Dr. James A. Stewart and his wife, Ruth were greatly used of the Lord to spread the word of God in Europe around the World War Two era (both before and after the war). There were many reported conversions. Many testimonies have been given that this was a genuine revival. Brother Stewart was a Scotsman, and of the old evangelical school. He opposed neo-evangelical, and ecumenical evangelism, which he saw rapidly developing in his lifetime. He wrote against it and preached against it. He fought it every way he could. Today he would be regarding as "against everything" because he would not compromise. He warned about what became "Post-modernism" and "Emergent Church" (the two most deviant and unscriptural movements in our day). He called what was happening "Potpourri evangelism". A potpourri is like a "smorgasbord". One definition I found is a "collection containing a variety of sorts of things." Certainly it does; the good and the bad and the ugly. Here are some things Brother Stewart had to say regarding this ecumenical evangelism.
We must be more afraid of flattery from the camp of the enemy than persecution. Read the pages of Church history. Persecution never did the
When religion gets up a revival, it must have from five to twenty churches of heterogeneous creeds and sectarian bodies to go into a great union effort; it must have a mammoth choir with great musical instruments, and many preachers and multiplied committees, and each committee headed by some banker, judge, mayor, or millionaire’s wife. It signs cards as a substitute for the broken-hearted cry of scriptural repentance. It must count its converts by the hundreds in a few days’ meeting. It must apologize for natural depravity.
Human religion’s enterprises have an atmosphere of earthiness about them. It despises the day of small things and scorns little humble people and lonely ways. It is eager to jump to the height of prosperity. Its music has no pathos in it, its laughter lacks divine cheerfulness, its worship lacks supernatural love, its prayers bring down no huge answers, it works no miracles, calls forth no criticism from the world, and has no light of eternity in its eyes. It is a poor, sickly thing, born of the union of the heart of the world with the head of Christian theology--a mongrel, bastard thing with a backslidden church for its mother and the world for its father. Oh, my dear brother and sister, never forget that this unnatural monster will be destroyed at the coming-again of our Blessed Lord Jesus Christ.
(From Evangelism, James A. Stewart, Asheville, NC: Revival Literature, pp. 25-28).
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