bible.  Historical researchers and archaeologists reject the Book of Mormon's claims to be a record of historical events, recognizing the underlying professedly historical account as fiction.  Joseph Smith claimed the angel took the golden plates and interpretation glasses up to heaven, so no one can examine them.  The sketches he made of a portion of the "reformed Egyptian" text don't match any known language. By early in the twenty-first century, Latter-Day Saints have translated the Book of Mormon into more than 100 languages and published over 150 million copies.  This book isn't the only document accepted as Scriptures by Mormons.  They also claim the Bible, "if translated correctly," and two compilation books of Smith's other revelations and writings: Doctrines and Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price (published 1851, adopted as scriptures in 1880).  Smith claimed to have translated much of the latter, the Book of Abraham, from papyrus mummy wrappings discovered in Thebes between 1818 and 1822.  The finder sold them to an American who used them as part of a traveling road show starting in 1833.  This is how they ended in Kirkland, Ohio, with locals asking Joseph Smith to translate the texts.  During Smith's era scholars hadn't yet rediscovered translation of hieroglyphics from the Rosetta Stone, but he claimed God gave him an infallible gift of translation.  He claimed God had Hebrews include scripture texts on these mummy wraps divinely to land in later Mormon hands.   Once thought destroyed by the Great Chicago Fire, researchers have now recovered about one-third of these papyrus fragments.  Some found their way to other museums including the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art.  Modern translation show that all these papyrus record pagan texts such as the Egyptian Book of Breathings, the Book of the Dead, and a Hypocephalus of Sheshonq. Smith's "gospel" and teaching turned the Trinity into a plurality of gods.  It offered Mormon males the possibility they could become god of their own planet.  He encouraged polygamy as a means of having enough children to populate this future planet.  His message of salvation through believing in Jesus Christ is faith plus works: "for we know that it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do." (2 Nephi 12:23b).  Further, Smith taught non-Mormon's could find salvation following death through proxy baptism, with Mormon's performing baptisms for the dead.  The Mormon Church split after Smith's death.  In 1872 issues of succession caused a group to split off and form the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (RLDS).  They followed the eldest surviving son of Joseph Smith, Jr., Joseph Smith III (1832-1914).  Though smaller than the LDS, they see themselves as true Mormonism following Joseph Smith, Jr.  The LDS followed Brigham Young and immigrated to Utah.  Smith III taught that his father never practiced or promoted polygamy or believed in multiple gods.  He further denied Mormons every accepted his father's Book of Abraham as Scriptures. He blamed all these on the new LDS leadership under Brigham Young.  In 2002, they formally adopted a new name, the Community of Christ.  Name change or not, they still hold to most Mormon beliefs. The LDS under Brigham Young openly promoted polygamy.  This quickly collided with US laws and interfered with Utah's efforts to gain statehood.  By 1890, the church president officially ended practice of polygamy but did not dissolve existing plural marriages.  This improved relations with the US government with Utah gaining statehood in 1896.  Some Mormons felt this a betrayal of their prophet Joseph Smith, Jr. and wanted polygamy to continue.  The practice slowed within the LDS but didn't stop.  Another Mormon president formally rejected polygamy before Congress in 1904. He internally issued direction that all Mormon plural marriages stop under threat of excommunication.  Those not accepting this became the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS).  The LDS officially excommunicated these dissenters by in 1935.  Showing you needn't be a direct follower of Adventist or Restorationist teaching to embrace their ideas, consider evangelist and radio broadcaster Harold Camping (1921-2013).  Camping and his wife were long-term members of the Christian Reformed Church, a denomination historically known for reformation theology and holding to Christianity's early creeds.  But Camping personally held to end-times ideas more in common with Dispensationalism and further rejected humanity's total depravity.  He left the Christian Reformed Church in 1988.  Camping followed Dispensationalism's tendencies toward date setting - at first in a general way.  In his book 1994?, he claimed high possibility, but no certainty, the world's end would come in 1994. Following Adventism lead he taught annihilationism, that existence would end for unsaved souls (Family Radio, May 15, 2011).  