Originally published in "The Lord's Coming Herald & Wesleyan Bible Prophecy Advocate," Spring Edition , 1999
Antinomianism and the Future of the Wesleyan Holiness Movement
Many of us would
agree that America is in an awful moral mess and things need to change. The
problem is the dread moral disease of antinomianism. It is not so much a problem
of the world, however, as it is a problem of the church. God placed His church
in the world as its salt and light. The church does not follow the world, the
world, in reality, follows the church. The solution to the problem of
antinomianism will not come from the pagan world. The solution to the problem of
antinomianism will come
from within the church. That solution is called, purely and simply, "the gospel
of Jesus Christ."
Daniel Steele affirmed that the dispensational premillennial
salvation history theory, as theology, was "antinomianism revived." We have
taught "antinomianism revived" in the Wesleyan Holiness movement now for many
years. The seeds of our own destruction were sown in our midst by the false
doctrines that we have imbibed. We became ideological antinomians years ago in
my grandfather's generation when we bought into the antinomian system of
dispensational fables that opponents of Bible holiness were broaching. Little
wonder it is, then, that my parent's generation went the way of all the earth in
practical worldly apostasy. Now my generation is groping in the dark trying to
find its way back to the God of absolute truth.
Friend, this generation can experience a great spiritual
awakening if we will pay the price that reformation has always cost. We must
reduce the complexity of issues to one motivational focus. To be a Christian
means to be a learner, a follower of the truth. The truth about
dispensationalism as antinomianism is the issue, and we will never get to first
base in our endeavor to solve the Holiness movement's on-going attrition into
secularism, humanism, and worldliness until we are willing and able to
rise up and deal forthrightly with Christian ideology prominently once again.
As long as we are content to sweep the issue of Christian ideology under the rug, be "existentialists" (i.e., liberals who ground all authority in religion in the subjectivity of mere human "experiences") and play church, things will continue about the way they are. We, as a professed Holiness movement, will go through our traditionalist sentimental motions, and the world will go to hell.
How sad. How tragically sad.
It doesn't need to be that way.
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