What is the Problem?

(Under Construction, first draft)

1. Analyses of the degeneration of Christian institutions and denominations reveals a common pattern.

2. Denominations may be viewed as pyramids. At the lowest level are the common people in the pews, with lay people in local offices (deacons, elders, etc.) slightly above them. At the next level are the pastors and local school teachers. Above them at the top of the pyramid are the seminary professors who train the pastors and teachers. Among this group the textbook writers and most influential theologians dominate the very tip of the pyramid.

3. The pattern for degeneration begins when textbook authors and seminary professors begin to suggest erroneous teachings and suppress the biblical viewpoint. Because of the reliance of the denomination on them and their popularity, their new teachings often gain widespread acceptance.

4. Once dissenters have been removed (or simply outlasted) in the seminaries, the new teachings are disseminated among the young, naive, and ignorant students entering the seminaries, Bible colleges and teaching schools. The students are simply presented with the viewpoint of the instructors, with little or no biblical viewpoint allowed. The students are usually woefully unaware of the atmosphere into which they have entered, or why things are changing.

5. The students then carry the heretical doctrines down to the bottom of the pyramid. Intolerant of anyone with a different or "old-fashioned" viewpoint they impress the heresy upon their congregations or the students they teach. Most accept their word as authoritative. A few protest, and few schools or smaller institutions break from the denomination, some people leave. Most do not and the heresy is accepted as dogma. The Bible is removed as the foundation of all thought.

6. This process has been repeated in dozens of denominations within the United States in this century. Only the Lutheran Missouri Synod and Southern Baptist Convention have - thus far - stemmed the tide within their own denomination, where the battle continues.

7. A caveat; the frequent assumption of those hostile to the "traditional" Bible-based position is that new positions originate in the higher schools of learning as a result of new information, new discoveries, new advances in knowledge. Change does after all often begin in schools precisely because they are the source of new knowledge (such as in applied science). This is emphatically not the case here. The heresies are without exception as old as Christianity, and arise from the same source: humanistic unbelief. Evidence, reason and knowledge never have anything to do with it and their attempted use is merely a smokescreen to impress the ignorant and a means by which the heretics can convince themselves. Indeed, Christians have more intellectual firepower now than ever before with which to defend Christianity and destroy the contemptibly pathetic rationalizations of the Enemy (as expressed in the media and schools), if only they would arm themselves and fight.


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(Created: 26 September 1996 - Last Update: 26 September 1996)