Though not related to Camping, another of his well-known contemporaries, also a non-Adventist, followed suit on this last point.  Renowned evangelical scholar and Church of England minister, John Stott (1921-2011), similarly championed the idea of annihilationism. Time magazine listed him among the top 100 most influential people in the world and most Protestants rank him "one of the 20th century's most respected religious leaders.     Camping was founder and radio host of "Open Forum," a weeknight call-in program, on Family Radio as of 1961. He heavily promoted "complete biblical inerrancy" by which he believed every word of the Bible was accurate, factual, scientific, and - most of all - predictive of future events.  The Bible was full of "proofs."  Camping never claimed he or Family Radio were under church authority or that he was acting as a denominational minister.  Rather, he criticized churches for not using the Bible alone as their sole authority. He chastised churches for continuing to use their own denominational doctrines and hermeneutics to shape their Bible understanding.  In solo Scriptura fashion, he believed his sole focus on the Bible distinguished his teaching from mainstream churches.  By 2003 Camping was teaching Christians should abandon all churches as they were apostate.  In replacement he encouraged personal Bible Study and listening to his broadcasts (mentioned in Four Questions on the End of the Church Age by Zin Yi, May 31, 2003; also Family Radio, August 10, 2008).  He dismissed those labeling him as a "date-setter" using personal Bible interpretation by claiming he followed the Bible's method of interpretation (Harold Camping, First Principles of Bible Study", Family Radio, May 9, 2008). Camping taught Scriptures would reveal the exact time of the rapture shortly before the end of time.  As previously mentioned, in 1992 he first set a date of September 6, 1994, for the rapture.  He used complex formulas and calculations based on "significant" bible numbers as the foundation of his dating.  He later updated his calculations to a May 21, 2011 date - the widely advertised date (especially on Family Radio) that made him infamous. Specifically, May 21 would be the "first day of Judgment" and October 21 would be the end of the world. People sold their belongings, quit work, bought billboards and advertisements, circulated pamphlets and caught notice of both print and electronic media, Christian and secular. Family Radio, itself, spent more than $5 million on billboard advertising in 2011. When his Saturday, May 21, date failed, Camping claimed a secret spiritual judgment took place that day, then claiming the later date, October 21, 2011, would unquestionably be the date of believer's physical rapture.  In March of 2012, Harold Camping admitted his prediction were in error and that he would make no further "Doomsday Predictions."  This did not stop Family Radio from rebroadcasting Camping's teachings.  A month after his death in December 2013, a Family Radio spokesman stated Camping's passing didn't change their message.  They insisted Family Radio would preserve his mission and theology, including his belief denominational churches are apostate (Christian Post, January 23, 2014). "Family Radio teaches that the return of Jesus Christ will be very soon (Family Radio, Statement of Faith, December 2017)." The Restoration Movement saw preacher and evangelist Charles F. Parham (1873-1929) create a new branch called Pentecostalism.  Key to Parham's teaching was belief that tongues speaking (glossolalia) was evidence of baptism in the Holy Spirit.  This baptism was separate from water baptism.  Parham's step-mother was the daughter of a Methodist circuit rider and their home was open for Christian "religious activities."  This didn't stop Charles from later marrying the daughter of a Quaker in 1896, with a Friends' wedding ceremony.  At age 15 Parham was already conducting worship services.  In 1890 he enrolled at the newly started Methodist affiliated Southwestern College (then called Southwest Kansas Conference College).  He attended until 1893 when he decided education would prevent him from ministering effectively.  During and immediately after this time he worked as an un-ordained Methodist supply pastor.  Unwilling to accept the Methodist hierarchy and feeling Methodist preachers "were not left to preach by direct inspiration," Parham left the Methodist church in 1895.  He believed denominational control prevented Methodist preachers from preaching by "direct inspiration."  For these reasons he began his own itinerant evangelistic ministry spreading Wesleyan-Arminian holiness movement ideas.   Living in Kansas, in 1897, Parham and his infant son both became ill. He credited their healing to divine intervention.  