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The Scriptural Problem of Kevin Bauder’s Definition of “Fellowship”

September 12, 2011 / 9 Comments on The Scriptural Problem of Kevin Bauder’s Definition of “Fellowship”

Coming out this month from Zondervan is one of its “four views” books, this one Four Views on the Spectrum of Evangelicalism. The four views of the book are represented by four different men with differing perspectives on what should be true evangelicalism. Collin Hansen, one of the editors, writes in the introduction: “This book’s four contributors offer their take on evangelicalism at its best and critique the movement at its worst.” Many are anticipating this book, and especially certain fundamentalists, first mainly because fundamentalists were recognized as even existent by evangelicals other than in mockery, and second because of Kevin Bauder’s presentation of fundamentalism. I’m very interested too in the interaction of the four men on this subject. The only place anyone could insert me into the four views would be in fundamentalism. I recognize this, even though I don’t believe my view could be represented in the book, even by Kevin Bauder.

I haven’t read the book. I’m not sure it’s even out. I will probably buy a physical copy (rather than kindle) because I want to write in it. I know I can write in Kindle but it isn’t a task that works with me as of yet. Maybe I’ll get there. I do like reading better on the Kindle, but the marking and note taking works better for me in a hard copy. But I digress. How can I write a little review of Bauder’s part when I don’t have the book? Well, I’m writing only on something that I did read Bauder write, the pretty large sample text from the book, and it spurred me to write this post. There’s a lot that I have trouble with in what Bauder wrote. For instance, he buttresses much for his argument on two texts, John 10 (article 1 and 2) and 1 Corinthians 12:13 (parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 of articles by me), and he gets those both wrong. With those wrong, the gist of what he writes is going to be wrong for him. There’s still a lot that he writes that I can agree with, but he can’t get it right when he gets wrong the two passages upon which he bases his entire presentation. But that isn’t what I’m going to write about here.

Bauder doesn’t get the concept or idea of fellowship right. In describing fundamentalism, Bauder describes its primary motive as “the unity and fellowship of the church” (p. 21). When he says “church,” he means all believers. That, of course, also colors everything that he writes, including what he says about fellowship. He writes on p. 21:

Fellowship (koinônia) means joint ownership . Properly speaking, fellowship involves something that two or more persons hold in common.

That is a too simplistic and minimalist definition of fellowship. In so writing, he reduces fellowship to a soteriological issue, when Scripture presents fellowship as more than soteriological. He continues in this vein on p. 23:

Fellowship always involves something that is held in common . The quality of the thing held in common determines the quality of the fellowship or unity . The thing that is held in common by all Christians— the thing that constitutes the church as one church— is the gospel itself.

Bauder doesn’t establish this thought from Scripture. He doesn’t prove that the thing held in common in fellowship is the gospel. It is true that the gospel is a boundary for fellowship. We should not fellowship with someone who believes or preaches a false gospel, but fellowship is more than just holding something in common. It is holding something in common, but it is more than that. Bauder himself hints at this in a sentence he writes later that clashes with his earlier statement (p. 24), “How can invisible unity be relevant for questions of visible cooperation and fellowship?” Cooperation extends fellowship to something further than merely holding something in common. The confusion that results from the reduction of the definition of fellowship is seen in this paragraph (p. 31):

Unity is a function of what unites, and fellowship is something that is held in common . The thing that Christians hold in common and that unites them is, minimally, the gospel itself . Those who profess the true gospel are to be accorded fellowship as Christians . Those who deny the gospel are to be excluded from Christian fellowship.

“Fellowship is something.” That “something. . . is held in common.” What is held in common is the gospel. So fellowship is reduced to all people who are saved. But then they are to be “accorded fellowship” who “profess the true gospel.” If they already hold the gospel in common, aren’t they already in fellowship? And then he mentions that gospel deniers “are to be excluded from Christian fellowship.” Aren’t they already excluded, since fellowship is simply holding in common the same gospel? Bauder himself sees fellowship as more than holding something in common, but in cooperation. What is it that someone is being excluded from? It must be more than holding something in common.

Later on p. 31 Bauder writes: “Inasmuch as their message constitutes a denial of the gospel, their adherents are not to be accorded Christian recognition or fellowship.” Here he equates fellowship with “recognition.” Fellowship is recognizing that someone is a Christian. So what is it? Is it holding something in common, is it cooperation, is it inclusion, or is it recognition? If we were concerned with what “fellowship” was, we would be confused at this point if we had only what Bauder has written to go on. Later (p. 34) he writes: “Where the gospel is denied (either directly or by denial of some fundamental doctrine), unity does not exist and fellowship should not be extended.” And here he says that “fellowship” is something extended. Someone is extending something to someone. Perhaps this is the proverbial ten foot pole with which certain ones we would not want to touch. If fellowship is holding something in common, if that definition is true, nothing needs to be extended, because it is already held in common.

Bauder continues on v. 34: “Once minimal unity is realized (i .e ., once the gospel is held in common), other levels of fellowship also become possible.” Now we are introduced to “levels of fellowship.” Isn’t fellowship holding something in common? Is this holding more in common? Or is fellowship more than just holding something in common? Recognizing? Or cooperation?

Then Bauder moves into his discussion on “Levels of Fellowship,” and begins on p. 34:

Scripture implies different levels of fellowship. Not all fellowship relationships are equal. Different relationships bring with them different levels of accountability and responsibility. One level is simple personal fellowship: two believers rejoicing together in the gospel that they hold in common. Another level is discipleship . Ministry collaboration is a different level, as are both church membership and church leadership.

Since I don’t have enough of his chapter (p. 34 is the last of the sample), I’m hopeful that Bauder can explain this “levels of fellowship” idea, show how that Scripture “implies” it, as opposed to his assuming it without proof. There is no doubt that people hold various beliefs in common. That would show different levels of fellowship, that is, if fellowship is holding something in common. Or is this just too minimal as a definition? I’ve shown how that is implied in Bauder’s chapter. And with good reason, Scripture shows fellowship to be more than “holding something in common.” Bauder was on to something when he threw in the word “cooperation.” Scriptural fellowship is actually cooperation and that cooperation is based upon doctrine and obedience to that doctrine. What is extended is cooperation. The recognition is cooperation. We recognize that someone does not believe and practice the same, so we don’t fellowship. Fellowship isn’t holding the same doctrine in common, but cooperating based upon having the same doctrine and practice.

“Fellowship” in the New Testament is cooperation or partaking or working together. It is joint activity. We tell that by the usage. 2 Corinthians 6:14 reveals this.

Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?

Two oxen are “yoked together” for common labor. They are working together, cooperating. Fellowship is doing ministry or service or worship together. It certainly is not just “being together,” or Paul would be contradicting himself. Earlier in 1 Corinthians 10:27 Paul writes:

If any of them that believe not bid you to a feast, and ye be disposed to go; whatsoever is set before you, eat, asking no question for conscience sake.

It is fine to eat with unbelievers, but in 2 Corinthians 6:14, Paul writes not to be “unequally yoked together with unbelievers” and describes this as “fellowship” with “unrighteousness” and “darkness.” And of course, Jesus ate with sinners. The only sinners that churches are told not to eat with are Christian ones (1 Corinthians 5:9-11).

Fellowship is more than holding something in common. It is worshiping together, serving together, doing the same Christian labor together. It is coming into union for common Christian endeavor. In 1 Corinthians 10 again, Paul says that the Lord’s Table is fellowship and he parallels that with the religious feasts of the pagans in Corinth. They are both religious participation or fellowship. He uses the word koinonos in 10:21, translated “partakers” (KJV). Fellowship is the activity of taking of the bread and the cup in the church. We are fellowshiping with another Christian if we are participating in common labor for God, service for God, or worship to God.

Should fellowship be reduced to just the gospel? Is that how we see it in the New Testament? No. And this is where Bauder’s view is all wrong. He minimizes fellowship by reducing it to the gospel. Fellowship is based upon doctrinal and moral purity, called “light” in 1 John. John writes that “if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another.” You can see that fellowship is paralleled with an activity, walking, and that it is based upon the light. What does 1 John say that the light is? Is it just the gospel? No. 1 John 2:9 says that “he that saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother, is in darkness.” Fellowship in the light is dependent on a particular practice. This fits with Ephesians 5:11, “And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.” The standard is higher than just the gospel. And if Bauder is going to say that the gospel encompasses all works consistent with the gospel then he is not making that clear with his chapter so far.

Fellowship is what occurs in a church, as seen in the Jerusalem church in Acts 2:41. 1 John 2:19 describes the break of fellowship with someone who leaves the church. When someone is disciplined from a church (Matthew 18:15-17), he no longer fellowships with that church. The basis of discipline is more than the gospel or else someone could be disciplined, and it would be fine to continue in fellowship with him as long as he keeps professing a true gospel. This is often how it sadly works in fundamentalism. If another church continues in practice that was the basis of discipline for one of our own members, how could we continue in fellowship with that church when it also offends? This is where the Bauder view of “fellowship” breaks down in its inconsistency.

I suspect that the Bauder presentation will be the strongest in the book. However, this only shows the sorry state of evangelicalism and fundamentalism. It has dumbed down fellowship to include those disobedient to Scripture and in conflict with the doctrine and practice of one’s own church. This is not walking in the light as the Lord is in the light. It is not fellowship one with another.

