In our final article concerning the rise and fall of Christian Fundamentalism, we are drawn to a sobering work of God that will strongly affect the Christian world in the end time—yea, it will profoundly affect the future of Christian Fundamentalism. This work of God's great shaking of the earth is addressed in Hebrews 12:25-29:
See that ye refuse not him that speaketh. For if they escaped not who refused him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven: Whose voice then shook the earth: but now he hath promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven. And this word, Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain. Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear: For our God is a consuming fire.
Prior to chapter twelve, the writer of this epistle had warned Christian brethren of the dangers of neglect (2:3), of hardening of heart (3:8), of unbelief (3:19), of indifference (5:11), of slothfulness (6:12), and of willful sinning (10:26). This passage of Hebrews 12 begins the final and most fearful warning of the epistle—the warning of apostasy.
As a basis for the admonition of Hebrew 12:26-31, the writer first speaks of the severity of the Law of Moses (12:25). In the previous verse he has declared that Christ's blood speaketh (or "divinely communicates") better things than that of Abel's. This speaking of better things through the blood of Christ is not to be taken lightly. God will not hold us less accountable for sin since Christ shed His blood (12:25b); to the contrary, there will be a greater penalty than that given by the Law. And in this context because the Jews had rejected for a final time God's Son, God sent a mighty shaking to earth's religious and political systems.
As the context continues, the "removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made" (12:27) becomes the great warning to us late in the Church ages of history. These words were first given by the prophet Haggai (2:6-7) to encourage the Jewish exiles on their return from Babylon to their ruined Temple and city. Although the foundation for their smaller temple had been laid fifteen years earlier, the ensuing years were marked with apathy and indifference toward completing this heavenly appointed temple under the leadership of Zerubbabel (the governor) and Joshua (the high priest). The elderly men had wept at the laying of the foundation thinking of the smallness of this temple compared to the glories of the magnificent Temple of Solomon. The prophet Haggai comforted them by declaring that the smaller Zerubbabel temple would be the transitional temple between Solomon's and the great (Millennial) Temple to come. In giving this prophecy, Haggai states that there is a crisis coming that will test and overthrow all material structures; and in this convulsion the outer form will pass away, however fair and costly it may be. But the inner, hidden glory will become more apparent than ever. There will come the "Desire of all Nations," Who is the substance of which these material objects are but the fading and incomplete anticipation.
The writer of Hebrews then reveals to his readers that they were living in the midst of a great shaking. It was and would be a time of almost universal trial. God was shaking not earth only, but also heaven. What were these shakings by God? Palestine was being shaken by the Romans and the whole Jewish nation was being affected. The interpretation given to the Word of God by the Rabbis was being shaken by the coming of Jesus Christ and His view of the Old Testament. The supremacy of the Temple and its rituals were being shaken by the revelation of the true temple of the Body of the Holy Spirit and that of the revelation of the true Church. All the Levitical sacrifices had been fulfilled in Christ. Even the observance of the Sabbath was being shaken in the substitution for it by the keeping of the first day of the week.
The Shakings of God with the Jewish Nation
The first symptoms of this shaking started when Jesus began to preach His Gospel message. The people flocked to hear Him. This shaking was felt all the way to the high priest and the Sanhedrin Court, who in response endeavored to silence Him. God then through the Apostles and the beginning of the true Church continued to shake through preaching, revealing the Jews' heart of unbelief. The shaking intensified when God destroyed the Temple in ad 70. This destruction shook the Jewish system driving the Jews from the city of Jerusalem. Over a million died in the conflict while tens of thousands were carried away to Rome as captives.
The writings of the New Testament went through the inhabited world, as the heathen cried, "They have turned the world upside down" (Acts 17:6). The power of these shakings toppled the apostate Judaism and the religious and political powers of the inhabited world.
Who is doing this shaking? According to Hebrews 12:26b, It is God! "I shake," the Scripture declares! "Yet once more" (12:27)—the shaking shall not last forever. Nor will these shakings injure anything of eternal worth and truth: "Those things which cannot be shaken may remain" (12:27b).