From this he renounced all medical help and began preaching prayer for the sick resulting in divine healing.  He saw this as God restoring truth in a latter-day movement.  Parham, wanting to know the latest God-restored truth traveled to visit other movements in 1900.  A significant visit included Shiloh, a ministry of Frank Sanford (1862-1948) in Durham, Maine.  Sanford preached premillennialism, the Higher Life Movement (Christian holiness), and divine healing, with a great focus on the Holy Spirit's indwelling power.  Following a declared successful exorcism and later direct revelation from God calling him to warn of "Armageddon," in 1891 Sanford formed a supernatural closed commune called Shiloh.  Reports of blindness, diphtheria, mental derangements, broken bones and more came out of Shiloh.  The big news was Sanford professedly raising a girl "dead" of spinal meningitis to instant perfect health.   At Shiloh, Sanford forced members into excessive fasting and praying and unconditionally obeying his orders.  Starving conditions led to an outbreak of diseases. (In 1904 courts convicted Sanford of manslaughter and child cruelty over a death and poor conditions.  A year later, the Maine Supreme Court overturned this convict because of religious law then in place).  Following a disagreement, with some members disagreeing with his bible interpretations, he claimed a chain-of-command where only God and Jesus could overrule him.  Of course, this meant everyone should follow his commands without question.  After another claimed divine revelation, Sanford declared himself Elijah and King David's incarnation.  He then started "The Kingdom" an apocalyptic Christian sect.  Following his release from prison in 1905, he made multiple visits to Jerusalem During his first Jerusalem visit Sanford published a paper announcing the ten lost Israeli tribes were England and America, making them blood descendants of ancient Hebrews carried into Assyrian captivity in 721 BC.  In this, he reflected the already circulating idea of British Israelism. This doctrine made the Bible more relevant because Sanford could apply its prophecies to the people of Shiloh and the American nation. Sanford later traveling with a large group of followers to Africa.  His actions again led to crew deaths on a voyage, again landing him in prison, this time in Atlanta.  After release in 1918, on good behavior, he returned to run Shiloh until authorities finally closed it.  He "retired" to New York's Catskill Mountains supported by his follower's "tithes."  At his 1948 death, his followers secretly buried him; keeping the press from reporting it for six weeks. He didn't die as Elijah, a claim he never renounced, in Jerusalem.  His death limited his following, but a form of his teaching continues to the present, the latest version called Kingdom Christian Ministries from 1998. Frank Sanford was a fan of contemporary faith healer John Alexander Dowie (1847-1907) and wrote admiring him in 1897 after personally witnessing his services.  Dowie, born in Scotland and moved to Australia as a teen, returned to Edinburgh to study theology in 1867 at age 21.  By 1872 he was an ordained Congregational pastor back in Australia. He quickly left the pastorate, in 1879 becoming an independent evangelist claiming powers as a faith healer.  Dowie briefly became a pastor again.  This led to a church split.  His final church burned to the ground under suspicious circumstances; this financial settlement unexpectedly enabling him to pay of large debts - all before quickly moving to the United States in 1888.   Beginning in San Francisco Dowie started holding faith healing meetings across the state and founded a ministry called the International Divine Healing Association.  This enterprise compelled members to tithe to him making them eligible to seek his help in healings as needed.  Paid-up followers could seek his faith healing prayer services by telegram, mail and, as available, phone.  Dowie also bought up securities of bankrupt companies to sell to his followers as investments. Following a court loss to two women he defrauded, and the related negative public relations, he moved to Chicago in 1890. Dowie's fame returned in Chicago as he held faith healing services on rented property next to the 1893 World's Fair.  His stages elaborate "Divine Healings" in front of large audiences, using carefully screen individuals, audience plants and other dubious methods, led people to believe he could cure a large range of illnesses.  In 1894 he founded Zion Tabernacle in downtown Chicago and stated Zion Publishing with weekly newsletters.  Dowie disbanded his earlier International Divine Healing Association to form the Christian Catholic Church in Zion in 1896, later renamed the Christian Catholic Apostolic Church in 1903. Dowie claimed he was a Restorationist merely recovering the church's "primitive condition."  