John Wesley and Charles G. Finney - PH68-02

Advanced Bible Doctrine - Philippians 3:7-10

Divine Viewpoint vs. Human Viewpoint

The Majority View

We may look at a nation like Nazi Germany who, in our own generation, exploded upon the world a brutality such as perhaps the world has never seen before. We are so distant from what took place during those years under the rule of Hitler – the bestiality, as it was expressed toward the Jewish people, for example, that even today, groups who organize world tours, when they visit Germany, warn the travelers that if you have a weak stomach, do not visit the memorials which have been left in Germany of the concentration camps, because they will turn your stomach. And that's today. Now all the naked, torn, shredded, emaciated bodies are gone and buried – bulldozed under. Yet, there remains enough in that memorial to man's brutality, which the majority of the nation approved. The majority sincerely believed that their cause was right. Yet, nothing could have been farther from the truth when it was judged by divine viewpoint.

The great religions of the world are the result of human viewpoint – Mohammedanism, for example. You would find it very hard to prove to the adherents of Mohammedanism today that they are not functioning under the approval of God, and that they do not possess the truth. They are quite confident they have the truth, and they point to the millions of people who share the viewpoint that they do have the truth.

I remember years ago when visiting the Mormon Temple at Salt Lake City. The guide presented what Mormons believe, which on the surface is very fantastic – the great revelation of the Book of Mormon to complete the Bible. After he presented all this, I remember him smiling and saying, "Now I want to remind you that this may sound strange to you what I've told you, but just remember that a million-and-a-half people believe these things." Now that was then. A lot more believe it now. His point was, "We know we're right because so many of us believe this." Now, that's human viewpoint. And it is the thing that you will accept if you are not careful – that what most people think must be the truth.

So consequently, we have movements that are constantly ebbing and flowing within Christianity. They just rise up, and they're like a sparkler on the Fourth of July. They make a big flash, and they draw a great following. People say, "There's where God is working. That must be what God is doing. That must be the truth." Why? Because they're making a spectacular splash and drawing people to it.

So human viewpoint, you want to remember, is the outlook of the great majority of humanity. Therefore, the beliefs, the conclusions, and the actions of the majority of humanity are considered correct because that's what everybody believes. However, when human viewpoint is matched up to God's divine viewpoint, we discover that what most people believe is quite out of keeping with the Word of God, and that God's divine viewpoint actually condemns what most people believe, so that the majority of humanity is not right. But you will discover that the majority of humanity is mostly wrong about everything.

Just look at the condition of the world today. The statesmen of the world are wallowing around in all the self-destructive effects of their human viewpoint actions. They go from one human viewpoint decision to the next, and they wallow around helplessly, coming up with these human viewpoint ideas to meet the problems of the world, and everything is getting worse. Human viewpoint is so disoriented (the thinking of people today), that people just lack judgment, even in appointing leaders.

Every now and then somebody says, "Wouldn't it be great just to get a really divine viewpoint oriented president of the United States?" Well, as you know, there was a time in the history of our country when a man named William Jennings Bryan ran three times for the presidency of the United States. He was a solid Bible believing fundamentalist in the finest tradition of those terms. And on three occasions, the United States, back there in the early part of the 20th century, when we were still a biblically oriented nation, looked at William Jennings Bryan; saw a man who was immersed in divine viewpoint; and said, "We don't want him for president." Now, can you imagine what chance a divine viewpoint politician would have today?

The first thing a politician has to learn today is to cover his tracks as to what he really believes, and to be all things to all men, so that he can get into office. Now, he justifies this by saying, "Once I'm in office, I will then become a noble person, and I will do what is right." And next year, he'll be out of office, too. That is American society today. That is human viewpoint. If you are not a human viewpoint politician, you would not get elected to office, because the people who are determining who is going to run the country, and who is going to run segments of our society, all have human viewpoint. This is true not only in politics, but it's true in all the institutions of our society. The leadership has to be human viewpoint, because that's what our society (who makes these appointments) respects.

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Religious Activities

Well, I want to warn you that they, too, are misleading on vital issues. Never forget one of the tactics of Satan that I've tried to teach you, and that is that he catches a ride with someone who is doing the Lord's work in order to gain advantage for his cause. Everybody who is being used of the law to propagate Bible doctrine viewpoint stands in the dangerous position of Satan, in some way, latching onto him, and gaining advantage for his cause through the very thing that that man of God is doing in the work of the Lord. History is full of examples of this, and this is why you should be careful toward becoming enamored, even with religious celebrities of our day. Be careful about becoming a devotee and a follower of some man or some teacher, rather than of the Word of God itself. Celebrities who believe the Bible can be very misleading.

