"My goal, I always made clear, was not to preach against Catholic beliefs or to proselytize people who were already committed to Christ within the Catholic Church. Rather, it was to proclaim the gospel to all those who had never truly committed their lives to Christ."
Billy Graham
Today’s Evangelicalism is just as much Catholic as it is Protestant. This may hard to understand, unless one looks at the issues involved during the Reformation.
Luther and the other Reformers taught was that a person is totally saved by the work of Christ on the cross 2,000 year. That once-for-all sacrifice purchased for us our salvation, and that all we need to do is to accept it by faith. The grace of God was found totally in Christ 2,000 years ago. His righteousness while He lived on this earth has been inputed to us, that is, His righteousness has been credited to us so that God sees us AS IF we have Christ’s righteousness. Christ’s obedience is credited to our account, even though in reality we are still totally filled with sin. Later on, the Reformers added that although we are totally filled with sin, we still out of gratitude for Christ’s sacrifice should try through the help of the Holy Spirit to live a godly life. They even go so far as to say that if a person lacked that gratitude, that could be evidence that the person never had really saving faith.
The Catholic Church has always taught that it is not enough that God sees us as if we are righteous because the righteousness of Christ is credit to us. We must actually be righteous. Justification is not only being declared righteous, but is also being righteous. This is all from the grace of God. We in our own power cannot obey God as He demands of us. It is only by grace. But this grace is not only found in Christ 2,000 years, but this grace is poured into our hearts to make us the people He wants us to be. While the Reformers saw Christ’s righteousness as inputed to our account, the Catholics see Christ’s righteousness as being infused into us, so that it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives within me (Galations 2:20).
As I mentioned before, there was not much positive fruit that came out the Reformation. Even Luther himself conceded on this. But later on there were times of revival that Protestantism did not bore fruit. God is all-merciful, and God can pour His mercy who is sincerely seeking Him. But here is the rub. The segments of Protestantism that have born fruit for God has been the segments that have turned back to the Catholic principle of infused grace. For instance, Puritanism emphasized the inner working of the Holy Spirit and the need for an inward conversion in order to be saved. To them, it was not enough to believe that Christ died for your sins. You must be inwardly converted.
We see this emphasis in American revivalism. You must be inwardly converted. You must be born again. All this is far more what the Catholic Church teaches than what the Reformers taught. The inner workings of the heart by God has been the emphasis of the Wesleyan revival, the Charismatic movement, and Pentecostalism.
This is not just my opinion, but it is also the opinion of Protestants who feel that modern Protestantism has drifted from the teachings of the Reformers. Read the article “Protestant Revivalism, Pentecostalism and the Drift Back to Rome” (see http://www.presenttruthmag.com/archive/V/5-5.htm, which is a website dedicated to bringing back the Reformation principles back to today’s Protestantism). The idea is this article is that American Revivalism is a drift back to Rome. And the article is right on this! I remember reading this as Protestant. At that time I though it was terrible that Protestant Evangelicalism was drifting toward Catholicism. But now I say – Praise the Lord!
Here are some quotes from others in the article:
"For the kind of Protestantism which has developed in America is not so much an expression of the Reformation, but has more to do with the so-called Evangelical Radicals.
"Luther's conflict with the evangelical radicals is especially important for American Protestants because the prevailing type of Christianity in America was not produced by the Reformation directly, but by the indirect effect of the Reformation through the movement of evangelical radicalism."
Paul Tillich, A History of Christian Thought (London: S.C.M. Press, Ltd., 1968), pp.225-226 and 239. (From lectures first given in 1953.)
Protestant scholar Paul Tillich saw that Luther was against the Evangelical Radicalism during his day, and that the Christianity in America has its root in what Tillich called Evangelical Radicalism. So this means that today’s Evangelical is not rooted on Luther’s teaching.
"The Protestant Revival . . . recalls the best and most authentic elements of the Catholic tradition . . . — Louis Bouyer, The Spirit and Forms of Protestantism (Cleveland, Ohio: World Publishing Co., 1964), p.186.
"We see in every Protestant country, Christians who owed their religion to the movement we have called, in general, Revivalism, attain a more or less complete rediscovery of Catholicism." — Ibid., p. 188.