Revival, believer’s baptism, and personal conversion vs. baptismal regeneration and traditional Reformed theology

August 21, 2011 / 14 Comments on Revival, believer’s baptism, and personal conversion vs. baptismal regeneration and traditional Reformed theology

Revival, believer’s baptism, and the need for personal conversion, and justification by faith alone apart from sacraments are very closely connected, as are baptismal regeneration, traditional Reformed theology, and opposition to revival. Rich Lusk, a high-church Presbyterian who accepts Calvin’s doctrine of baptismal regeneration and consequently rejects the Biblical and Baptist necessity of personal conversion, as well as the value of revival, powerfully describes what he believes is the unfortunate connection between revival, experimental religion, and the decline of infant baptism in his well documented essay, “Paedobaptism and Baptismal Efficacy: Historic Trends and Current Controversies” (Pgs. 71-125, Chapter 3 of The Federal Vision, ed. Steve Wilkins & Duane Garner. Monroe, LA: Athanasisus Press, 2004). Lusk writes:

America became progressively “baptist” on a massive scale in the early-to-mid nineteenth century. . . . [T]he loss of paedobaptism [was closely connected with] experiential Revivalism[.] . . . [T]he experientialism of Puritanism (which was only exacerbated by revivalism) eventually overthrew the Calvinistic principle of the church membership of children. . . . As baptism degenerated into a “mere ceremony” . . . New England Congregationalism continually lost members to newly formed Baptist churches. . . . Charles Hodge . . . [u]sing statistics provided by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church . . . pointed out that from 1812 onward, the number of children being brought for baptism was radically declining in relation to the overall number of communicants. In 1811, there had been 20 paedobaptisms per 100 communicants; by 1856, the ration was just over 5 per hundred. . . . Hodge reported a similar downgrade was occurring in other ostensibly Reformed denominations. The Dutch Reformed ration was only slightly better than the Presbyterian in 1856, at around 7 paedobaptisms per hundred communicants. Things were even worse in other bodies. The New School Presbyterians were leaving six out of seven children unbaptized. Paedobaptism was so rare among the Congregationalists by the mid-1850s that Hodge could truthfully claim, “in the Congregational churches in New England, infant baptism is, beyond doubt, dying out.” Only the high church Episcopalians [who believed in baptismal regeneration and rejected revival] seemed unaffected by the trend. . . . [T]he 50 year period of decline Hodge traced out coincides, more or less, with the institutionalization of Revivalism in American Christianity. . . . The revivals of the Second Great Awakening totally restructured American religious life in radical fashion. . . . The doctrines of God’s sovereignty and predestination [as Calvin understood them] . . . were jettisoned[.] . . . Paedobaptism also fell into disfavor since it . . . imposed a religious identity on an unwilling subject. Personal choice was exalted. . . . [T]he revivals focused on the immediacy of religious experience, to the exclusion of traditional means of grace [that is, sacramental grace]. . . . [I]t is easy to see that paedobaptism would fit very awkwardly into such a religious matrix. . . . Instead of “growing up Christian” under continual covenant nurture, children were expected to undergo their own “conversion experience” at the appropriate age. . . . A conscious conversion experience from enmity to friendship with God was looked upon as the only way of entrance into the kingdom. . . . Infants, it was thought, needed new birth, as well as adults. They could not be saved without it. But the only channel of the new birth which was recognized was a conscious experience of conviction and conversion. Anything else, according to Gilbert Tennent, was a fiction of the brain, a delusion of the devil. In fact, he ridiculed the idea that one could be a Christian without knowing the time when he was otherwise. . . . Obviously, revivalism was no friend of covenant children. . . . The experiential rigor of Puritanism and revivalism . . . seemed like a safeguard against merely “nominal” membership in the churches . . . As adult-like credentials for conversion and full membership were pressed more and more, infant baptism became an increasingly tenuous practice, until it finally gave out altogether. . . . [T]he rise of the Baptist movement, with its individualistic approach to the faith and its voluntaristic ecclesiology . . . [made] [i]nfant baptism . . . preposterous on such presuppositions. . . . [I]nfant baptism [declined as] baptistic principles of church membership [became] the essence of true religion. . . . [T]hese views eroded the traditional Catholic and Reformation view that God acts to accomplish God’s purposes through sacraments. The desacralizing tendencies played down God’s role in the sacraments . . . [Such] influence[s] . . . reshaped the way some conservative Presbyterians read their . . . Reformed confessions . . . [c]ertainl[y] the sacraments could not be viewed as powerful, saving actions of God. . . . The [alleged] mystery of God’s activity through these physical instruments could not be allowed to saint. Any view of sacramental efficacy came to be regarded as “magic.” The sacraments were viewed [instead] as visual teaching aids. . . . In short, then, . . . the sacraments are basically treated as human acts of piety[.] . . . Their value is completely subjective—they help us remember divine truth, profess our faith, stir up emotions, and so forth . . . they cannot be regarded as genuine means of saving grace, for God’s grace is not actually found in the lowly natural elements of water, bread, and wine. In such a context, the sacraments obviously cannot belong to infants in any true sense since infants cannot perform the requisite acts or experience the proper emotions. . . . Given the push and pull of Revivalism . . . perhaps the wonder is not so much that paedobaptism declined in America . . . but that it survived at all. . . . [Lack of interest in sacramental theology . . . became a distinctive feature of American religiosity. . . . Some Southern Presbyterians had severely degraded the meaning of baptism, so that baptized infants were not regarded as genuine church members, much less recipients of salvific blessings in union with Christ. Presbyterian giant James Henry Thornwell regarded baptized covenant children as enemies of the cross of Christ and under church censure until they made a mature and experience-based profession of faith. . . . For Thornwell, “covenant” children stood condemned until they passed revivalism’s test of an experiential conversion and . . . [made] an articulated, cognitive profession of faith. . . . A credobaptist victory was virtually inevitable unless strong views of baptismal grace were recovered. . . . [T]he real issue underlying the loss of infant baptism was the loss of baptismal efficacy . . . infant baptism presupposes an objective force in the sacrament itself . . . [that] children . . . were made Christians at the font. . . . Apart from an efficacious view of baptism, the question “Why baptize infants?” became progressively more difficult to answer coherently. The credobaptists won the day[.]

In a passage by Thornwell quoted by Lusk, as representative of Presbyterian baptismal theology affected by revival, Thornwell wrote:

[I]n heart and spirit th[ose] [who have received infant baptism] are of the world. In this aspect, how is [the church] to treat them? Precisely as she treats all other impenitent and unbelieving men—she is to exercise the power of the keys, and shut them out from the communion of the saints. She is to debar them from all the privileges of the inner sanctuary. She is to exclude them from their inheritance until they show themselves meet to possess it. By her standing exclusion of them from the Lord’s table, and of their children from the ordinance of Baptism, she utters a solemn protest against their continued impenitence, and acquits herself of all participation in their sins. It is a standing censure. Their spiritual condition is one that is common with the world. She deals with them, therefore, in this respect, as the Lord has directed her to deal with the world. . . . Is not their whole life a continued sin? Are not their very righteousnesses abominable before God? Repentance to them is not the abandonment of this or that vice; it is the renunciation of the carnal heart, which is enmity against God: and, until they are renewed in spirit and temper of their minds, they can do nothing which the Church is at liberty to approve as done by them. . . . As of the world they are included in the universal sentence of exclusion, which bars the communion of saints against the impenitent and profane. They are sharers in its condemnation. They are put, as impenitent, upon the same footing with all others that are impenitent. As rejectors of Christ, they are kept aloof from the table of the Lord, and debarred from all the rights and privileges of the saints. Their impenitence determines the attitude of the Church towards them; for God has told her precisely what that attitude should be to all who obey not the Gospel. What more can be required? Are they not dealt with, in every respect, according to their quality? . . . Is it not equally clear that their condition, as slaves, determines their treatment in all other respects, until they are prepared to pass the test which changes their status? Is not this precisely the state of things with the Church and baptized unbelievers? Are they not the slaves of sin and of the Devil, existing in a free Commonwealth for the purpose of being educated to the liberty of the saints? . . . But until they come to Him, [Scripture] distinctly teaches that they are to be dealt with as the Church deals with the enemies of God. (pgs. 341-348, The Collected Writings of James Henley Thornwell, James H. Thornwell, vol. 4: Ecclesiastical. Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1986)

Thornwell’s views are set in contrast by Lusk with the view of baptismal salvation found in traditional Reformed theology, as presented, for example, by “John Williamson Nevin . . . [who sought] . . . along with . . . Philip Schaff . . . [in] the Mercersburg movement . . . to maintain the traditional ecclesial and sacramental theology of classic Calvinism” (pgs. 85-86, The Federal Vision). Nevin wrote:

If the sacraments are regarded as in themselves outward rites only, that can have no value or force except as the grace they represent is made to be present by the subjective exercises of the worshipper, it is hard to see on what ground infants, who are still without knowledge or faith, should be admitted to any privilege of the sort [quoted from pgs. 237-238, Romanticism in American Theology, Nichols] . . . [T]he Baptists . . . refuse to baptize infants, on the ground that they have no power to repent and believe in Christ, so as to be the subjects of that inward spiritual conversion of which baptism is the profession and sign, and without which it can have no meaning. What conclusion, indeed, can well be more logical, if we are to believe that there is no objective power, no supernatural grace, in the sacrament itself[?] . . . It belongs on the old order of thinking on the subject, as we have it in . . . Chrysostom and the Christian fathers generally, which made baptism to be the sacrament of a real regeneration by the power of the Holy Ghost into the family of God. Why then should it [paedobaptism] be given up, along with this [baptismal regeneration], as an obsolete superstition? It is becoming but too plain, that the Paedobaptist part of the so-called Evangelical Christianity of the present day is not able to hold its ground steadily, at this pint, against the Baptist wing of the same interest. The Baptistic sentiment grows and spreads in every direction. [Pgs. 214-215, “The Old Doctrine of Baptism,” John Nevin, Mercersburg Review, April 1860.] . . . On this subject of baptismal grace, then, we will enter into no compromise with the anti-liturgical theology we have now in hand. . . . It is impossible . . . to establish the necessity of infant baptism, except upon the ground that baptism imparts a special grace. . . . [Revivalistic Presbyterianism is therefore] hostile to infant baptism . . . in reality, whatever it may be in profession . . . and unfriendly, therefore, to the whole idea . . . it has been based upon in the Reformed church from the beginning. . . . To what a pass things have already come in this respect throughout our country, by reason of the baptistic spirit which is among us . . . [t]hose who have eyes to see, can see for themselves. [Pgs. 399-400, “Vindication of the Revised Liturgy: Historical and Theological,” John Williamson Nevin, in Catholic and Reformed: Selected Historical Writings of John Williamson Nevin, ed. Charles Yrigoyen, Jr. & George H. Bricker. Pittsburgh, PA: Pickwick Press, n. d.]