This required end-times restoration of spiritual gifts and the apostolic offices.  In 1899, he announced himself "God's Messenger" and, in 1901, he specifically claimed he was the return of Elijah.  As "Elijah the Restorer" or "the Third Elijah" he wore Jewish looking priestly robes.  As an expert on divine healing he was highly critical of other's teachings on healing.  Dowie taught total reliance on divine healing and opposed all forms of regular medicine. It wasn't enough for Dowie to own a seven-story Zion Home on Chicago's Michigan Avenue housing some of his followers. He also had the New Zion Tabernacle, multiple other Zion Tabernacles, Zion Junior School, Zion College, a Zion Hall, Zion Home of Hope, and various healing homes.  He then leased Chicago's Auditorium to enable the huge crowds wanting to attend his services.  Finally, he secretly bought a large tract of real estate about 40 miles north of Chicago.  Here, in 1890, he owned and founded the city of Zion. Here Dowie banned eating pork, smoking, drinking, and, again, any form of modern medicine. Notably, Dowie ordered all his followers and Zion residents to deposit their wealth in his Zion Bank - unknowing to them an unincorporated entity solely under his control.  Predictably, large sums of money went missing.  His second in command deposed Dowie on charges that millions of dollars were missing, while all while Dowie was in Mexico recovering from a stroke.  Dowie fought his overthrow in court but settled for a paid allowance for the rest of his life.  Courts never held him legally responsible for his Zion financial fraud.  His greatest legal run-in, coming in 1895, was fighting charges he practiced medicine without a license.  Dowie's grave is in Zion Illinois.     Returning to Charles Parham, in 1900 he returned to Kansas encouraged by Sanford's methods and message.  Parham's new writings showed he adopted many of Parham's beliefs including British Israelism.  His newly started Bethel Bible College in Topeka welcomed "all ministers and Christians who were willing to forsake all, sell what they had, give it away, and enter the school for study and prayer."  His college readily received such financial gifts as Parham modeled it after Sanford's "Holy Ghost and Us Bible School" and charged no tuition.  Bethel's only textbook was the Bible, with the Holy Spirit as teacher - of course speaking through Parham. By published accounts, student Agnes Ozman prayed for God to grant her the fullness of the Holy Spirit on January 1, 1901.  She then began speaking in tongues - something she and most present thought was a known language.  Soon (some say a year earlier) Parham drafted his belief that tongues speaking was "Bible evidence" of Spirit baptism.  His need to have assurance that God would take him in the rapture fueled some of his search for evidence of Spirit Baptism.  He assigned eschatological reason for this tongues-speaking, claiming it "sealed the bride" for the "marriage supper of the Lamb."  Parham believed Christ's bride was 144,000 people God would take from the church to escape tribulation judgments.  Another of Parham's beliefs was annihilationism.  This he adopted from Quaker beliefs.  Most later Pentecostals rejected his conditional immortality doctrine.  On creation, Parham believed in multiple creations, with an earlier human creation different from the Adamic race. Combined with 1000-year "days" of creation he claimed a "literal" view of the Bible, but held his belief answered Darwinists without accepting an evolutionary origin of man.  Parham believed God gave tongues speaking for end-times evangelism.  This unique power enabled missionaries to travel around the world without learning foreign languages.  Some of his followers traveled to foreign countries and tried their glossolalia on local people, which they believed were real languages.  Many disillusioned among Parham's followers left the movement because of these missionaries' failure to communicate.  Later Pentecostal teaching dismissed any idea tongues should be real human languages though Parham personally continued to believe this.  Parham gained new followers when the wife of a prominent citizen of Galena, Kansas, claimed healing under his ministry at a popular health resort in Missouri. Press reports claimed Parham healed a thousand people and had eight-hundred conversions in his resulting 1903-04 Kansas crusade (News Herald, Joplin, Missouri).  From these meetings he recruited traveling bands of young coworkers for preaching the "apostolic faith," encouraging them to dress stylishly so show the attractiveness of Christian life.  In 1904 the first distinctly Pentecostal or "Apostolic faith" assemblies started, first in Kansas and then Oklahoma and Texas. In 1905 he healed a paralysis victim from a widely publicized 1902 street car accident.  