"The contemporary revivals most valuable and lasting in their results all present a striking analogy with this process of rediscovery of Catholicism..." —Ibid., p.189. ". . . the instinctive orientation of the revivals toward the Catholic… would bring in that way a reconciliation between the Protestant Movement and the Church… "— Ibid., p.197.
Catholic scholar Lous Bouyer has agued that Protestant Revivalism has more in common with Catholicism than with traditional Protestantism.
Compare Christianity in America to the Christianity in Europe. In Europe, less than 2 percent even bother to go to church! And why bother? One is justified by faith alone. But here in the America where there is more of a prevalent trend to an inner conversion, our country is still considered by many as a Christian country. Only the Protestant churches that are experiencing growth are the ones who emphasize inner conversion – Baptist churches, Assemblies of God, etc. Evangelical Churches are the ones that are growing, whereas the traditionally Protestant, main-line denominations have often fallen into dead orthodoxy, liberalism, relativism, and a pro-abortion morality. So why should we cling to the Reformation principles when most or even all the churches that came out of the Reformation are spiritually dead? (I would encourage people to look closely at the website this article came from. The website is http://www.presenttruthmag.com. I found something very curious on this website. There are many articles, but they are seem to be anonymous. These articles were written back in the 1970’s. I know, because I used to receive the magazine in my college years. And these articles were not originally anonymous. I remember these articles all too well. They are all reprints from the 1970’s. At least half of them were written by a guy name Robert Brinsmead who is the founder of this magazine (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Brinsmead). But now Brinsmead has rejected any form of traditional Christianity.)
As a member of Campus Crusade For Christ, we used to share our faith with others using The Four Spiritual Laws. It was a great tool, and even Billy Graham used it. Now as a Catholic, I realize how Catholic it is and how much it goes against the Reformation (praise God!).
Here are the Four Spiritual Laws, as found in http://www.ccci.org/wij/index.aspx:
Law 1:
God loves you and offers a wonderful plan for your life.
None of the Reformers would ever say that. All the Reformers were heavily into predestination. Even Luther wrote a tract call "The Bondage of the Will". To the Reformers there is no free will. God predestines some to be Christians, and others to go to hell. So a Reformer would never say to a stranger that God loves him and has a wonderful plan for him. After all, God may plan him to go to hell!
But Catholicism has always taught that man has a free will, and God wills that everyone go to heaven.
Why is it that most people are not experiencing the abundant life? Because...
Law 2:
All of us sin and our sin has separated us from God.
Both Catholics and Protestants can agree on this.
The third law explains the only way to bridge this gulf.
Law 3:
Jesus Christ is God's only provision for our sin. Through Him we can know and experience God's love and plan for our life.
Both Catholics and Protestants can agree on this, although I am a little uncomfortable with the emphasis on experiencing an abundant life.
It is not enough just to know these three principles...
This is where this tract really starts to depart from the Reformation and drift back toward the Catholic faith. Luther would stop at the first three laws. All you need to do is to know by faith that Christ died for you. That is the teaching of the Reformation.
Principle 4:
We must individually receive Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord; then we can know and experience God's love and plan for our lives.
This something a Catholic can say “Amen” to. We must receive Christ. Of course, this is not fully Catholic teaching. We Catholics say that we receive Christ in the Eucharist. And we would not see receiving Christ as a one-time act. But this principle is still far closer to the teachings of the Catholic Church than the teachings of the Reformers. The Reformers would argue that receiving Christ was infused grace, and we were only saved by Christ's death on the cross. We only need to accept that fact, not be receiving Him.
The following explains how you can receive Christ:
You can receive Christ right now by faith through prayer
Prayer is talking to God. God knows your heart and is not so concerned with your words as He is with the attitude of your heart. The following is a suggested prayer:
"Lord Jesus, I need You. Thank You for dying on the cross for my sins. I open the door of my life and receive You as my Savior and Lord. Thank You for forgiving my sins and giving me eternal life. Take control of the throne of my life. Make me the kind of person You want me to be."
If this prayer expresses the desire of your heart, then you can pray this prayer right now and Christ will come into your life, as He promised.
