The wonderful revival of truth which characterized the first half of the nineteenth century provoked vigorous counterattacks on the part of Satan. These took various forms: Some were direct frontal attacks, such as higher criticism and evolution, while others, much more subtle, like the Oxford Movement, were aimed at weakening the effect of the truth then being recovered as to the Church.
Higher Criticism
Higher criticism took its rise in Germany, where, in the eighteenth century, rationalism was rampant. Eichorn, who has been called the “father of higher criticism,” tried to reconcile the Scriptures to rationalistic ideas by explaining away the miracles, which he treated either as the fruits of imagination or deliberate impostures. Others followed who explained them as the hallucinations of the writers. De Wette, born in 1780, attributed the whole of the Old Testament to mythological origins. These ideas were developed by later critics who, with only their own theories to guide them, divided up the sacred writings and allotted them to mythical authors or editors of their own imagining, designated by letters of the alphabet. Recent researches and archaeological discoveries have made many of these theories look foolish and confirmed the authenticity of the Holy Scriptures in a remarkable way.
Evolution
In 1859 Darwin published his work entitled The Origin of Species. The idea of evolution on which it was based is as old as the Greeks, but Darwin supported the theory with a mass of argument which made it seem plausible. In spite of its hypothetical nature, it captured the scientific world and popular imagination. For the Biblical account of the creation of man and the fall, it substituted a long process of development over an immense period of time. The idea of a fall was denied; instead, a gradual ascent from amoeba to man was supposed. The Creator was denied or pushed back into the infinite past and admitted, if at all, as the Originator of a process which was afterwards left to work itself out. Though Darwin referred in The Origin of Species to evolution as a “view of creation,” it is a view which denies revelation. He himself became an avowed agnostic. Probably no single factor has wrought such damage to the gospel cause or closed so many minds against the truth of Scripture. But the progress of scientific discovery has, since Darwin’s day, discredited many of the ideas once so confidently asserted. Evolutionists have even been compelled to admit that they hold it as “an act of faith.” At one time a reconstructed skull was exhibited in the British Museum as one of the missing links. It has since been removed, having been found to be a hoax.
Modern scientific methods of determining the age of pieces of bone have shown even the genuine relics to be much less ancient than was supposed, and scientists are now busy trying to show that, after all, evolution was a much quicker process than was thought in Darwin’s day. But the lie has been broadcast and has produced a harvest of evil. The idea that only the strong should survive and the weak should perish was the teaching that gave rise to Nazism, and to it can be traced the horrors of the two world wars.
The leaven of these teachings has permeated Christendom. Modernism has infected the pulpit. Few, if any, of the sects are free from it. C. H. Spurgeon saw it working in his day and called it the “downgrade movement.” Since his time, it has spread alarmingly and lowered the spiritual temperature in Christendom. The truth is still held by individuals, who are spoken of contemptuously as Fundamentalists, but the apostles themselves were Fundamentalists. Divine power has never accompanied the preaching of any other gospel than the Fundamentalist gospel that Peter and Paul and Luther and Wesley preached. No other gospel ever saved a human soul. Those who preach another lie under a curse (Gal. 1:89).
The Oxford Movement
It is significant that the Oxford Movement began just when the light of the Church as the Body of Christ was being recovered and many were leaving the Churches to gather only to the Lord’s name.
In 1833, John Keble, Henry Newman and Dr. Pusey issued a series of tracts — hence the name Tractarians — the object of which, to put it briefly, was to de-Protestantize the Church of England, to wipe out the effects of the Reformation, and to restore the Anglican Church to what it was before Elizabeth’s time. The principal architect of the system, Henry Newman, disappointed with the opposition it evoked, went into the Romish Church and became a Cardinal. The center of the system was the Mass. A recent advocate of these teachings has written:
“The Eucharist or Mass is the great central act around which all the Christian family was once united. It is the symbol which sooner or later, if ever the wounds of Christendom are to be healed, will one day draw them together again.”
Revival of the Romish Church
These words are particularly significant in view of the revival of the Church of Rome. Its adherents total over 472 million throughout the world, and the numbers are still increasing. Its missionaries are active all over the earth, while the Pope today wields a greater influence than ever before.
Communism
This is another great anti-Christian movement which had its origin in the nineteenth century. In 1848 Marx and Engels published the first manifesto of the Communist Party. Primarily a political and economic movement, its devotees are marked by a kind of religious fanaticism. It is not only anti-Christian, but anti-God. It seems to be sweeping the Eastern world like a tidal wave, and its advance is fraught with incalculable consequences.
Christian Science
This is another nineteenth century delusion. It shows the gullibility of the human mind that so many apparently intelligent people are deceived by this medley of ideas which are neither Christian nor scientific. It was promulgated by a woman, Mary Baker Eddy, who was born in 1821. Among other nonsense, it teaches that God never created matter, sin is an illusion, and disease exists only in the mind. Persons who are too clever to believe the gospel are duped by these Satanic teachings which are, in fact, only the ancient mysticism of the East in a modern dress.
Seventh-Day Adventism
This strange sect took its origin from the prophecy of W. Miller, already referred to, that the coming of Christ would take place in 1843. Although Miller abandoned his false notions, they were taken up by a weak-minded woman named White, who claimed to be a prophetess. This doctrine denies the holy manhood of Christ, perverts the truth as to the atonement, makes salvation dependent on keeping the law, rejects the Lord’s Day and makes the keeping of the Sabbath essential to salvation.
Jehovah’s Witnesses
This movement, which has gone under various names, such as the International Bible Students’ Association and Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, was first known as Millennial Dawn. It was founded by C. T. Russell, who died in 1916 and was succeeded by J. F. Rutherford. Suffice it to say that the awful parody of the truth taught by these people denies the Trinity, the deity of Christ, the personality of the Holy Spirit, the atonement, the resurrection, hell and the immortality of the soul. That such anti-scriptural notions can be spread abroad in the way they are being spread and received by thousands only proves the awful power of the Old Serpent to deceive man.
Christadelphianism
This teaching originated in the United States in 1838. Like the foregoing, it denies the deity of Christ, the personality of the Holy Spirit, the devil, the atonement, the immortality of the soul, and heaven and hell. Need we say any more about it?
In all these movements, the subtlety and power of Satan are evident, but the believer has the assurance of the Word that “greater is He that is in you, than he that is in the world” (1 John 4:44Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world. (1 John 4:4)). “To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them” (Isa. 8:2020To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them. (Isaiah 8:20)).