Parham preached across racial lines including to African Americans and natives.  William J. Seymour (1870-1922), an African American Baptist pastor in Houston, became a significant follower.  Seymour sought and received a license to preach as a minister of Parham's Apostolic Faith Movement.  Parham sent him to Los Angeles, where Seymour's message and preaching sparked the Azusa Street Revival in 1906.  Most consider this the Pentecostal movement's true birthplace. Seymour soon broke with Parham, because Parham criticized the excessively emotional worship at Asuza street (what Parham called "manifestations of the flesh" and "hypnotism") and race-mingling in these services.  Parham also thought it wrong that revival leaders were trying to teach methods and techniques for encouraging people to speak in tongues rather than it being a solely God-given ability. Aimee Semple McPherson (1890-1944) was an early by-product of the Azusa Street Revival, falling under the teachings of William Durham, a Full Gospel Assembly preacher, who had visited Azusa Street during the revival.  She became a traveling evangelist and media celebrity of the 1920s and 1930s, also founding the Foursquare Church.  In 1915, without notice, she left home with her children responding to "God's call" for evangelistic work.  Married to a former Pentecostal missionary from Ireland, now a bi-vocational foundry worker and preacher at a local Pentecostal mission, she sent a note to her husband a few weeks later to join her.  He did, with a goal of bringing her home, but Aimee persuaded him to stay on the road with her for a time.  By 1918 they separated with divorce following in 1921.  Aimee's continuing services and tent revivals across America and Canada included tongues speaking and faith healing, people coming to her by the thousands for healing.  Since Pentecostalism wasn't popular in that era so she avoided using that label.  Under Durham's earlier teaching Aimee had discovered her ability to interpret tongues, translating with "stylish eloquence."  The church Aimee founded in 1923 after she moved to Los Angeles became perhaps the first modern mega-church.  Billed as the largest Christian congregation in the world, Angelus Temple enrolled over 10,000 members. It claimed to have 40 million visitors over its first seven years.  Aimee wanted it for both a place of worship and an ecumenical center regardless of Christian denomination.  She welcomed speakers from Baptists and Methodists to Quakers, Adventists, Roman Catholics and Mormons.  McPherson famously chartered a plane in August 1925 while away from Los Angeles to not miss delivering her Sunday sermon.  The plane failed after takeoff and crash landed.  Undeterred, she boarded a second and made it back, using the miniature planes as stage props and her two-plane experience as a sermon illustration for a capacity crowd. Returning to Parham; scandal and allegations largely led to his decline.  This included allegation of financial irregularities and a 1906 arrest for sodomy in Texas.  Prosecutors later dropped sexual charges and Parham vigorously denied any wrongdoing.  A 1907 report didn't help. Word spread that a group of Parham's followers in Zion, Illinois, descended into madness, harming some and killing one woman in a brutal exorcism where they first broke her bones.  Most Pentecostalism, under Seymour and his successors, distanced themselves from Parham, something Parham openly resented with vocal attacks on emerging leaders.  He also mocked much of their their tongues-speaking as "counterfeit Pentecost, with chattering, and jabbering, and windsucking (The Everlasting Gospel, George Parham, 1919)."  In Parham's later ministry, he further developed his Millenarianism.  In 1918-19 he predicted with specifics the coming world crisis that would lead to Christ's intervention and the resulting millennial age. Again, he was sure the renewed outpouring of God's Spirit was a sure sign the end was near.  Sadly, by 1927, Parham offered praise of the Ku Klux Klan and "their high ideals for the betterment of mankind (Apostolic Faith, March 1927)." Parham's doctrine of first evidence, that tongues-speaking is evidence of Holy Spirit baptism, is the doctrine that made Pentecostalism distinct from other holiness groups.  Pentecostalism and related word of faith charismatic churches became the largest Protestant denominational export from the US in the 20th and 21st centuries.  The Assemblies of God is the largest Pentecostal denomination. Africa, Asia and South America now host large Pentecostal populations. By 2014 there were an estimated 279 million Pentecostal believers worldwide (compared to about 100 million Baptists, the next largest Protestant group). The early church saw a movement similar to Pentecostalism starting around 177 AD, with Tertullian its best known 3rd century member in the west.  