The true gospel of justification by faith alone, the practice of believer’s baptism as an ordinance, not a sacrament, and revival are intimately connected, as are baptismal regeneration, traditional Reformed theology, and infant baptism. Let the friends of Christ’s gospel and of historic Baptist churches take note.

–TDR

The Artifically Manufactured “Major-Minor” Controversy pt. 3

July 12, 2011 / 13 Comments on The Artifically Manufactured “Major-Minor” Controversy pt. 3

At one time, Christians and churches believe and practice particular, accepted, orthodox, and historical ways. These want to change, but also want tolerance from other Christians and churches for changing. God hasn’t changed, but the world’s changes instigate ones for churches too. Those particular doctrines or practices where they have changed, therefore, then must be less important, secondary, or tertiary. And they can’t affect fellowship or separation because they aren’t “major.”

Which doctrines and practices are minor? There isn’t such a list in the Bible. The Bible doesn’t deal with doctrine and practice that way—just the opposite. The tertiary doctrines and practices have been artificially manufactured by evangelicals and fundamentalists to cobble together coalitions for greater signficance. The casualties are the truth, obedience, and God. The new enemies are those who insist on preserving and protecting all the doctrine of God’s Word.

Post-enlightenment culture of the world has changed radically—its art, literature, language, music, and fashion. And we’re not talking here about printers, projectors, planes, and polyester. Churches and Christians, which are responsible for holding the line on biblical, godly belief and behavior, for maintaining a lifestyle distinct from the world, have slid along several steps behind as if dragged by an invisible tether. This slide contradicts the immutability of the nature of God and His Truth. Room has been carved out for the contradiction with the invention of the tertiary doctrine or practice. Now the secondary belief and behavior position has become cardinal dogma of a new evangelical canon, its adherents scrambling and sifting through history to find a whiff of its presence, willing to jettison any long proven exegesis that might get in their path.

Among many others, biblical appearance or dress, dress standards if you will, is one of the beliefs or practices bounced off the boat, bobbing in its wake without a life preserver. It had to go. It offended way too many important, new passengers of the Christian coalition.

You can still have dress standards for yourself and your family. More power to you. Go for it. But don’t expect others to be with you. And even if you do, don’t make it an issue of fellowship or separation. Dress standards, my friend, have become secondary and tertiary, and now are only a distraction from what’s really important.

If you bring up dress standards in evangelicalism and in a lot of fundamentalism, you’re one of the following—a moralist, a legalist, judgmental, anti-intellectual, unloving, the weaker brother, a Pharisee—or you’re just ignored. Take your pick. Also very common now is the charge that those who hold to these now tertiary practices undermine the gospel with dress standards. Today a professing Christian looking for a church thinks of himself as even on some higher theological ground if he rejects a church with dress standards. He justifies himself with aforementioned labels affixed through the persistent propaganda campaign of evangelical and fundamentalist leaders now for a half a century.

Dress standards divide up into four types: extravagance, worldliness, modesty, and gender distinction. Of course, modernistic Christianity will focus on the first of these with the new emphasis on casual dress. You won’t be required to dress-down for church, but you’re probably at least more authentic if you do. What was once normal Sunday best is now extravagant and unChristlike. The other three types of dress standards have been tossed overboard. You’ll hear just a little, very little, about modesty and that’s it.

In the materials on what make doctrines or practices tertiary, they are usually shifted to the secondary column by their distant proximity to the gospel and their supposed relative ambiguity. For instance, the Bible doesn’t prohibit shorts on women. You won’t find that verse anywhere. Now that means the teaching must be unclear. And women won’t go to hell for wearing shorts. The people who really care for women’s souls don’t want a dress standard to get in the way of their getting saved. These are how a dress standard has become tertiary. And if it’s tertiary, you would be wrong to make a big deal about it, really don’t want to make anyone feel guilty about violating ‘one of your standards,’ and especially wouldn’t want to separate over it.

Even if someone does believe there are tertiary doctrines and practices, have dress standards always been treated like they are today? Are the people with the dress standards really the oddballs of Christian or church history? Or are those who have opted out of the standards by reason of the new tertiary doctrine category the ones who clash with orthodox doctrine and history?

The trashing of Christian culture by Christians themselves helps explain the horrible shape of the United States today. Professing Christians helped excuse the dump that American culture has become, one from which it has become exponentially more difficult to be saved. God designed men and He gave them dress standards. Christians have joined the world in the rejection of those standards. By doing so, they think the world will like them better and the world also might have a better opportunity to be saved. The former is probably true, but the latter isn’t. The former, however, is also a very sad state of affair. Christianity is so like the world in its dress that it’s hard to tell the difference. And this isn’t God’s will.

Christian preachers once preached against mixed swimming. Not any more. Churches organize mixed swimming activities for their young people. Churches once distinguished between men and women in the design of clothing. Not any more. Now a popular Christian woman author proudly sports a butch haircut on the cover or flyleaf. Blue jeans are even acceptable church attire for ladies.

The orthodox and historic position of Christianity forbade pants on women. It’s only been for decades that Christians haven’t done so. That’s the position that every Christian took for centuries, as far back as before the printing press. That standard was challenged by the most godless pagans in our society until it became mainstream. It originated with people with an anti-god agenda. Churches at first bucked and resisted, and now they operate just like the world in this behavior. They defend it. The change never came through biblical exegesis or spiritual renewal, but through theological erosion and compromise. Now evangelicalism and fundamentalism pressure with mockery and ridicule the few churches remaining with this dress standard to capitulate and join in. Why mockery and ridicule? Because that’s the best stuff they’ve got. They either don’t want to feel guilty for selling out or they don’t want to have even the faintest of association with these curious cousins.

Oh, but it’s tertiary. Women dressing like men is tertiary. The rise of homosexuality. The break down of the male and female role. The destruction of the family. The downfall of a nation. Worshiping and serving the creature rather than the Creator. Tertiary.

Change in dress standards is a case study on the corruption of biblical doctrine and practice. A culture corrodes first in the areas that most clash with society. The pattern of corruption makes way for further doctrinal and practical erosion. God is no longer in charge. His way is no longer respected. The so-called major doctrines are not far behind because the toleration of error has already started. Total apostasy.

The Artificially Manufactured ‘Majoring on Minors’ Controversy

June 23, 2011 / 16 Comments on The Artificially Manufactured ‘Majoring on Minors’ Controversy

Imagine you and I go to a department store to shop for a shirt. You pick out a nice one. We get to the check-out and while waiting in line, you notice a small hole in the back of the shirt. Very small. Very minor. You announce to me that you’re going to take it back. And I answer, “Is the rest of the shirt OK?” You answer, “Yes.” “So why make a big deal about such a minor, little hole, when everything else is fine?”

Why is the small hole an issue when the rest of the shirt is good? It’s easy isn’t it? The hole is the problem. The rest of the shirt isn’t where the problem is. We major on the problem because it is a problem. And it is a problem. It’s enough to take the shirt back and no one would question it. Our standard is that we won’t keep a shirt that has a little hole in it.

If I spent too much of my time on the hole in the shirt, I wouldn’t have almost finished preaching through the entire New Testament during my nearly twenty-five years of pastoring. I’m in my last book, Luke. My and others’ emphasis is on the whole instead of the hole. However, the hole becomes an issue when others say the problem is minor. It’s a hole. It isn’t minor. It’s a part of the whole, but it isn’t anything anyone should ignore. People don’t ignore it either, which is why this is a controversy.

Evangelicals have been banging the major-minor, primary-tertiary drum for a long time, until now people believe it. This reminds me of two different quotes. The first is credited to Joseph Goebbels, that if you say something big enough and then keep repeating it, even if it’s not true, people will begin to believe it. People are believing this type of minimalism, not because of scripture, but because the philosophy has been repeated by its advocates for so long and so many times.

The other quote comes from Martin Luther:

If I profess with loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except that little point which the world and the Devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved, and to be steady on all the battlefield besides, is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point.

The “little point” becomes major because it is being attacked or ignored, even though it is in God’s Word and is historic Christian doctrine. There is a reason it is being disobeyed or opposed and that is because it is important, even though it is being relegated to something minor. In the strategy of Satan, I also believe he is an incrementalist. He wants to destroy what some might call a major doctrine, but he does it by starting with the “little point.” People give in on the “little point” and then Satan and his system keep chipping away until more and more is gone. I’ll explain as you continue reading.

The Manufacturers and their Impact

The major-minor propaganda that has owned evangelicalism for decades is now holding sway as well in wide swaths of fundamentalism. This is observed recently in a sermon at the national FBFI conference in Indianapolis, where a young, conservative fundamentalist, Jeremy Sweatt, discussed a survey he did of thirty FBFI type young fundamentalists, and he asked these men what they thought that the worst problems in fundamentalism were. You can see that evangelicalism has made huge headway when you read what these men wrote as answers to his survey. They sound like evangelicals. He said (at about the 28 minute mark) that they responded with these criticisms:

It seems like some fundamentalists are often majoring on the minors. It sometimes seems like some fundamentalists have a judgmental edge towards anyone who is not just like them in their eschatology, ecclesiology, dress standards, music philosophy and practice, etc. Their loudness in expressing their opinions concerning issues of secondary importance can sometimes become louder than their passion for the true work of the gospel.

I’m thinking, “These men are duped!” They are being swayed by propaganda. Think men! In the next few minutes, he gave a few more quotes along this line. Why are men saying these things? They give no biblical basis for their criticism. This sounds like men who are talking directly from the evangelical playbook and talking points. The words are even identical.

At the same time, conservative evangelicals are beginning to see the damage done (they’ve done, but they don’t confess that), and are pulling back on minimilization. Now in this, it seems like Johnson and MacArthur have been reading my blog in certain places (I’m not saying they are, just that it sounds like it. I hope they would.). This is seen in an interview that Phil Johnson did with John MacArthur in January of this year (2011):

PHIL: So here’s my question. This may be the hardest one I have for you all night. With these issues that aren’t really necessarily fundamental gospel issues, but they’re supremely important, with so much drift on issues like that, do you think that Together For the Gospel formula is sufficient, the idea that we can unite and fellowship with anyone who simply affirms the gospel? What if they affirm the gospel but they deny Genesis, they deny that homosexuality is a sin and they deny that, you know, they suggest that it’s okay to have women preachers? What do you do with someone like that?

