Introduction to the Twentieth Century

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Vince Massi

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    Welcome to the Twentieth Century!

    I will be spending a LONG time in the introduction, focusing on WHY various things happened in the Twentieth Century. And I will be concentrating on NUMBERS, not what I personally believe. I expect some people to get offended when I explain the backgrounds of various events, but if you'll be patient and listen to knowledge from outside your own group, you'll learn information that is not taught in your own group.

    Certain major religious events dominate the Twentieth Century (not necessarily in this order):
    1) The rise and failure of Atheism.
    2) The rise and success of the Charismatic Movement.
    3) The spread and failure of "Christian" modernism.
    4) The spread and disaster of Evolution.
   

 
Oh great...another lecture.
 
The Rise and Failure of Atheism

Nations often went to war and threw in religion as a propaganda value. You would even have warring nations with the same or similar religions claiming that God was on their side, while committing atrocities that those same religions forbade. But Communism made Atheism, socialism, and enslavement integral parts of their system.

With roughly 1/3 of the world under their control, Atheists murdered more people in the Twentieth Century than every other religion in history combined. One of Atheism's most powerful defenses is that religions have been to blame for a lot of innocent deaths, but without religion, Atheism is even worse. It has been pointed out that even the Nazis had higher moral standards than the Atheists.

?The highest death tolls that have been documented in communist states occurred in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, in the People's Republic of China under Mao Zedong, and in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. The estimates of the number of non-combatants killed by these three regimes alone range from a low of 21 million to a high of 70 million.? Wikipedia

Part of the problem is that the Atheists destroyed as many records as they could. Another problem is that under their incompetent leadership, Atheists produced mass famines that killed millions unintentionally.

Written by European scholars , one of whom later became President of Germany, ?The Black Book of Communism,? published in the US by Harvard University Press, estimates that Communists killed 94 million people. This is not counting military casualties in World War 2.
 
Are you planning on discussing your ideas with others, Vince, or are you just going to blog?
 
Ransom said:
Are you planning on discussing your ideas with others, Vince, or are you just going to blog?
Click to expand...

Rhetorical question much?  ;)
 
Hey! What about the rise of Calvinism? I feel left out! :)
 
The Rise and Success of the Charismatic Movement

I need to explain the difference between a charismatic and a Pentecostal. Charismatics attach a great deal of importance to spiritual gifts, often emphasizing speaking in tongues, but they can belong to any denomination. There are Catholic, Lutheran, and Presbyterian charismatics. Not all charismatics are Pentecostals.

Pentecostals are charismatics who belong to a denomination that is officially charismatic, such as the Assemblies of God. All Pentecostals are charismatics.

Bursting out of a small American revival in the early Twentieth Century, the charismatic movement rivals the Protestant Reformation in its size and importance. A century later, one out of every 25 people on earth are Pentecostal, while one out of 12 are charismatic (about 584 million). The Assemblies of God is second in size only to the Catholic Church (about 1.2 billion members) among professing Christians. About 27% of professing Christians are charismatic.

There are about 800 million Protestants in the world, many of whom (including Anglicans, Baptists, and Pentecostals) do not consider themselves Protestants. About 100 million people are Baptist (about 1 out of 70 people on Earth).

If spiritual gifts were automobiles, the early American charismatics were driving without a license, while the Baptists rode bicycles. Charismatics clashed, split, merged, fought, united, and grew--so heavily that they rapidly expanded outside the US, forming megachurches (averaging 2,000 weekly attendance) in Latin America and elsewhere.

And the early charismatics had their problems. Power-hungry crackpots would declare themselves to be prophets and demand ruling power, unregenerated charismatics would teach salvation by baptism and/or speaking in tongues, and crazy behavior was sometimes regarded as a manifestation of the Spirit. But colleges were established, doctrine corrected many of the flaws, born-again non-charismatics helped out, competent leaders emerged, and charismatics have left many of those problems behind.
 