One of the prime examples, of course, that we have in our day is Billy Graham, who dignifies, with his fellowship, the World Council of Churches, which is not only liberal theologically, and which is not only apostate theologically, but is also communistic, so that it is antagonistic in every way to everything our nation stands for with its Christian heritage. Yet, people who do not know any better see Mr. Graham with his fellowship with the World Council of Churches, and they assume that there is nothing wrong with the World Council of Churches.

Hal Lindsey has declared that the charismatic movement has the gifts of the miracle of tongues and the gifts of the miracle of healings. Therefore, vast numbers of Christians who have confidence in the celebrityship of Hal Lindsey actually believe that he is leading them into the truth concerning the charismatic movement. Nothing could be farther from the truth. He has done a fantastic, huge disservice to the cause of Christianity, because he has misled people on something that is not compatible with sound doctrine.

So divine viewpoint Christians know that the majority views of Christians are often influenced by leaders who, themselves, while biblically oriented, have become disoriented at some point to the Word of God. Influential Christian leaders today move in a common channel, or you could call it a rut. There is a mainstream in which influential Christian leaders all move, and they're all in the mainstream. That is why they are influential Christian leaders. They are possessed by a common mentality which expresses itself in a common set of words that they use; a set of terminology; a common set of goals; common fads that they promote; common gimmicks; and, common public relations techniques and practices. In other words, they talk to themselves. When people talk to themselves, people begin to sound like themselves, and they begin to share each other's viewpoints, notions, attitudes, outlooks, and goals; and, they suddenly find that they're all moving together in one channel. They become a tremendous influential force in the Christian community of this nation.

One of the reasons they do this is that there is a mutual reassurance; there is a security; and, there is a sense of success by moving with the herd and with the majority in evangelical circles. You find a much more comfortable position for yourself if you're in the mainstream, because somebody who is out of the mainstream is looked upon with suspicion. But what they do by staying in the mainstream is to deny themselves the personalized guidance of God the Holy Spirit. Instead, they have the acceptance of the mainstream people who think like they do, and talk like they do, because they have created their mutual outlooks.

Divine Viewpoint of the Non-celebrity Believer

Think of Gideon. Who knew of Gideon? He was the biggest unknown you could ever think of. And he turned the nation of Israel around. God couldn't do it through the priests. God couldn't do it through the mainstream of Israel's religious life. He had to pull His nobody, who was faithful to God, to make the change.

The same thing was true in the time of Martin Luther. Who was Martin Luther? He was a nobody Augustinian priest. But God could not change the direction of Christianity through the officialdom of the Roman Catholic Church. He had to take a nobody who was out of the mainstream, and he said, "With this man, I can turn the world around." And He did.

Paul

So the non-celebrity believer is the one who can discern, best of all, what is of God, and what is of the herd mentality of the mainstream. It is that non-celebrity believer that God generally uses the most.

So be careful of the human viewpoint concept that what the majority believes indicates the truth. Human viewpoint believes that where there is success, whether it's in the church or outside, that's where God is blessing. Human viewpoint believes that the one who is an influential religious leader can be trusted to lead you to the truth. That is not always so.

We found that the apostle Paul was a religious celebrity under Judaism. In his human viewpoint days, he thought that his celebrityship was great gain, and the Greek has it in the plural – "gains" to him. As a human viewpoint religious celebrity, he used his influence over human viewpoint religious followers to kill Christians and to oppose Christianity. In his later divine viewpoint days, he described his religious celebrityship as amounting to human and animal excrement, and to garbage. We used the word "refuse" in Scripture to translate that strong Greek word. Paul held celebrityship in utter contempt. However, once Paul started functioning on divine viewpoint, he lost popularity and acceptance with society in general, and with the religious majority of his day in particular. He was right, but he was in the minority.

He was a prime example of the value of celebrityship – the trustworthiness of religious celebrities. He was sincere. Nobody could have ever accused Paul of being insincere; not genuine; or, not really wanting to glorify God. That was at the core of everything he did in his human viewpoint days. Yet, he was not someone that God could use, because he was a celebrity within human viewpoint context.

