Are we now living in the Great Apostasy? (1)

by Ray Caldwell

Is original sin no longer applicable?

Is the message of salvation from our sins through obedience to the gospel of Jesus Christ now null and void?

Do we no longer need to be born again through baptism and filled with the Holy Spirit?

Charles Darwin 1809 – 1882, portrayed as an ape in a cartoon

in The Hornet Magazine, 22nd March 1871

The impact of evolutionary theory

Since the mid-19th century we’ve been through a process of ‘Evolution usurping Creation’, until the Church establishments crumbled and their buildings were left abandoned and empty.

Schools today are in the grip of atheist educational programmes. As Darwin's evolution theory gained mass acceptance, secular entertainment reached new heights. Fascinating and intriguing cartoons and movies mesmerised parents and children alike, rendering captive audiences inactive. Whole families gazed at the tv screen while lounging on the sofa for hours.

Contrast this phenomenon with the era just prior to this current age of technological wizardry: families and friends would make their own entertainment singing around the parlour piano. Perhaps others joined the singers with recorders or violins. Everyone would use their own initiative and resources to create their own entertainment.

Fast food deliveries now replace traditional family mealtimes. The Sunday newspaper and magazine read at home supplants church attendance with preaching and hymn singing.

Throughout the 20th Century another spiritual search sprang up in the ‘Christian’ West: interest in Eastern religions and philosophies. These seemed to satisfactorily explain life and reality for a mass of people who still experienced spiritual yearnings, despite being taught by our governments that God does not exist, as science and atheism progress hand in hand.

While Eastern religions ‘proved’ the existence of God, quantum physics came along and underpinned their claims: that the ‘universe’ is indeed conscious and a higher intelligence than ourselves has, in new age language, ‘manifested’ the orderly material universe.

Perhaps we do not believe in God at all, basing all our suppositions on our observation of the natural world: the way that creatures compete and fight, kill in a process of survival of the fittest and natural selection: dog eat dog. This would be the modern scientific observable approach rather than relying on an internal felt experience in our conscience.

The Reality of Original Sin

I would like to try to explain why I believe that humanity still needs a saviour - Jesus Christ - and why I still believe in the reality of original sin and sin.

Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden by Pere Mates (1500-1558)

The conviction that we inherit original sin and as humans we have a tendency to sin, was firmly felt and deeply held by the millions who accepted the Christian faith and filled church buildings throughout the world in the pre-industrial age. The conversion of huge numbers of people to Christianity in the centuries preceding the electronic and technological age is undeniable. Were they all gullible and misled?

Their turning to the Christian faith and church membership was a result of their felt sin, the conviction of both their inherent condition as well as their own unique personal sins, and their consequential belief in Jesus Christ as the saviour of the world. They were convinced that they had a need to 'save their souls’. These millions of believing converts did not respond to anything other than the Gospel as it was preached by the apostles of Jesus Christ themselves, in the first century AD.

Gospel or New Age?

And yet, the spiritual fire of this gospel preaching and gospel fervour seems to have definitely left the churches.

We could compare, for example, the empty pews in the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches in my town, with the massive popularity of, and interest in "Self Help", ‘Law of Attraction’, ‘Power of Intention’, "Ask the Universe’ – ‘I am a god or goddess’ doctrines explained in countless books of Eastern philosophy and spirituality with support from quantum physics and psychology. "Even more than Western Culture believes in Christianity, it believes in psychology. Psychology and self-help books consistently top bestseller lists ..." (A Course in Miracles Made Easy by Alan Cohen p. 113)

Are we all, in fact gods and goddesses and is the ego and sin just an illusion like the material world?

The Antichrist: enemy of God and man

The writers of the gospels and rest of the New Testament make an irreconcilable distinction between Jesus Christ and the Antichrist.

The Antichrist, left, with the attributes of a king, by Herrad of Landsberg (about 1180),

From the 12th-century Hortus deliciarum 

The Antichrist would/will be the representative of everyone who does not believe in original sin and personal sin per se, everyone who disbelieves the account of the fall of humanity in Genesis and the real need for the salvation of our souls through obedience to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Anyone who likes and appreciates the teachings of Jesus, who believes that he was a healer using supernatural means, believes he was a significant and/or enlightened spiritual being: YET DENIES THE ORIGINAL SIN THAT ALL HUMANS INHERIT AS WELL AS DENIES THE SINFUL NATURE AND BEHAVIOUR OF EACH OF US (that is our real tendency to make mistakes - to miss the mark) - this person has the mind of Antichrist. That person has no felt need of a Saviour, or for the salvation of their soul.

This is not my thinking or my understanding – a conviction of one's sin and of the need for one's salvation is central to the gospels and New Testament. The following quotes are from the First Epistle of John in the New Testament (The Holy Bible).

I JOHN 1:8,9 If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

I JOHN 2:22 Who is a liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ (Saviour). He is antichrist who denies the Father and the Son.

I JOHN 4:3 and every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of the Antichrist, .....

I JOHN 4:14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son as Saviour of the world.

I JOHN 5:5 Who is he who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?

And so, I ask, is this present time momentous falling away from the fundamental gospel message safe? Do we no longer have to account for our sins because:

• a truly loving God would know nothing except love and definitely would not punish;
• sin is just an illusion, a dream from which we need to awake;
• I am not a bad person because I was born inherently good and fully lovable;
• God doesn't exist;
• We don't need Jesus Christ to access God because everyone is a part of God?

In what follows I will try to see if the present age could match up to the prophecy of The Great Apostasy as prophesied in the New Testament epistles; that is, the falling-away from New Testament biblical belief and faith in Jesus Christ especially concerning His central role as incarnate Son of God and Saviour of the world.

Part Two: What is the Great Apostasy? to follow.