It's cute that Vince lays the blame for the 20th century on atheism, the Charismatics, theological liberalism, and evolution.

Think we'll get a lesson on the three most influential thinkers on the 20th-century worldview, Marx, Freud, and Darwin? Well, I guess point 4 pays lip service to Darwin, even if Vince has never read The Origin of Species. Or how about Nietzsche, or Rousseau, while we're at it?
 
                                    THE SUCCESS OF THE ASSEMBLIES OF GOD

Not even existing when the Twentieth Century began, the AOG rapidly grew into one of the world's largest religions. I do not agree with all these reasons, but here is why  (not necessarily in this order of importance)

    1) A strong belief in God's Word. The AOG has done a far better job of keeping out modernism than any other Christian group.

    2) Arminianism (the belief that a born-again Christian can lose his salvation). The AOG has done a far better job than other Christians in keeping Calvinism out. (There are Calvinist charismatics, by the way).

    3) A declining emphasis on speaking in tongues. Early Pentecostals could perform their own miracle--speaking in tongues. Linguists who recorded this see an over-abundance of the same consonants, no pattern of subjects and verbs, and no pattern in the use of the same words. Claims that priests and rabbis heard charismatics speaking in Latin or Hebrew have been discredited. But it gave life to Christians with dead religions. Today, in my OPINION, the AOG is burdened with the doctrine that speaking in tongues is the evidence of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. The new doctrine that you can be filled with the Spirit without the evidence gives the AOG a chance to bypass the problem.

    4) My fundamentalist friends (I am a fundamentalist) are dismayed to learn that the New Testament put FAR greater emphasis on spiritual gifts than it does on commanding you to read the Bible. Paul devotes entire chapters to explaining the hows and whys of spiritual gifts, which most non-charismatic Christians ignore. The Holy Spirit gives spiritual gifts to edify the church (building up both numbers and strength) and the AOG uses these gifts.

    5) They really do go soul-winning. Brethren, I am going to tell you an ugly spiritual truth: the key to building a successful church is to steal people from other churches. When you see a "great, soul-winning church," you'll find that most of its deacons, elders, teachers, and tithers were saved somewhere else; they came to the growing church because they wanted to do something with their lives. Most American megachurches are in the Bible Belt, where they grew by attracting born-again Christians from other churches. But the AOG actually did win unsaved people to Christ in large numbers. And Pentecostals actually do have mega-churches in Catholic countries. And by teaching poorly-educated peasants how to use their spiritual gifts, the AOG is able to keep them.

    6) Purification through splits. Without a central leadership, early charismatics could not be controlled. Unsaved charismatics were free to split off into groups that reject the Gospel, reject the Trinity or reject spiritual growth in favor of showing off. The AOG didn't throw them out--they left eagerly.
 
The Failure of "Christian" Modernism

Loosely speaking, "Modernism" is the belief that the Bible and modern society should be blended so that popular sins are no longer condemned. In the Twentieth Century, this often meant that immorality was all right.

When I was a teen-ager, I actually read an article teaching that fornication is all right, if it is meaningful. Modernism teaches that sin is all right, if it is committed properly--"properly" is defined by the Modernists.

In real life, Modernist churches and denominations declined during the Twentieth Century, while fundamentalists, evangelicals, and even cults (which have high moral standards) grew. Modernists have little to offer beyond permission to sin.

In 1981, Moral Majority helped sweep Ronald Reagan and the Republicans into control of the US government. Modernists began preparing a massive, expensive television campaign to combat the effects of born-again TV evangelists. But they dropped their plans when their hired advisers told them they would fail--evangelicals have something to offer, and Modernists do not. The National Council of Churches actually did run some television ads, but they failed.

Strangely, various polls show that most Americans have a high opinion of God's Word, even if they don't read or practice it; even people who practice Modernism don't respect Modernism.  Widespread acceptance of immorality is the legacy of Modernism--nothing else is.
 