Actually, the Catholic Church teaches that you can receive Christ apart from the Eucharist. It is called spiritual communion. Here is how it goes:
My Jesus,
I believe that You
are present in the Most Holy Sacrament.
I love You above all things,
and I desire to receive You into my soul.
Since I cannot at this moment
receive You sacramentally,
come at least spiritually into my heart. I embrace You as if You were already there and unite myself wholly to You. Never permit me to be separated from You.
Amen.
http://www.ewtn.com/devotionals/prayers/blsac4.htm
Notice how similar the prayer of spiritual communion is to the prayer in The Four Spiritual Laws. Both prayers emphasize a commitment to Christ (“Take the throne of my life.” – “I embrace You… and unite myself wholly to You”), a dependence on Christ (“Make me the kind of person You want Me to be” – “Never permit me to be separated from You”), and actually receiving Christ (“receive You as my Savior and Lord – “receive You into my soul”).
As far as I can see, spiritual communion goes back to the Middle Ages.
But when he is hindered by sufficient cause, yet will he ever have a good will and pious intention to communicate; and so he shall not be lacking in the fruit of the Sacrament. For any devout man is able every day and every hour to draw near to spiritual communion with Christ to his soul's health and without hindrance.
Imitation of Christ - Thomas a Kempis (Book IV: Chaper 10: Verse 6)
Thomas a Kempis wrote this in the Middle Ages, so it shows that Catholics believed that we could receive Christ by prayer as early as this.
And yet by contrast I could not find anything in the Reformation fathers concerning the act of spiritual communion. To them, you become saved by simply believing that Christ died for your sins. The act of receiving Christ into your heart among Protestant evengelicals seems to be a modern concept, developed sometime in the end of 19th century. Billy Sunday used this phrase to explain what must a person must do to be saved. True, "asking Christ into your heart" is not exactly the same the Catholics' spiritual communion. Spiritual communion can be done often, but the evangelical's "asking Christ in your heart" is done only once. But still the idea of praying to receive Christ cannot be traced at all back to the Reformers. The idea is not actually found in the Bible. John 1:12 says "As many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children", but in its context this passage is talking about people at the time of Jesus either rejecting or receiving Jesus and his message. It is reading into this verse to make it sound that receiving Him means to mystically receive Him into one's heart. Revelation 3:20 is the closest to the evangelical idea, but this passage was addressed to Christians, not to non-Christians. The evangelical sees receiving Christ as an act that a non-Christian does to become a Christian. So it seems that someone within evangelicalism, whether consciously or not, took the practice of spiritual communion from the Catholic tradition and made it part of the evangelical tradition.
Receiving Christ sacramentally is far better than receiving Him spiritually. In receiving Christ in the Eucharist, one is not just receiving Him in His Divinity, but all in His humanity. But still receiving Christ spiritually is a valid experience with God. A Catholic would never (or should never) deny the Evangelical’s experience of receiving Christ into his or her life. I would always praise God whenever someone shares with me of the experience of asking Christ into one’s heart. But I would encourage the person to not stop at doing it just one time. In a way, even Evangelicals realize that they need subsequent experiences with God. But they refuse to call these subsequent experiences “receiving Christ”. Instead, they call the subsequent experiences to be “rededicating yourself to Christ”, or receiving a “second blessing”, or being “baptized in the Spirit”, or being “slain in the Spirit”. Although these terms have questionable justification in scripture or tradition, I can appreciate their hunger to find something more in their experience with God besides their initial conversions. But it would be far better not to limit these to be one or two experiences, but to offer yourself to Christ completely at each Holy Communion during Mass.