Known as Montanists after their contemporary self-proclaimed prophet and founder Montanus, the church rejected their prophets, prophetesses, and charismatic gifts as counterfeit to the Biblical example. Not surprisingly, their expectation for Jesus' imminent return had them claiming the New Jerusalem would descend to earth on a plain between two Phrygian villages in Asia Minor, close to where the movement started. Many later prophets and follower moved to the area. Montanists also discouraged marriage because Jesus' return was near. Modern Charismatics typically don't look to any history earlier than Parham.  Many define the spread of Pentecostal teachings by waves: First Wave:  The original movement under Parham and Seymour followed by the Azusa Street revival in the first decade of the 1900s. This gave birth to class Pentecostal denominations including the Assemblies of God, Church of God, Open Bible, Four Square, Church of God in Christ, Pentecostal Holiness and more. Second Wave: The second wave is the 1960's Charismatic movement with Pentecostal teaching and practices spreading to non-Pentecostal churches and denominations including the Roman Catholic Church.  This second wave also spread the Word of Faith movements and the "Name It and Claim It" teachings.  This "prosperity gospel" claims God wants to bless all his people with financial prosperity as a reward for skillfully managing their relationship with God. The USA west coast simultaneously birthed the Jesus People Movement and the signs and wonders of "seeing prophet" Lonnie Ray Frisbee (1949-1993). Frisbee influenced Chuck Smith (1927-2013) who founded the Calvary Chapel denomination.  Smith predicted the 1948 generation would be the last generation, with the world ending by 1981 at the latest (End Times, Chuck Smith, 1978). He reaffirmed this this belief in a second work though conceding he "could be wrong," while simultaneously saying "it's a deep conviction in my heart, and all my plans are predicated upon that belief (Future Survival, Chuck Smith, 1978)."   Third Wave: "Signs and wonders" characterize the third wave, or Neo-Charismatic Movement, of the 1980s and early 90s.  It's often associated with the Vineyard Church and teachers John Wimber, Mike Bickle, C. Peter Wagner, and Jack Deere.  Many credit Lonnie Frisbee as the spark behind the Vineyard Movement.  Wagner, of the Church Growth Institute and Fuller Seminary, is perhaps the best-known spokesperson. He defined the Third Wave as "a new moving of the Holy Spirit among evangelicals who, for one reason or another, have chosen not to identify with either the Pentecostals or Charismatics."  They taught "power evangelism" that needs signs and wonder for people to respond in faith, the term "power evangelism" coming from Frisbee's ministry.  Also, they strongly held that God is communicating directly through modern day prophets and apostles.  The Toronto Blessing or "Laughing Revival" is its greatest revival.  A "Fullness Movement" began among Southern Baptists championed by evangelist James Robison.  Fourth Wave?:  Charisma Magazine published an article in April of 2016 claiming "The Fourth Great Wave of the Holy Spirit has Begun." A conversation with the Holy Spirit unfolded and it was explained to me that the previous waves included renewal, revival and empowering of the Holy Spirit and aspects of restoration. It was shared with me though that there was a "fresh movement" once again emerging on the world scene that would include all of the previous ingredients of the earlier movements. It is a time of the "convergence of the ages." I heard the following word spoken to me in the dream, "It is time for the Fourth Wave to crash upon the course of history. (Article author, James W. Goll)" They claim this movement again comes from California, a movement also called the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR).  It's characterized by "diverse global networks, applications and expressions."  They cite Bethel Church in Redding, California, Hillsong in Sydney, Australia, plus Glory of Zion in Dallas, Texas as examples of "new Apostolic hubs" for equipping saints in this fourth wave.  Only time will confirm whether the whole movement will claim this fourth wave, perhaps as they assert another fifth wave.  The NAR is a dominion theology (Dominionism) group that asserts God is restoring the lost offices of church governance for the end times.  Many credit church growth specialist C. Peter Wagner (1930-2016) as the movement's founder.  Charles D. "Chuck" Pierce of the International Council of Apostles is his successor. Specifically, the two offices are prophet and apostle.  This is a loosely organized movement believing only modern prophets and apostles have the power and authority to achieve God's earthly plans.  God's plan, of course, includes creating a foundation for a global church governed by these prophets and apostles.  