Yay! Another blog post solely based on a word redefined by the author immediately following a post that celebrated traits of the philosophy he is now condemning!
 
The Disaster of Evolution

People are surprised to learn that Charles Darwin's great work, "Origin of the Species," is so discredited that no one believes it today. But evolution keeps changing to deal with the scientific evidence against it, and the evolution of today is not the evolution that I learned in high school. And while in high school, I was astounded to learn that scientists were building and describing ancient creatures from bone fragments that might not even belong to the same creature--they didn't have complete skeletons.

In his book "Mein Kampf," Hitler justified his policies with theistic evolution. Communists justify their policies with atheistic evolution. The mass murders of both groups are justified by evolution, while evolution has produced NO benefits to the human race.

The only type of science that rejects the scientific method, evolution has never been produced in a laboratory, but devolution (devolving down into an inferior species) has. Under ideal conditions, inferior creatures increase--superior creatures do not evolve. When faced with scientific proof that evolution is impossible, evolutionists merely state that it can't be explained, and then ignore it. No other type of science does this.

Modernism teaches that religion, including Christianity, evolves, and their rejection of God's Word is justified by this belief.
 
Well, now that Vince has reached the end of his syllabus . . . That was singularly uneducational.
 
Before continuing, I need to correct some incorrect posts made by others.

The four major religious events of the Twentieth Century did not cause the Twentieth Century--they occurred after the Twentieth Century had begun. I have neither praised nor condemned Pentecostalism--sticking to the numbers, I have shown that the Pentecostal Revival rivals the Protestant Reformation in importance.

And speaking of numbers, here are some numbers that HAC did not tell us about in Church History class:

1906

The Pentecostal movement begins with the Asuza Street Revival in California. Emphasizing salvation by faith, to be followed by spiritual gifts, Pentecostalism explodes throughout the world.

Loosely speaking, a ?charismatic? believes in spiritual gifts, often emphasizing speaking in tongues. Charismatics belong to a variety of religions, including Catholic, Presbyterian, Lutheran, etc.

A ?Pentecostal? is a charismatic who belongs to a denomination that is officially charismatic, such as The Assemblies of God. Today there are about 500,000,000 charismatics, which includes about 275 million Pentecostals. There are 67.5 million members of the Assemblies of God, making it the second-largest Christian denomination, after Catholicism.

How big was this revival?
Exact numbers are impossible, but there are about...
1.2 billion Catholics
275 million Pentecostals
265 million Orthodox (of different denominations).
100 million Baptists
85 million Anglicans (They had tremendous growth in Africa and other nations in the Twentieth Century, while declining in Britain and the US). The official position of the Anglican Church is that they are not Protestant and did not come out of the Protestant Reformation, but history contradicts this claim.
77.5 million Lutherans
70 million Presbyterians and Reformed (Prebyterian, Reformed, some Evangelical, and some Congregationalist denominations have nearly identical doctrines).
55 million Methodists

While Baptists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, and Methodists include many denominations that do not believe the Bible, the Assemblies of God remains Bible-believing.

Some Pentecostal denominations teach salvation by works such as baptism and speaking in tongues.

How big was the Pentecostal Revivlal? There are 275 million Pentecostals, while 232.5 million people belong to a denomination that actually came out of the Protestant Reformation.
 
So much wrong.....
 
First Vince says:

Vince Massi said:
Before continuing, I need to correct some incorrect posts made by others.
Click to expand...

And then he says:

The four major religious events of the Twentieth Century did not cause the Twentieth Century--they occurred after the Twentieth Century had begun.
Click to expand...

. . . which no one had said. Who are you "correcting," Vince? Your imaginary friend? A massive letter-writing campaign?
 
CERTAIN POLITICAL MOVEMENTS DOMINATED THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

1) The rise and failure of militant socialism
2) The collapse of European empires
3) The world-wide independence movement
4) The establishment of semi-permanent international alliances
 
You should package this thread and sell it. You could call it "A Vague History of the 20th Century."
 
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