There is a movement within Evangelism called the Charismatic movement - which emphasize the speaking, or praying, in tongues. It is based on Acts 2:4, where they were filled the Holy Spirit and spoke in tongues as the Holy Spirit gave them utterance. The apostle Paul then wrote of tongues in 1 Corinthians 12-14. Paul asked rhetorically whether all people speak in tongues, implying the answer is no, tongues is not for everyone. But, on the other hand, Paul forbade them from prohibiting the speaking in tongues. This was something that was very frustrating when I was a Protestant evangelical. The charismatics said that everyone must speak in tongues and non-charismatics said that no one should speak in tongues. My position has always been that if you desire and can speak in tongues, then go ahead. If it helps you in your private prayer life, more power to you! But if you do not desire to pray in tongues, or you cannot pray in tongues, that is OK. You do not have to use tongues in your prayer life. But in spite of the numerous Protestant denominations, I could not find any that took this moderate position. Either they said that everyone must pray in tongues or that tongues is of the devil. And yet the Bible seems to teach that not all pray in tongues and yet we should not forbid tongues. I finally found the church that had the moderate position. Guess which one! I will not leave you in suspense - it is the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church does not teach that all must pray in tongues and yet it is very tolerant to charismatic Catholics who find that praying in tongues helps them in their prayer lives. The Church does not see that one size fits all. It recognizes that God could deal people in different ways.
Something that is gaining popularity among modern Protestant evangelicals is the prosperity gospel. There are people like Joel Osteen, TD Jakes, and Joyce Meyers who preach this gospel. The idea is that if you really live for God and trust in Him, God will bless you financially and physically as well as spiritually. This is a natural outgrowth of the Protestant gospel. Protestantism has rejected anything that they saw as negative from the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church taught that the Christian must take care not to fall from grace and forfeit heaven. The Church also taught that even if a Christian does not fall from grace, that he should do whatever he can to avoid or shorten his duration in purgatory so that he can more quickly attain heaven. The Reformers took all that away! The Christian no longer needs to fear purgatory or hell. But Protestant ministers found that this caused a problem. Their people would say "Well, then, if there no possibility that we can go to hell or even a purgatory, then why should we bother to serve God?" So minsters would respond that although our actions no longer effect us in the hereafter, they can effect us now. God will reward or punish us in this life, depending on whether He is pleased with us. Max Weber, in his book The Protestant Ethic and Spirit of Capitaliusm showed how the perception of God's favor and our success seemed to go hand in hand. But this goes against the Catholic way of thinking. To the Catholic, purgatory and even hell still remains a definite possibility. So it would not make sense that God would want us to prosper in this life since prosperity would tempt us to love the world and God less, which would increase our duration in purgatory and maybe disqualify us from heaven altogether. Also, the Catholic Church teaches that there is not only a redemptive value in Christ's sufferings but there is also a redemptive value for others in our sufferings as well, although to a much lesser degree than Christ's sufferings. Our intercessory prayers increase in effectiveness as we offer our sufferings with them. In the Catholic Church, there seems to be more acceptance of people going through hard times. We do not look at them as somehow lacking faith in God, and that is why all these bad things are happening to them. We know that all of us, either now or in purgatory in the hereafter, will face tribulation. Tribulation is part of life.
Another popular movement within evangelicals is the study of the end-times. It is being taught that we are living in the end times, Christ will soon return. Any day now, the genuine Christians will be secretly "raptured" up into heaven. Then there will be seven years of great tribulation when the Anti-Christ will be revealed who would persecute all those who became Christians after the rapture, which will end with Christ returning to earth which the genuine Christians returning with Him. We will then have glorified bodies and have a thousand years of peace on earth. After that, a new heaven and a new earth would happen, and so we will be with the Lord for all eternity.
Although the Catholic Church teaches that Jesus Christ will return, the Church disagrees with most of what I wrote about what evangelicals believe on the end times. The Bible clearly teaches that no one knows when Christ will return (Matthew 24:44). Throughout history, there have been people who predicted that they were living in the end times. The Montanists would sell all their possessions and then went up the mountains to wait for Christ. Jehovah Witnesses have given several dates for His return, each one passing with nothing happening. Protestants during the Reformation thought that the pope was the Anti-Christ. Then Christians thought in the 1940's that Hitler was the Anti-Christ. In the 1960's evangelicals preached that Christ would return within a generation of Israel becoming a nation again in 1948. It is human nature to think that we are somehow special, and that our times are special. You can always point to something to show that we are in the end times. True, Jesus tells us of conditions where He will return. People will marry and give into marriage; there will be persecutions of Christians; there will be false prophets; there will be wars and rumors of wars (see Matthew 24). But really! When has there been a time when people did not marry, or Christians were not persecuted somewhere in the world, or that we did not have false prophets, or we did not have wars? I believe Jesus was giving conditions that could be applied in any period of history, so that we would always be on the watch for His return.
