🤩🔔CHURCH HISTORY 101‼️THE HIGHLIGHTS OF 20 CENTURIES 😀

➡️ Last Part ‼️

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🔖 The Age of Paradoxes ✝️

🟡 The twentieth century was a time of great paradoxes, as the church fell into decline in some parts of the world, but grew and flourished in others. In the first two decades, many in the West envisioned the triumph of Christianity in a golden age of peace and progress for the human race, but this vision died in the carnage and destruction of two world wars.

🔴Rationalistic Modernism assailed the trustworthiness of Holy Scripture, sending great denominations into swift decline, as "the battle for the Bible" beset them. At the same time, Pentecostalism appeared as a tiny offshoot of Methodism and grew into a significant third force in Christendom, augmented by the charismatic movement of the 1970s. The Reformed faith was eclipsed in the early decades of the century, but since 1960. has recovered on both sides of the Atlantic, extending its reach to many parts of the developing world.

🐦As decadent Western churches retreated from missionary work, under pressure of declining memberships and shrinking revenue, the newly planted churches of Africa and Asia grew apace. Communism waged a long and brutal campaign to destroy Christianity in the name of materialism and atheism, but failed, falling into the dustbin of history. There is a vibrant church in Russia today, and more Christians in China than in any other nation in the world. The church in the West has declined in faith and numbers, poisoned by Modernism, battered by secularism, and emasculated by worldliness. But God has continued to send forth His Word to the ends of the earth, bringing people to Himself through Christ, planting churches everywhere and building His kingdom in the hearts of His redeemed people.

✨The twentieth century was hard on the churches in Europe and North America. At the beginning of the century, in many places, nearly everyone went to church as a matter of course. The rejection of evangelical theology and biblical Calvinism was regarded as a necessary adjustment to changing times; few could see that it would end with the "Death of God" theology of the 1960s. For a time, the deceptive "Neo-Orthodoxy" of Karl Barth promised to save the church from sterile, destructive Modernism, only to disappoint all but its most zealous exponents. In the wake of the two world wars, thousands gave up churchgoing in Britain, the Netherlands. and elsewhere in Europe. Churchgoing increased in the United States during the 1950s, only to fall off sharply in the 1960s, though it remained considerably higher than in Europe.

🌸There were exceptions to the general rule. Evangelicals belatedly realized that their denominations had been hijacked by Modernism and began to protest in the name of the "fundamentals" of the faith. For better or worse "Fundamentalism" became a force in American church life. To stem the tide of unbelief, mass evangelistic campaigns were organized in urban centers, led by Billy Sunday and, later Billy Graham. Movements to recover the historic Reformed faith were led by able men such as J. Gresham Machen, founder of Westminster Seminary and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. In Britain, D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones drew large congregations to London's Westminster Chapel, and through his influence the Banner of Truth Trust began to republish outstanding but long-forgotten works of Reformed and Puritan theology.

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📹 ⛪ ️ The Church of the Sacred Heart on the summit of Mount Tibidabo, the highest point in Barcelona. 🇪🇸

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✨Meanwhile, the younger churches of the developing Third World, planted by missionaries in the nineteenth century, began to flourish. In Latin America, Pentecostalism succeeded in breaking the iron grip of Roman Catholicism and drew many thousands into its ranks. Presbyterian and Reformed churches were planted in the Caribbean islands, as well as in Central and South America. In Asia there came to be Christians of many kinds in China, a thriving if sometimes-discordant family of Presbyterian churches in Korea, and significant numbers of Reformed churches in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and elsewhere. As for Africa, huge numbers of Christians adhered to churches of all kinds often coming into conflict with the forces of Islam spreading down from the north.

✨In the Middle East, historic Christian populations are shrinking under persecution at the hands of militant Islamists. The clash with Islam continues in Pakistan, Indonesia, and elsewhere in the world. But the record of church history teaches us to hold fast to Christ, assured that He is with us always, even to the end of the world. He will build up His church and kingdom to all generations.

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