For anyone who loves history or theology, I recommend Ligonier's teaching series, A Survey of Church History. W. Robert Godrey is the teacher, and he's fabulous! The series has six parts.
The sixth part is the final part. It covers the twentieth century. Again the focus keeps returning, circling around, the Presbyterian church. Many of the messages share a common theme: what went wrong with the Presbyterian church, when did it go wrong, how and why did it go wrong, etc. A lot of division and splitting occurs. But the series covers so much more than that.
The messages are:
- A Remarkable Century
- Empires and Missions
- Fundamentalism
- J. Gresham Machen
- Struggle in American Churches
- Aimee Semple McPherson
- Pentecostalism
- The New Evangelicalism
- Rome in the 20th Century
- The Church and Islam
- Doctrinal Distinctives
- Reformed Christianity
I really LOVED, LOVED, LOVED the series as a whole. I thought it would be easy to choose a favorite part: one, two, three, four, or five. You might think, well, the one on the Reformation HAS to be the best of the best, right? Well, I'm not sure I can pick. I found the last two discs to be SO GOOD. Perhaps a bit more thought-provoking and convicting than previous sections which were more history-themed.
One thing he addresses are labels and definitions. Fundamentalism and evangelicalism. How labels come about, how words are defined, how words change meaning, who uses them and why. In one lecture, he talks about how limiting the word evangelical really is. He says that there are four pillars of evangelicalism and that these are the most basic, most bare minimums you could come up with and still technically be of the Christian faith. He argues that Christianity is so much more than four points. It is not even five points. If you're going to embrace the faith, and STAND for something, then he wants you to stand for the whole faith and embrace everything the Bible teaches. The last two messages are specifically about Reformed theology.
Mom and I were definitely sad to see the series end. We'd become quite attached to spending our days with Godfrey! The series in total is 73 messages!!!
© Becky Laney of Operation Actually Read Bible
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