Paul's value system as a divine viewpoint believer led him to esteem the knowledge of Christ Jesus above all else. His only interest in life, he says at the end of verse 8, is to, "Win Christ." That is, to gain Christ: to be free from human viewpoint disorientation; free from legalism; and, free from the misguidance of celebrityship. To win Christ meant to be secure in the blessings and the joy of what God's grace had provided for a sinner who believes the Word of God.

Sanctification

Some of you say, "Oh, well, I'm relieved. You're not talking about me. I wouldn't say that." No, but you think it. You don't say it, but you think it. You think that you have achieved, somehow through your intake of doctrine, a position where you are something really clean-cut – the all-American clean-cut Christian boy and girl. Sanctification means "setting apart." There are plenty of people today who believe that they have achieved the ultimate of sanctification, and that they have outward evidences of having achieved the position of freedom from sin.

Paul, in verse 9 says, "And be found in Him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law (legal righteousness), but that righteousness which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith." The word "and" is the Greek word "kai." "Kai" here is indicating a continuation of what Paul has expressed in verse 8: "I want to win Christ. Instead of the celebrityship I once possessed under Judaism, what I prefer is to win Christ." He's going to explain to us now how he would win Christ – how he would proceed from celebrityship to something that he considers exceedingly more valuable.

That is, he says, "And to be found," which is the Greek word "heurisko." "Heurisko" means "to discover," but it means "to discover" as the result of an intellectual activity on your part. This is to discover something because you have been doing some thinking. You have reflected upon something. You have observed; you've examined; you've investigated; and, you've thought about it. Here the particular point is that you are investigating something the Bible says. The Bible makes a declaration (the Bible makes a statement), and on the basis of what the Bible says, you discover something.

This discovery that Paul makes comes from Bible doctrine, and it tells him something about himself. It's not a discovery that he made from feeling or from experience. The discovery that he's going to have is, "In Him." The word "in" is "en" which means "within," and "Him" refers to "the Lord Jesus Christ." Christianity, in other words, is described as a relationship to Jesus Christ – not a religion. It is this relationship that determines where each of us is going to spend eternity. Your religion doesn't determine that. Your religion will take you to hell because religion originates with Satan, but the relationship to Jesus Christ will take you to heaven. "This relationship," Paul says, "is what I want to be discovered as being in Him;" that is, in Christ. It is in the aorist tense, which means the point when Paul was placed in Christ at salvation. It is passive, which means it was a work upon Paul which he did not have anything to do with. It is subjunctive, meaning that it is potential. It's possible.

Now, what is this work upon Paul that produces the condition of being placed in Christ? Consider two concentric circles representing fellowship with God. The larger outer circle represents eternal fellowship with God, or we call that salvation. The smaller inner circle is temporal fellowship. This has to do with our walk with God in time. We call this spirituality. Paul says, "I want to be found in Christ." To be "in Christ" means to be within this outer larger circle. What is it that places you in Christ? The Bible tells us that it is the baptism of the Holy Spirit. The baptism of the Holy Spirit is the key issue in the Christian life. The baptism of the Holy Spirit places you in Christ at the point of salvation. It places you in the inner circle so that you are in complete temporal fellowship. You'll come out of that circle when you sin, but you are still within salvation. You are still "in Christ" even when you sin. Confession of sin brings you right back into that inner circle fellowship again.

The devil has looked at this. He understands this particular little chart very clearly. The devil, because he is wise says, "You know, here's the key right here – this baptism of the Holy Spirit." The baptism of the Holy Spirit is what the apostle Paul says, "Is more important to me than everything I ever had in the days when I was a famous man, among the Jewish people: a Hebrew of the Hebrews; a Pharisee of the Pharisees; a leader in the Sanhedrin; a celebrity among my own people; and, head and shoulders above my peers." Paul says, "All of that is refuse compared to one thing – that I should possess the baptism of the Holy Spirit. The baptism of the Holy Spirit is the thing that is of supreme value in the life of every individual.

The devil comes along and he says, "You know, there's where I can undermine all of Christianity as at no other point. I will come along and say the same thing." The Bible says many times (Paul is saying it here) that the baptism of the Holy Spirit is the supreme factor in the life of a human being. The devil says, "I'll say the same thing. But I'm going to add a little twist to it. I'm going to distort the baptism of the Holy Spirit into something entirely different from what it is. I'll call it the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and I'll start promoting this false concept. I'll just get millions of Christians to swallow this false concept of the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and with one blow, I will incapacitate the people of God. With one blow, I will tie the hands of God so He cannot use a person. I will tie up the church so it cannot advance the cause of Christianity, and so that believers cannot do the work of the Lord."