NAR teachers place greater emphasis on dreams, visions, and other extra-biblical revelations, not needing these be proven by Scriptures.  They've also experience extensive mission outreach outside the US in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. NAR isn't an organization and no church or member can directly join, so there's no defined leaders or authoritative churches.  This makes it harder to discover who is following NAR teachings. While NAR churches vary in opinions, some common beliefs include: 1. This is a second Apostolic Age, complete with new Apostles and prophets who now speak for God with authority.  These apostles aren't "self-appointed" rather "commissioned" to their office by other "respected and qualified leaders."  Prophets have even less formal recognition. They cite Old Testament passages, such as 2 Chronicles 20:20, that prophets are necessary for God's church to prosper. 2. Leaders are seeking to bring the Gospel of the Kingdom of Heaven to Earth (Dominionism).  This means taking dominion of the seven "mountains" of government, media, entertainment, education, business, family, and religion.  Believers must "push back" the kingdom of Satan and bring peace and prosperity on earth.  They believe in a theocracy, not necessarily running government, rather permeating all areas of society which includes the seven "mountains." 3. Not all followers are charismatic, yet most still have focus on special anointing, direct revelation, plus healings and supernatural signs and wonders to change the world.  God uses extra-biblical revelation to reveal His will to us today. Some object to the notion that God communicates directly with us, supposing that everything that God wanted to reveal He revealed in the Bible. This cannot be true, however, because there is nothing in the Bible that says it has 66 books. ...  The one major rule governing any new revelation from God is that it cannot contradict what has already been written in the Bible. It may supplement it, however (The New Apostolic Reformation Is Not A Cult, Charisma News, C. Peter Wagner, 8/24/2011). 4. The goal is revival on a massive scale, the "end times harvest." Churches and teachers market revival meetings, and the next big thing is always around the corner. 5. The movement's goal aims to promote unity and they claim unity necessary for the movement to succeed. Blurring of denominational lines and doctrinal distinctives is okay if it brings everyone under one movement.  It doesn't matter if they're Reformed, Charismatic, Word of Faith, progressive, or Roman Catholic.  Seemingly all that's necessary is belief in basic statements of Christian belief, such as the Apostle's Creed.  Without defined leaders or official channels, "relational structures" define NAR's contacts. A Charisma article denies NAR teachings affect Christian doctrine... The NAR represents the most radical change in the way of doing church since the Protestant Reformation. This is not a doctrinal change. We adhere to the major tenets of the Reformation: the authority of Scripture, justification by faith, and the priesthood of all believers. But the quality of church life, the governance of the church, the worship, the theology of prayer, the missional goals, the optimistic vision for the future, and other features, constitute quite a change from traditional Protestantism. (The New Apostolic Reformation Is Not A Cult, Charisma News, C. Peter Wagner, 8/24/2011). Two more of Wagner's statements are worth noting: NAR has no official statements of theology or ecclesiology, although a large number of us do happen to agree upon many somewhat radical conclusions. One of the reasons for opposition to some of the more radical ideas of NAR is that certain people have decided not to change and they are upset with those who have chosen to change. One thing is certain, the changes championed by NAR are a modern continuation of the Protestant fragmentation brought about by solo-Scriptura beliefs.  This is ironic as this movement professes to seek unity. Conclusion The early church creeds summarize what the whole church affirmed the Holy Spirit taught about beliefs found in God's Word.  The earliest church writings uphold the meaning of Bible words in their historic context. Indeed, as the early church became aware of each volume, they together confirmed the apostolic origin of all 27 New Testaments books.  They also reaffirmed the Jewish church's adherence to the 39 books of the Old Testament. While individual churches or teachers may have dissented, a few claiming more and others failing to recognize one or two, the whole church said: 'No, the Holy Spirit has confirmed these 66 books to us.'  The whole church subsequently rejected any church then failing to recognize this uniformly agreed canon.  