The word "rapture" is only used once in the Bible.
16 For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven, with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first;
17 then we that are alive, that are left, shall together with them be caught up in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.
1 Thess 4:16, 17
The phrase "caught up" is the Latin word "rapiemur", which is where they get the word "rapture". It is interesting that the evangelicals refer to the Catholic Latin Vulgate, a Latin translation of the Bible. I am a bit surprised that they would do this.
But I digress. This passage says that the Lord will descend with a SHOUT, with sound of a TRUMPET. This does not sound like a secret rapture to me. Also, it says that when we meet the Lord in the air, and "so we shall ever be with the Lord". This will be our entering into eternity. There are no more stages after this - no tribulation period, no return of Christ after this, and no millenium. When we meet the Lord in the air, this will be our final, eternal state with Him.
The Pre-Tribulation Rapture is an integral part of most Christian orthodox teaching. In many cases, it is made a test of a person’s orthodoxy in some denominations, Bible colleges, and seminaries.
Where did this doctrine come from? It is not clearly, or plainly taught in the Scripture. There is not a single place where it is so stated. The doctrine of a secret rapture was never taught before 1830. Did this system of belief come into existence by a careful exegesis of the Scripture? No, it did not. The first person to teach this was a young Scottish woman named Margaret Macdonald. She was not a theologian, or even a Bible expositor, but she was a prophetess in the Irvingite sect in the Catholic Apostolic Church. Dave MacPherson, a Christian author, wrote a book on the subject and origin of the Pre-Tribulation Rapture.
He wrote, “We have seen that a young Scottish lassie named Margaret Macdonald had a private revelation in Port Glasgow, Scotland, in the early part of 1830, that a select group of Christians would be caught up to meet Christ in the air before the days of the Antichrist. An eye-and-ear witness, Robert Norton M.D., preserved her handwritten account of her pre-trib rapture revelation in two of his books and said it was the first time anyone ever split the second coming into two distinct parts, or stages [emphasis added is mine]. His writings, along with other Catholic Apostolic Church literature, have been hidden for many decades from the mainstream of Evangelical thought and only, recently, surfaced. Margaret’s views were well-known to those who visited her home. Among them was John Darby of the Brethren. Within a few months her distinctive prophetic outlook was mirrored in the September, 1830 issue of The Morning Watch and the early Brethren assembly at Plymouth, England. Early disciples of the pre-trib interpretation often called it a ‘new doctrine’” (The Incredible Cover-Up: the True Story of the Pre-Trib Rapture. Plainfield, NJ: Logos International, 1975, p. 93).
http://www.plainerwords.com/artman2/publish/2008/The_Pre-Tribulation_Rapture_-_True_or_False.shtml
So there is only one verse in the Bible that talks anything about the rapture, and that verse does not support the idea of a pre-tribulational secret rapture. What is more, it seems to have started from a woman in a trance! This rapture doctrine does not have a good tradition.
It seems to me that this doctrine falls into the same trap as the prosperity gospel. The idea is that once we become Christians, it is God's will that we should not experience any type of suffering in present world or the hereafter. They know from the Bible that things will get really bad just before Christ returns, but God will deliver all true believers away from the great tribulation. Again it seems to fall into the Protestant mentality that suffering is an indication that God is displeased with us. If we really believe in God, God will spare us from all suffering. But we Catholics believe that as Christ suffered, so we too must suffer.
I know that there are still many areas that Evangelicalism differs with Catholicism – the Blessed Virgin Mary, Purgatory, Assurance of Salvation, praying to the saints, the use of suffering in the Christian life, etc. But at least Evangelicalism has realized that need for grace to be infused into our hearts, so that there is an actual changed life due to the Holy Spirit’s working on the heart. And whenever Protestantism, or at least a segment of Protestantism, has realized the Catholic doctrine of infused grace there has been a spiritual revival. Historically, God has always blessed Protestants whenever they have become more Catholic. Imagine what spiritual blessings they can receive if they come back fully to the Catholic faith!