Being in Christ

The Baptism of the Holy Spirit vs. the Baptism in the Holy Spirit

Now, when they are pressed like that, they begin searching Scriptures. They've discovered that indeed, that is what the Bible teaches on the baptism of the Holy Spirit. So what the charismatics have done is come up with a twofold spiritual baptism. They say, "Yes, of course, the baptism of the Holy Spirit means being placed into union with Christ. But we're talking about the baptism in the spirit that gives you your power for service."

You say, "Well, where do you see the two in the Bible? Where is the distinction made?" Well, they're all one, but they have this twofold expression. And at this point, you recognize that you're dealing with an assumption. So for this reason, the charismatic movement, I say, has as its cornerstone the baptism in the Holy Spirit, because in the charismatic groups, there is one thing that everybody focuses on. It is not even salvation. Salvation is really, "Here, pass that on the line." But the thing that you're looking for is the explosive event of being baptized in the Holy Spirit. Everything in the charismatic movement focuses upon that single point. The charismatics center on Acts 2:4, which describes how God the Holy Spirit came on the day of Pentecost on the first believers.

Charismatics

Now this is the (core) of the whole charismatic movement – getting the baptism in the Spirit. The charismatics view themselves as possessing a supernatural confirmation inexperience through the baptism of the Holy Spirit. It is confirmed, they say, by tongues. The main point of the charismatic movement is not the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, but the main point is the experience of being baptized in the Holy Spirit.

If you were to read a doctrinal statement of the charismatics themselves, you would discover that you'd have very little difference. You would discover that you are very close in agreement with them right down the line. You would find that only at this point, even in the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, would you have a difference of viewpoint. The key is: what exactly is baptism in the Holy Spirit? It is at this point that the whole charismatic movement is built now.

If it can be established that what the charismatics view concerning the baptism in the Holy Spirit is not at all what the Bible teaches on the subject, then there is no further discussion necessary concerning tongues and healing and everything else. It obviously then is not of God. Then there is no need to discuss the fact that the Full Gospel Businessmen's Association can put on fantastic television spectaculars as they did recently, and that God is behind them. He is not. There is no further discussion on the fact of whether all of these sincere Christians are being led by the Spirit of God in what they are doing, because they are not.

This is the crucial doctrine. You should be able to think through, and I hope before we're through, you will be able, with a few Scriptures, to say, "OK. Now, here's what the Bible teaches on the baptism of the Holy Spirit. If what you say and do does not match up to this, then you must be wrong. That's the end of the discussion." If the charismatic view of the doctrine of the baptism in the Holy Spirit is shown to be contrary to Scripture, the whole mighty movement collapses as being one great monumental delusion.

The majority of religious movements are historically and regularly wrong. So the size of the charismatic movement does not connote that God is blessing. The cults are big; liberal Protestantism is big; Roman Catholicism is big; and, the religions of the world are big. Numerical success is not a sign of God's approval. The false movements, however, do contain truth. That's Satan's favorite tactic. Satan has taken a true doctrine, and he has distorted it into something that is not true.

John Wesley

Now, this was achieved through a great deal of personal effort on the part of the believer. He had to pray. He had to practice self-denial. He had to keep all the commandments. He had to practice fasting and self-crucifixion. In other words, he was making his justification, Wesley said, "Perfect." The major goal of the Methodist church, and the followers of Wesley, then was not justification (salvation). But the major goal became sanctification. So the eyes of the Wesley followers were centered upon sanctification – that instantaneous, complete cleansing of the soul from the control of sin. It was not upon salvation itself. As a matter of fact, later the expression was put point-blank that until you had this second stage (this second blessing), you didn't even have salvation. It took both of them complete in order to give you access to heaven. Without the second work of grace, you were not going to enter heaven.

So consequently, this naturally became the thing that concerned all of the followers of the Methodist movement. The result of Methodism's second work of grace (of absolute sinlessness) would bring a Christian to perfection. This meant that the Christian would be entirely governed by love. Wesley allowed for the fact that as long as the Christian is in the body, he is in a corruptible shell, and therefore he is going to make what Wesley called "mistakes" because of ignorance, and even response to temptation. But he said that these were no longer sin. This was a different kind of problem. Achieving entire sanctification became the focus then of Methodism as the highest level of relationship to God.

