By the early 16th century, the heresy of selling indulgences helped ignite the Protestant Reformation. Indulgences are certificates one could purchase from the Roman Catholic Church to ensure salvation for oneself or deceased loved ones. This is still official RC doctrine to this day, I might add.
Prior to the Reformation, Roman Catholicism restricted access to Scripture by insisting the Bible could not be read in a region’s native language, only in Latin. This prevented rank-and-file laypersons from seeing how RC doctrines and leadership had repeatedly violated the Scriptures, all in the name “church tradition.”
Reformers including Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Knox, William Tyndale, and others challenged the Catholic system. Earlier voices such as John Wycliffe and Jan Hus had already prepared the ground, often at tremendous personal cost.
During the initial stages of the Reformation, tens of thousands of people who protested the pervasive abuses and false doctrines of Roman Catholicism were dispossessed, burned alive as heretics, and put to the sword in open warfare.
What many folks don’t realize is there were actually several Protestant Reformations, the most famous of which were:
- Martin Luther’s salvation by grace through faith
- John Calvin’s salvation by divine lottery
- The Anglican Reformation (Henry VIII wanted a divorce)
The Reformation restored several foundational scriptural truths:
- Salvation comes by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.
- Jesus’ blood is fully sufficient to cleanse all sins.
- Believers do not need a human priest to gain access to God.
- Scripture — not church tradition — is the final authority for faith and practice.
- The Bible belongs in the language and hands of ordinary people.
The printing press helped spread translated Bibles throughout Europe, increasing both biblical and general literacy.
The Reformation changed the world.
But it did not finish the job.
Some Catholic assumptions passed into Protestant churches almost untouched. Cessationism, state churches, religious poverty, infant baptism, rigid clergy-laity distinctions, and other traditions survived simply because few thought to question them.
Cessation Theology
One of the most consequential assumptions carried into Protestantism was the idea that the supernatural ministry described in Acts belonged to a vanished apostolic age. That false doctrine is called “cessationalism.”
I heartily reject it!
In my view, cessationism offers powerless church leaders a theological excuse for why their ministries bear little resemblance to the Church described in Acts.
It began with the gradual institutionalization of Christianity during its first 300 years caused by the encroachment of Man’s Religion as I detailed in the first article in this series. Along the way, the supernatural aspects of the Christian faith somehow faded away. That erasure was cemented when ungodly leaders entered into the church’s governance, men who could not access the gifts of the Holy Spirit because they weren’t even saved to begin with.
Instead questioning their unbelief and the church’s institutionalization, they simply declared that God no longer worked that way.
Problem solved — or so they thought.
Once church leaders relegated the Holy Spirit’s supernatural ministry to the past, they increasingly blamed sickness, poverty, catastrophe, and oppression on God’s mysterious will rather than works of the enemy Jesus came to destroy.
The results have been devastating:
- The sick are told to endure what Jesus had healed.
- Poverty is spiritualized instead of confronted.
- Ordinary believers are kept dependent on religious professionals.
- Those who espouse the current availability of the Holy Spirit’s supernatural gifts are rejected as heretics and their churches regarded as cults.
Man’s Religion always needs someone to blame — and someone to control.
Jesus came to set captives free.
The Recovery Continues
Over the ensuing centuries, successive moves of God recovered neglected truths:
- The Azusa Street Revival emphasized the baptism and gifts of the Holy Spirit.
- The healing revivals of the 1940s and 1950s restored widespread expectation for divine healing.
- The Charismatic Renewal carried the experience of the Holy Spirit across denominational boundaries.
- The Jesus Movement shattered cultural stereotypes about who could come to Christ and what Christian community should look like.
- The Word of Faith movement renewed emphasis on the believer’s identity in Christ, confidence in God’s Word, divine healing, and deliverance from poverty.
Each movement recovered something valuable. Each also faced the danger of becoming another institution defending its own traditions — and eventually succumbed to it.
That is the recurring cycle of Christendom: revelation becomes a movement, the movement becomes an organization, and the organization becomes a monument to what God did several generations ago.
We polish the monument while the Holy Spirit moves on.
Protestant Fig Leaves
Roman Catholicism is not the only place where Man’s Religion operates. Protestants have sewn plenty of fig leaves of their own.
Thousands of people have prayed a salvation prayer, joined a church, adopted the correct political opinions, and learned Christian vocabulary — yet remain almost indistinguishable from followers of any other religion. They may attend churches faithfully while showing little love, grace, or compassion. Their grasp of Scripture is shallow, but their confidence in judging others is Olympic-caliber.
The Internet has given this crowd a worldwide pulpit.
They use it.
Loudly.
Such believers drive people away from Christ by presenting a message of contempt and condemnation instead of reconciliation. Their harshness brings reproach upon the Body of Christ and reinforces every ugly stereotype unbelievers already hold about Christianity.
Let me hasten to clarify: biblical compassion is not the spineless tolerance promoted by popular culture. Love does not require us to call darkness light or pretend destructive behavior is healthy.
Jesus never compromised truth.
He also never used truth as a club for feeding His ego.
Truth and grace are not enemies. In Jesus, they are inseparable.
Thanks for reading!
AUTHOR’S NOTE: If you have never truly surrendered your life to Jesus and want to explore that possibility, you can jump back to the final section of my first article in this series to find out how.
Part 6: When the Church Went Up for Sale Return to the Series Index