The whole similarly rejected any church or individual who scorned the fundamental Bible truths contained in the early ecumenical creeds. If any person wants to make a doctrine or new practice a test of Christian orthodoxy the burden rests on them to provide biblical proof for their belief.  This must stand up to historic understanding.  It doesn't matter if a new teaching comes from an angel or finds authentication with miracles.  Does their message feature another Christ or another God?  Does it feature another gospel or a fatal corruption of God's word?  If so, believers must count that false teacher or pretended prophet as dead to God's church. This prevents second chances to deceive. 1) They must show they have not altered the original word-meaning from its original geographical and historical setting. 2) They must show Scriptures teach or clearly implies their belief without violating rules of context and standard grammatical rules of interpretation. 3) They must show the Holy Spirit has taught similar understanding to God's people throughout history, especially in the early church.  They must recognize the same Holy Spirit teaching us today has always taught God's church. End times belief or eschatology cannot be a test of Christian orthodoxy.  The early church rightly debated interpretation of end times prophesy.  Nowhere did the church uniformly issue statements on the obscure or the speculative.  Together the early church agreed this much is unquestionably true: Jesus is bodily coming back, get ready and stay ready. False teachers twist this God-demanded understanding that we be ready daily for His imminent return into a belief that God guarantees His return in their lifetime.  They apply end times "signs" to current events as though they could have no other application.  They casually discard thousands of years of failure and improperly applying these signs, encouraging followers to cling to assumptions, baited and hooked by hopeful speculations and the thought "what if they're right this time."  There's great danger when interpretation of the obscure becomes a test of orthodoxy.  Every end-times teaching beyond a "no man knows the day or hour" expected return of Jesus must be thoroughly biblically examined, lightly held, and never used to divide God's church.  Believers must be as wary of any church making belief in Jesus' pretribulation return necessary for membership. Similarly, they should be wary of a teacher compelling belief in Jesus' return within the present generation (specific date or not).  Both have made speculation a test of orthodoxy.  The church must treat any teacher that claims special insight or demands other believers hold unwaveringly to their teaching as modern prophets. The church must do so because they make their claim a continued revelation of the Spirit and their words into testable prophecy (whether they set a specific date or not).  Then the God-given standard for a prophet's authentication applies.  A single error, a failure to provide genuine testable fulfillment, a single misuse of God's word and they've proven themselves false.  Upon behavior incompatible with an authenticated prophet of God, the church must discard their entire teaching and listen no more.    Among declared "Bible only" teachers, "clear" teachings of Scriptures are often speculation and assumptions wrapped in poor exegesis (eisegesis).  A sprinkling of truth often provides Christian camouflage for wishful thinking and conjecture. The church must stop looking for false teachers outside of the church - we know they'll be there.  We're called to be on guard for the wolves masquerading as sheep.  We must expose false prophets, prideful teachers who make the message their personal claim to fame, and preachers whose god is their belly with a lust for worldly gain.  We must reject the individual who claims to rule as God or His designate, whether pope or pastor.  This means rejecting all who demand unconditional personal loyalty and are unwilling to submit to the authority of other tested godly leaders and, indeed, the scrutiny of God's church. While the early church never used the phrase Sola Scriptura, there's much evidence they believed and practiced it.  The Bible itself testifies to this truth as do the earliest writings of God's church.  I stand with the Protestant reformers in embracing sola Scriptura.  Let all who understand Sola Scriptura work to teach believers how to not fall into the error of solo-Scriptura.  Everyone abandoning God's Word as held from the beginning must accept its authority and return to His truth.  These words have unchanging meaning.  No pope, no pastor, and no person's opinion can supplant that truth.  Unchecked, solo-Scriptura's errors will continue to fragment Christianity until Christianity becomes everyone doing what is right in their own eyes. Article by Brent MacDonald, (c) 2019/2020 Lion Tracks Ministries (a division of Cottage Cove's Discipleship Training Institute)