Christianity in the United States in the 18th century was tremendously influenced by the technique of revivalism. Revivalism was an intensely emotional meeting, at first in brush arbor's – outside. It was a social center for evangelical Bible-believing people who would come together in order to have the experience of listening to great preaching for reaching souls in the revival context. Now, this was not known any place else in the world. Just like jazz is pure American music from New Orleans, so in the religious field, revivalism is a pure American methodology in church work. It was not known anywhere else in the world, but revivalism did meet a great personal need of the American frontier, because it was an era when the nation was growing and people were losing a sense of their individual identity. Revivalism, as you know, zeros in on the individual. In a revival, you become very much aware of yourself and of your own identity. Furthermore, the whole meeting was charged with a great emotional experience.

Charles G. Finney

Here's the way he put it: "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. Men are so sluggish. There are so many things to lead their minds off from religion and to oppose the influence of the gospel that it is necessary to raise an excitement among them till the tide rises so high as to sweep away the opposing obstacles." Finney said, "Revival – that's the technique. Wesley's idea of people coming to sanctification and freedom from sin is good. I'll combine the two, but I'll have revivals that will be so emotionally charged that people will not be able to resist the desire to thrust themselves not only to salvation, but toward sanctification."

When I was a student at Dallas Seminary. Dr. Lewis Sperry Chafer, who had some contact with the Finney revival technique, used to tell us that Finney had developed his revival methodology to such a refined point of emotional excitability that when he came into town, and people heard that Finney had arrived, they would fall into a convulsive excitement – just the fact that he had arrived on the scene. That is knowing how to handle the emotions of people. Finney was sincere. He said, "I'm going to get these guys into heaven if I have to drag them in there and kick them in there in a frenzy. I'm going to get them joggling and jump and hipping and hopping, but I'm going to get them to go into heaven one way or another." So he danced them right in. Of course, in the meetings, that's what happened: the dancing; the clapping; the shouting; the screaming; the convulsions; and, the fainting. All of that became part of the highly-charged Finney revival technique.

So what Finney did was to join together the second blessing concept of Methodism and his own intense emotional revival technique, and it clicked on the American frontier. It met a need. This combination was later taken in total into the Pentecostal movement. Finney himself wrote a theology which is the basic theological basis of the Pentecostal or charismatic movement today. He rejected justification as an act of God's declaration – that God as judge declares that we who have received Christ as Savior are justified. He said, "That is not justification. That is not God declaring that we are just, but it is when we have sanctified ourselves that then we have received justification."

Finney called this act of sanctification the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Remember that. He identified sanctification as baptism of the Holy Spirit. Thus, it was an instantaneous act after salvation. This became the majority view of Christianity in America by the middle of the 19th century. It was the overwhelming religious view in our country.

The Holiness Movement

So there was a group following the American Civil War that was dissatisfied with the attitude toward the perfectionist doctrine, and they moved off into what became the Holiness movement. They zeroed in on Wesley's second experience of sanctification and achieving perfect love. This is the movement that popularized the terminology that Finney began of calling perfect sanctification the baptism of the Holy Spirit. The Holiness movement equated coming to sinless perfection with receiving the baptism of the Holy Spirit – the second blessing. So the standard salvation procedure within the Holiness movement became, first, the experience of salvation for justification before God, and then you must complete that with a second experience of sanctification before men in the form of sinless perfection.

This idea is actually sometimes expressed in our hymns. If you look at the end of the first verse of the hymn Rock of Ages, you will notice these words at the end of the first verse: "Be of sin the double cure, saved from wrath and make me pure." There you have this holiness concept of two acts of the grace of God: "Give me a double cure: Saved from wrath (justification), and make me pure (perfect sinless perfection sanctification)." This entire double conversion was viewed in the Holiness movement as being essential together for eternal life. The effect of this concept was again to center the attention upon this thing that they now call the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

Well, this movement spread from the United States to England, where in 1875, this concept of moving on toward great spiritual power was embodied in a movement known as the Keswick Convention, which has come down to our day. The Keswick conventions, or Keswick meetings, have centered upon the spiritual life. There have been Keswick movements in our country which have not had the distortion of the second blessing concept, which are legitimate emphasis upon the spiritual life.

Now, Satan had to make his key move. He had to be careful. It had to look good. It had to be impressive. He had led down from Wesley to this concept of two stages to go to heaven. He had brought through Finney an intense emotional experience that sealed this contact with God. They had called it the baptism of the Holy Spirit, but something was still lacking. Something was still lacking for Satan to be able to explode this movement all over this country and all over the world. I'll tell you about that in the next session. Don't miss the next important event.

Dr. John E. Danish, 1973

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