JOHN: It’s not enough just to be together for the gospel.

With that initial statement, then MacArthur pulls away a little, because he’s not comfortable yet, it seems, making that point, so he follows:

I just think a biblical issue is enough. Sure, I’m not going to restrict fellowship with people who take a different view of eschatology, different view of baptism, mode, maybe a different view of Old Testament covenants. But when people begin to violate Scripture, I’m not talking about different views of Scripture or different interpretations of Scripture…some of them very historic. But when they begin to set the Scripture aside, that’s scary. And you’ve got these young guys who even call themselves evangelicals who are caught up in this self-exaltation movement of promoting themselves and they’re the big guru of their movement, developing their own style and their own theology…that is really scary.

Notice how MacArthur says that eschatology and baptism are not scriptural doctrines worthy of separation. Why? He never explains. Is he saying that scripture could be teaching sprinkling or infant sprinkling? Really? And he doesn’t explain that ever, which sends a mixed signal that he says he doesn’t want to send. MacArthur says all the time that the Bible is very clear, unambiguous on eschatology. We know how everything is going to end. And then he says that it isn’t worthy of restricing fellowship. That, my friend, is contradictory. The doctrine isn’t as important as his “friendships.” What about the friendship with God that we’re supposed to have? So he keeps fellowshipping and rewarding amillennialists because he likes them. What about the doctrine? Shouldn’t it be of greater value? Of course, when does an evangelical ever teach separation anyway? MacArthur is very ambiguous about what is worth restricting fellowship for him. Why not be clear? Scripture is clear on this. Johnson and MacArthur continue:

PHIL: One more question. Because there’s a danger on the other side of that as well…what you’re saying is, well the gospel defines what’s most important, and therefore all the fundamentals are somehow related to the gospel…there are other very important issues worth fighting for that are maybe not directly related to the gospel but still worth defending. And you don’t want to give up the fight on those things and say, “The only thing that’s really important is the gospel.”

JOHN: No.

This is all Johnson with MacArthur giving the one word answer. And immediately after, Johnson attempts to make sure that everyone knows they aren’t going to be too strong in this.

PHIL: And yet, on the other side of that if you look at the history of the fundamentalist movement, the twentieth century, what they did was begin to fight mainly about secondary issues. How do you avoid that pit fall?

JOHN: Yeah, we used to say about the fundamentals, it was no fun, too much damn and not enough mental. They basically made…they died on the peripheral hills. You know, you just can’t do that. So I go back to what I said before, the issue for me is what does the Bible say and what is the clear interpretation of what it says. For all of those truths, I have to be ready to take my stand…for all of those truths, not some of them, all of them.

And I think that’s why things drift the way they drift, because the people who have the ear of these young guys are too restrictive in what it is that they will fight for. Paul gave the whole counsel of God. I think…look, if you don’t know what your view is on something, then get back in the book until you do know what it teaches because you’re responsible for all of it. And I wish…well, I wish more people would take the Genesis to Revelation responsibility and stand for all that is revealed in Scripture.

Obviously there are things we can’t be dogmatic about, but we’re not talking about those. We’re talking about the things that Scripture clearly teaches.

This is all confusing, as it will be in evangelicalism. MacArthur makes a joke about fundamentalism, essentially calling them stupid, and that they died on peripheral hills. That is nice preaching for the choir, but it really doesn’t say anything. It doesn’t prove anything. It’s just more propaganda. Where are the oracles of God from the man of God, instead of sheer ridicule? Then he moves the other direction and says stand for all of Scripture, but don’t be too dogmatic on parts. Where does this come from? It isn’t from the Bible. Out of one side of their mouth, they say “take a stand on all of Scripture” and then out of the other side, “some of the issues are only peripheral.” Well, which ones are which? Complete ambiguity.

So MacArthur and Johnson are seeing the dangers of the minimalistic approach. I think it’s because they see the young preachers following all the fads of the young and restless, following these rock star evangelicals, and they don’t like it. But Johnson and MacArthur won’t be clear about, are cryptic about, what they are talking about, because they don’t want to shake up their present coalition and numbers and “significance” (a common Johnson word) and their own fads that they followed, that are now out-of-fashion, because they are circa the Jesus movement.

Johnson became a part of the discussion at SharperIron over the Jeremy Sweatt FBFI message and he wrote this:

To wit: the actual “gist” of my remark was NOT that John MacArthur “doesn’t like the direction T4G is headed,” but that he is concerned about the tendency toward doctrinal minimalism among EVANGELICALS IN GENERAL.

MacArthur is concerned now with doctrinal minimalism. This is something I’ve been hitting for years here and I think that MacArthur and Johnson are just now seeing the damage they have been a part of causing in evangelicalism with their own emphasis on doctrinal minimalism, an emphasis from the Sweatt message that we can see has impacted some of the most conservative young fundamentalists too. And what is at stake? Obedience to God and His Word and the authority of Scripture in the lives of believers.

What Is Really Happening?

In Romans 14 Paul writes about disputable matters and those are non-scriptural doctrines, not minor scriptural ones. The Bible doesn’t present a minor-doctrine teaching. We’ve talked about that a lot here. My concern is that biblical doctrines and practices are being nullified in the name of this primary-tertiary scheme, invented by men. What we have happening is the incrementalism of a Satanic plan. We have an acceptable attack on biblical doctrine, given credence by evangelicals and now fundamentalists. Those who defend these doctrines are called “peripheralists” or the like, part of the propaganda—name-calling. They are also ‘not enough fun and not enough mental’—they aren’t nice people and they aren’t very intelligent (that sounds like typical liberal attack, by the way, in our culture). There is not biblical basis for ignoring Bible doctrine and practice, so they have to attempt to humiliate these men, that is, use carnal weaponry. It’s too bad.

When there is a hole in the shirt, that’s a problem. We’ve got to fix the hole. Evangelicals and now fundamentalists say, “let it go, it’s peripheral.” But it is the hole. It is what needs to be fixed. And there is a reason why it happens to be the hole. When a reformed and evangelical pastor says that it’s good to use salty language, corrupt communication, in preaching, then Johnson and MacArthur say that there is a hole in the shirt. That isn’t acceptable. Why? Because that is their preferred “peripheral” issue. It’s important. Why? Because they say so. Complete subjectivity here.

Sensual and worldly music used in worship, misrepresenting and blaspheming God, is a hole in the shirt. Detiorating obedience to biblical dress is a hole in the shirt. The disappearing doctrine of the preservation of Scripture is a hole in the shirt. Skewed eschatology is a hole in the shirt. Charismatic ecstatic worship is a hole in the shirt. These don’t mean that we are ignoring the whole shirt. The whole shirt is important. But the holes are what get our attention. And they need to get our attention.

(part two to come)

When I Left Fundamentalism part seven

May 3, 2011 / 4 Comments on When I Left Fundamentalism part seven

God is light without any darkness (1 John 1:5). Darkness is doctrinal and moral. God created us to please Him. We can’t please God with doctrinal or moral darkness, both of which contrast with or contradict the message and application of God’s Word. God Himself does not fellowship with darkness. If we wish to please Him, we cannot fellowship with it either. Over ten years ago, I concluded that I could not be a fundamentalist and please God.

Scripture is perspicuous. We can know what it means. God would have us do what it says. For instance, we know it teaches believer’s baptism by immersion, not infant sprinkling. Infant sprinkling is darkness. And yet, infant sprinkling doesn’t exempt one from fundamentalism or evangelicalism.

To remain in fundamentalism, one must condone or at least overlook doctrinal or moral error. This is how fundamentalism conducts what it calls “unity.” Fundamentalism unifies upon a very amendable, malleable group of fundamentals, which are the source of perpetual debate between evangelicals and fundamentalists. Therefore, if you are going to get along in fundamentalism, you have to learn to “let go” what a mysterious consensus of fundamentalists consider non-essential. But none of this is how the Bible reads, nor is it how God operates. And this among other reasons is why I couldn’t claim to be nor wished to be associated with fundamentalism.

How I Left, When I Left

To stay in fundamentalism, you remain involved with a para-church organization—a college, university, camp, fellowship, association, or board. And then you continue with the churches who continue to participate with those groups. If you persist in your fellowship with these, you will also fellowship with darkness. How? They are tolerating some doctrinal and moral error. If you fellowship with them, you will fellowship with darkness. God isn’t pleased with that. You are choosing to let go some violation of Scripture.

I think that most fundamentalists do not believe it is possible to be consistent in the matter of separation. You will always be affiliating with some kind of wrong doctrine or practice, so your associations will always be a matter of a degree of error. You’ve got to choose what you think is serious enough to break from. And fundamentalists will make breaks. They will separate, unlike evangelicals. Evangelicals will say they don’t like something, but it won’t result in separation. Fundamentalists will separate, but they are always arguing about what is a “matter of separation.” Because fundamentalists mostly don’t know what they’re supposed to separate over (in other words, there is no consensus), separation has become mostly political. Whichever fundamentalist orbit has the most dominance (not to be confused with competence) will most often sway the most fundamentalists to its particular stew of doctrine and practice.

Leaving fundamentalism didn’t mean moving to another group where the same or worse problem existed, that is, evangelicalism. Leaving meant going back to square one, where I was only in fellowship with my church. Fundamentalists call this isolating yourself. Fundamentalists will say that you don’t want to isolate yourself and even call this “isolationism.” You know the verse on that, don’t you? Correct. There is none. They’ll also mock this kind of act, by asking something like this: “So I guess you are left to fellowship with yourself then, aren’t you?” Actually I’ve found just the opposite, and I’ll explain later.