The End-Time Shakings of Theological Systems by God
These days are accelerating us to the culmination of this Church Age of Laodicea. To these days that have brought the final global apostasy of the institutional church through the spiritual defection of Protestantism, God is sending the most powerful shakings and testings that the world has ever known. There is a divine purpose for it all—God's eternal Truth is causing everything that is false, fleshly, worldly and Devilish, to begin collapsing. Everything that is unable to resist the energy of His shaking will be revealed for what it truly is!
In the days leading up to the Reformation, there were great questionings about Romanism and its doctrines of antiquity. The pre-reformers and reformers were longing to know what the Scriptures said about the matter of Truth. Those days brought an upheaval in thought to public Christianity.
Now, in these last days of the institutional church, God is bringing a powerful shaking to its accumulated theological systems. The very warp and woof of these systems of both Protestant and non-Protestant beliefs is being shaken by God and tested as never before. What is the true New Birth? What is a true Born-again experience? What is sanctification and holiness of heart and life? Is the power of the flesh to be broken by Christ? Is there a distinction between being born of the Spirit and being filled with the Spirit?
So much human debris, carnal reasoning, and sin-protecting doctrine have accumulated within and around the truth in the institutional church over the centuries that God is sending shakings in the testings. Our methods of work and ministry are being weighed in the balances. God is letting the false prophets come; He is letting the false emerging churches come in their bold boastings. He is allowing the changes within the church to come as the leaders believe these changes are for the good. He is allowing the contemporary Christian music to come in like a flood with all its emphasis upon "praise and worship."
We are also witnessing God shaking men who are capitulating to the apostasy. This naturally prompts the question, "Are they saved?" We are witnessing what seemed to be good men, yea, great men of our times, who fought battles for God in their earlier days but now are compromising with their former enemies? How far will the theological systems allow them to go before it must be said they are no longer a Bible Christian? How far can a man go into the corridors of sin and apostasy before he has made a mockery of the precious doctrine of biblical "eternal security of the believer"?
The institutional church is now questioning all historical doctrines. Even what Fundamentalism has believed is now being questioned through the eyes of Neo-Evangelicalism. Multitudes of Bible versions have flooded the sanctuaries of God causing greater confusion and enigmas among the professing people of God. Many are distressed about this and fear that the truth of the true Gospel publicly is being discarded.
In all of these shakings by providence within the Church, will God allow an eclipse of truth to happen? Will God allow His precious Gospel to be destroyed? Has He maintained it in its integrity through the ages to now allow it to fall into oblivion? In the last days the trying of true Christianity as gold in the fire will be part of the shakings of God amidst the rise of false Christianity. It is now the most difficult time to be a Christian, for, as never before, everything that is not true is going to be thrown away by the centrifugal forces of God's appointed shakings. Nevertheless, in these terrible shakings by God, not one jot or tittle of God's Word shall perish—not one grain of truth will fall to the ground. God is threshing the chaff and testing the wheat. The things which cannot be shaken shall remain!
Why is God shaking the church? Why is He allowing all of this compromise and change to come without stopping it? This is all of God's allowance as part of the shaking of the church: to bring it all down to singularly the ELECT. There is a massive amount of wood, hay, and stubble in Christianity today. We read in Matthew 24:24, "For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great [mega] signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect." God truly is using all of these religious things in the end time to shake everything away from the Elect.
The precious biblical remnant of the elect will be the only entity remaining by the time Christ comes for His own! Everyone else identified with Christianity will be proved to be false. The Rapture will be the final shaking of who was right and who was not. Deuteronomy 13:1-5 reminds us of God's purpose for allowing false prophets to rise in the earth with their visions, dreams, signs and wonders: "For the LORD your God proveth you, to know whether ye love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul" (13:3b). The rise of such men in the earth is part of God's shakings of both heaven and earth.
The Christian Life
Every day the Christian's life and character are being shaken by God through circumstances, trials, testings, temptations, and even through soil-shaking messages from His Word and Spirit. He is even permitting our confrontation with the powers of the world and Neo-Christianity. It is God behind it all: "I will shake!"
