People

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The following is an excerpt from a lecture of a very fine Christian historian. To my knowledge he was a Van Tillian at heart and spoke and wrote from a Reformed perspective. You may or may not recognize him. These are some of his thoughts as he was addressing a group of Christian history teachers back in the 1970's. Enjoy!

I wrote transcribed this and sent it to my email list which was consisted of about thirty contacts.

Wednesday August 16, 2000 6:59PM

Subject: Historian Speaks Out


The doctrine of election may well pass from the major denominations. They are in a state of upheaval. Some of them may pass from the scene. Organized religion may undergo a tremendous devastation. It probably will. Some of them may well perish but the truth of God will not but the decline of theology in the churches has brought on the decline of Western culture and Western culture in turn has given the death notice to the civilization which it created.

I draw a distinction between culture and civilization. The culture being the intellectual currents which produce a civilization and when the culture dies the civilization can not continue to live without the continual nourishment of the culture which gave it birth.

So modern and contemporary Christians whether they be professional historians or theologians face, of course, a tremendous challenge. They face a tremendous task.

Historians are not free to attach their own peculiar or particular interpretations to the stream of events without any reference to that previous interpretation which God has given to history. History is not subject to private interpretation.

I think for those of you who teach history that you must preach the decline of the West, not for the reasons which (Oswald) Spengler portrayed, although I'm not saying that Spengler is totally wrong. I think all these aberrations...there are modicums of truth...there are some observations which are true but that are true for different reasons from those which these authors assigned to them.

We must bring to the attention of the public that the rise of Russian Communism, of Nazi Germany and the totalitarian regimes in general of the present day are not accidents over which God had no control because there are no accidents in history as I said before, but rather are they are part of his plan for the chastening of an impenitent and an impatient and a godless West.
Secondly, for the purifying of a church which has become to a great extent totally and or partially apostate.

History is used of God to chasten and to correct his people. What did he do with the children of Israel? He sent them into Babylonian captivity to punish and to chasten them and then according to his promise he brought hem back into the promised land. Now, while we may understand only a little of what his plans are we must believe that even in contemporary events god is working and the Christian scholar and the Christian historian is called upon to give his allegiance to this great truth in his writings, teachings and his dealings professionally.

Dr. C. Gregg Singer

Telling words indeed from a man who knew what history was all about.

With warm regards,
Carlton Pruitt
Hollywood, CA






Carlton Pruitt ministers the gospel to the Los Angeles area. Formerly a Hollywood actor (SAG member)and junk removal expert he now spends most of his time studying the scriptures, writing articles, hymns and poems and doing street preaching.

See his videos on http://www.youtube.com Type LAStreetPreacher in the search bar. CONTACT at Carlton2061@gmail.

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