So I went to ground zero in my fellowship. I knew I was in fellowship with my church, and so now our church and myself within our church would only fellowship with other churches that believed and practiced like we do. Our basis for fellowship would be doctrine and practice, that is, doctrinal and moral light. The truth is the grounds for fellowship (read 1-3 John—it’s very clear there). Unrepentant false doctrine and practice hinder, disrupt, or break fellowship.

For a moment, I think it is important to understand that fellowship relates to working together in some endeavor or worship or service. It isn’t getting together to talk or have a discussion. You will see that in 2 Corinthians 6:14-15 and 1-3 John again.

The missionaries with which we would work together are sent by churches with which we are in fellowship. Those churches believe and practice like our church does. If I preach at a conference, I go to fellowship with that church. There may be someone attending the conference that I would not fellowship with, and I might even talk to him or discuss something with him, but I’m there to fellowship with that church.

Once we got back to square one, I didn’t know of one church in California with which I would fellowship with. I would have hoped there was one church, but it wasn’t that important to me to find another one. I knew I could trust the Lord with this. Micaiah was one prophet telling the truth next to four hundred who didn’t (1 Kings 22). I was invited to preach at a church in Utah. The pastor there had heard me on tape. I wasn’t sure I was in fellowship with that church, but I went to preach. This is how fellowship works. You don’t cut people off. Love is involved. You believe. You hope. I preached there and then started receiving the church’s news publication. When I read it, I was finding that I agreed with him on everything. We started fellowshiping with that church and today we support a missionary sent by that church. As I fellowshiped with that church, I got to know other churches with which that church fellowshiped. Now I know of churches all over the United States and in foreign countries that are just like our church. Or in other words, we’re not isolated.

We once were in the American Association of Christian Schools. Things only improved when we left the AACS. If we want a teacher conference, we hold our own. We do a great fine arts and academic competition with only churches which believe and practice like we do. We have our own camp in the Sierra Nevada mountains. We’ve gotten together with another church that believed and practiced like ours one year. We have in missionaries who are sent by churches like ours, who are not affiliated with a board. We don’t have to tolerate doctrinal or practical error. We can please God. We can be consistent. We’re not isolated. We have fellowship.

When You Leave Fundamentalism

There really is no reason for a fundamentalist to separate from me or our church, except that we separate from fundamentalists. I’ve noticed that if you separate from fundamentalists, you are treated worse than evangelicals who don’t fellowship with fundamentalists. If you are a separatist, but not a fundamentalist, then you must be a heretic or factious. There is no way that someone who separates more than fundamentalism could be anything but a heretic. I don’t know of the scriptural explanation for this, have never heard it. Fundamentalists are not excited you are a separatist, which has me thinking that separation isn’t what’s so important about being a fundamentalist. It can’t be unity either, or fundamentalists wouldn’t be as separated as they are.

I have noticed that fundamentalists will sometimes agree with me, but then they’ll quickly provide a disclaimer, something like “but I don’t agree with everything he says” or “I’m not in favor of his position on the versions or the church or on dress standards.” You won’t, however, hear them say, “I really like Mark Dever, but I don’t agree with everything he says, especially on amillennialism.” Or “I really like the material on humility by C. J. Mahaney, but I’m not in favor of his continuationism.” Fundamentalists dislike certain disagreeable doctrine and practice more than others for no apparent biblical reason. I think that amillennialism is far worse than women wearing dresses, but you would never, ever know that by listening to fundamentalists. This is one way that I see fundamentalism to function according to a political position more than a doctrinal or moral one. Or maybe this is just modern fundamentalism—men who feel such respect for the intellectual or numerical prowess of evangelicals, that they are fine with throwing embarrassing separatists under their bus.

After I left fundamentalism, fundamentalism didn’t associate with me any more. They didn’t have a verse for that. I wasn’t confronted by fundamentalism for my separation from it. I just got the cold shoulder. To remain a fundamentalist, you do have to support fundamentalism. You have to send your kids to their colleges, go to their camps, and support the missionaries that are a part of their boards. That’s how you get along in fundamentalism. If you stop doing that, you really are “x’ed” from fundamentalism. It’s nothing official or even biblical. You’ll just know. And some guys are afraid of that, afraid of those prospects, that they might be missing something. News: you won’t be missing anything. You thought you were getting something and all you were getting was getting gotten. They got you; you don’t get anything. You don’t even get fellowship, because that involves doctrinal and moral light.

Shortly after I left fundamentalism, myself and a few other pastors finished a theological book. I’ve written three. One is not yet in print, but it’s been done for a little while. A fourth is about finished. No one from the fundamentalist college from which I graduated had written a book. None of the faculty had written a book. Maranatha had published two books. The first was a reprint of Thomas Armitage’s two volume History of the Baptists. The second was a paperback, Evaluating New Testament Versions, by Everett Fowler, foreword written by B. Myron Cedarholm, the founder and president. The latter was a King James Only book. Of the two books that I have written, that are on the market, neither of them is either in the college bookstore or library. You’ll find secular humanist and apostate books in the Maranatha library and several non-fundamentalist books in the bookstore, but never mine. Why? I don’t send students nor support the college. Neither does R. Kent Hughes, but you’ll find his books in the library and bookstore. He’s as good as separated from the school, to it’s left, not a separatist. This is the blatant inconsistency of fundamentalism. And it will always be inconsistent—it really is part of being a fundamentalist.

(More to Come)

God’s Evaluation of the Judgment of an Individual Church

April 18, 2011 / 26 Comments on God’s Evaluation of the Judgment of an Individual Church

The world places a low value on the judgment of a church. Even churches today, or professing Christians, do not consider the decisions of a church to be worthwhile. But what does God think? Can we know what He thinks? We have a passage of scripture in which we receive the Divine point of view: 1 Corinthians 6:1-4.

1 Dare any of you, having a matter against another, go to law before the unjust, and not before the saints?

2 Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world? and if the world shall be judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matters?

3 Know ye not that we shall judge angels? how much more things that pertain to this life?

4 If then ye have judgments of things pertaining to this life, set them to judge who are least esteemed in the church.

The church of Corinth was thinking like the world (1 Corinthians 1:11-2:16). The members had allowed the world’s leaven, the old, unconverted lifestyle, to leaven their lump, when God wanted them to be a new lump (1 Corinthians 5:6-7). They were operating in various worldly ways that reflected their former way of doing things.

Greek culture was litigation mad, much like the United States today. Everyone was his own lawyer. Rich tradition in Greek logic and rhetoric is due their responsibility to argue for themselves in court. Their whole society was built upon arbitration of disputes before various assemblies. The converted Corinthian church was no longer to continue this practice.

Paul makes strong statements about it in chapter 6. He starts with “How dare you?” and later in v. 5, he continues with “Shame on you!” He’s clear that he doesn’t want church members to take other church members to secular court. Why? His first overall reason in vv. 1-6 is because of the authority of the church itself. If you read vv. 2-4, you see that he asks rhetorical questions to make the point, and in so doing he reveals God’s evaluation of the authority of a New Testament church. Our evaluation of the authority of a church, an assembly, should be the same as God’s. Are we more wise than God in our evaluation? (see vv. 5-6) Of course not.

The rhetorical questions of Paul in those three verses (2-4) offer four separate arguments. First, God will have saints judge the world later because God sees saints as having greater judging ability and capacity than the secular world (v. 2a). Second, God will have saints later judging even greater matters than the ones that churches are dealing with now that God wants them to judge, so they are certainly able, in God’s eyes, to judge the lesser matters now (v. 2b). Third, God will even have saved people to judge angels, who are superior beings to people, so if these saved people can judge angels, they can judge these church matters (v. 3). Fourth, God considers even the least esteemed church members can judge matters pertaining to this present life in comparison to their future responsibilities in the whole world (v. 4).

These four arguments are devastating on the overall point Paul (on behalf of God) is making. The typical contention against church judgment relates to disrespect of the individual church. Paul is saying that even the least esteemed in a church, the least respected, and we are talking here about the Corinthian church, can make a better decision than the world. Why do you think? Because a church will rely on the Bible, God’s Word, for decisions. Believers are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, God Himself.

We can see in the verses that this is the judgment in a church between church members, solving a dispute, even a legal one, between church members. In v. 4, he says “the least esteemed in the church.” Members of a church are who he is talking about. God respects the least esteemed members of the church of Corinth to make a better decision in matters than the secular world.

Let’s say that, even though God says what He says here, it is actually true that those least esteemed members couldn’t make a better decision than the world, because the world has been trained in law and with advanced degrees and with a lot of respect from the world. Should we go ahead and go outside of the church into the world? V. 4 is a command, an imperative—“set them to judge.” God wants church members to sit in judgment over church members. He commands it. He doesn’t want the perceived quality of the judges in the church to stop the church from doing this. This is a matter of trusting God, trusting God’s authority.

God respects the judgment of a church. He evaluates it higher than the world. I’ve been writing about this recently here at What Is Truth. The biggest argument against accepting the discipline of an individual church, according to opponents of what I wrote, was that we can’t respect the judgment of an individual church. The only scriptural exegesis given for this, the only Bible referred to as a basis for disrespecting a church, was the example of the trumped up witnesses of Jezebel in the case of Naboth in 1 Kings 21. This man (who goes by the anonymous handle of “Anvil”) said that we can’t accept the judgment of a church because a church could have false witnesses against a disciplined member, like that in the case of Naboth with Ahab and Jezebel. Later I’m going to show how that this example is really the point for leaving it in the hands of believers in the church. It is a bogus argument, a total twisting of the Bible to overturn what we see is a biblical mandate in 1 Corinthians 6.

How can we know which church could get a judgment right, so should be trusted? Paul is speaking to the church at Corinth, which most would say was a “bad church” at the time, certainly not the best with all its problems. But God wants trust in this church’s judgment. The one criteria seems to be that the members were saints, that they were true worshipers of God, that they had believed a true gospel. What is dismissed here are the other problems. When I talked about this before, a few opponents intimated that the judgment of our church should be rejected because we used the King James Version and that the women of our church wore clothing with designed gender distinction. Our church does not add those two items to the gospel. We don’t believe that in order to be saved, one must use the KJV and have these kinds of dress standards. But that is irrelevant anyway. The question should be, “Are the people in the church saved?” Do they demonstrate Christian testimony of salvation? I wouldn’t question the authority of a church, unless I believed that church taught a false gospel, so that there weren’t saints to do judgment in that church. That is the case with some churches, so I think it is a legitimate concern, but it isn’t one with our church, unless someone could demonstrate that. I, for one, would be happy to hear how it is that we preach a false gospel, if that were the case. We are very careful in our soteriology.

