The Need For Reformation

Chris­tians are to be exhorted that they be dili­gent in fol­low­ing Christ, their Head, through penal­ties, deaths, and hell;
Dr. Mar­tin Luther, 95 The­ses (94)

Luther, Calvin, Wycliffe, Hus, Knox, among oth­ers led a move­ment to reform the Roman Catholic church from it’s sad state. The move­ment was not taken well (obvi­ously) by the Papacy, but mil­lions ral­lied behind the reform­ers due to their frus­tra­tion with the church. Today, we need a ref­or­ma­tion; 400 years later Chris­tian­ity is again fight­ing human­ism, a mis­un­der­stand­ing of God’s decree of sal­va­tion, and in one sense the sale of “indul­gences” to car­nal Christians.


“Every­thing is in shame­ful con­fu­sion; every­where I see only cru­elty, plots, frauds, vio­lence, injus­tice, shame­less­ness while the poor groan under the oppres­sion and the inno­cent are arro­gantly and out­ra­geously harassed. God must be asleep.“
John Calvin

Chris­tian­ity is plagued with the “dis­ease” of feel-good, moti­va­tional preach­ing found in such preach­ers as Joel Osteen. Rick War­ren is telling Chris­tians how to live a “pur­pose dri­ven life” with­out a solid Bib­li­cal foun­da­tion and under­stand­ing; Billy Gra­ham has alter calls where thou­sands come and “accept” Christ from the emo­tional expe­ri­ence of his ser­mons; Promise Keep­ers is telling men that we are in the wrong in our lead­er­ship as men (to which is true), but they attempt to rec­on­cile this through moti­va­tional speeches; James Dob­son and Jerry Fal­well stand out on the Chris­t­ian right “pro­claim­ing” morality.

These afore­men­tioned indi­vid­u­als are the rea­son why a movie like “Saved” was made. That truly is the vision that most have of Chris­tian­ity today. It is so sad. What hap­pened to the church? Reli­gious sta­tis­tics state that there are over 2 bil­lion Chris­tians in this world. Those sta­tis­tics are espe­cially fright­en­ing, because they include Mor­mons, Jehovah’s Wit­nesses, and Catholics (Catholi­cism has a stated adher­ence of 800 mil­lion). This num­bers mean noth­ing, but yet so many thing it is a com­pelling “proof” for the effec­tive­ness of Jesus Christ. Did Jesus con­cern Him­self with the num­ber of fol­low­ers He had?

“Enter through the nar­row gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruc­tion, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is small and the way is nar­row that leads to life, and there are few who find it.“
Jesus Christ (Matthew 7:13–14)

What about the 5 solas? Truly, where is the Lord­ship of Christ in our mod­ern gospel (Sola Chris­tus)? How much do mod­ern Chris­tians hold the author­ity of the Scrip­tures (Sola Scrip­tura)? Where did jus­ti­fi­ca­tion go in a time where Syn­er­gism leads us to a human­is­tic, works-based, man-centered gospel (Sola Fide)? Also, the Syn­er­gism that is so ram­pant demeans the grace of God to a gift con­tin­gent on the will of man (Sola Gra­tia)? From all this, where is the true glory and exha­la­tion of God (Soli Deo Gloria)?

The doc­trine of Mon­er­gism was so strong an influ­ence that in the Ref­or­ma­tion that Hus was burned for it, Calvin ostra­cized for it, and Luther pro­fessed the belief. What’s amaz­ing is that Syn­er­gism is the stance of the Roman Catholic church! In other words, we have gone backward.

“A ref­or­ma­tion hap­pens every time you open the Bible.“
Dari­enne Hall

I hear in pass­ing this talk, but who is doing any­thing about this? Who will stand up?

“What is truth?“
Pon­tius Pilate