Yes, dear reader! God is shaking not only the earth but also the soil of our own souls! We must get ready for these shakings. The testings from God are going to become so severe that it will seem like an earthquake shaking the very foundation of our existence and walk with God. Our homes are going to be shaken; our families, our marriages, our churches, our schools. They are all being shaken more than ever before. We are hearing of more Christian marriages dismantling, of more Christian couples simply existing together without heart, love, warmth of life together, and a personal walk with God. Everything that is false, hypocritical, and built by the arm of the flesh will be brought to naught. Every ministry that is not built upon the Word of God will go the way of all flesh and will capitulate to the Neo-Christianity. Instead of bankruptcy, some ministries may flourish amidst these shakings, producing a false security in their thinking. Whatever is true will remain; but whatever is false will be revealed and cast to the wind of the age.
Things That Cannot Be Shaken
What results from these shakings? Through these shakings the inward man of the communing Christian is being daily renewed and the power of sin broken. The things which cannot be shaken will remain!
One of the things that cannot be shaken is the Word of God. Heaven and earth may pass away, but God's Word will never pass away. This is why we must ever be standing upon the Word of God. What is true and what is real in your life? Let us not fear this shaking from God, for it is to get rid of the vipers that have fastened themselves onto us.
Another thing which cannot be shaken is God's Love. For nothing "can separate us from the love of God" (Romans 8:35-39). No shock or shaking can destroy it for us; it will remain.
God's eternal kingdom (Hebrews 12:28) cannot be shaken. Let us therefore make sure that we are in His kingdom and not simply identified with the earthly church.
Conclusion
The Bible speaks of three great judgments in the End Time: (1) the Great Tribulation period, (2) Daniel's Last Week, and (3) the House of God. The Great Tribulation Period will be God's judgment upon the Gentile world as pictured in the book of Revelation when the Book of Seven Seals is broken by Christ and poured out upon the earth. Daniel's Last Week is the final judgment upon the Jewish nation and Jerusalem as prophesied in Daniel 9:24-27. But there is a judgment that is mentioned in First Peter 4:17, "For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God?"
The shakings we are experiencing in the Christian world today are part of this judgment first at the House of God before the Great Tribulation period. It is overwhelming at times to see the changes that are taking place even within Fundamentalism today. More and more the line of demarcation between Neo-Evangelicalism and present-day Fundamentalism is being erased. Personal separation of life from the world has become almost non-existent in the way Christians dress; the casual and carnal "dress-down" look has been brought into the sanctuary. Our music has drifted toward a contemporary sound while in many quarters of Fundamentalism it has fully embraced the world's worship culture. Lack of discretion by conservative Christians in attendance to places of entertainment have merely marked how far we are drifting from God. Ecclesiastical separation is becoming less and less important as the sympathy for a broader base of Christianity is permitted. God is allowing His people to go "their merry way" with fewer dealings of conscience. We tend to believe that this neo-culture of worship is the standard we must pursue in order to survive the pressures bearing down upon Christianity. What will Fundamentalism be within five years?
God is allowing these changes to occur as He is shaking and testing contemporary Fundamentalism to finally reveal who truly are His own, His elect. Some may seem to be a part of the Elect, but future shakings will prove they are not. Ministries and ministers tend to view the victories of the past as the proof of this election; however, God's shakings are not finished. The final test of the Elect is found in enduring unto the end of life; this will be the real proof of the power of God within the human life.
These are days in history when we are witnessing the shaking of the nations. All nations are in great tensions. As the Scriptures foretold, the nations are in perplexities (Luke 21:25). May God enable us to see the signs of the times in which we live, realizing that the greater concern is not the return of the Jews to their land but the falling away that is happening within the very House of God. This is where the judgment commences before the judgment of the world. May our Election and the proof of the true Word of God within us give evidence of withstanding the very shakings of God that have now come to the most conservative part of professing Christianity, that which is called Fundamentalism.