If a church is truly a church of saints, with a regenerate membership, its authority should be trusted by other churches. God trusts it. God demands it. How dare you not trust church authority? Shame on you if you don’t trust authority. And I mean the opposition to our church when I say that. Shame on you!

That lack of a trust in a church, which is required by scripture, I see as coming out of fundamentalist and evangelical politics. Fundamentalist and evangelicalism are willing to disrespect the church discipline, the judgment of an individual church of regenerate members, for sheer political reasons that relate to a larger, unscriptural group think. Jesus loves His church. These outside factions do not love the church. They love their own opinions, which contradict the Bible. They truly think of themselves more highly than they ought to think.

Let God be true and every man a liar.

Addendum on 1 Kings 21 and the Witnesses for Jezebel

1 Kings 21 represents two world views, a biblical world view and a secular world view. The biblical view of the world comes from Naboth and Elijah. The secular one comes from Jezebel, her sycophantic supporters, and her compliant husband, Ahab.

Ahab wanted Naboth’s land. Naboth would not give it up because (vv. 2-3) God’s law would not allow it. It was not his inheritance to give away, based on laws in Numbers and Deuteronomy. He said (v. 2), “The LORD forbid it me.” God wouldn’t let him make the deal with Ahab.

Of course, Ahab does not take the correction of God’s Word very well. I find this with fundamentalists and evangelicals. They love their opinions so much that they think you’re being “mean” when you point out what the Bible says about their views. He went home and sulked. Jezebel noticed and she asked him what the problem was.

Jezebel didn’t see kings as “under the law” as the Bible taught. Deuteronomy 17 says that the Israelite king needed to write out by hand his own copy of the law. He was to rule under the law of God and he was to subject himself to those laws. That is foundational to Judeo-Christian ethics. Jezebel, a pagan, a secularist, saw kings in her tradition as just taking what they wanted. They didn’t have to ask. They didn’t have to sell. So she brought her Phoenecian world view into this matter.

She forged signatures and recruited trumped up witnesses in order to testify against Naboth, and they killed Naboth and, we know from later, also his sons. Ahab took what he wanted with Jezebel’s guidance. The secular, pagan view of the world was that king’s were not under the law. Ahab could take the property of Naboth without repercussions. Of course, this act led to the death of Naboth and all his sons, so it wasn’t true. God’s law was still operating, which is a major them in 1 Kings itself if you work your way through there.

Enter our opponent, Anvil, from the comment section. He doesn’t respect the authority of our church because our witnesses could be the very type that Jezebel, the pagan queen, recruited to offer her talking points. Unsaved witnesses. Not saints. Offering secular judgment. Of course, in this picture, I am Jezebel. And our church are these two witnesses. This is Anvil’s view of our church. And this is a view that is supported by a chunk of fundamentalism. They accede to this view in order to operate how they want, for their own convenience. We are railroading a church member out of the church with trumped up charges for what reason? The analogy doesn’t work very well here, but who cares? We needed to take something from him? We needed something he had? We wanted to get rid of him? Actually no to all that. It doesn’t work in any way in parallel with what Jezebel did. We just wanted to obey 2 Thessalonians 3:6-15 and 1 Timothy 5:8, among other places. And God tells our church to make those types of judgments as saints who will some day judge the world and angels, even the least of our members should be able to judge.

How dare you?!? Shame on you who view the regenerate membership of a church like the secular, pagan view of the world! Woe unto you who call good evil and evil good!

Somebody Did Something Bad So I’ll Do Something Just as Bad or Worse

April 15, 2011 / 5 Comments on Somebody Did Something Bad So I’ll Do Something Just as Bad or Worse

Years ago a Jewish rabbi wrote a bestselling book entitled “Why Bad Things Happen to Good People.” Maybe someone has already written it, but a better and more scriptural title would be, “Why Good Things Happen to Bad People.” Much more realistic.

People do bad things. They have done and they will do too. And they’ll do them to you. Sometimes they do them to children, who, of course, don’t deserve it. Or do we all deserve worse than any bad thing that was done to anyone of us? Actually we all deserve worse than the worst that has been done to us. That particular truth does not excuse a person who did a bad thing to someone. Yet, doing something just as bad or worse doesn’t help anyone or anything.

There are bad marriages, but that doesn’t make marriage bad. Some have decided that a bad marriage, maybe their own parents’, means that they’ve got to give up on marriage itself. This is an example, a case, of somebody doing something just as bad or worse because someone did something bad.

Here’s an extreme example of a bad thing. A man drives up on the curb to kill little children playing in the front lawn. Two kids die. But here’s another example of a bad thing. Someone spreads false doctrine that deceives a whole family, and that entire family, who has believed the false doctrine, rejects the Jesus of the Bible and is damned to Hell. Which is worse? The first gets treated worse. It is short term and emotional. The latter is forever. The latter is far worse on any scale. Not excusing the first, but we can’t let temporal issues cloud our view of eternal ones.

People get treated badly at a church. Mistakes are made. So they decide that a right way to respond to that is to head some place worse or just give up on church all the way. This kind of reaction is wrong. I eat a bad tomato, I don’t give up on all tomatoes. I buy a lemon car, and I don’t stop driving. Satan knows he can have his way in these situations.

My physical education teacher screamed at me, so I give up exercise? Do I? No. But a father mistreats his daughter and now patriarchy is wrong? Now we’ve got to be egalitarian because we got abused by a man? People injure their children, so now corporal punishment is wrong? No, no, and no.

If someone misinterprets the Bible or even uses the Bible as a reason to do an unscriptural thing, do we give up on the Bible? No. The Bible is still true. A church, where the women dress modestly and the congregation and choir sing reverent worship to God, does some and allows some wrong things. Are modest dress and reverent worship now wrong? Does immodest dress and irreverent worship correct the wrongs? Are we more likely to receive godly treatment with less modest clothes on?

Is Buddhism now true because we haven’t heard of a Buddhist child abuser? If the math teacher who told me 2 + 2 = 4 is later convicted of child porno, should I still think 2 + 2 =4? Because Mussolini got the Italian trains to run on time, should I be against prompt, timely public transportation?

I was recently reading a blog operated for people who have been abused by churches. The chief credential of the owner and operator is that she was abused by someone from a church. Someone came on to say she too was abused by a church and so she became a Buddhist. The moderator said she characterized her own Christian living as conforming to a pattern of Buddhism. She mainly followed Buddhism as a practical model for her life, she said. She didn’t expose Buddhism as a damning lie. She promoted it as an acceptable lifestyle.

If we’ve been abused, do we now have a more valuable evaluation of abuse and abusers than those not abused? Does my having been abused make me more trustworthy in my interpretation of Scripture? Does a victim of a gunshot become better prepared to treat gunshot wounds?

Why should someone attend an independent Baptist church? Is the Bible true? Are Baptist beliefs and practices biblical? Is the scriptural model for churches autonomy or independence? If you were abused by an independent and Baptist church, is that because it’s wrong to be either independent, Baptist, or a church? Is moving to something unscriptural the right response to something unscriptural? No, it isn’t. If somebody does something bad, the wrong reaction is to do something as bad or worse. Don’t do that.

Should we approve of Buddhism, because we’ve always been treated nicely by Buddhists? We’re all offended by child pornography, and perhaps there is less of that in Sikhism? Should we become Sikhs? People who called themselves Christians murdered 100,000 Protestants in France. Does that make Christianity false?

If someone who has been abused in some way in the past, not by me, and I criticize his or her unscriptural statement or evaluation or reaction, am I supporting his or her abuse or even all abuse? What kind of authority does someone have who can’t be criticized? Let’s say several abused organize into a group, who can’t be criticized, because criticism can only be interpreted as support of abuse or abusers. Aren’t cults characterized as groups with this kind of unquestioned authority?

Lot thought he was getting something when he left an abusive situation with his uncle Abraham and so pitched his tent toward Sodom.

When I Left Fundamentalism part three

February 27, 2011 / 13 Comments on When I Left Fundamentalism part three

I discovered that fundamentalism secured and held with its web of schools, colleges and universities, fellowships, camps, and boards, none of which are found in Scripture. Men argue that biblical silence is permission. If you are a fundamentalist, you keep supporting a number of these institutions with money and manpower with the thought that they help you and your people, not that you might just be propping up fundamentalism.

Part of being a fundamentalist really is having your fundamentalist school, camp, board, and/or fellowship. A fundamentalist church sends you to its school, which gives you a fundamentalist degree with its fundamentalist connections to help you get fundamentalist support and/or a fundamentalist ministry. Fundamentalism feeds off of itself even in its accreditation. The churches confirm the institutions, which validate the churches that accept the students. None of this may be very good at all, but the network itself self-authenticates, keeping its own cycle of approval within the world of fundamentalism.

Remaining in the fundamentalist pack or orbit or circles has required a certain level of doctrinal and practical quality control. I understand the benefits of that insofar those standards are biblical. However, you can find yourself on the outside of fundamentalism if you do not adjust to the fundamentalist parameters. It’s not so much that anything will really happen to you per se, just that you might find yourself into various levels of exclusion from fundamentalist opportunities, that are not so much a loss of biblical opportunities, as they are a loss of the sense that one is fitting into fundamentalism. No one will stand before God to be judged for what kind of fundamentalist he was or whether he even was one.

Someone in fundamentalism does not carry a fundamentalist card, but he does carry a standing or value that work something like a credit rating in the financial world. Your score is based on certain credentials that are common for continuing as a fundamentalist. Your net fundamentalist worth may not relate to your obedience to Scripture, even as certain disobedience of the Bible may not bother your status in fundamentalism at all; it might even improve it.

