Hyper-Evangelism

In this article I intend to propose a term for the practices that have long been (at least in this post-Finney period of redemptive history) regarded as normal evangelical efforts. Such practices and efforts Charles Finney called the "new measures". These new ordinances included the alter call, and the sinners prayer, and the method of their administration was not gospel proclamation but "preaching" the Law of God so as to insight fear in the heart and a desire to change one's own behavior. The term I propose for these practices which unfortunately remain a large part of 21st century evangelical heritage is, "hyper-evangelism".

Contrary to all that, in the middle of the 1770's God blessed America and the world with what we call "The First Great Awakening". Men like Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield were on fire with the gospel of God and they lowered their flames to catch fire to the souls of sinners who God had humbled by His grace. As mentioned before, in regards to the Finneite heresies, the second work that must be considered in the realm of Christian history is what is commonly referred to as "The Second Great Awakening" which took place about a half century later in the early 1800's, and from which the Christian Church is still recovering. In my opinion that second work was not an awakening at all, at least not an awakening to God and His gospel; it was more of a revival of externally moralism than anything else, and I would prefer to call the work God did through Edwards and Whitefield "The Great Awakening", and the events that occurred in America under the influence of Finney, a "Second Sinai" because of its emphasis on Law without gospel and the failure of its participants to see that the Law of God does not redeem it only condemns.

I justify the use of the labels hyper-evangelism and hyper-evangelistic based on the historical use of the terms: Calvinism, Hyper-Calvinism, evangelism and evangelistic. Calvinism is a term describing the biblical position which systematised five points of soteriological doctrine that resulted at the Synod of Dort from the discussions of Jacob Arminius' proposals against reformed thinking, but hyper-Calvinism rightly describes an unbiblical position loosely based on historical Calvinism but misapplied and drew unbiblical and illogical conclusions from the historic Calvinistic position. likewise, historically, evangelism is a term which describes the biblical methodology of spreading the kingdom through the means of gospel preaching, but the term I propose, hyper-evangelism, is a term I am using to describe an unbiblical method of evangelism which is loosely based on the historical, biblical method, but it either goes too far or not far enough.

Furthermore, Calvinism is the modern name that has been given (due to John Calvin’s debates with Jacob Arminius over the nature of election and saving grace) to this system which attempts to describe all the relevant biblical data concerning the sovereignty of God over all his creation and creatures, over all of history and his decree of those things. On the other hand, hyper-Calvinism is not so much a system, but rather a dogma which takes the Calvinistic understanding of election and predestination and, instead of building an understanding of all related doctrines systematically, it twists those doctrines to fit an illogical outworking of predestination and election while ignoring relevant passages stating the contrary, thus skewing one's evangelistic methods.

Likewise, evangelism is a word used to describe the act of bearing witness of the Christ of history, what he did in time and why. Historically speaking, the method of doing so is built on a systematic approach to all the biblical texts relevant to the nature of God, the nature of man, his relationship to man, the commands pertaining to said method, historical accounts of what God has done, and the weight of future events. On the other hand, hyper-evangelism also describes a method of bearing witness but it is not a method firmly tied to a systematic which considers all the relevant biblical texts but instead, it focuses exclusively on the "offer" of the gospel and the responsibility of all sinners to “accept Jesus Christ”. It does have a skeletal framework on which it bases its methods, that God is asking all men to embrace him, and that everyone God asks to come, has the natural ability to either accept or decline the invitation, and that if one experiences sufficient regret, then their prayer to God obligates Him to extend to them His grace.

The alter call, the “sinner’s prayer”, a fixation on “numbers”, “seeker sensitivity, a bare-bones presentation of the gospel (in fact the removal of God’s holiness and wrath from the gospel presentation all together), no or very little discipleship, no church discipline, a focus on false worship, a confusion of indicative and imperative passages and of law and gospel, a denial of perseverance (Christ’s lordship and the believer’s security), the promotion of the believer’s “temporal prosperity”, and in the most severe cases, a denial of original sin are either, symptoms of, or practices resulting from hyper-evangelism.