Discipleship

It might be hard for some today to believe, but as I got started in California, I had never been taught about discipleship. I knew about soulwinning and programs, but I did not know about making disciples. It’s possible that someone may have brought discipleship up, but never encouraged it, even though I had a double major in pastoral studies and biblical languages. The only exegetical point I could defend was “preach the gospel to every creature.” I thought that the great commission was something like “go and win people to Christ” and then train people to win other people to Christ. I knew that I needed some kind of soulwinning program. And I say soulwinning, because I thought that evangelism was something evangelists did. The terms soulwinning and evangelism were two different terms with different nuances of meaning, in my mind.

What I did hear about was the “follow-up” program. “Follow-up” was about seeing the new convert get baptized and join the church, start tithing, get into a ministry, and join the soulwinning program. Reaching those kind of goals as quickly as possible was in tune with that era of church growth philosophy. Follow-up was usually a short booklet and you did it in a new converts class. The pastor or a pastor led the follow-up and this was how the church integrated new converts.

I knew something was wrong with the system of fundamentalism as it stood. And as I began preaching in the Gospels of John and then Matthew, I saw that part of it was the lack in discipleship. Some equated discipleship with opposition to soulwinning—while we were busy discipling people, the soulwinning wasn’t happening that would keep the lost from going to Hell. Some of fundamentalism was even opposed to it, giving the impression that discipleship was new-evangelical. I thought that might be why I rarely heard the word. If someone were to support it in a sermon, fundamentalists would mark that man as a new-evangelical. In my first few years of pastoring, I became convinced that the great commission of the Lord Jesus Christ was to make disciples.

Matthew 28:19-20 has only one verb in it, an imperative, the word “teach” in v. 19, which means “to make disciples.” To obey the great commission of Jesus, one would need to make a disciple. One cannot make disciples of unsaved people, so discipleship always starts with preaching the gospel, but the great commission isn’t finished until you have someone who is ready to reproduce himself in another person.

I began looking around to see if anyone else was thinking the same way as I was. I found the Navigators and read a bunch of their materials. I read what evangelicals said about discipleship because I hadn’t found anything written by fundamentalists. Even though I was encouraged by much of what they said, I still saw that evangelicals were lacking in certain biblical doctrines and practices. None of the follow up programs in fundamentalism looked capable of making a disciple in a true New Testament sense, so in 1991, I wrote my own material. I became convinced that ministry technically was making disciples, so I was failing as a pastor if I was not perfecting our church members for this (cf. Eph 4:11-12).

In order to make a disciple, I saw in the Bible the necessity of involvement, so we didn’t use objective type questions where someone could regurgitate answers, but ones that required thought. As well, what someone did should come out of who he is, that is, right practice should proceed from right doctrine. Jesus set up a gauntlet for professing believers to test their devotion to Him, expecting sacrifice or true worship.

Worship was another term of which I heard very little when I was in college and graduate school. I became convinced, again through expository studying, that God was seeking for true worshipers. The Gospels transformed our entire ministry philosophy with the emphasis on discipleship and worship.

A First Pastoral Conflict with Fundamentalism

Fundamentalism enmeshed itself in our church in several ways. We sent students to Christian college. This was the only pattern I knew and assumed that this should be the norm for high school graduates from our church. We began to send students to Maranatha Baptist Bible College, my alma mater. We recruited teachers from Christian colleges to teach in our school. On those trips, I preached in college chapel. Ensembles from certain colleges came and made presentations. We scheduled evangelists I had heard while in college. We sent our young people to fundamentalist camps—Lucerne and Ironwood. I attended FBF meetings, conferences, and retreats. Our school became a part of the American Association of Christian Schools (AACS). We started supporting missionaries from Baptist World Mission (BWM).

Evangelizing, making disciples, and studying for four different teaching or sermon times every week, among other duties, took up the bulk of my time. I would almost always be preaching at least two book series in the New Testament and one in the Old. I’ve now preached through every book of the New Testament, except for Luke (I’m in chapter 11 right now), and many in the Old (Genesis, Deuteronomy, Joshua-1 Kings 19, Nehemiah, Job, 120 or so of the Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and all the Minor Prophets). The study, more than any one thing, exposed fundamentalism to me.

Every book of the Bible I preached through changed both me and our church. At one point I was in 1 Corinthians 14 and got to verses 29-35. I was convicted by God’s Spirit through those verses and then other parallel passages (cf. 1 Timothy 2:9-15) about ways that our practice clashed with God’s Word. Women needed to remain silent where in the church there was a forum for challenge—preaching times and business meetings. I did a long series of sermons from all the applicable passages for our church to come together on this decision. Only men should speak during preaching or make the business or financial decisions of the church.

One family, where the wife often spoke up in business meetings while her husband remained silent, did not like what it heard. The family didn’t say anything to me at that time, but one of the parents did complain to the son, who brought this matter to attention of one of his doctrine classes at school. Word traveled about this from the professor to the administration of the school, and I got a call from the president. He challenged me to “choose my battles” and to be careful not to make decisions that could hinder church growth. I wanted us to line up with and obey Scripture, whatever the consequences. Soon thereafter, I got a several page, single-space, typewritten letter from the dean of academic affairs, opposing the position I was preaching to our church. Among other things, he said that our position was a form of chauvenism, which would in fact “muzzle” our women.

Our church changed to follow the Bible and our ladies have never suffered from that. They are as fulfilled and joyous and involved as any group I’ve seen. The men of our church were strengthened by what the Bible expected of their leadership. Men had to lead. Today many conservative churches operate just like ours with their church government, except also excluding all of the men except for a small entirely male group of elders who decide everything for the church. What I saw as this related to fundamentalism was another example of the nature and work of fundamentalism enacted upon the superior institution, the church.

More to Come.

The Necessity of Poetry in the Praise of God

December 30, 2010 / 5 Comments on The Necessity of Poetry in the Praise of God

Growing up, I didn’t like poetry. I thought that a person should just say what he meant in a simple sentence that anyone could understand. “Get to your point,” I felt. When in college, I minored in speech and took two semesters of oral interpretation. The first semester was all poetry. We memorized and performed poems. I couldn’t wait until it was over. The teacher tried to persuade us of the importance of poetry, but I resisted. The college required two semesters of literature, English and American, a great deal of which was poetry. We called them English and American “monsterpieces.” I think you get the picture. I disliked poetry.

I knew that if you were a Christian, you had to like poetry. I want to help you with that, to explain to you the necessity of poetry in the praise of God. We were created for the praise of God and poetry is indispensable to that. Why is poetry necessary?

1. The Psalms Are Poetry and Inspired by God

This is the most obvious reason. If you don’t like poetry, you don’t like the Psalms, because they are poetry. If God inspired poetry, then He too likes poetry. That would mean that if you didn’t like poetry, you don’t like something that God does like. None of us should expect God to change His taste, but we should alter ours to conform to His. We could stop here, but we will go on.

There are reasons, I believe, that God inspired poetry and likes poetry. We know He does because of the Psalms, but now I want us to think about why He inspired and likes poetry.

2. God Deserves Greatness and Skill

Four times Scripture says “great is the Lord and greatly to be praised” (1 Chron 16:25, Ps 48:1, 96:4, 145:3). God is great so deserves great praise. God wants skillful praise (1 Chron 15:22, Ps 33:3).

Psalm-like poetry requires skill. It requires great and skillful word choice and meter and metaphor. Poetry asks for more time and thought to put the words together. God is given that effort and He is worth it. We can write non-poetry and spend far less time to put the words together. Poetry makes us stop to get the word order and adjectives and verbs and nouns right. This pause is the essence of waiting on God, not moving ahead to get done, but slowing down to make sure that all the words work together.

3. To Understand Poetry about God, We Must Love God More with Our Minds

God should captivate the thoughts of those created in His image. To comprehend all of what a poem says, we must think over the words again and again. We must mull them over, regurgitate them in our minds, meditate upon them. Our flesh is repulsed by that kind of mental labor, but it will be the discipline of those who love God. We are to cast down imaginations that exalt themselves against the knowledge of God (2 Cor 10:5). On the other hand, we should embrace the imaginations that exalt the Lord God. With the exercise of poetry, we are afforded the opportunity to love God with our minds. The thoughts required to ascertain even one line of poetry will yield more and more truth about Him.

4. The Form of Poetry Mirrors Attributes of God

The symmetry and structure of poetry fits the character of God. God is a God of order. A certain mathematical precision exists in poetry that aligns itself with the nature of God. Since God’s Word was settled in heaven before the foundation of the world, God invented poetry. Poetry exists because God exists, and poetry as a form reveals something about God that no other form can.

Poetry and Good Poetry

As I talk about poetry, I hesitate to call all poetry, well, poetry. It reminds me of the debate about culture—does it reflect reality or cause it? We should start with the form and content of what God calls poetry. That would reveal to us something about God and, therefore, about beauty. What is lovely is defined by God (Philippians 4:8). With objective truth, which comes from God, comes objective beauty. Psalm 96:9 says that it is the beauty of His holiness. True beauty is separated unto God, affiliated with His majesty. We would find that represented in His creation and in His Word, God’s revelation of Himself.

In biblical poetry, the psalms, we see creation and biblical history used as figures of speech, the descriptors that reflect the symmetry and substance of God. Good poetry will contain those same reflectors of God’s majesty. God defines beauty.

In the history of English literature, both British and American, good poetry has strong similarities with the poetry of the poetic books of scripture. They provide the elements of good poetry. We can judge the quality of the poems by their parallel with God’s Word.

Poetry that is offered as praise to God should be good poetry. The best English poetry was written previous to the 20th century. Today we might not identify with that poetry. We might not even like it. However, for praise we should change our taste to what reflects what we know God wants to hear. These poems are being offered to God as worship. They should be the best. Perhaps some poems today are like those poems. We do well to consider this.

We shouldn’t care what people like. Worship is what God wants. What He wants is the best, and the older English poetry in content and form is superior to almost all of the modern. For this reason among others, our church sings out of the Trinity Hymnal, Baptist edition, and the Comprehensive Psalter. The former has the best English poetry in a hymnal and the latter are the best versification of the Hebrew Psalms.

Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised.

The Biblical Mandate for House to House Evangelism, part 4

December 9, 2010 / 3 Comments on The Biblical Mandate for House to House Evangelism, part 4

II. Application

“And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15).

This record of the final command of the Lord to His church is not an option. While it is certainly a church command, doubtless the imperative of reaching every creature falls upon all those who are members of His assembly. The imperative is repeated in the other gospels: “Go ye . . . teach” (Matthew 28), “repentance and remission of sins should be preached” (Luke 24). The version of the Commission in John is notable: “Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained” (John 20:23). When the saints faithfully preach the gospel, men believe, and their sins are remitted them. In this sense, believers do remit the sins of the lost. Compare Jude 22-23: “of some have compassion, making a difference [distinction]: And others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire.” The believer is the subject of the verb “save.” We save people in a certain sense, when we preach the gospel to them; and when we fail to fulfill our duty to do so, we retain their sins. What a responsibility Christ gives His church in John 20:23: “whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained”! They are damned because of us. We are accountable for the fact that they will suffer unspeakable, everlasting torment in unquenchable fire forever and ever. Some, “shall be tormented with fire and brimstone . . . And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night” (Revelation 14:10-11), because of us. They weep, and wail, and suffer there, because we would not remit their sins. We were afraid to speak out boldly to them. We had our reasons to not go door to door. We had something else to do, so we did not go out soulwinning—and they will writhe, and cry, and drown in the lake of fire forever because of this something else that we made a higher priority. Paul states this truth as well. Because the apostle had “taught you publickly [mass evangelism], and from house to house [canvassing every person in the area], Testifying both to the Jews, and also to the Greeks, repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ,” because he had been faithful to “testify the gospel of the grace of God,” he was “pure from the blood of all men.” (Acts 20:20-26). He was not responsible for the blood of their eternal damnation. How much better to kill a man physically, yea, to expose him to the worst of earthly torments, than to be responsible for drowning him in everlasting perdition. The physical murder will last only a few moments—his spiritual murder will last forever. Had Paul not been faithful in going house to house, and doing mass evangelism “publickly,” the blood of the lost would be on his hands. Allusion is made to Ezekiel 3:18; 33:8: “When I say unto the wicked, Thou shalt surely die; and thou givest him not warning, nor speakest to warn the wicked from his wicked way, to save his life; the same wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at thine hand. . . . When I say unto the wicked, O wicked man, thou shalt surely die; if thou dost not speak to warn the wicked from his way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at thine hand.” If I do not evangelize as God has instituted—publically, and house to house—the blood of the lost will be required at my hand! Will countless souls rise up before me at judgment, and say, as they each pass groaning away before my eyes, “You retained my sins—I am here because of you—I am going to burn forever because you skipped out on door to door that week—I am here because you left early, and did not put in the hours regularly into evangelism that you ought to have—I am here because you did not carry tracts that one time—I am here because you were not filled with the Spirit, and so did not speak as you ought to have, nor been as urgent with me as you should have, when you spoke to me—I am here because you did not know how to deal with my spiritual problem, and did not use the verses you should have—I am here because you used shallow, non-convicting tracts—I am here because you, and your church, did not follow Biblical methodology—how many lost will point at me, and with voices filled with both despair—for it is now too late for them—and just anger, give me the undeniable accusation, “I AM DAMNED, AND MY BLOOD IS ON YOUR HANDS, BECAUSE YOU, YOU FAILED TO OBEY CHRIST’S COMMAND TO REACH ME!” We rightly view the mass-murderer, the serial killer, as one of the vilest of men—what multitudes, oh my soul, have I killed, what multitudes of sins have I retained, what legions of “true worshippers” (John 4:23) have I prevented from coming to know God, and offering Him glory forever, and so what infinite quantities of glory have I robbed from Jehovah?

It is no excuse if others around me are committing the same sin likewise. It is no excuse that many who go house to house also slaughter souls by their failure to properly interpret Scripture, by practicing easy-prayerism and generating false professions, or the like. Do few faithfully fulfill their evangelistic duty in my church? Their disobedience does not justify mine. Indeed, it makes it all the more necessary that I be on my guard to not wretchedly commit soul-manslaughter. It is necessary that I stand in the gap and set the right example, and thus seek to keep my brethren in Christ from having blood on their hands, rather than giving in to general apathy and allowing that to lull me to sleep.

We are very busy. We can convince ourselves—and the flesh will delight in it—that we are really fulfilling our duty when we pass out tracts to people we come across. However, “every creature” is the command, and that requires a systematic method of seeking to reach every single person in our area, which is not possible without going house to house (as well as using the tracts, which is the “publicly” portion of Acts 20). We may even be discouraged from going because of the necessity to perform lesser, though important, goods, from doing chores, doing physical labor for the church, doing non-evangelistic but spiritual work in the church, and so on. We absolutely must not allow these things to prevent us from getting out and reaching “every creature.” The cost is far too high—the awful guilt of having on our hands the blood of lost souls!

Furthermore, not having an organized soulwinning program in a church, with specific listed days and times to go out and preach the gospel, is a very bad idea. It makes many more people guilty of this terrible sin of soul manslaughter. This brings the judgment of God upon the congregation and the individuals guilty of this, instead of His blessing. Since Scripture declares that “The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life; and he that winneth souls is wise,” and “they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever” (Proverbs 11:30; Daniel 12:3), it also deprives people of immeasurable eternal reward. One learns how to deal with people’s souls by doing it, so not doing it also prevents parents from knowing how to effectively deal with their own children, making them more likely to bring their offspring to false conversion, and having them lost to the world. It also prevents saved young people—and adults—from developing the spiritual toughness, tenacity, and boldness that comes from having to take a stand for Christ at doors and speak to people there. It is easier to take a stand against the world in other areas when one is regularly taking a stand against it by preaching the gospel to it. Churches that do not go soulwinning should, therefore, expect to lose more, likely many more, young people to the world and to neo-evangelicalism. People are also deprived of ability to do ministry; fulfilling the Great Commission really is the definition of what ministry is (cf. Philippians 2:22; 4:3). Church unity is weakened by not having soulwinning; the saints are bound closer together when they participate in evangelism together, communally face the opposition of the world, and experience their Savior’s consolation in their obedience. It makes it easier for someone who does not want to follow God to feel comfortable in church every week, which is a bad thing. It brings the loss of the power of the Spirit, for He empowers for the purpose of producing boldness in evangelism (Acts 1:8). Revival should not be expected. Fewer prayers are answered. How can men lift up “holy hands, without wrath and doubting” (1 Timothy 2:8) when those uplifted hands are dripping with the blood of damned souls (Ezekiel 33:8; Acts 20:26)? It reproduces a bad model for ministry, as young people who are future preachers and leaders do not learn how to properly win souls, and so will fail to lead churches they will pastor or otherwise lead in the future to obey God in this area, so disobedience and all the ruin it causes will multiply over time. Conviction in soulwinning does not develop in a vacuum—the flesh very easily slips away from obedience in this matter, and pastors very rarely have pressure from the congregation to go door to door—the pressure is almost always to drop or decrease or minimize it, so if passion for reaching every household in a community is not deeply ingrained in young people, they will not do it later. A wrong view of church growth methodology also results—when we do not follow Scripture by reaching “every creature” in the world by going “publicly and house to house,” we adopt a system where inviting visitors becomes the main focus, and church services are changed from being for the purpose of edifying the saints who will them themselves go out into the world to do ministry—the Biblical pattern, Eph 4:11-12 (the pastor/teacher is given to perfect the saints, and the saints do ministry), to a model where church services are designed to evangelize the lost instead of edifying the saved. (Of course, it is not bad for the lost to come to church, nor to evangelize the lost that do come, but that is not the focus in Scripture for the assembly of the saints.) This inviting-the-lost-in model, versus the go-out-and-preach model of the Bible, is the root of the “seeker sensitive” megachurch, Rick Warren, neo-evangelical model that has destroyed many formerly sound churches. Indeed, the distinguishing marks of the two churches in Revelation 2-3 that were not going bad were evangelism and the reciept of persecution (Revelation 2:8-11; 3:7-13)—and the latter tends to come with the former, 2 Timothy 3:12; cf. Acts 7:59; 28:20. In short, when we don’t have organized, aggressive soulwinning going out to reach “every creature,” where we don’t strongly preach that everyone should be going door to door, as well as speaking to neighbors, friends, etc. (and we will be much less effective with the neighbors and friends without the experience from speaking to others), God is not properly glorified, saints lose out on eternal reward, saints do not grow on earth as they should, and the lost are not saved as they could be—it is an unutterable tragedy.

What can we do? First, we must constantly make sure that we as individuals do not become apathetic, and that we put the time into reaching the lost that is requisite to be fully obedient to God. We should not let a week go by without getting out there and putting serious time into that final, great command Christ gave us before He ascended to heaven. Second, we should try to bring as many people along with us, and strive to convey to them a passion for evangelism, as we can. If we are in a leadership position, we can, indeed, we must, make sure that organized efforts for weekly house to house evangelism are going on, must preach strongly the necessity of participating in soulwinning, and must set the example of passionate obedience in this area ourselves. We must make sure we have the love of Christ for the lost in us, the love that led Him to even suffer the horrors of infinite wrath (Matthew 27:46) to save them, and that will move us to do our part to reach them, and convey it to others. If we have “great heaviness and continual sorrow in [our] heart” over the unconverted so that we “could wish that [we] were accursed from Christ” to save them (Romans 9:2-3), we will go out and preach to them. Third, we should fervently pray for, be deeply concerned about, troubled in spirit concerning, and passionately desire a return to and an increase of obedience to the Great Commission in our church and in the kingdom of Christ on earth at large.

-TDR

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When I Left Fundamentalism part seven

God’s Evaluation of the Judgment of an Individual Church

Somebody Did Something Bad So I’ll Do Something Just as Bad or Worse

When I Left Fundamentalism part three

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